Trapping Fog

by William Stafford

  While Kipper poured, Sergeant Adams lowered himself onto a chair, taking care not to crease his dollymop’s frock.

  “You’re a good man, Adams,” Kipper offered the sugar bowl, “Despite appearances to the contrary.”

  Twenty-One

  Of course, being shut up in a cell on your Jack Jones gives you a lot of time to think. Well, there ain’t much else to do apart from counting the bricks in the wall. I was itching to get out - of course I was - but the longer I stayed there, the lower my spirits sank and I got to thinking perhaps I deserved to be there after all, on account of I had killed a man. Well, my brief had put it differently in court. He said a man was dead because of me, which ain’t quite the same thing, apart from the end result. But the jury was having none of it. They came back with a guilty verdict. I was guilty of murder, said the judge. Manslaughter was out of the question and no sop to the dead man’s widow and nippers, therefore I was to be hanged by the neck until I was brown bread and there was an end to it - an end to yours truly.

  Only, of course, it wasn’t, or you wouldn’t be reading of my further adventures now, would you?

  I remember the day in question vividly, although I tries not to dwell on it. It’s like a painting in your house or a favourite story from when you was a kiddie. You can recall every detail as well as your own name and it’s always there in your head. You can walk past that picture every day and not look at it but you know it’s there. And being banged up like I was, I had plenty of time to stop and look at that picture all over again.

  It happened in the market down Portobello Road. Doctor Hoo had sent me out to pick up a few bits. I think he just wanted me out from under his feet, truth be told. He’d been working on something-or-other up in his lab, only I weren’t privy to it, but then he’s always been a secretive bugger at the best of times. It turned out to be them brass fittings what’s on that toff’s leg and, let us not forget, is holding me new chalks to me old shoulders; I only found this out after I was dug up. Anyway, off I went to the market with a list of bits and bobs to get. Broken clocks mainly, it looked like, and who was I to question it?

  Only I hadn’t even made it to the first bleedin’ stall when some ruffian grabs me by the arm - one of me old ones - and shoves me into an alley and into a pile of boxes - you know the kind greengrocers have, the sort they carries their apples and pears in - and this time I really do mean apples and pears, not their bleedin’ stairs because that wouldn’t make no sense, would it? There was a stack of them piled up and he throws me into them and they breaks under me. Well, they’re only thin wood, ain’t they, and light? While I’m trying to pull myself up and keep out of his reach, he pulls a knife and kicks me legs from under me so I lands on me Aris’ again and I’m sure a splinter of that wood goes right up me jacksy.

  The ruffian’s after the dosh, of course, and he holds his hand out for it but I tells him what he can go and do to himself as an alternative, which only serves to enrage him and he starts swinging his arm about - the one that’s holding the knife, of course - and I scrambles away, backwards, like I’m a bleedin’ crab trying to escape from Billingsgate but I’m only getting farther and farther into the alley, trapping myself good and proper.

  “Give me your money!” he barks, jabbing in my direction with his knife and he’s bearing down on me and blocking out the light in that alley and all I can think of is Doctor bleedin’ Hoo and what he’ll do if I goes back empty-handed, and that’s a million times more scary than what this knife-wielding prick might do to me and I thinks, No! I ain’t going to let it happen, so I charges at the robber, like a bull at a - well, like a bull charging at anything, really - and it takes him completely by surprise to have my head butting into his belly, and I’m roaring like one of them old circus lions when they found Brutus in their midst, and I drives the robber backwards, toward the mouth of the alley, and it all happens so bleedin’ fast. Over he falls, down he goes, right on his back, and he lands on them wooden boxes, just like I had, only they wasn’t already broken when I had my go, and there’s a big, sharp shard, only I don’t see it and neither does he, not until it’s sticking out of the front of his shirt. We both looks at it in surprise and our eyes are wide and his locks on mine and it occurs to me to apologise and it occurs to him to spill blood from out his mouth and he lies back and dies and he drops his knife and me, not thinking straight, I picks up the knife and I offers it to him, thinking that might make things right. And then a woman screams and the mouth of the alley is blocked by a crowd and a whistle blows and the coppers turn up to take me away...

  As far as the coppers was concerned, it was an open-and-shut case. There was plenty of witnesses who opened their gobs in a rush to tell the police what they thought they had seen, and then it was a matter of the coppers shutting the cell door.

  Nobody had seen the robber accost me. I should be so bleedin’ lucky. All anybody saw was me standing over him with a knife in my hand and blood coming out of his belly. Then they found I had money in my pocket and they thought that I had robbed him! I tried to show them me shopping list as the reason why I had so much cash but I couldn’t find it. I must have bleedin’ dropped it in the alley. Well, I couldn’t tell him to speak to my employer on account of Doctor Hoo liking his business kept quiet and all that. So I didn’t have a peg to stand on, did I?

  So I was done for murder and robbery with violence and my fate was sealed. Well, I’ve told you how Doctor Hoo got me out of that - eventually! - because that’s where you came in; but now that I was back behind bars, I was preparing myself for a long stretch - and I don’t mean my neck because I don’t think they was going to hang me again but I had a feeling they didn’t know what to do with me, so I was going to be left to rot in prison. Well, it’s what I would have done if I was in their ones and twos.

  And then, just as I’m getting settled in, under that scratchy blanket and feeling sorrier for myself than a pirate with woodworm, the cell door opened and a man in a frock tells me I am free to go.

  Twenty-Two

  “Somebody to see you, sir.”

  Kipper looked up from his notes and glared. Sergeant Adams was still wearing his dollymop costume. Adams caught the glare and apologised.

  “I was just about to get changed, sir - I’ve had to send a cab to Scotland Yard to pick up me uniform, but I thought you’d want to see him right away, sir.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s right, sir! How did you guess?”

  Kipper scowled. Adams actually bobbed in a curtsey and scurried out. Kipper got to his feet as a tall, slender figure appeared in the doorway. He gasped involuntarily as the lamplight played on the visitor’s features.

  It’s a mask! It has to be! The thought arose again like desperate hope. Nobody could really look like that. Could they?

  “Come in.” Kipper managed to squeak. He cleared his throat and made a gesture of invitation. The man stepped over the threshold without seeming to move at all. He seemed taller in the office; Kipper waved vaguely at a chair but the man declined the offer - but how exactly he did this, Kipper could not say. Kipper felt uncomfortable in his chair with the visitor towering over him so he stood up again. It helped but not much.

  “What can I do for you, Hoo?”

  It might have been the inspector’s imagination but he could have sworn Hoo’s lips curled in a lop-sided smile. Not a mask, then; the poor bleeder really does look like that.

  “Deacus,” Hoo’s voice rumbled from somewhere deep inside him.

  “I beg yours,” said Kipper. “Oh, oh! Him! What about him?”

  “Release him.”

  Kipper emitted a laugh of surprise. “I should cocoa. Go on, get out of it. Coming in here. He’s a convicted murderer, that one.”

  Hoo’s lips parted enough to give Kipper a flash of his small but even teeth.

  “Verdict unsound,” he said. “Accident.” />
  “Now, look here,” Kipper, more than a little unnerved, wanted rid of this eerie presence and sharpish. “Bit late to come in here, defending him. Doctor of Law, are you? Where was you when the trial was going on then, eh? Go on; sling your hook.”

  But Doctor Hoo showed no signs of going anywhere. In fact, to Kipper he looked like he had planted himself in the office like a lamppost or a tree - No - a totem pole.

  “Foggy Jack,” said Hoo and Kipper’s blood ran cold.

  “What about him?”

  “Release Deacus. I catch killer.”

  Kipper gasped in disbelief. “Oh, no! Oh, no! It don’t work like that. What? Make me a deal, will you? I don’t know you from Adam.”

  Hoo stared, implacable. He touched his hat and left. Sergeant Adams materialised in the doorway.

  “Excuse me, sir, Doctor, only there’s a message come from Bigby of the Yard, sir. Wants to know if you wants to join him talking to a coachload of them stage magicians.”

  Kipper groaned. Bigby was ahead of the game again, was he? Got a head start with the conjurors and I’m expected to tag along, am I?

  Sod that for a game of soldiers.

  Kipper looked from Adams to the space vacated by Hoo and back again. “Tell him thanks but no thanks.”

  “Right you are, sir.”

  “And Adams?”

  “Yes, sir? Uniform’s on its way, sir.”

  “Never mind that. Pop down to the cells, will you, and give our friend Deacus his liberty.”

  ***

  “There’s no need for this, Inspector. I can find me own way home and I won’t dilly-dally on the way, neither.”

  Damien Deacus fidgeted in his seat in the cab the copper in the frock had summoned.

  “I’m sure you can find your way to a lot of places,” Kipper’s smile was taut and humourless. “To Limehouse, please, driver!”

  “Ta-ta, sir,” Sergeant Adams simpered from the footpath. Kipper reddened.

  “Get back inside, man!” he urged. “Before somebody clocks you.”

  Deacus sniggered. “It’s him, ain’t it? The one what had the beard.”

  Kipper glowered at him and was almost jolted from his seat as the cab moved off.

  “And I thought I kept strange company,” Deacus laughed. Kipper scowled, sparing himself the futility of trying to explain about Adams’s undercover garb. A toe rag like Deacus would not appreciate the finer points of police work.

  Their journey continued in silence, save for the horses’ hooves on the cobbles and the sounds of the streets, which became quieter the closer they drew to the docks. The hour was late and it seemed even the smugglers were having an hour or two off.

  “He’s a right one, isn’t he?” Kipper prompted.

  Deacus frowned. “Who is?”

  “Your boss.”

  “Is he? That’s one word for it.”

  “It’s two words, actually.”

  “I suppose he is.”

  “What?”

  “A right one. His heart’s in the right place.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah. It’s on the inside. Really, Inspector, I’m touched you would bring me all the way out here and I’m thankful for the escort - don’t think I’m not - but I can walk it from here; it ain’t far.”

  Deacus made to get up but a bark from the inspector sat him down again. “Stay where you are!” Kipper snapped. “Before we go in, you’re going to tell me everything you know about this Doctor Hoo.”

  “Am I?”

  “Or we could turn this cab around and deliver you back to the nick.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes,” said Kipper. “Oh.”

  Twenty-Three

  Well, I should have bleedin’ known. I should have known my liberty would come with strings attached. I had to think carefully and quick. What could I tell this copper that wouldn’t land me nor Hoo in the tom tit?

  “He’s a doctor, ain’t he?” I shrugged. “Didn’t he give you one of his cards?”

  The copper let out a grunt what I think was meant to signify ‘yes’.

  “But he no longer practises?”

  “Oh, he’s practising all the bleedin’ time, mate. That’s why he’s so good at it.”

  The copper - Inspector Fishface, I’ll call him - was not amused.

  “But his Harley Street premises are shut up.”

  “He’s moved out. No law against it, is there?”

  “My question is why.”

  “Well, you’ll have to arsk him about that, won’t you?”

  “I will.”

  “Good luck to you.”

  “Been with him long?”

  “How’d you mean?”

  “In his employ.”

  “Years, mate. Man and boy.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  I sat back. Old Fishface had got the cab driving around in circles, delaying our arrival at the warehouse. Clever bastard. He could have arsked me all this back at the nick and I wouldn’t have said nothing. But out here, on the streets where I could taste the air of freedom, he was showing me what I was in danger of losing all over again. Like I said: clever bastard.

  ***

  Doctor Hoo was hard at it when I brung Fishface up to the lab. “Just don’t touch nothing,” I warned him. “He don’t like it if you touches his things.”

  Old Fishface muttered something about being of a similar disposition and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be funny.

  True to form, the doctor’s workbench was littered with clock parts. Dials, cogs, and wheels was all over the shop, and the doctor was wearing his goggles with the magnifying lenses what made his minces looks like somebody peeping through a letterbox. He was concentrating hard on something fiddly so I put my hand out to keep the inspector at bay until a suitable interval arose. When Hoo had finished what he was doing, I didn’t have to clear my throat nor nothing. He knew we was there and he said, Good evening, before he turned around - When he turned it was peculiar; he just sort of revolved like a little figure in a music box I once nicked - I mean, saw in a window. (I’ve got to be careful what I think with Fishface at my elbow, in case anything incriminating slips out me north). I see the effect Hoo’s strangeness has on the copper.

  “You’ll get used to it,” I says out the side of my mouth. Which was a bit of a falsehood on account of I ain’t never got used to it.

  “Come,” says Hoo and he picks up the lantern and we has to follow him pretty sharpish or get left in the dark.

  He stopped at a covered object in a far corner, and waited for us to catch up.

  “What is this?” said Fishface with impatience. He’d come to talk about catching a killer not to witness some kind of bleedin’ unveiling ceremony.

  “See,” said Doctor Hoo and he lifted up a corner of the tarpaulin and slowly pulled it away, revealing a tall crate, almost a coffin, really - especially when you saw there was somebody standing up in it. A woman. Tarted up like a two-penny dollymop.

  “My Gawd,” said Fishface, peering closer. I did too. “I don’t understand.”

  Neither did I, to tell you the truth, only I didn’t say nothing, on account of not wanting the copper to know I was in the dark as much as he was.

  “Bait,” said Doctor Hoo.

  “Come again?” said Fishface.

  “Bait,” said Doctor Hoo a second time.

  “Stands to reason,” I chipped in. “It’s bait, ain’t it?”

  Kipper took a break from staring at the dollymop long enough to send me a puzzled look, and then he went back to gawping at the woman in the box again.

  She was an amazing piece of work and no mistake. Lifelike, except she wasn’t breathing. The detail was astonishing. From t
he make-up caked on her cheeks to the bruises on her shins, Hoo had not overlooked a thing.

  I saw him, watching us, and even he couldn’t hide the smile of pride on his mush. If I had a minute alone with him I would have arsked him what he was playing at, but I had to keep shtum on account of the copper being right there.

  Speaking of him: Fishface’s fingers was reaching slowly toward the dollymop’s arm.

  “No touch!” said Hoo.

  “What did I tell you?” I said, but Fishface took no bleedin’ notice. His fingertips touched the dollymop’s arm, gingerly at first, as though he was afraid she would wake up, and then he got a little bolder and he’s trying to pinch and squeeze her. Then he’s rapping on the arm with his knuckles and it makes a hollow sound, so he tries again on her chest and it makes a deeper sound.

  Well, I pulls him away before he launches into a drum solo. At least I’ve got one question answered: she weren’t made out of no dead bodies, which had been my first thought.

  “I don’t get it,” said Kipper, pushing me away from him. “What’s all this in aid of?”

  “Bait,” said Hoo, and I could tell that even his patience was wearing thin.

  And then it clicked.

  “Don’t you get it?” I teased the copper. “This here dollymop’s a decoy. We put her out on the street and along comes Foggy Jack and we nab him. Or rather, you do, on account of it being your bleedin’ job and all.”

  Fishface looked far from convinced. He stroked his chin and squinted at the dollymop. “I don’t know,” he said. “Even with a ton of fog...”

  Something else clicked - and not in my loaf this time. Something whirred as well, and the dollymop’s eyes flew open and she was looking right at him with bright baby blues. Her mouth opened but didn’t move as words came out of it. “Tanner in the hand and a bob in the gob,” she said.

  Fishface recoiled but he was clearly fascinated. “Good Gawd!” he said.

  “I know,” I chuckled. “Prices ain’t half gone up.”

  ***

  We called it Coppélia after the puppet in the old story and we passed a couple of amusing hours in her company, seeing what she could do.