Hardie, though, seemed to find it an acceptable reply. “Me too. I misunderstood that you’re better not to dip the pockets of off-duty police.”
He laughed and, to my surprise, I found myself joining in. “Is that what brings you here?” I asked.
“This time it is, yeah. I got a bit too cocky, to tell the truth, John, and tried my hand at something which ain’t really my game. Saw this swell; he’d taken a drop more than was good for him. Leaning against the wall, he was, eyes closed and singing to himself, with a nice little lump in his jacket front. I was on my way home – I’d had a drop as well, and I said to meself, just let it go, Bert. But I never listen, not even to meself, so I slid over, acting like I’m going to help him up, and slips me hand inside his coat. Next thing I know, I’m lying on me face and he’s standing there, waving his card at me, telling me what’s what. And so here I am. Just arrived yesterday.”
He grinned again, arrest and imprisonment obviously little more than an unpleasant occupational hazard to one such as he.
“This is not your first time in prison then?”
“Not by a long chalk. I’ve been nabbed three times – no, four, now I think on it – but never sent down for long. I’m too tricky for that, John. I know how to play the game. Give the judge a sad tale, rip me clothes a bit, knock a year or two off my age. Six weeks is the most I’ve ever got.”
I shook my head, but his cocksure self-belief was strangely comforting and buoyed my flagging spirits once more. If a child like Bert could face imprisonment with such fortitude, surely I could too?
“This is your first time though, ain’t it?” he continued, still smiling.
I nodded. “It is. As I said, it is a misunderstanding. One that will shortly be cleared up.”
I remembered the upsurge in hope I had felt on leaving Holmes’s presence and told myself that though everyone in positions of authority seemed determined to make my current situation as unpleasant as possible, I had on my side the finest investigative mind in the country. Holmes would uncover the truth, I was sure.
“Thought it was,” declared my new friend with satisfaction. “But you’ve got the right idea. Keep your chin up. And don’t tell the guards a thing. That’s the surest way to a slit throat and a quicklime grave.”
“I’ll certainly keep that in mind,” I replied, and settled myself as comfortably as I could on the hard bed. The room was cold, the bare bricks leaching away what little heat there was. I pulled a thin blanket over my knees, and asked Hardie what I could expect from the remainder of the day.
“Well, there’s services in a bit. Always handy for passing a note if there’s someone you want to talk to.” He paused in consideration. “Not much else, though. Not before your trial. You get an hour in the yard and a bite to eat after, but you missed that today. Best to stay here, get your head down if you can, and keep yourself to yourself.”
It seemed sound advice. Holmes had made a similar suggestion, in fact. “I intend to do exactly that, actually. But at the moment I can’t imagine how I’m going to pass the time. Are we allowed reading materials? Books, perhaps?”
Hardie shook his head. “Don’t know about books. You can get a newspaper if you can pay for it, though.”
That was something, at least. I filed the information away for later, then sat in awkward silence for several minutes, as our conversation faltered and failed. Hardie sat opposite me, legs crossed at the knee, one eyebrow raised as though amused by my discomfiture, obviously unconcerned that we seemed to have no common ground on which to base so much as a single conversation. Finally, in fear that I would spend the remainder of my time in Holloway in silence, I asked him about his life outside prison.
I wondered how he would react to what I felt sure was a breach of prison etiquette, but to my surprise, he appeared completely unconcerned.
“Dunno where me father is. Left me mother when I was a babe. She used to say he’d been murdered down Chinatown, but I heard he’d taken up with a barmaid and moved somewhere Highgate way. Didn’t make any difference to me. Not really. Mother had a touch of the morbs now and then about the old feller, but not me. Never knew him, did I?”
It was a familiar tale. “So you were brought up by your mother? That must have been hard on the poor woman.”
“I reckon it was. Not that she was much use, but there was a neighbour or two who’d make sure we was fed when they could manage it. And when they couldn’t, well, there’s always ways to make a penny or two, if you’re willing to take a risk.”
“By theft, you mean?”
“A bit o’ that, I s’pose, but I did me share of mudlarking too, until I were chased off by them as thinks they own the mud itself. I were in a gang for a while, me and some other lads. We looked out for each other, but that didn’t last neither. Police grabbed a couple of ’em and some wanted to try their luck up north. So I were back on me own, wasn’t I? Could have been the making of me, that. Allowed me to spread my wings. That’s what I told meself, anyway. But no mates means no lookout, and nobody to help you get away when a copper grabs your collar.”
He shook his head, but the smile never left his face, as though he found his own ill luck humorous. I found myself warming to Albert Hardie, a child condemned more by the fact of his birth than any innate wrongness in his character. I could see no evil in him as we talked of the London he knew, and I told him a little of my own life, though missing out any mention of Holmes or my role in his investigations.
By the time the lights were extinguished and the cell plunged into darkness, I had decided to do what I could for the boy upon my release. Perhaps it was the realisation that here was someone whom I might be able to help once the world returned to normal, or perhaps it was simply the company of a friendly soul, but I suddenly felt more positive than I had since I had found myself trapped in that terrible room.
I told Hardie some of this, and in return he beckoned to me in the dim light. “Here, have a drop,” he whispered, and pressed a glass jar into my hand. Propping myself up on an elbow, I unscrewed the lid and cautiously sniffed at the contents. The smell of raw alcohol assaulted my senses, reminding me of long days spent in laboratories during my medical training.
“It’s a bit rough,” Hardie continued, “but it’ll do you good.”
Of course, I should not have been surprised at the presence of illicit alcohol inside a prison, but I admit that I had not realised it was so prevalent that even the likes of Hardie would have access to it. I had no great desire to pollute my body with such a poisonous brew – God knows what had been used to create it – but it would have been rude to reject so well-meant an offer and so I sipped a little, trying not grimace at the taste, then passed the jar back to Hardie with my thanks.
“It’s all right,” he said, lying back on his bed. “You got to look out for your mates when you’re inside, don’t yer?”
It had been a long and confusing thirty-six hours. The horrible death of Miss McLachlan and the night spent dozing in Scotland Yard already seemed a lifetime ago. Only as I lay in the dim light and sipped from Hardie’s jar as we passed it back and forth did the full enormity of my predicament truly hit me, and I came close to being overwhelmed. I had complete faith in Holmes’s abilities, of course, but the evidence against me was extensive, if mainly circumstantial, and Inspector Potter was not, I thought, inclined to try too hard to refute it. In addition, I had the new problem of a prison governor who, for some reason, had taken against me, and no means that I could see by which I could protest against his behaviour. Somehow, though, the peculiar kindness of Albert Hardie – and the warming glow of his illicit alcohol – provided me with a modicum of hope which I held to me and which allowed me, eventually, to fall asleep.
Chapter Six
Over the next few days I was introduced to the strange rhythm of imprisonment. We rose early, to a breakfast of gruel-like porridge and stale bread, then washed ourselves in cold water and made our beds. That task completed, we had nothing to d
o but sit in our cells and amuse ourselves as well as we could.
I quickly realised that I preferred the extended periods of confinement in my cell to the occasional activities prescribed by the prison rulebook. Hardie was an engaging young man, with a plethora of stories to tell about his criminal life, and though I should perhaps have remonstrated with him regarding some of his tales, I never did so. His voice, often filled with joy at his own cleverness, brought a little light into our grim surroundings and lifted my spirits, which otherwise inevitably would have sagged as the long day wore on.
There was another reason for my preference for relative solitude. As Holmes had warned me, and Hardie reinforced, I would be safest if I could keep myself separate from the other prisoners. Besides the commonplace violence that plagued all such establishments, there was the very real possibility that one or other of the felons currently awaiting trial might have reason to remember without fondness the names of Holmes and Watson.
Even so, there were two points in the day when I had no choice other than to leave the security of my cell, and mingle with my fellow prisoners.
Religious services, which took place each morning at a quarter to nine, were the less worrisome of the two. We were herded to a rather impressive chapel, big enough to hold the entire prison population, arranged in long pews which faced a carved chaplain’s lectern, on which lay open a heavy Bible, and a row of more plush seating for the governor and other senior prison staff. Indeed, all the guards were present at every service (Hardie later informed me that they were fined a shilling if they did not attend). They sat at the end of each row, presumably the better to observe the prisoners, but for the most part quickly dozed off or stared blankly at the ground. The devotions themselves were designed more to castigate prisoners for their failings than to remind those fallen low that there was a higher power who would never despair of them. In common with many of my fellow inmates my attention quickly wandered and, far from considering the condition of my eternal soul, I found myself watching notes and small packages slip from hand to hand. Eventually the chaplain brought the service to an end and we shuffled out the way we had come, and silently made our way back to our cells.
The stroke of ten, however, brought a more dangerous break in the monotony of the day. The heavy footfall of guards progressing along the corridor was followed by the creak of keys in rusty locks as cell doors were opened and we were led through the building to the grim rectangle of ground that served as the prison yard. Here we were left to exercise for an hour (though Hardie informed me that it was often longer, while guards searched for contraband inside). For one reason or another, I had contrived to miss exercise time on my first few mornings, but eventually, I had no choice but to take part. In all honesty, and in spite of my reluctance to mingle, I could not help but anticipate with pleasure the thought of time spent in the open air, no matter how enclosed the area or unappealing the surroundings.
Holloway Prison is laid out on the panopticon principle, with six wings arranged like the top half of a cartwheel, surrounding a central section, from which vantage point the entirety of the prison population can be observed by the guards. The front two wings house women and very youthful prisoners, but the remainder, at the time of my spell within its walls, held some four hundred men, the majority of them awaiting trial like myself. I had been placed in A Wing, the first of the male wings, situated to the left-hand side of the administrative quarters, and thus only a short walk downstairs and past some outbuildings to the courtyard.
I had taken Hardie’s suggestion that I leave my jacket in our cell, and divest myself of my tie, lest I appear too obviously out of place, but in the event I need not have worried, for as I emerged into the dull light of an overcast day, I was confronted by a mass of humanity of all shapes and sizes, several of whom were dressed far better than I could have contrived.
The courtyard was an expanse of trampled ground ringed and criss-crossed by gravel pathways, along which prisoners were intended to walk in perpetual motion. In reality, groups of acquaintances came together in clumps between the paths and stopped to converse. My new friend and I took up a position within easy reach of the route back into the prison proper and while I looked around and wished for the hundredth time that smoking were allowed in Holloway, Hardie pointed out the various criminal types to me.
“You see the fellow in the top hat and the fancy coat? That’s Christopher Stone, accused of swindling some Scotsman out of thousands. Sold him a gold mine in America, they say, only it turns out it wasn’t his to sell. He’d have got away too, but he got greedy and sold it to another bloke too, and the second bloke knew the first bloke and they got to talking and by pure chance one of them mentioned the mine he’d just bought. That’s what I heard anyway.”
He shrugged indifferently and drew my attention to a group of grubby young men, thin, wiry types in dirty, stained jackets and flat caps. “And that lot there are all that’s left of the Old Nichol gang. There was twice as many once, but they’ve all either swung or done a flit before the police felt their collars for them.”
He shook his head ruefully. “Right nasty crowd, they are. You’d do well to keep away from ’em, John, especially if they take their caps off. I saw ’em kill a man once, with the razors they keep in the brims.”
If I am entirely truthful, I was no longer listening to Hardie’s excited chatter. Instead I was looking at a tall, broad-shouldered man who stood halfway across the courtyard from me. The yard was crowded with men, two wings’ worth of prisoners poured into an area smaller than a rugby pitch, but somehow he had contrived to make a clear space for himself into which no other man, whether prisoner or guard, dared to tread. It was this isolation that had drawn my eye. Who could he be?
I turned to ask Hardie, but before I could do so I felt a hand grasp my shoulder and pull me backwards. What had been a steady stream of passing prisoners became a solid mass enclosing the two of us, pressing us back against the wall and cutting off our path to the safety of the prison interior. A meaty fist flashed towards me and connected hard with my cheek, snapping my head to one side and filling my mouth with the taste of blood. I had boxed a little in my younger days but the press of bodies made it impossible to bring my own fists to bear, so I lashed out with my feet, catching one man on the shin with a satisfying crack and leaving another on the ground clutching his stomach. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hardie disappear beneath a crowd of bodies and pushed myself forward to his aid, struggling free for a second, only to feel rough hands grab my arms and pin them against my sides. Another blow to the cheek set my head ringing and caused my vision to blur. I shook my head and refocused my eyes just as a grotesque face swam into view, mouthing a curse, which I failed to make out in the sound and fury of the fight. I had a moment in which to register a mouthful of black teeth and a nose covered in angry boils before a flurry of blows sent me sagging to my knees. Above me, the black-toothed man pulled something that glinted metallically from his pocket and reached down, grabbing my hair and pulling my head back to expose my throat. There was nothing more I could do, and when I tried to push myself up from the ground my legs failed to respond and I knew that death was mere seconds away.
And then, just as quickly as it had begun, the attack came to an end. To my dazed senses it seemed that time had slowed down. The man who held my head fell backwards in a smooth motion, taking a clump of my hair with him, and vanished from view, while his associates appeared to fade away, disappearing into the throng of prisoners who were now running from our corner of the courtyard. My hearing cleared suddenly, and I was aware of whistles and shouts all around me while, as the press in front of me dissipated, guards ran in my direction, their clubs swinging indiscriminately at any passing inmate.
Above the tumult, however, I was aware of one voice. The broad-shouldered man I had spotted immediately prior to the attack held out a hand to pull me up and repeated his words, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear.
“This m
an is under my protection. Anyone who touches him answers to me.”
He steadied me against the wall then, with a half-smile and a nod, turned on his heel and slipped back inside the prison just as the first of the guards reached our position. I fancied I heard him murmur, “I always pay my debts, Dr. Watson,” but my head had begun to spin once more and as I slid back down the wall, I could be sure of nothing except the fact that I would meet this man again.
* * *
When I came to, I was lying in a strange bed, enclosed by curtains on rails that had been pulled round in three sides of a square. A small table to my right-hand side was the only other furnishing. A hospital bed, obviously. I struggled to sit up, wincing at the sharp pain that blossomed in my chest. A cracked rib, perhaps. Gingerly, I pulled up the top part of my pyjamas. Yes, the tightly wrapped bandage that circled my midriff indicated some such injury, though I was pleased to note that the material was clean and free of blood. Nothing worse, then.
Moving from a seated position to standing was a painful experience, and as my feet found the cold floor, I felt twinges in my back and legs, which suggested further, hopefully minor, damage. There was no sign of my clothing but the tips of my shoes peeped out from under the table, and I pulled them on my bare feet before slipping through the curtain and looking out at the room in which I found myself.
The ward – for such was clearly its function – was brightly lit by daylight streaming through large, unbarred windows. Facing me were six beds, all but one of which was hidden by curtains similar to those that had enclosed my own. The final, unconcealed bed was empty, but turning to look behind me, I saw a similar arrangement on my side of the room, save for the fact that only my own curtains were closed. Five other men, it seemed, were currently enjoying the hospitality of the medical ward. I hoped that Bert Hardie, whom I had last seen engulfed by my attackers, was among them.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Improbable Prisoner Page 5