‘Mr Williamson is a good man. What is his condition?’
‘I spoke with him earlier this morning. He was badly beaten about the head and chest, though no bones seem to be broken. He refused to stay at the hospital and has returned home under the protection of two constables. Dr McLeod has advised him to remain in bed for at least a week. I certainly do not think he is ready for duty, but he says he will lead the investigation from his bed. What investigation, I say? There is no investigation.’
‘There is the man Hawkins: a bare-knuckle fighter by all accounts. He is a big man and his face is known. We will find him, Mr Newsome. With that letter already in our possession, we will compel Mr Hawkins to provide us with certain means of sending this Boyle to the gallows. In order to expedite that piece of investigation, however, I have a more pressing question. Where is Noah Dyson?’
‘The last we heard, he was in pursuit of this Razor Bill – the very same man found dead this morning. Since then, we have no indication as to his whereabouts.’
‘What of your man Mr Bryant who has been following Mr Dyson these past days?’
‘That is the curious thing, sir. After the fire in Oxford-street, Mr Bryant continued to follow his man as usual when Mr Dyson suddenly darted around a corner and simply vanished into the crowd. It is as if he had known all along that he was being followed and simply chose the moment to elude his pursuer. He has not returned home.’
‘Do you suspect him in the murder of this Bill fellow?’
‘I see no benefit for Mr Dyson in that murder, but I do wonder why he chose now – of all times – to vanish.’
‘Perhaps he is also dead. This Boyle is proving highly effective in fulfilling his promises to cut all connections.’
‘I do not believe that Mr Dyson is dead. Whatever my feelings about the man, he is like a street dog. He lives by his wits and has already survived what might kill others.’
‘No matter. We know where he lives. If he is alive, he must return there for clothes – and he has a manservant, does he not? A Negro?’
‘Indeed. Mr Bryant is observing the property as we speak.’
‘Do you think that Mr Williamson gave anything away during his beating? I am sure this Boyle would appreciate knowing Mr Dyson’s address, for instance, or what we know so far about Boyle himself.’
‘I asked him that and he said he believed he had not said anything damaging to the case – although he did lose consciousness. I do not believe he would speak. You know him.’
‘Let us hope he is correct in his assumption.’
A knock at the door interrupted the officers’ conversation and a clerk, on being beckoned by Inspector Newsome, entered with a sheaf of papers.
‘Do you remember our initial interrogation of Mr Dyson?’ said Mr Newsome to his colleague. ‘You will recall that he gave us scant personal details. Since then, I have had my men investigating these and other questions I had. Let us see what we have.’ Mr Newsome indicated that the clerk should present his information.
‘Ahem . . . well, sirs, his claim that he was born in the parish of St Giles is not true. At least, there is no record of the birth of a Noah Dyson. We checked for twenty years either side of his probable age and found only a Noel Dyson, who died aged three months.’
‘I see,’ said Inspector Newsome, giving Sir Henry Wilberforce a knowing glance. ‘And what of his sailor’s service in the South Seas?’
‘We could find no evidence of his having been in the Royal Navy, sir. ’
‘Indeed? I cannot say that I am surprised. No doubt he sailed under another flag. What of his other claims?’
‘The house in Manchester-square was paid for in cash, sir, in the name of Henry Matthews. Of that gentleman, we can find no evidence.’
‘So – we have nothing. Nothing. The man vanishes like a ghost. It was foolish of us to—’
‘Sir? We did discover one piece of information . . .’ offered the clerk.
‘Then speak of it, man!’
‘In 1829, a boy called Noah Dyson was transported to New South Wales for incendiarism and theft. He was initially sentenced to hang, but received a royal pardon on account of his tender years. We are trying to discover if any ticket of leave or pardon was issued to permit him to return to England. It may take some time.’
‘Ha! I’m certain you will not find evidence of a legitimate departure from those shores. Good work, Jones. You may go back to your researches. What do you think of that, Sir Henry? Our man is an escaped convict from the Antipodes. That would explain his multiplicity of scars.’
‘That remains to be seen. What is of greater interest – if he is our man – is the nature of the crimes: incendiarism and theft.’
‘Indeed.’
‘What do you intend to do? Noah is apparently a greater criminal than we thought. And this man Boyle must be apprehended with all haste. Neither can remain at liberty.’
‘Mr Dyson will not remain away from his home indefinitely. My Mr Bryant and his colleagues are watching the place for any signs of contact as we speak. And we will endeavour to locate this Hawkins, who himself is no doubt also searching for Noah. A bulletin will be sent out to all stations and watch houses for both, though I am sure that wherever Boyle or his instrument Hawkins are to be found, we will also find Noah.’
‘What about this writer fellow, Askern? Do you think that Boyle will make an attempt on his life? We cannot afford another murder.’
‘Mr Askern is quite safe. Only we know where he is.’
‘Are you sure that Sergeant Williamson did not speak to Hawkins?’
‘He says not and I believe him. He has no reason to lie. No, Sir Henry – even Boyle cannot find a man we have purposely hidden.’
‘One week ago, I might have believed you. Check on it personally.’
Benjamin sat in the study at Portland-place and stroked the scarred skin at his throat absent-mindedly. A mantel clock ticked stolidly through the silence. Whenever Noah did not return home, the Negro man could not rest until a letter or other communication arrived with information or instructions.
Some would say – if they knew the full details – that Benjamin stood to benefit greatly from the death or disappearance of his benefactor, for he was named sole beneficiary in Noah’s will. The house and all of Noah’s considerable assets would go directly to him. But would one wish the death of one’s brother for financial gain? Wealth and property meant little to a man cast friendless, speechless and alone upon the metropolis. A dark face was a badge of foreignness, however well-to-do it might be. In truth, he would have laid down his life for Noah, as Noah had risked his own to save Benjamin. Theirs was an unbreakable bond.
He thought back to their early acquaintance on a ship – the Bluebird out of Nantucket – plying the Southern Oceans. Noah already had his stripes from the cat, and Benjamin was tongueless and scarred about the neck. Both outcasts and fugitives, they were drawn together and were bunkmates.
Crews could be volatile. Both men knew how to defend their names or their honour. Benjamin could knock any man into oblivion with his powerful fists, but his wits were not as sharp as his friend. Noah was as patient and strategic as a spider, but was not made for the seas. He was a city boy thrown to the winds and he would not rest until he was back within the shadow of a building.
Of course, Benjamin knew something of hate and retribution. His neck was proof enough of that. How long had he hung until they’d cut him down thinking he was a corpse? And didn’t he still carry in his inner eye the face of the instigator of that lynching? The man had pleaded for his life like a child as Benjamin had tightened a rope around his neck until the last strangulated cry was twisted out. It had been an empty victory – a shameful loss of control that had cast him beyond the coasts of America for a life of outlawry.
A timid knock at the street door started him from his thoughts and he rushed down the stairs to open it, hoping for good news but fearing another visit from the police.
On the door
step stood a ragged urchin, who recoiled to see a black man with a ghostly eye opening the door to him. The boy’s feet were bare and caked in filth, and his clothes showed pale skin and bruises through their rents. He was evidently a long way from his accustomed streets. A letter was clutched in his hand.
‘Is you Ben?’ he said.
Benjamin nodded.
‘’E said as you should show me yer licker first.’
Benjamin opened his mouth and bent down so that the boy could peer into the darkness.
‘O! Did it ’urt bad?’
Benjamin nodded once and held out his hand for the letter.
‘’Ee said there was a sovvy in it for me.’
Benjamin took out a sovereign from his waistcoat pocket and held it up to the light. The boy’s eyes focused on it as if it was the largest diamond in the world, and acquisitiveness twisted a smirk across his vulpine features.
‘What if this letter is worth more than a sovvy to you and the gent?’
He had hardly finished expressing that base consideration when a meaty black palm like one of those enormous spiders sometimes encountered by men working at the ports settled gently on his shoulder and exerted just enough pressure to promise crippling pain.
‘I’ll take the sovvy.’
And he handed over the letter. Benjamin opened it quickly and looked at the postscriptum to assure himself that it was indeed from Noah. Then he handed the sovereign to the boy, who snatched it and danced away with a cheeky ‘Thanking you, chimney chops!’
Benjamin closed the door and the boy walked jauntily and newly wealthy back along the street, moving eastwards. He had hardly gone more than a hundred yards around the corner when a man in a top hat and dark-blue clothes ran up behind him and grasped his grimy ear.
‘Halt there, boy! What do you have in your hand?’
‘Ow! Yer ’urtin’ me lug! It’s a sovvy – and I earned it fair an’ square, so get off me, bluebottle!’
‘So, you recognize me as a policeman.’
‘I smelt yer!’
Mr Bryant slapped the boy none too gently with an open palm while keeping hold of the ear. ‘Who gave you that letter to deliver, boy?’
‘What letter? Ow! Stob ’ittin’ me like that! It was a gent down on the Mall. Gave me a sovvy an’ says there’s another in it if I took a letter to this address.’
‘So why didn’t you just take the first sovereign and throw the letter in a dustheap, you rapscallion?’
‘Two sovvies is better than one, ain’t it?’
‘What did he look like, this “gent”?’
‘I don’t know – like any gent. Only ’e had manners . . . ow! Stobbit! ’E was nothin’ paticlar, I tell yer!’
‘Did you read the letter? Be honest now!’
‘I can’t do readin’. I only knows some words like “gin” an’ “meat pie” an’ the like. Will you let go of me b— lug now?’
‘Not yet. What did he tell you? His exact words, mind.’
‘’E said “Take this letter to this address an’ there’s another sovvy in it for yer.” ’E said a blacky man will open the door and you must look in ’is gob cos ’e’s got no licker. If it is ’im, ’e said, give ’im the letter an’ ’e’ll give yer another sovvy. An’ that’s all.’
‘Are you sure? I could have you in gaol in a moment if you are lying to me.’
‘Ow! Me — lug! Wait. There was somethin’ other – I think ’e meant it for you. He said someone might stop me an’ ask me about the letter, an’ if they did I must tell ’em paticlar this message: “The pusood is now the pusoor.” Made me repeat it ’bout ten times to remember, ’e did.’
‘“The pursued is now the pursuer?”’
‘S’what I said, isn’t it? Ow! Stobbit, I tells yer!’ And the urchin twisted free to escape the grasp of Mr Bryant, who in any case was in a state of some surprise. He looked about him and made his way quickly back to a point where he could view Mr Dyson’s house.
Benjamin was locking the door. The Negro tilted his top hat at an angle and began to walk with an athletic gait down Duke-street and along Edward-street towards the east.
Mr Bryant followed, signalling to his colleague standing on the corner that he should watch the house.
Mr Allan, it will be remembered, is the worthy who was overseeing the anonymous address where Mr Askern was safely ensconced. That very same morning, he was frying eggs and bacon in the kitchen for the benefit of his various guests, some of whom might very much surprise the reader, and even the police themselves.
In its time, that unassuming address in an unremarkable area of London had accommodated thieves, informers, fallen women, potential victims like Mr Askern, and at least one murderer. Though it might seem incredible, even the commissioners themselves did not know of its existence – or rather, they had not been told and affected not to know. What went on there was legally expedient but judicially suspect. A man’s residency was no guarantee either of innocence or immunity from the gallows. It was a place – and a state – of temporary invisibility from which one might emerge free, or damned.
Mr Allan started at the top of the building, knocking at a selected door and leaving breakfast and a newspaper before it before moving on to the next, always being careful that no resident might see another. With each opening door, a bell rang out. A few in the past had been curious, but most were there in fear of their lives and were grateful for the anonymity. When he reached the basement room of Mr Askern, he repeated the practised ritual again, knocking on the door with a ‘Breakfast, sir!’ and laying the plates and cups on the stone flags at his feet.
However, when he set about collecting the breakfast things an hour or so later, he was surprised, but not alarmed, to see Mr Askern’s food untouched. People reacted differently to their stay, and a temporary loss of hunger was the least of their symptoms. So, honest Mr Allan simply took away the crockery and went about his daily business: taking delivery of coal and beer, receiving his shopping in packages throughout the morning and fulfilling his role as amanuensis in the divers police correspondence he was obliged to read and write.
When the writer did not emerge from his room or eat his lunch, Mr Allan was still not alarmed. Such things had happened before. Nor did he feel any compulsion to notify Mr Williamson (of whose unfortunate encounter he was completely ignorant). Indeed, it was only when the dinner remained untouched that Mr Allan thought to knock on the door – a gesture of personal concern rather than of fear for the man inside.
‘Sir? I do not mind whether you eat, but I must ask you for a sign that you are healthy and not in need of aid. Sir?’
Silence.
‘Sir? You need not speak. Simply rap upon the table or make a sound if you are all right.’
Silence.
‘I am afraid I must forcibly enter if you do not give me a sign. Sir? Sir?’
Silence.
Mr Allan banged on the door to be sure that the inhabitant was not in a deep slumber. Still there was no answer. The situation was still not unprecedented: a man had once taken his own life in the house and the door had been broken down. This Mr Askern did not seem the kind to kill himself, but any man discovers parts of himself that perhaps he had never before explored when forced to spend time alone in the silence of an unfamiliar room. Mr Allan sighed and went to fetch his hammer and chisels. He hoped there would not be blood on the new mattress.
The Negro named Benjamin made his way on foot and uninterrupted towards Leicester-square. Among the shops there, he looked in the window of a tobacconist and stood to read a large street display of advertisements and playbills before entering a shop on Castle-street. This establishment was Mr Nathan’s Masquerade Warehouse, where the Negro purchased two costumes – a Greek and a Moor – and two masques, all of which he arranged to have delivered later. I discerned this on returning to this shop after I was relieved.
Mr Newsome put down Mr Bryant’s report and nodded to himself. Mr Bryant was a dedicated and thorough man. T
he inspector was reading the report in the back of a carriage on his way to the safe house to which Mr Williamson had escorted Mr Askern, there to ask the writer what he knew of the bare-knuckle fighter Henry Hawkins. The swaying motion and start-stop traffic was making him nauseous.
. . . Then he made his way towards Whitehall – passing within mere yards of headquarters – to cross the river at Westminster-bridge, whereupon he continued south along the water’s edge until he came to the very same alley where the girl Eliza-Beth was murdered. Here, he paused a while as if in contemplation of the property and presently extracted a sheet of paper from his coat. He folded it, slipped it under the door and turned to retrace his steps back towards Westminster-bridge. (I attempted to extract the letter from under the door but it was locked tight and I was afraid of losing the Negro, so I continued to follow him.) He walked all the way back to the house in Manchester-square, where PC Jackson told me that no-one had entered or left the property since. This is the extent of my latest report.
Mr Newsome folded the report and returned it to his coat pocket. It was clear to him, if not to Mr Bryant, that Benjamin had taken his curious route in full knowledge that he was being followed and that there was some message to be gleaned from that strange peregrination. The letter would of course have to be recovered from the (now empty) Lambeth property with all haste. If Noah Dyson did not show himself very shortly, his house would have to be searched again and the Negro interrogated more persuasively than on the last occasion.
These thoughts were still in his mind when the carriage stopped outside the secret house where Mr Askern was staying. He stepped down on to the street and bade the driver wait. The door opened before he could knock, and the expression on Mr Allan’s face told him that the news was dire. The housekeeper beckoned him in and closed the door behind them.
‘Mr Newsome, sir! Thank G— you have come. I was about to send a boy for you. It is most strange . . . most dreadful and most strange.’
‘What is it, man? Is it Mr Askern?’
‘I cannot explain it, sir. There is no indication . . . there is no clue . . . I am at a loss . . .’
The Incendiary's Trail Page 21