SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments

by Francis Selwyn

  Verity was about to invoke Samson as a witness. Then he thought that if things went badly it would be better to save Samson rather than that they should both be destroyed. He said,

  'Them photographic plates, sir. There's proof of blackmail in them.'

  Lord Henry's double drawing-room was on the floor above them. In slow and painful procession they moved to the stairs, Richard Jervis shuffling with the aid of two sticks and Captain Ransome's powerful arms. At the staircase, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, Ransome picked up his master, like a groom carrying a bride, and bore him rapidly up the three sides of the staircase which rose above the central vestibule. At the double door of the drawing-room, Ransome took a key and opened the lock.

  'Show us your evidence,’ said Richard Jervis. He was breathless and his wan face was pinched with pain.

  Verity led the way into the front drawing-room and through the archway to the rear.

  'The plates is in the secret compartment of the ornamental bureau, sir, what stands before the rear window at the centre,' he said triumphantly. Then he stopped. Before the rear window in question there was a small occasional table without a single drawer. Verity swung round to "see where the bureau had been moved to but there was no sign of it in the rear room. He charged like a wounded bull into the front drawing-room. It was not there either.

  'Well?' snapped Richard Jervis.

  'It's gone, sir. The bureau's gone. Someone must a-took it!'

  'Sergeant Verity,' said Jervis, 'if you are indeed a blackmailer, thank God you are also a stupid one.' Captain Ransome intervened.

  'Sir, might not a murderer have left such evidence here for Mr Verity to find, hoping to suggest suicide by Lord Henry? Then, thinking that Mr Verity would never mention such disagreeable evidence to you, might not the murderer think himself safe to remove it after a few days during which nothing had happened?'

  'It ain't likely, by God,' said Jervis furiously, 'not without my key!'

  'Not just your key, sir,' said Ransome respectfully. 'There's Mrs Butcher's and Lord William's.'

  Richard Jervis thought about this, and Verity looked sidelong at the bluff red face of Jack Ransome, a broken-down half-pay captain who had done him an unexpected friendly service by his suggestion.

  'It could a-happened, sir,' said Verity encouragingly. 'That or something like it.'

  Richard Jervis looked helplessly about the room. Then his gaze swung at Verity.

  'Sergeant,' he said sharply, 'I advise you to forget what might have happened and remember instead what will happen. I have hired you and I will not release you so easily. If, in the shortest possible time, you do not provide the service for which I have paid, Inspector Croaker and your superiors shall hear the whole sorry story of your failure. More than that, I shall preserve the so-called blackmail letter and your own scribblings. They too shall go to Mr Croaker, with my compliments and my observations. Do not think, sergeant, that you will get the better of me by perjured evidence forced from a Lambeth street-girl by beatings and threats!'

  'I been put up, sir!' said Verity, his voice quivering with anger.

  'If you have sold yourself to my enemies, you shall find you have made a bargain to repent of!’

  'Sold!' muttered Verity, jowls trembling, 'I been put up, sir, and the villain that done it ain't half got a reckoning to pay!'

  7

  'Fifteen four and a flush of five,’ said Mrs Rouncewell triumphantly.

  'I'm low and Ped's high,' added Samson, turning over the dummy hand.

  Mrs Rouncewell's healthy masculine features creased in a deep grin.

  'Tip and me's game,' she announced. Then she collected the cards which lay on the table and coaxed them into a pack. The single illumination in her dark parlour was the oil lamp at the table's centre, casting a rich shadowy light on the faces of Samson and Verity who sat at play with her. Mrs Rouncewell splashed a careful measure of spirit from a stone jug into the three glasses, adding hot water from a kettle. Finally she plopped a lump of sugar into each.

  'Nasty ungrateful wretch,' she said suddenly, recalling an earlier topic of discussion. 'Nasty charity-school creetur. Ran off the first chance she got, not minding the pains I'd took to apprentice her proper. There ain't no reason a girl can't make a respectable living at the wash-house, once she puts her mind to it. It ain't one of your dirty, unhealthy jobs. Clean 'olesome suds and water. Fresh linen. And I never had to give Miss Elaine her licks more 'n two or three times.'

  'No appreciation,' said Samson sympathetically. 'But her mother was a whore and if the girl ever has a daughter she'll likely go the same way.'

  'I could a-took a fancy to that little madam,' said Mrs Rouncewell wistfully.

  Verity took a pull at the unaccustomed heat of the gin shrub and his eyes watered with the effect.

  'You never saw who 'elped her out?' he asked breathlessly.

  Mrs Rouncewell shook her head.

  'Never saw,' she said carefully, 'but I know sure enough. Jack Tiptoe and the scaldrum dodge needed 'er. There was two of 'em as they calls Stunning Joe, the fighter, and American Jack, walking the pavement outside 'ere as if they'd been paid to walk a beat.'

  'She ain't with 'em,' said Samson, 'not that we can see.'

  'No,' said Mrs Rouncewell, 'she wouldn't be where you could see, a-cos she knows the consequence. Straight back 'ere for the bloody 'iding of a lifetime. Nasty little slut.'

  'She might a-gone back to the fairgrounds,' Verity remarked. 'She might be anywhere from York to Bodmin. Contrariwise, she might have got a taste for what Charley Wag put her up to. Them blackmail dodges is easy money for a girl like 'er that doesn't care a fourpenny-bit in the china dog-kennel for what she puts on paper. It don't 'ave to be true. There's a thousand young gentlemen in London, and old 'uns too, that'd pay her a hundred pound rather than have it whispered that they'd dishonoured themselves, even if they never had,'

  They finished their gin.

  'I'm to walk back,' said Verity to Samson. 'I left the 'ouse in Portman Square before the chains were put on the doors, and I shall go in after they're taken off in the morning. I must start on my way, Mrs Rouncewell, I really must. But I shan't easy forget all the 'elp you gave me and Mr Samson.’

  'I'm sure it was nothing, Mr Verity,' said the muscular old woman, 'I only fret for 'aving lost Elaine. Why, she was fed on the best. None o' your padding-ken gruel and slops but lovely rabbit pie. Sich a rabbit-pie! Sich delicate creatures with sich tender limbs that the very bones melt in your mouth and there's no occasion to pick 'em. And for that the little slut run off! Nasty baggage!'

  With varying expressions of sympathy for the ingratitude shown by the fifteen-year-old street-girl towards her mistress, Verity and Samson took their leave. Even in the deadest hours of night, the streets just south of the river seemed bright and noisy with buying and selling. At the kerb of the paving stood a block-tin stove baking potatoes for sale to passers-by, a lavish design in coloured lamps erected over it. The kidney-pie stand was advertised by a candle in an oil-paper lantern with characters crudely drawn. One of the ragged boys gathered under the canvas blind of the cheesemonger's shop, earned a penny a night by running to fetch a light from the wine vaults each time the candle blew out. Under the flaring gaslights, the watermen from the Blackfriars Wharf returned with dim and dirty lanterns in their hands and trudged to the ill-lit doors of 'watering-houses' for pipes and rum shrubs.

  'You ain't struck a lot of luck, Mr Verity,' said Samson kindly. 'I shouldn't wonder if you wasn't glad to get back to the division. Specially since you was hired under false pretences.'

  'Gammon,' said Verity, striding in time with Samson. 'All gammon.'

  Samson chuckled.

  'Far from uncovering evidence of blackmail, my old son, you helped to suppress it.' "ow d'yer mean?'

  'Lay you odds,' said Samson, 'your Mr Jervis wasn't worried whether Lord 'enry died accidental or not. But he knew there was evidence of blackmail and he wanted i
t found. So he hires you for an investigation, knowing a detective officer is the most likely to find it. Then, when it's found, he destroys it and calls you a liar for saying it ever existed.'

  Verity shook his head.

  'Not if you'd seen Mr Richard Jervis,' he said softly.

  'Lay you odds?' Samson suggested hopefully. ‘I ain't a gamester, Mr Samson. Never was and never will be.'

  There was another silence which continued as the two sergeants crossed London Bridge. In the recesses above the piers of the bridge, in arches, and doorless hovels, the destitute huddled in shapeless masses. The mist hanging over the river surface deepened the red glow of fires on small craft moored off the wharves, rendering more dark and indistinct the murky buildings on either bank. Warehouses, stained by smoke, rose heavy and dull from the mass of roofs and gables, among which the tower of St Saviour's and the spire of St Magnus struck three o'clock on the night air. A forest of masts rose from the shipping below, as though in reflection of the thickly scattered spires of churches above.

  'Mr Samson,' said Verity softly, 'if you wanted the body of a dead man, 'ow would you go about the business?'

  'I s'pose I'd go to an anatomist like men that walk the public hospitals do.'

  'No,' said Verity impatiently, 'what would you do if you wanted the body of one man in particular?'

  Samson's face creased in suspicion and alarm.

  'Opening tombs?' he said. 'Snatching corpses?'

  'No, Mr Samson. Legal.'

  'Whose body might you want to examine, then?'

  'Lord Henry Jervis,' said Verity with a scowl.

  Samson threw back his head with a guffaw that roused the sleepers in the niches of the bridge and set them shifting uneasily.

  'Cor,' he said at length, 'you ain't 'alf a caution, my son.'

  'Nevermind that, Mr Samson, 'ow might it be done?'

  'Well,' said Samson jovially, 'seeing that the corpse you wish to question is a peer o' the realm, you might first ask his guv'nor. Not Mr Jervis in this case but Lord William. If 'e ain't averse to his brother being uncoffined, then he might ask the Home Office to please grant an exhumation order. Or you might ask Mr Croaker to ask them. Only thing is,' said Samson smugly, 'Home Offices are apt to be fussy about having their clients dug up all over the place and seeing Kensal Green turned into a 'oliday fair."

  'I never even seen Lord William,' said Verity thoughtfully. 'I got no idea how he'd take to it.'

  'Likewise,' said Samson blithely, 'you might cut a caper my way.'

  "ow's that, then?'

  'Smile sweet on a couple o' resurrection coves and have 'is lordship up and about, ready for inspection, without a by-your-leave.'

  'Mr Samson,' said Verity sternly, 'I got trouble enough already. It ain't the way I should've chose to make Lord William's acquaintance, but ask him I will.'

  Samson rubbed his hands briskly in the pre-dawn chill. He said,

  'It ain't no business o' mine, I daresay, but why might you be so desirous to see Lord Henry?' Verity scowled again.

  'Simple, ain't it? I never seen Lord Henry and I only know what I'm told about his scars and his rings. And I never saw the wound the bullet made, only from a steel copy of a photograph. He ain't been in the ground more than a month, so there can't be much alteration.'

  'You never mean to have him out of his shroud?' said Samson in dismay.

  'That ain't all I mean to do, Mr Samson,' said Verity primly. 'That ain't even the half of it. So far I took everyone's word for what happened, and look where I am! Now I'm going to see for myself.'

  They stood on the verge of Covent Garden Market, the sky red and golden from the newly risen sun, the long rows of carts and donkey-barrows loading. Under the dark Piazza bright little dots of gaslight were burning in the shops, while shoeless girls on the steps of the Theatre tied up flowers in penny and halfpenny bundles. Samson looked at Verity's round face as it glowed with plump self-confidence at the thought of seeing for itself.

  'God save us all!' he said with faint exasperation.

  Verity turned to him with studied dignity.

  'Much obliged, Mr Samson, and I ain't a man that takes kindly to profanities.’

  Then, in a gentler tone, he bid Samson a good-day and began his slow lumbering walk, north to the thieves' rookery of the Seven Dials, west down Oxford Street, and thence to Portman Square and Upper Berkeley Street. At five o'clock the boy who slept in the kitchen roused himself to attend to the laying of fires, and the chains were taken off the doors.

  Captain Lord William Jervis had for many years maintained an appearance of indeterminate early middle-age. He seemed not the least out of place chaffing a group of young men in Dubourg's or the Beargarden, nor in serious debates among senior officers at the Board of Admiralty on the comparative advantages of iron-clad warships and the lighter wooden vessels. It was this last subject which chiefly preoccupied him as he strode up the steps of Portman Square in company with Captain Lord Edward Clay, the two men in the royal blue frock-coats and white ducks of their naval uniform. Lord William bore the same clear-cut features as his brother Richard Jervis, but the older man's face was set more aggressively, the cheeks flushed and the trim whiskers jet black.

  'If a ship were to roll heavy,' he said a little breathlessly, 'then of course she must ship water through the gun ports and can't fight her guns. But they need only ask Yelverton. When his squadron was caught in the Portsmouth gale, every ship rolled like a skittle. The iron-clads rolled over so far that a little water was shipped through the ports and made the guns difficult to fight. But, damme, the wooden hulls rolled so far that the ports must be closed tight to stop them shipping every sea that came.'

  The two men strode through the open doorway. But for the death of Lord Henry Jervis so shortly before, this would have been the evening of 'Lord Jervis' summer dance', the single event of the London season by which the family distinguished itself. This year it had been decided to substitute a mere private dinner-party, as a token of family mourning, but it was an event which obliged Lord William, as head of his house, to leave the diversions provided for him by a succession of street-girls at the White Bear.

  Unobtrusively, the Jervis house had been transformed into a brighter and more agreeable setting for the guests, as though the summer dance had not, after all, been cancelled. The wrought-iron balcony was glassed in and had become a conservatory stocked with orchids and bright, tropical flowers. Every alcove of the hall and stairway had grown a green arbour among fine pilasters, which were in fact no more than painted wood with daubs of heavy gilding. Incense was still being burnt by the servants to kill the smell of paint. A score of additional footmen, kitchen-girls and maids had been temporarily employed, for even a private dinner-party in the Jervis town house required places for thirty or forty couples. Lord William and Lord Edward Clay climbed the stairs together and then separated to the two dressing-rooms set aside for them.

  Lord William, in his habitual manner, threw open the door.

  'Anstey!' he shouted, looking round for his valet, 'Anstey, damn you!'

  There was no reply. His lordship drew a silver-engraved spirit flask from his pocket, poured a full measure and drained it off. He put the flask on the dressing-table. Just then there was a movement from the small adjoining bedroom which formed part of the dressing suite. Lord William, who had drawn off his blue frock-coat and thrown it on the sofa, opened the communicating door. There was Elaine. Having now finished making the bed, she tossed her hair into place and straightened up. Lord William's mouth twisted in a half-formed sardonic smile.

  'Well, little madam!' he said, 'why so quiet and secret in here? Did you mean to spy on a gentleman dressing himself?'

  Elaine knew how to type a customer from his first words. In Lord William's case, she looked him full in the face with all her snub-nosed impudence, her narrow dark eyes with their tint of bronze-green scanning his features. And then her mouth opened in a slack grin.

  'Take off those damn
ed weeds,' said Lord William imperiously, and. he went to lock the door through which the absent valet might otherwise come. When he returned, Elaine had cast off the long skirts and petticoats of her servant's livery. She stood revealingly in a white blouse and a grey pleated petticoat, obviously part of her professional wardrobe, so short that it reached no lower than the tops of her thighs.

  ‘I’m not la-di-da about it,' she said, as though the words were a challenge. Lord William surveyed the broad hips, the sturdy legs and thighs of the young tomboy. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her towards him, running his hand up and down her bare legs as she stood there. Under the skirt, she was wearing tight pants in white cotton. Lord William began where the waist of the material touched the base of her spine and let his fingers travel over her body, through the warm cotton, running down between the cheeks of Elaine's bottom, between her thighs, finding the sensitive lap of flesh and working it skilfully with his Fingers. The girl squirmed her bare legs restlessly, and presently pulled away from him. But Lord William's protests were cut short as he saw that she was freeing the little skirt so that it dropped to her ankles and she stepped out of it. Elaine slipped a pair of fingers where his own had been, as though out of curiosity, and watched him with amusement. She pulled the front of the pants down and showed a little cleft of fair hair. Lord William's colour deepened and his eyes widened. She turned and pulled the knickers down a little way again. Lord William stared intently at the broad pale cheeks of Elaine's backside, the faded marks of Mrs Rouncewell's attentions just visible.