by Carol Hedges
Heartened by the bright song, Greig takes up his pen and begins to write. Twenty minutes later, the page is covered. The pen is set down. He reads through what he has written and is satisfied with it. He blots the letter, folds the paper and inserts it into an envelope. The die is cast.
Next morning Greig is walking to work, the important letter in his pocket. He is adopting the head-down-no-I-am-not-a-member-of-the-police-force-so-do-not-approach-me stance. It has always astonished him how members of the general public, so quick to avoid him if he wants to question them, are so keen to address him if they have the slightest trivial problem.
Greig has given up musing upon how they know he is a member of the Metropolitan Police, given that he does not wear a police uniform. They just do, though. His fellow detectives have also remarked upon the same phenomenon. Despite seeing no difference between his own work attire and that of any other city employee, some invisible aura surrounds him, and it draws individuals to his side like a magnet draws iron filings.
He crosses Covent Garden piazza, stepping over and around various bits of detritus, vegetable, animal and human, and is about to make his way to one of the coffee stalls, when he is suddenly hailed. Greig looks around.
“Down here, mister.”
Greig looks down. An overlarge cap is sitting on the head of a small boy, who is in turn sitting in the gutter, hands clasped around his knees. His eyes are red-rimmed, and his clothes smell of neglect, tobacco and woodsmoke. Greig has a soft spot for small waifs and strays, having been abandoned as a baby, and something about the utterly miserable expression on the boy’s face touches his heart.
He squats down. “Hello, laddie. What’s your name?”
“I’m Brixston. Dunno yore name, but I recognises yer,” the boy says. “You came into the Ship, didn’tcha? While back, it was. With anovver man. Asking questions.”
Greig nods and makes a ‘go-on’ motion with one hand.
“I heard yer talking to Janet what works behind the bar. I used to work there, see. Pot boy. An’ I stayed there at night too. Wasn’t meant to, but they never bovvered to turf me out. I slept with Fang and Biter. All curled up together by the fire. Them doggies was my pals.”
Greig remembers the two vicious dogs. He also notes the use of the past tense. A tear trickles down the boy’s face, making a clear white path through the grime.
“But you don’t work there anymore?”
The boy wipes his eyes on the back of his sleeve. “Place has burned down. I was lucky to get out alive. Had to climb on a chair and break a winder. But the doggies didn’t get out. Burned to death. Heard them barking, but I couldn’t get back to save them. My pals, gone. My home, gone.”
He buries his face in his hands and sobs piteously. Greig waits for calm to be restored. Then he asks, “How did the fire start?”
The boy shrugs. “Just did. I woke up and the bar was full of smoke.”
So, a couple of days after his colleagues were questioning Mr. Munro Black about his whereabouts on the night of a murder, the public house that he was drinking in was burned down. Some might call it an unfortunate accident. Some might call it a deliberate attempt at intimidation of any possible witnesses. Greig belongs to the latter camp.
“Where do you live now, lad?” he asks.
The boy shrugs once more. “Doorway up west one night, tarpaulin back o’ Spitalfields Market last night. There’s five of us sharing it now, so I ain’t sure where I’ll kip tonight.”
“I see. And how would coffee and a slice or two of bread go down?”
The boy’s face brightens. “It’d go down a treat, mister.”
He scrambles to his feet, brushing filth off his worn trousers.
“Mebbe you could answer some of those questions you heard me ask?” Greig suggests, as he leads the way across the Piazza.
The boy nods. “Maybe I could an’ all. Coz I was there on that night, working in the bar. I know all the regulars wot come in. And them what isn’t regular, too. And I know what they talk about. Nobody ever sees me, though.”
“Let’s get some food and a hot drink into you first, eh?” Greig says, putting a kindly hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Then we’ll talk.”
A short while later, the tall figure of Inspector Lachlan Greig and the very much shorter figure of Brixston enter the portals of Scotland Yard. The boy looks decidedly more cheerful and is wearing Greig’s striped muffler round his neck.
Greig directs him to the Anxious Bench, where citizens come to wait for news of their nearest and dearest who might have been taken up for various crimes and misdemeanours of which, naturally, they are totally innocent. Brixston stares around him, bright-eyed with wonder, while Greig goes to locate Jack Cully.
When the two detectives return, the boy is leaning against the front desk, working his way through a bag of toffees supplied by the duty constable.
“He was telling me all about his dogs,” he says apologetically in response to Greig’s raised eyebrow. “I used to have a dog when I was his age. Poor little tyke.”
Greig and Cully steer the poor little tyke to a vacant interview room and sit him down.
“Is this where the wrong’uns come?” the boy asks, staring at the plain whitewashed walls and small high window.
“It is,” Cully says. “But you are not one of them. You are helping us to catch some.”
“Now, Brixston, can you tell the detective exactly what you told me,” Greig says. “And while you tell him, I shall write it down so that we have a record of what you saw on that night.”
The boy glances from the bag of toffees to the two detectives and back again. Then, with a sigh, he shoves the bag into his coat pocket, folds his arms, and begins his tale. It does not take long in the telling, and once it is told, Cully and Greig leave the room for a quick discussion in the corridor. After which Greig returns, telling Brixston to sit tight and not to leave the building under any circumstances.
The two detectives then head for Detective Inspector Stride’s office, where they find the incumbent shifting folders around his desk with the air of a man in desperate need of a filing system. His face expresses relief when they knock and enter.
“Paperwork, gentlemen! Damn paperwork! The curse of the modern-day detective. I would rather hunt down the vilest criminal through the city streets than deal with endless memoranda from Home Office wallahs who wouldn’t recognise a crime if it was being committed in front of their eyes in their own drawing-room!”
Greig and Cully, who have heard this rant, in various forms, many times over, make placatory noises and seat themselves in front of the desk.
Stride hunts around for his mug of coffee, fails to locate it, utters a few more expletives, then fixes them with a baleful stare. “Yes?”
Greig gets out his notebook. “We have just come from interviewing a young lad who worked at the Ship Inn ~ I don’t know whether you’ve heard, but the pub has been burned to the ground in what we think was a deliberate arson attack.”
“We believe it was carried out at the bidding of Mr Munro Black,” Cully says. “Either to intimidate anybody who was drinking there on that night, or to serve as a warning to the local community not to engage with us. It is too much of a coincidence.”
“The lad survived the fire ~ he was lucky,” Greig continues. “We have him in an interview room for his own safety. We described Mr Black to him, and this is what he told us: on the night in question, he saw Black drinking in the bar together with another man. He heard Black saying that he was going to collect on a debt later that night and the man in question had better pay up this time or it would be the worse for him. The two men stayed in the pub drinking for several hours, then they got up and left. Black told the barmaid that they would return to settle up later. They never came back.”
Stride abruptly shunts a pile of folders onto the floor, the better to rest his elbows on the desk.
“The picture is emerging, gentlemen. Black the elder refreshes himself at the Ship Inn with another m
an, name currently unknown. They then meet up with Flashley, who either had the collection of Japanese carvings ready to hand over or was going to break into his master’s house and remove them.”
“I have spoken to some of my contacts,” Greig says, “Black was in the habit of buying up various debts and then using his power to extract money or favours from the debtors. We know James Flashley liked to gamble, and I saw lists of sums he owed at the back of a notebook in his room. When added up, and if unpaid, they amounted to a tidy sum. So you are right, Flashley has to be the man they were going to meet.”
“And he decides to pay off his gambling debts by stealing from his master. That is either a lot of debt or a lot of fear,” Stride says.
The three detectives sit in meditative silence.
“The trouble is, it’s all hearsay at the end of the day; we can’t prove any of it,” Greig says. “The boy is nine years old, so his evidence, such as it is, would never stand up in court. A good defence lawyer would hang him out to dry in ten minutes. The brothers can and will deny everything. The younger one seems to have disappeared altogether. We do not know anything about this third man, and the only other party to the whole business is dead. Where, gentlemen, do we go from here?”
“I am awaiting a response from Mr. Daubney to my letter,” Cully says. “I have asked when it might be convenient to call upon him. I’d like him to tell me some more about the Japanese cat he listed as stolen. Obviously, I shall tread cautiously: we don’t want to build up false hopes.”
Faces brighten. Then unbrighten, as Stride observes that whatever the strange collector of antiques and Japanese ornaments might say, the small ivory cat is no longer on Black’s mantelpiece, and he has only to deny its existence in court to further distance himself from the theft.
“We will just have to sit tight,” he says. “It is the hardest part of any investigation, but it must be done. We have shaken the tree, and now we must wait and see what falls out of it. And let us pray that it is something that will put both these brothers behind bars for a very long time.”
“Let us hope so,” Cully says. “In the meantime, I shall get the boy to sit down with our police artist and see if he can produce a likeness of the man who was drinking with Black on that night. It might just be worth our while circulating it amongst the riverside taverns. I’ll get copies sent to the local police stations too.”
“And I will find somewhere safe for the lad to stay until we close the case,” Greig says. “He is not safe to roam the streets, not with a ruthless operator like Mr Munro Black on the prowl.”
****
It takes a lot of horsepower to keep the population of London moving. 40,000 horses are needed just to pull the omnibuses that daily transport the clerks and office workers from the newly built suburbs to their jobs. Add to this, dray horses, carriage horses, cart horses, pet ponies, costermonger horses, and riding horses, and the importance of the horse, in all its various manifestations, alive or dead, cannot be overestimated, and can be judged by the number of London public houses bearing their name. There are 25 Black Horses, 54 White Horses, 27 Horse and Grooms and sundry other equinely named watering holes. In contrast, Queen Victoria has a mere 21 pubs named after her.
Leaving aside the question of the various by-products, though many of the ambulant inhabitants of the city wish they wouldn’t be, there are horses in mews, horses in sheds, in stables, in back yards and tethered on common land. And right at the top of the tree, leading the most privileged lives, are the fine carriage horses and riding ponies of the rich.
Here, at Bob Miller’s Livery Stables in St John’s Wood, head groom, William Smith is supervising the re-shoeing of a fine dapple-grey mare, property of Lady Fanny Windermere. The mare is a thoroughly pedigree animal. She has a skittish temperament. A bit like her owner.
William holds the bridle and croons soothing words as the blacksmith cradles Araminta’s hindleg on his lap and begins removing nails from the first worn shoe with a pair of pincers. A brazier burns brightly nearby, and there is a bucket of cold water on the ground. The smith’s tools, and the new shoes are awaiting the fixing.
It is a picture that could be placed at almost any period of history, thinks Lachlan Greig as he steps into the yard. Behind him, the boy Brixston hangs back, staring round-eyed at the busy scene.
The mare shakes her head impatiently and blows out a whickering neigh of indignation. William leans his face along her smooth neck and makes small clicking noises. Greig motions the boy to stand still.
A black and white sheepdog suddenly emerges from one of the stables, shakes itself, yawns, and pads across the yard towards the visitors, its tail wagging. The boy lowers himself to the ground and stretches out a hand. The dog, sensing a friend, comes to investigate.
By the time the mare has been shod, and William is free to shake Greig by the hand, Brixston and the dog have disappeared, which conveniently allows Greig to outline the boy’s story, and the urgent need to hide him from possible recriminations by the dangerous villain currently the focus of Scotland Yard’s attention.
“If they are prepared to burn down a public house to send a warning to the community not to talk to us, killing an innocent boy would be like squashing an inconvenient insect,” Greig says.
William Smith, hands in trouser pockets, listens intently, occasionally nodding. He too, began his life in the gutter as a lowly crossing sweeper. He was rescued from this life of grime by Josephine King, owner of the flourishing business King & Co., who took him in and cared for him.
Now, Greig suggests, it is time to repay some of his good fortune by helping the boy Brixston, another waif and stray in a desperate situation. “There must be some jobs he can do around the place,” he suggests. “Sweeping up or mucking out the stables.”
William considers the offer. “We are a stable lad short at the moment,” he admits. “It would only be temp’rary though, until he returns.”
“Temporary is fine,” Greig says, adding, “And it would be better if he stayed on the premises and didn’t stray too far.”
“Fair enough,” William agrees. “Let’s go and see if it suits him.”
The men look around, searching for the boy. One of the grooms comes out of a stable, leading two fine matching carriage horses on halter reins.
“If you’re looking for that lad, he’s in the far box with Molly and her pups,” he says.
They find Brixston lying in the straw, curled around the sheepdog, who is suckling six tiny puppies. It is a scene of utter contentment, boy and dog in perfect accord. The boy glances up as the two men step into the box.
“Look at them fine pups,” he says, stroking Molly gently on her soft head. The dog moves her head sideways and licks his hand.
“Brixston, how would you like to stay here for a while?” Greig asks. “We need to keep you out of harm’s way until we have arrested Mr Black.”
The boy’s face lights up. “Could I? Really? Oh my ~ that’d be prime, that would. Can I sleep here, with the dog too? Only I’m used to sleeping with dogs, you see, and I’d have the pups for comp’ny as well.”
Greig turns to William, who is regarding the boy with an amused expression.
“I reckon that’d be alright,” William says. “You can help out in the yard during the day, to earn your keep as it were. I began as a stable lad, and so can you. We’ll see if you have a knack with horses like you have with dogs. Moll hasn’t let any of us near her pups since they were born.”
Brixston utters a great sigh, then buries his face in the dog’s warm fur. They leave him there and return to the yard, where Greig gives William some money ‘to pay for the training’. Then the two shake hands once more, and he departs.
On the way back, Greig buys a copy of the Police Gazette. The burning of the Ship Inn is on the inside page. According to the journalist, the fire was started by a candle carelessly left alight, that fell onto the bar where it set light to some spilled alcohol. The fate of the two dogs is descr
ibed in graphic detail. The article ends by saying that the animals were the only casualties, apart from the building itself.
Greig, who knows from Brixston, that there were no candles that night, wonders whether Black and his accomplice have read the piece. And whether they’ve realised that there is a lone survivor of the tragedy. And who he is. Because if they have, judging upon what the boy has told them, the brothers will move heaven and earth to find him, and shut him up. Permanently.
****
Mrs Riva Hemmyng-Stratton has not yet received any reply to her letter to Lucy Landseer. She has, however, received a letter from her publisher, Charles Colbourne & Co. enclosing the copy of a communication from Strutt & Preening, the lawyers representing Lord Edwin Lackington, declaring that as they have had no offer to meet their client’s demand for monetary compensation for his suffering and humiliation at the hands of the writer, they are instructed by their client to take the matter further and prepare court papers. They await a response etc. etc.
The Author does not understand. She was assured by her editor, in whom she has placed her absolute trust, that the matter would proceed no further. But it is proceeding, and apparently at an alarming pace. Too upset to break her fast, she dons her bonnet and outdoor mantle and sets off in the murky grey light of the morning to discover what has gone wrong.
Reaching the publishing house, she is even more alarmed to see Charles Colbourne himself standing on the step with a copy of Cecil Danvers in his hand, and a group of scribbling reporters gathered in a semi-circle around him. She secretes herself in a convenient doorway, the better to observe without being spotted.
“This book,” Colbourne declares, holding the copy above his head, “is one of the publishing sensations of the age. Look long and hard at it, gentlemen of the press. My author, the popular and talented fiction writer, Mrs Hemmyng-Stratton has written a book ~ and what a book, gentlemen, a book that has sold many copies; that has been loved and devoured by young ladies throughout the land, but which now, by some peculiar twist of literary Fate, has been seized upon by a certain noble Lord who believes it is the true story of his wife’s scandalous love affair.