by Sam Gafford
By the time the clock had pointed to the dinner hour, we were at the Ringers. It was not the place I really wanted to be, and Arthur knew it.
“Sorry, old man,” he said, “but we have to come here. Like it or not, this bar is the centre of the East End. I was hoping we’d have better luck in the other bars, but now we have no choice.”
I nodded and we walked inside.
The early evening crowd had already filled the bar. By now, those lucky enough to have found work for the day were here drinking its edge off. The others, those who either didn’t find work, couldn’t find work, or didn’t want to work, were also here. People were laughing and joking with one another, but there was an uneasy mood. It was the empty happiness of people who were living in fear, and you could see it on their faces. We were all, every one of us, waiting for the next shoe to fall.
We managed to find a table and suddenly drinks appeared before us. “Compliments of Mr. E,” the barmaid said. I looked towards the rear booth and saw Edwards lifting his glass to me. I was not the only one who saw this, as many heads turned in our direction, and I sensed that we had suddenly become very popular. A large man came over to me and said, “Mr. Edwards wants to talk to you.” Actually it wasn’t so much human speech as some kind of animal guttering.
I stood up and Arthur began to follow me. “Not you,” the human brick wall said to Arthur, “just him.”
Trying my best to be brave, I said to Arthur, “This won’t take long. I’ll be right back.”
My knees shaking, I walked over to the booth and slid into the seat across from Edwards.
“Heard you had a spot of adventure, mate. You get what you were looking for?”
“After some effort, yes. Thank you for your help. Cohen is dead, by the way.”
“I know, of course. Not terribly surprising. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. I am, naturally, quite hurt that you didn’t come to me when you had finished your mission. If you had, I could have passed this information on sooner.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your old friend, the Gaffer. Turns out he gave the cops the slip. He’s on the loose again.”
“What? He was locked up! What happened?”
“The kind of thing that happens sometimes. He was being brought from the station to the gaol and he escaped. Put two more constables into the hospital, from what I hear.”
I was stunned. “How did he escape?”
“Story goes that the police wagon got waylaid by some lads. Terrible the things that happen these days, isn’t it?” He took a drink, but I could swear there was a smirk on his face. Then a thought occurred to me.
“You . . .” I began slowly, not sure if I might get beaten for what I was about to say, “didn’t have something to do with this, did you?”
Edwards pretended to be shocked. “Me? Why would you think that? I was just sitting here giving you some news and a friendly warning. The Gaffer knows you now, and he’s going to come looking for you.”
“But I don’t have the item anymore,” I lied. “I gave it back to Wendell.”
“Don’t matter to the Gaffer. It’s not about the ‘item’ now, it’s all about you. He’s focused on you, and sooner or later he’ll find you. Just a word to the wise, you know. Watch your step, cuz he’s after you now, and the Gaffer’s not a man you want chasing you. Know what I mean?”
I did indeed—just as I knew that, in some way, Edwards was involved with the Gaffer’s escape. The only question was whether he had done it on his own or if someone had hired him to arrange it.
“I do. Thank you for the warning. I wonder if it might be possible to ‘arrange’ some protection?”
Edwards chuckled. “Like to help you, mate, I really would, but all my chums are busy right now. Lots of work to be done and people to sort out. I’ll let you know when there’s an opening. Good luck to you.” He raised his glass, and that was my cue. The human wall was at my shoulder again, and it was time for me to leave. I nodded my head to my host.
“Mr. Edwards, always a pleasure,” I said and slowly made my way back to Arthur on my unsteady legs.
“What happened? What did he say?” Arthur asked.
I took a long sip from my drink. “I think he just threatened to kill me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Well, not in those exact words, but he did tell me that the Gaffer has escaped from the police, and I believe that Edwards was behind it.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
“Not for any reason I could think of, so I believe that the same person who first hired the Gaffer to retrieve the book from Cohen hired Edwards to spring the brute.”
“Is the Gaffer going to come after you for the book again?”
“Possibly. But I think that he’ll come after me regardless of the book. I think he wants me dead, and Edwards is taking more than a little joy at that thought. Arthur, we need to get that book back to Wendell.”
Arthur shut down, and I could see he did not agree with me. “That would be a mistake. That diary is the only evidence we have against Eddy right now. If we give it back, you know it will disappear and be burned. You know it!”
I nodded. “Yes, I do. But right now we are leaving Wendell in the lurch. At any minute that diary could be called for; and if he can’t produce it, it would mean his ruin. I’ve given him my word that I’d help him.”
“And if we give the diary back and Eddy kills again and we can’t stop him and have no evidence against him, what then?”
“I can’t say, Arthur, but I can’t leave Wendell hanging like this.”
Before Arthur could answer, a woman strode up to our table, slammed her hand on the table, and said, “I’m Pearly Poll. What the hell do you blighters want with me?”
Chapter 29
You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
Yet in its depth what treasures!
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Like most of the people in the East End, Poll had seen better days. I would have judged her to be in her mid-thirties, but she looked much, much older. She was tall and also one of the most masculine women I had ever seen. Despite her age, I felt that she would have no trouble laying both of us out if she wished to. Her face was red with drink, and it seemed that she was far from sober. Although we had finally found her, I had my doubts as to how trustworthy her recollections would be.
“Ah!” Arthur said excitedly. “What we want first is to buy you a drink. I trust you have no objections?”
Poll smiled. “None at all! You can buy more than that if you want!” She sat down at our table and made a sign to the bar.
“Perhaps we shall,” Arthur said, which made my stomach churn.
“So what’s you asking for me for? Every place I’ve been tonight, me chums have told me you toffs been looking for me. Have you gotten good words about ol’ Poll and her charms?” A glass of gin appeared at her elbow and she began drinking it as if she were afraid it might evaporate before she could finish it.
“Why, everywhere we turn the lads are singing your praise, my dear. ‘Poll’s the beauty of the East End,’ they say. But what we really wanted to talk to you about was Martha.”
Her face soured. “Not that again. I don’t think I feel like talking about that anymore. I’ve said all I’ve said anyway.” A light went off in her mind. “’Ey, you aren’t reporter johnnies, are ya?”
Arthur grinned. “What gave us away?” he said without admitting anything.
Poll laughed. “I can smell you lot coming from a mile away. Should have known you weren’t really toffs; you’re not dressed well enough.”
“Could we ask you some questions about that night?” I asked. It was the first time I had spoken to Poll, and she looked annoyed that I had interrupted her seduction of Arthur.
“I gues
s, as long as my glass stays full. I can’t think of much more I’ve got to say, though.”
“That night,” Arthur said, “when Martha died, you both met a couple of Guardsmen?”
Poll nearly flew off her chair in a rage. “Don’t you start with me! They were Guardsmen, I swear it! It ain’t my fault that they wasn’t in the parade that pig Reid set me on. I looked at every one of those faces, and Martha’s Guardsman wasn’t there. Neither was mine, for that matter.”
“We believe you, Poll.”
She was taken aback by that. “You do?”
“Yes,” Arthur replied. “We don’t think the men you met that night were present in any of the identification parades you saw. We think that those men were never brought before you.”
“Oh,” Poll said, perplexed, as she had been expecting an argument. “Well, there it is, then. So what’s you want from me?”
Arthur spoke slowly and carefully. “I want to show you a picture of a man. He is not dressed in the uniform of the Grenadier Guards. I want you to tell me if he is one of the men you and Martha met that night.”
He took the picture out of his pocket and slid it over to Poll with the image down. She gave him a strange look but picked it up and turned it over. The recognition was nearly immediate.
“Cor! That’s him, all right! That’s the bloke what went off with me, sure as spitting!”
Until she had said it, I didn’t realise how much I wanted her to say that she had never seen the man in the picture. But now it was out there and it supported the diary. I had no idea what we would do next.
“You’re absolutely sure?” I asked.
“What do you take me for? Some cheap tart? I know what I know and whom I’ve known. This is him, all right. Who is he?”
Arthur hesitated.
“It is,” I jumped in, “someone who’s recently come under suspicion. He’s not a Guardsman.”
Poll practically leaped from her chair in delight. “I knew it! I knew he weren’t no fuckin’ Guardsman. I tried to tell Reid that, but would he listen? Nooooo, not his nibs!”
“You’re going to have to testify that this is the man now,” I said.
Poll’s good humour vanished almost immediately.
“Like hell I will! After all the crap I went through before? Be a cold day in hell before I give Reid anything to crow about.”
“But if you don’t go to the police, he’ll get away with it!” I said. I noticed that Arthur was not joining me in trying to convince Poll to go to the authorities.
“Look,” Poll said, “this ain’t the guy who went off with Martha. He’s not the killer, his chum was. Besides, you said he’s already suspected, so just sweat his friend’s name out of him. From the looks of him, it shouldn’t take too long.”
“Thank you, Poll,” Arthur said, “we appreciate your help. Here’s something for your troubles.” He pressed some coins in her hand, and she quickly stuffed them into her pocket.
“Your friend here,” meaning me, “needs to learn his manners from you. Appreciate it.” She took her newly filled glass of gin and left.
I turned to Arthur and felt like decking him myself.
“What are you doing? Why are you letting her go? We need to take her to see Abberline!”
“Calm yourself, Albert. Poll will never willingly go to the police at this point. She’s been ill treated by them and didn’t have much faith in the law to begin with. No, she’ll never testify against him, even if she lived to do so. If we exposed her to Abberline now, her life would be in danger.”
“If that’s how you feel, what was the point of all this? If there’s no one we can go to for help, why put Poll in danger at all?”
Arthur sighed. “I didn’t like having to do this, Albert, but it was necessary. We had to know for sure if Eddy was really involved. Now we know. As I said before, stopping him and his friend will be up to us. Fred is compromised by his very position in all this, and I won’t put him into this business any deeper. Our next step is a virtually impossible one: we have to find Eddy and follow him to this friend.”
“And then what?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps we can impose on Dr. Williams to commit them both to an asylum. I fear that we may have to steel ourselves for an unbelievable course of action. We have to be prepared to use deadly force.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Arthur, have you gone mad? Do you know what you’re saying?”
“I do know, Albert, all too well. It is, in the least, treason; at the worst, murder. I pray it doesn’t come to that, but we have to be ready if it does.”
I shook my head. “How did this happen? How did it come to this?”
“Years of people looking the other way because of who Eddy is and what that means. It can’t be allowed to go any further than this, Albert; we can’t let this continue.”
There seemed to be little left to say. I drank my beer and wondered what our next step would be. Even if Eddy were behind these murders, how could we ever hope to catch one man in the entire East End by ourselves? The enormity of the whole business overwhelmed me.
I slowly looked over the crowd. There were a great many people there, but I didn’t see anyone I knew. Edwards’ booth was empty. Up at the bar, there was a short, somewhat chunky woman who looked familiar. Arthur’s back was to her, so he did not notice her. I struggled to remember where I had seen her before. I had a feeling it was probably in this same bar, but why would I have remembered her at all? When she turned around, it came to me. When I had been here before meeting with Edwards, two women had gotten into a fight. This was the woman who had lost. There was an ugly bruise on the side of her head, and I could just see the tip of another one on her chest. She moved awkwardly, as if every movement were painful. Her face was ruddy, and I guessed that she had been drinking a lot already that day.
The barmaid walked by and noticed the picture lying on the table. Poll had left it facing upward, and the woman looked at it and laughed. “Oh, that’s priceless, that is! Where’d you get that? Did George get it at some costume shop?”
“What are you talking about?” Arthur said. “Do you know him?”
“What? George? ’Course I do. He comes in all the time, except I haven’t seen him in a while. Hang on a bit.” She turned and yelled at another woman across the room. “Hey, Sarah! You ain’t seen George around lately, have you?”
The woman turned and looked at her in confusion. “George who?”
The barmaid held up the picture to show her friend. “Here, you know him. He’s Walter’s brother, George, remember? George Sickert?”
I looked at Arthur in amazement.
“Oh, yeah,” her friend said. “Naw, I ain’t seen him lately. Probably hanging around Annie now that she finally had the baby.”
“Who’s Annie?” I asked.
“That’s his wife, Annie. She used to work in a sweet shop on Commercial Street, but she quit when she got pregnant. Right after the wedding too. Ain’t that just the way!” She laughed again and walked away.
“Arthur,” I said in disbelief, “what the hell was all that?”
Grinning, he replied, “The universe is working in our favour, Albert. We’d be foolish not to take advantage of it. Come on, we have to go see that idiot Sickert.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“I do, but that’s not where we’re going. He has a studio in Whitechapel, on Commercial Street, but no one is supposed to know about it.”
“If no one is supposed to know about it, how is it you do?”
“Sickert likes to come into the East End and ‘slum.’ He likes the local colour of the people and places. To him, they’re nothing more than subjects for a painting, a spot of amusement.”
“And that’s why you hate him so much?”
“Well, one of the reasons. Amy is a patron of the arts. She’s always dragging me to some art exhibition or concert or whatever. Well, one time, shortly after we were married, she met Sickert and admired
his paintings. He invited her to come to his studio and see his work. Except that he didn’t take her to his studio at home but to a more private, secret one. While there, he attempted to seduce Amy. She refused, of course, and Sickert took it better than most men would have, I suppose. I don’t think she was the only woman he’s invited there, though. He has a high opinion of himself as a ladies’ man. Anyway, Amy told me the whole thing, and she thought it was more of a lark than anything else. She has a tendency not to see the worst in people, unfortunately. She also told me where the studio is.”
“Do you think he’ll be there now?”
“It’s as good a place to start as any, Albert. If our surprise witness here was correct, perhaps Eddy will be there himself.”
A thought occurred to me. “Wait, you don’t think that Sickert could be S, do you?”
“That is a very real possibility. But there’s something else to consider as well. I haven’t heard anything about Eddy being married, have you?”
I shook my head.
“And yet this woman says that he is and, what’s more, he’s fathered a child. I wonder if Victoria knows that little gem!” Arthur laughed, but I didn’t see the humour in it.
We got up and made our way to the doors. For some reason, as I walked out the door I looked back, even though I didn’t know what I was looking for. I saw her sitting in a chair near the back corner, the bruised woman looked forlorn and forgotten. She winced as she breathed, and for some reason my heart went out to her.
It wasn’t until we were out of the bar and halfway down the street that I remembered where I had seen her before. Bruises and all, she had been in my coma dream. She had been the one who told me how sorry she was, but I still didn’t know why.
*
It was a quick walk and neither us said a word. I don’t know what Arthur was thinking, but for myself I was wondering how things had gotten to this point. We were on the way to find and confront a man we suspected of murdering at least two women. Not only that, but there was a very real chance that we might end up murderers ourselves. I felt in my pocket for my gun but wasn’t reassured by the touch of the cold steel.