Alley Urchin (15 page)

Molly had no intention of giving up though, and, in a minute, she was boldly tapping on the carriage window. ‘Hello, mister,’ she called out, even beginning to move the handle which would open the door, ‘got a shilling, have you?’

At once the driver had swung down from his seat. ‘Clear off,’ he warned Molly, ‘else I’ll take my horsewhip to your backside!’ However he wasn’t quick enough to stop Molly from flinging wide the carriagedoor. At the same instant, an arm reached out from inside with the intention of quickly closing the door again, just as the driver was bearing down on Molly. At once, before the flesh might be flayed from her legs, she sprinted away. And with her she took a vivid and disturbing picture of the toff inside the carriage: a big man, whose face and neck were smothered in iron-grey hair, and who had the most vicious, piercing eyes she had ever seen, which stared down on her with a look of pure hatred!

From a safe distance, Molly kept watch on the carriage; she wished that Sal would hurry up and come out, so they could go home to the relative safety of their hut. It wasn’t too long before the odd one or two revellers began emerging from the ale house, so Molly kept her eyes peeled for Sal’s familiar figure.

But it wasn’t
Sal’s
familiar figure that came out. It was Gabe Drury’s, together with the fellow who had arrived in the carriage. There they were, arm in arm, the older man swaying and staggering, occasionally bursting into song, and now and then laughing out loud at some genial comment made by the other fellow.

With Molly still watching from the shadows, Gabe Drury was led towards the carriage, and unceremoniously bundled inside it, with the other fellow standing watch outside and talking quietly to the driver. Molly crept nearer, until she was crouched below the door, with her ear pressed close against it. She could hear old Gabe Drury protesting most strongly at being ‘brought away from me drinkin’ pals!’ Whereupon the toff showed great interest in ‘the story you’ve been telling . . . regarding a certain man by the name of Thadius Grady . . . and the murder of a bargee by the name of Bill Royston?’

‘What’s it to
you
, then, eh?’ Molly thought Gabe Drury’s voice seemed more sober and suspicious, especially when the toff offered him ‘two guineas to repeat the story to me. But, leaving nothing out, mind . . . nothing at all!’

‘Two guineas!’ Molly couldn’t help but gasp softly at the price this gent was willing to pay, just to hear a story! Why!
She’d
tell him a better tale than old Gabe Drury, at half the price. Then she recalled the gent’s words – ‘the
murder
of a bargee by the name of Bill Royston’ – and something inside her froze. The name was familiar to her, because hadn’t Sal once revealed that her
own
name had been Royston, but was changed to Tanner when she was a child. Beyond that, Sal would say no more. But Molly had been left with the feeling that there had been a terrible tragedy of sorts, because of the sadness in Sal’s face when, on that one occasion only, she had talked of her background, and of her parents, Eve and Bill Royston. Was it the same ‘Bill Royston’, Molly wondered now. Had Sal’s father been murdered? And, if he had, then why was this gent so interested, and what did Gabe Drury know of anything?

Molly was tempted to steal away, lest she should hear something which was best not heard. But she was more tempted to
stay
.

‘Let me out. I don’t want ter talk to no bloody toffs!’ Gabe Drury’s voice was trembling with fear, not booze. ‘Let me out, I tell yer. I don’t know nothing about any “murder” . . . an’ I’ve never even heard of a fellow called Thadius Grady!’

‘You’re a liar! You’ve been spreading gossip about the town . . . malicious and dangerous gossip that could have you put away . . . or likely hanged! In fact, I think I’ll tell the driver to take us straight to the constabulary this very minute.’

‘No, I don’t want no truck with the bobbies,’ came Gabe Drury’s fearful cry, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong, I’m tellin’ yer.’ When the gent appeared to brush aside the old fellow’s fears and to lean out of the window ready to instruct the driver to move off, the old man began blubbering and pleading, ‘All right . . . I’ll tell you all I know.’

‘And I shall see you get your two guineas,’ promised the gent in velvet tones.

Molly listened most intently, while Gabe Drury hurriedly spilled out his story, his nervousness evident in the way he halted and stumbled on every other word. He described how, on the day Bill Royston was shot to death, he saw a man fleeing from the place . . . a gent . . . ‘much like yourself, sir’, but not he, no, not he! ‘Blood all over him, and a look on his face as guilty as any I’d ever seen!’ The memory of it all was too much, as Gabe Drury pleaded, ‘That’s all I know. Now, let me be . . . let me out of here!’

‘In a minute. Tell me first, and think hard, man, because your life might depend on it. You say you saw Thadius Grady running from the place where Bill Royston lay dead? . . . Did you see anything else, man? Any other person, anyone
else
you could recognise? Speak up, man, speak up or I’ll have you hanged, I tell you! There should be enough to bring a charge against you!’

‘No . . . I weren’t there, sir!’ protested Gabe Drury. ‘I were in the grass some fair distance from the canal . . . sleeping off a night o’ revelry. Oh no, sir . . . I weren’t
there
. Not at all. What’s more, I never saw nobody else . . . only that gent, Thadius Grady . . . just like I said. An’ he’s dead an’ gone himself now . . . so it don’t matter.’

‘You’re sure?
He
was the only one you saw?’ When Gabe Drury reassured him, there was yet another question to answer before he was allowed to go. ‘Just now . . . before you entered the public house, you addressed a scruffy urchin?’

‘Scruffy urchin?’ Gabe Drury’s mind was still shot with fear at his experience here this night, and what with the booze, he was having trouble thinking straight. ‘Oh aye! Yer must mean young Molly . . . Sal Tanner’s lass.’ He was relieved to have remembered, but puzzled as to why a posh gent might be interested in the likes of Sal Tanner’s little ’un.

‘Sal Tanner, eh?’ The gent raised his hand and thoughtfully scratched at the mass of hair about his face. Then, leaning forward and looking the old fellow hard in the eyes, he repeated, ‘Sal
Tanner
, you say?’ He waited for an affirmative, if nervous, nod. ‘Hmm . . . the same one who ran her barge from Liverpool and carried coal and cotton to the Wharf Mill?’ Again, he waited for the nod. Then, when it was cautiously given he went on, ‘The same one who had a brother . . . I believe his name was Marlow?’

‘That’s right, sir . . . Marlow, a fine young fellow. Went off to seek his fortune and ain’t never come back since.’ By this time, Gabe Drury was glad that the subject had come away from the night of Bill Royston’s murder. Funny though, how two things in particular stood out in the old fellow’s mind, in the wake of the gent’s questions. First, it was speculated at the time that a
woman’s
body had been found alongside Bill Royston’s. And, if rumour had it right, it was said that the woman was not one of the usual run, but a well-bred lady of the gentry, no less. But it had been carefully hushed up. Then as if that wasn’t enough, here was a fellow of the same class . . . asking about none other than Sal Tanner. Sal Tanner! Whose father was the same Bill Royston that got himself murdered!

‘This scruffy urchin . . . you say she’s Sal Tanner’s daughter?’

‘Well . . . not
exactly
her daughter. Sal never had any children of her own. Folks don’t rightly know where Sal got the young ’un from.’ Of a sudden, the gent was leaning forward again and, when Gabe Drury saw the cunning look in those piercing eyes, some deep instinct warned him to keep his mouth shut. So when he was asked, ‘What
more
do you know of Sal Tanner . . . the brother, or the urchin?’ he shook his head. ‘I don’t know nothing else, sir, an’ that’s the truth. I ain’t been round these parts fer a long time, an’ I ain’t got that many friends ter speak of.’ He winced beneath the other fellow’s close scrutiny of him. But he was determined that, two guineas or no two guineas, wild horses wouldn’t get him to admit that he’d known Sal and Marlow since they were no bigger than a blade o’ grass . . . an’ he knew their parents, Eve and Bill Royston, a good many years afore that. It wasn’t widely known that when their daddy was shot to death and their mammy hanged for it, the two Royston children were whisked away to safety by the barge-folk, and their name changed to that of Tanner. Somehow, Gabe Drury suspected that even this gent ’ere wasn’t aware of the connection. But if that was the case, why was he asking after Bill Royston and Sal Tanner in the
same
breath? There was something strange going on here, thought Gabe Drury, although he was convinced that the gent was not aware of the blood ties between Sal and the murdered man. But he felt he might have said far too much, and stopped short of revealing how Sal Tanner had come across young Molly after a hanging . . . found the little wretch right outside the prison gates, or so it was said . . . when it was still wet and warm from its mother’s womb.

‘You’ve told me all you know?’ The voice had a sinister ring to it, as it came out of the dark shadows in the carriage. ‘You’re certain that the man you saw was Thadius Grady? You saw no
other
?’

‘None at all. Like I said, I don’t know nothing else, as God’s my judge,’ and he hoped God might forgive him for lying.

‘Then here’s your two guineas.’ There was a chink of coins and a grateful ‘Thank you, sir’ before the carriage door was opened and Gabe Drury set his foot on the pavement. As he hobbled off into the darkness, a song on his lips and thankful that he was at last on his way, the gent himself stepped down out of the carriage and muttered into the ear of the other man, who had kept watch outside. This one now nodded his understanding of the instructions just issued. In a minute he went stealthily after the homely figure of Gabe Drury, the both of them being swiftly engulfed in the darkness.

Having quickly scurried back to her hiding place when she knew the conversation was over, Molly watched everything. She felt afraid, yet didn’t know why. But having been taught well by Sal, and not being one to miss an opportunity, she sidled up to the carriage; before the gent could climb back inside, she had slipped her fingers into his coat pocket and stolen away what felt to be an unusually thick wallet. Molly smiled craftily as she crept back into the shadows. Sal will be pleased, she thought, as the carriage moved away. It wasn’t too often that the gentry presented themselves so easily for the picking! But how would she explain it to Sal? How could she tell her about the carriage an’ all . . . yet
not
tell her about that fearful conversation? Molly thought better of telling Sal about that, because there was something awful about it. From what Molly could understand, old Gabe had seen the fellow who had murdered Sal’s daddy . . . and his name was Thadius Grady. There would be no sense in raking all of that up when it would upset Sal, especially since this Grady fellow was ‘dead and gone’. And especially since Gabe had seen fit to keep quiet about it up till tonight. Molly supposed Gabe hadn’t wanted to upset Sal over it then, any more than she did now. She expected Gabe had been afraid to go to the constabulary before, and Molly could understand that. You didn’t go looking for trouble, and the constabulary was trouble, for the likes of folk such as Gabe.

Molly’s stomach had turned somersaults when that gent began asking after her and Sal. That in itself was enough to make her keep the whole thing from Sal, because she did like to get to the bottom of things, did Sal. Molly sensed that it could only bring trouble down on their heads. No. The best thing was to forget all about it, and tell Sal that she’d found the fat wallet lying there on the pavement. The thought made her chuckle. Wouldn’t Sal be surprised, she thought, taking up her place at the door of the public house, just as the revellers began pouring and stumbling out of it. She kept her eyes peeled for Sal’s shawled figure, and she returned a cheery ‘G’night’ to one and all as they went away down Angela Street, singing and laughing at the tops of their voices – one or two starting a fight, afterwards rolling about in the gutter with a crowd of cheering drunks egging them on. Bedroom windows were flung open, and out came angry instructions to ‘Piss orf, yer drunken sods!’ and ‘Bugger orf out of it . . . else I’ll set the dog on yer!’ Molly grinned from ear to ear. She’d seen it all before. And many was the time when it was Sal who might be fighting and rolling about in the gutter, especially when she’d had a few too many and lost at cards into the bargain.

As the carriage sped away into the night, leaving behind the alleys and cobbled streets of the old quarter, the gent inside smiled to himself. He had done well, he thought, and covered up his tracks most cleverly. It always paid to keep an informer amongst the riff-raff, because who could sniff out a rat better than another rat? When the news was brought to him that a certain old fellow was spreading a story that could so easily have pointed the finger in
his
direction, there was no other course but to track the fellow down. He had to find out just how much the fool did know of the canal murders which took place all those years ago.

The smile which had crept over the gent’s face deepened into a cruel and smug grin. He had satisfied himself that the fellow had no knowledge of any person fleeing the scene, other than the hapless Thadius Grady, who was always a weak and unfortunate fool. Now, had the old man Drury stayed a moment longer on that particular day, and looked in the opposite direction, he might well have seen the very gent who was seated in this carriage now. In fact, if he hadn’t been so intent on fleeing from Thadius Grady, he might well have seen a real murderer. And, if he had, thought the man, if he had, then he might not have lived until this night!

Though he was pleased with his night’s work, there was something else that played on his mind and set him wondering. It was to do with Marlow Tanner and Emma Grady who, thankfully, everyone believed was no more than a ward to him, left in his care by his wife’s brother, Thadius. The image of the small, dark-eyed urchin insisted on troubling him also, and it made him furious inside, firing his avowed determination to rid the streets of these vagrants and thieves!