Death In Hyde Park (24 page)

“Pick a pocket?” Lottie interrupted eagerly.

“Yeah.” Jack grinned. “This old geezer shared my cell, Cardboard Clancy, his name was. They called him Cardboard because that’s where he liked to sleep on the road, in little houses he made out of cardboard boxes. Card, he was a masterful pickpocket.” Jack lit a cigarette from the end of the one he was smoking and stubbed out the butt. His eyes were sparkling with the memory and the telling of it. “One day, in the mess-hall, ol’ Card picked the keys clean out of the guard’s pocket. Slick as a whistle, it was. Fella never even knew they were gone.”

“And then what happened?” Lottie asked, regarding him curiously. The trouble with Jack was that you never knew how much of his tale to believe. He could recount a story so full of lively, real-life details that you felt you were actually there, then he’d laugh and tell you he’d made it all up and congratulate himself on having fooled you.

“What happened?” Jack shrugged. “Nothing happened. We were getting out the next week, so we didn’t bother using the keys. Might as well get a few more prison meals under our belts.” He grinned. “Anyway, Card just did it to show me how it was done. We had it all fixed up to go into partnership when we got out, y’see. Card thought I was a crook just like him, and I didn’t see any merit in disabusing him of the notion. So I let him think I was the real goods, so to speak, and he spent a fair amount of time teaching me what he knew. Especially picking pockets. As I say, he was real good at it. We practiced on one another until I was real good at it, too.”

“So you learned how to be a dipper,” Lottie said in a speculative tone.

“A dipper?”

Lottie laughed. “That’s what a pickpocket is called here. A buzzer, sometimes. A mobsman, if he’s well-dressed.”

“Well, I don’t think they’d’ve called me a mobsman in those days.” Jack chuckled briefly. “I was a tramp, pure and simple. And I wasn’t doing it to pick up story material, or study human nature, either, the way I’m doing now. I did it because of the life that was in me, the wanderlust in my blood that wouldn’t let me rest. But I hadn’t the price of the railroad fare in my jeans, so I—”

“Did you practice dipping while you were a tramp?” Lottie interrupted. Jack’s story was interesting, but he was taking a long time to tell it.

Jack gave her a shame-faced look. “Well, I wouldn’t admit it to anybody but you, but I have to confess to giving it a shot a time or two. It’s a useful trade, I’ve got to say. One time in Ogden, Utah, when I was dead broke and didn’t know where my next meal was coming from, I passed this dandified dude on the street and—”

“I wonder,” Lottie said, “if you’d mind showing me just how good a dipper you really are.” She stood up. For a change from her gypsy costume, she was wearing a pair of Jack’s spare trousers and one of his clean shirts. “Give me your wallet,” she commanded. She tucked it into a rear pocket and turned her back on him. “Now, show me.”

Without hesitation, Jack brushed against her. She felt nothing, not even the touch of his fingers, but when she reached for the wallet, it wasn’t there.

He grinned at her mischievously, holding it up and reaching for her. “Is this what you’re looking for, lady?”

She evaded his grasp. “So much for the wallet,” she said. “How are you with keys?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 
 
 
Nellie Lovelace sat in front of the mirror in her dressing room in the theater, staring at her reflection and fighting back tears. Tonight was the last time she would sit in the room that had become so dear to her in the past few months, with its big gold star on the door, its clever little costume closet, and its prettily-flounced dressing table littered with theatrical makeup, the mirror framed with photographs of herself in various theatrical roles. For tonight was the last time she would star as Princess Soo-Soo. She had been fired. The director, who had given her not just one warning but several, had finally told her that there was no longer any need of her services.

At the recollection of that terrible humiliation, Nellie stopping fighting, dropped her head on her arms, and gave way to bitter tears. It was an appalling thing to be fired from a role, especially such a plummy role as the Princess. The theatrical world was a close-knit society. By tomorrow, everyone in the cast would know what had happened, and by the following day, word of her disgrace would have rippled through every theater in London. Every director would know that she had been fired for missing cues and forgetting lines, and it would be next to impossible to get new work in a decent theater. If she was lucky, she might get a job as a chorus girl in the music halls, but likely not the Hippodrome or the Alhambra, the leading variety houses. The Paragon Theater of Varieties, maybe, in Mile End Road. She might even end up back in Whitechapel, at the Wonderland. At the thought, her heart sank. Given how far she had risen, such a thing would be a terrible come-down.

That wasn’t all, of course. Working as a mere chorus girl or a bit-part player, she wouldn’t be able to keep her beautiful little West End house, with its garden and piped-in hot water in the bathroom. She would have to sell her beautiful furniture and move back to the theatrical rooming house where she had lived before she became Princess Soo-Soo. And there were her debts. She didn’t actually know how much she owed the dressmakers and jewelers in New Bond Street, but it must be hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Thinking that her stardom was ensured, she’d spent money far too freely on things that, she realized now, were not at all important.

And there was worse, much worse. Nellie had never read a medical book, and it probably wouldn’t have profited her if she had, for most of the advice that was available to late Victorian and Edwardian women about their bodies was simply wrong. William Buchan, for instance, in his book
Domestic Medicine,
assumed that menstruation was a dangerous disease that required regulation and suggested the use of “corrective pills” to relieve its inevitable associated symptoms: “weakness, nervousness, giddiness, and hysteria.” Other doctors taught that women should avoid all excitement during their menstrual periods, for intellectual stimulation, strong emotions, or intense physical exertion could obstruct the menstrual flow and lead to insanity and death.

But while Nellie might not have known what the learned doctors taught about the hazards of being female, she was not without experience where pregnancy (and its prevention) was concerned. From the 1830s on, newspapers had advertised “female syringes” designed to be used with various sperm-killing chemical douches, such as alum or sulphate of zinc and iron. Another commonly available contraceptive was the pessary, which Nellie’s friends gigglingly called the “pisser.” It was widely sold in chemists’ shops to “correct a prolapsed uterus,” but women knew that its real purpose was to prevent conception. They also fully understood the real and frightening implications of a missed menstrual period, and very few would have been silly enough to blame it on reading an intellectually-challenging book, or dancing at a ball for hours on end, or crying over a romance novel.

So when Nellie realized that she had missed the period that was due a week after her evening with Jack, it was certainly no wonder that she was upset, and no wonder that her anxiety caused her to miss a few more cues and bobble a few more lines, which only led to greater stress and more missed cues and bobbled lines, and to the final humiliation.

Perhaps Nellie should not be blamed for thinking that, even if by some miracle she wasn’t pregnant, falling into bed with Jack London was the cause, pure and simple, of her professional downfall. Of course, she could not hold him solely responsible, for she knew she should have been more watchful, more on her guard against him. But Kate Sheridan was right, she thought with a weary anger. Jack had taken advantage of her naive eagerness to have a good time, and should she be indeed pregnant, he was going to find himself confronted with the responsibility of fatherhood. And if he felt no moral obligation to accept that responsibility, perhaps a letter to his wife in California might make him see the light.

But these thoughts provided cold comfort, and certainly offered no answer to her current dilemma. Nellie knew that she would have to start looking for work first thing in the morning. With a heavy sigh, she rose from her dressing table and began to pack her few belongings.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 
 
 
The Central Criminal Court was adjacent to Newgate Prison, in an old stone building that was called the Old Bailey after the name of the street on which it stood. In 1086, at the time the Domesday Book was compiled, this particular site was next to a gate in the stone wall, or bailey, around the City of London. In 1188, Henry II ordered that a prison be built adjacent to the wall; it was constructed by two carpenters and a smith for the cost of three pounds, six shillings, and eight pence. Over the following centuries, the gate and the prison (now called New Gate) were demolished and rebuilt several times. In 1539, a sessions house, or court, was built adjacent to the prison, and became known as the Old Bailey. Charles knew that both Newgate—probably the most notorious of English prisons—and the Old Bailey were soon to be razed, in order to make way for a grand new structure designed by E. W. Mountford, although he doubted that even a splendid new judicial building would banish the tragic ghosts of the men, women, and children—debtors and criminals alike—who had died or been executed within Newgate’s dark, dismal walls.

But the demolition was not scheduled to begin until the following spring, and on Tuesday, the second of September, Charles Sheridan and Edward Savidge presented themselves in the covered yard between the prison and the Old Bailey, some thirty minutes before the trial of Henry Jackson was about to begin. They handed their admission cards to the sheriff’s usher and were directed up a stair, down a narrow passage, and into seats in the spectators’ section. The chamber was unusually crowded with people, mostly off-duty police officers, Charles suspected, since they had a significant stake in the outcome of the trial.

Charles and Savidge had scarcely taken their seats when they heard the usher’s cry. The crowd got to its feet as the judge entered and took his place at the bench. A moment later, Harry Jackson came in and stepped down to the front of the dock, his head bowed.

The trial went swiftly. Richard Muir, black-robed and white-wigged, outlined the Crown’s case and called several witnesses including Sergeant Collins, who told the impassive jury how the evidence was obtained and what it meant. Then Muir placed in evidence two photographic enlargements, comparing the single fingerprint that the burglar had left at the scene of the crime with that of the print of Harry Jackson’s left thumb. Sergeant Collins demonstrated the points of comparison between the two prints, and the Crown rested.

The barrister for the defense was witheringly scornful of both Sergeant Collins and the fingerprint evidence and dramatically passionate in his assertions of his client’s innocence, pleading with the jury not to convict a poor laborer on such intangible and untrustworthy evidence, “never before offered in a court of law,” he cried. But the jury, unmoved by his passion, returned within the half-hour with a guilty verdict. Jackson was sentenced to seven years, the judge’s gavel came down smartly, and the case was concluded.

“Well, that was one for the record books,” Savidge said, as he and Charles repaired to a table in a nearby coffeehouse much frequented by barristers and court officials.

“Yes,” Charles said, shaking his head. “Seven years for seven billiard balls. Hardly a fair sentence, if you ask me.”

“It’s not the sentence I’m talking about, and you know it,” Savidge retorted. “Students of the law will be reading about the fingerprint evidence for years to come.”

“And the police will have to learn how to deal with that kind of evidence,” Charles said thoughtfully. “It will mean more training, greater care in the handling of evidence taken from the scene of the crime, and much more attention to the proper custody of evidence. Men like Ashcraft may have a difficult time of it.”

“I doubt,” Savidge said wryly, “that Ashcraft will ever learn. He’s far too full of his own authority.” He looked at Charles over the rim of his coffee cup. “What did you make of the fingerprint evidence in our case?”

“The question is,” Charles said with a crooked grin, “what will the jury make of it? What’s your prediction, Savidge?”

Savidge shook his head. “I never attempt to guess how a jury will react—especially not in a complicated case like this one, with three defendants. It will take a smart jury to sort through it all.” He shrugged. “We’ll find out soon enough—day after tomorrow, in fact.”

Charles raised his cup in salute. “To success,” he said. “May the innocent prevail.”

Savidge gave a sarcastic laugh. “My word, Sheridan, you
are
an idealist.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

 
 
 
With Patrick’s ankle mended and her manuscript at last completed and ready to be delivered to her publisher, Kate came up to London early on Thursday, the fourth of September, the day of the trial. Charles had stayed in town during the intervening fortnight, busying himself with various investigations relating to the case, so they had little opportunity to discuss his work. Regarding the trial, he had left her a note at Sibley House saying that the preliminaries were scheduled to begin at ten o’clock in the morning. If she wished to attend, she should get there early, for it was likely that the spectators’ box would be full.