Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (20 page)

His face soured further. “I must be getting on.”

“In that case,” I said with a regretful look, “I may be back later, with my inspector, to discuss a couple of items from the Licensing Act–”

“Oh, what is it you want, officer?”

“Your hoofers. Only to speak to them.”

“They were snapped up by the Evans, if you must know. Look for ’em there.”

In the few minutes it took me to reach Covent Garden, I puzzled over the multiplying coincidences of the case. Glancing down the alleyway beside the music hall, I chanced upon three girls arriving in high spirits.

“Hulloah, there, ladies.”

The tallest, a full-bodied woman, called out. “What can we do for you, officer?”

“Is the stage door this way? Only I’m looking for the dancers.”

“You’ve found us,” she said. Her voice crackled darkly. “What of it?”

My nerve faltered as I recognised her. It was the marvellous Amazon of the show. Her tumbling locks were tied up beneath a bonnet, but that voice of hers was unmistakable. The two shorter girls eyed me with suspicion and amusement in equal measure, as nervous of me as I was of them. I asked my question quietly, as if the name were a charm – a spell, a key – which I was scared of uttering too many times, for fear of wearing out its magic before I unlocked its secrets. “Do you… Might you know a man – Berwick Skelton?”

The tall girl turned away, while the short ones burst out giggling.

“Who doesn’t know him, officer?” said one.

The other made a face as if this was the most daring comment she’d ever heard. She pointed back at the tall girl. “It’s her you’ll want to talk to, though.”

The two scurried down the alley and tugged at her shawl. The Amazon looked back with a strange dignity. “I ain’t got the foggiest what he’s talking about,” she said and turned on her heel.

The others clapped in excitement.

I strode after her. “Please,” I said. “I must speak with you.”

“It ain’t me you want.” She fixed me with her dark eyes, and my plan to be tough melted clean away.

“Please. I beg you most humbly.”

She glanced round. Her friends were huddling at the stage door. “Oi,” she called out. They disappeared into the doorway. “This is no good. Got a teviss?”

I gave her a shilling.

“Here, girls. Now, bugger off while the copper and I have a chat.”

Her friends tried to stifle their giggles. They grabbed the coin from her hand and vanished with some leery comment that brought a scowl from the tall girl.

She strode in through the door and led me into a small room with a shelf of wigs, a mirror and a rail of extravagant costumes. She sat down and began to put on make up. “What kind of a reputation this’ll get us I don’t know. Bringing a copper into me dressing room. What is it you lot want this time?”

The statuesque tilt of her head and a dismissive tone in that velvet voice left me at sea, and I fumbled for words. “You know him. You know Berwick Skelton.”

She frowned quizzically. “Are you for real, mate?” Her laughter was warm and infectious. She looked me up and down, appraisingly. “Who’s sent you along here?”

“Nobody,” I said quickly. “I’ve come on my own account.”

“I’m sick of the lot of you.” She looked down her aquiline nose into the mirror with sudden decision. “I have to get ready. I got a good job here and I likes to look me best.”

I must choose how to play my hand. I couldn’t let her send me away so quickly. But this was not the moment to speak of the spout. That would make it seem like I was pursuing him for a crime. I had no veiled threats to drop, as with the Haymarket man. I reached into my pocket. “Look, you gave that shilling to the others. Here’s one for you.”

“I don’t want your filthy shillings.”

“I’m sorry.” I frowned in dismay. “Please, if you ever had any fondness for him–”

“What’s he done?”

“I just want to find him.”

She turned her big doe eyes upon me. “You’re a strange one. All right. As long as you don’t mind me getting into me things.” She went across to the rail and pushed her way through the rich fabrics as if she was walking through a forest. “Yes, I knew Berwick.”

My heart thrilled, and I realised that I had begun to doubt that he existed. I almost burst out and told her how relieved I was. “Do you know where he is?”

“Oh yes. He’s sat in the upper circle, waiting for you.”

I started up in confusion.

“I’m having you on, copper,” she laughed. “What d’you think this is, a drawing room farce?” She picked an outfit off the rail.

“I’m Hester, by the way.”

I introduced myself in turn, feeling foolish. “Tell me about him, Hester.”

“What, like his life story?”

“Why not?” I realised I could see her in the mirror, changing her clothes. I averted my gaze. “Were you close?”

“I think,” she said tightly, “it’s my old friend Nellie that you’re after.”

“Nellie?”

With a rustle of cloth, she popped her head around the end of the rail, jaw set firm and bare shoulder peeking out. “You really don’t know nothing, do you?”

“Oh, I don’t know what I know, Hester.” We both laughed. “Is Nellie in the show?”

“Nellie,” she grinned, “no longer graces the stage with her little tootsies. She has, shall we say, alighted in higher circles.”

“As Berwick’s fiancée?”

She puffed out her cheeks. “Let me say straight away that I have lost touch with Nellie, not seeing eye to eye with her, you might say, but as far as I know that particular agreement is no longer binding.”

She gave me a smile. Disappearing back among the gowns, she began to speak more freely. She had been best friends with Nellie since they were knee-high. She spoke of their early days on the stage, dancing down at the Hoxton Hall. Even then, she said, Nellie was the darling of the audiences. Hester painted her friend as a charmer, who revelled in playing off against each other the million men chasing her.

“I was the shy one,” she said, emerging resplendent in her rather sparse Amazonian costume, red frills and feathers all over it.

The door burst open and one of her little friends popped her head around the door.

“Bugger off,” Hester growled. The friend vanished. “What’s so funny, copper?”

“You don’t seem so shy to me,” I mumbled.

“You can bugger off and all.”

“No, no. It’s just that I… I’ve seen you perform.”

“Oh, yes? Juliet or Cleopatra? I do so love the classical roles. Don’t look so confused. I’m pulling your leg.”

I grinned. “And out of these millions of men, she chose Berwick?”

“They chose each other. Nellie wanted to go up in the world, you see. Which of us doesn’t? And Berwick was always headed somewhere. You could see that from the start.”

“Tell me. What is he like?”

She looked at me, as if I she could scarcely believe that I didn’t know him. As if it amused her and, at the same time, she pitied me for it.

“He was a lovely one. Full of brains. And a way with words he had. Ask anyone.”

“Where’s he from?”

“There was different stories. I heard he was an orphan. Nellie said his family were gypsies and they’d left him in London to grow up into a trade. Others said he was the illegitimate child of some lord, abandoned at the Foundlings’ Hospital. Could have been, he had that air about him. He had family in Clerkenwell, I think. They’d know the truth of it.”

“What do you believe?”

“Don’t know,” Hester said with a wistful grace, as she fixed her hair into a high bunch. “Does it matter? He did have something faraway in his look. She loved that, the thought that he was destined for great things. Oh, he had stars in his eyes when he saw us dance. He wooed her good and proper, like a gentleman would have done, and that’s how he won her. Whenever she stepped out with him, it was like he couldn’t quite believe it. Like he thought it was his birthday every day. Silly boy. He was worth her weight in gold. Could have been somebody too, with his brains. Nellie was ever so impressed. Not that she told him. Then along comes another, money jangling in his pockets. Nell takes one last look at Berwick’s old waistcoat, and his sideburns, and his old bowler hat. And she drops him, like she dropped all the others. Yes, she drops him and goes off with the toff. And that was the last I saw of them.”

“And now? Where are they now?”

“Your guess is good as mine.”

“You’re not friends any more?”

“Look, to my eyes, Nellie behaved badly. Berwick deserved better than her, and she treated him like dirt.”

“Hester, forgive me. Did you have an interest in this fellow too?”

“No,” she said sharply. “He was a nice-looking fellow. Well-spoken, and gentlemanly. A lot more gentlemanly than a great many gentlemen I’ve encountered.” She stood and, before I could speak, she kissed the top of my head. “And you’re a sweetheart too, but you must be off or I’ll be in trouble.”

I stood up, my mind spinning. “The toff that Nellie ran off with,” I said, knowing it was indiscreet to ask, and maybe irrelevant. “Who was it? Not a man called Coxhill?”

Hester’s eyes narrowed.

I stopped short. “You know Coxhill, then?”

“I knew I’d seen you before.” She looked at me closely. “Last week, wasn’t it?”

I laughed an awkward laugh. “Not Juliet, nor Cleopatra. You’re very good.”

She brushed off my compliment. “Uniform suits you better.”

I thought of my arms sticking like pins out of Coxhill’s jacket, and my cheeks burned with shame. “Hester, I have to find Berwick. I can’t say why, but can’t you tell me where Nellie lives?”

“I tell you, petal, your lot know more about it than me. Go on now, scarper.”

I thanked her. Enthralled with these discoveries, I decided to stop in at a tavern to collect my thoughts. Yet in truth I still had nothing substantial to go on. After a couple of ales, the notion took me to step into the Evans and watch the end of Hester’s show over again. I huddled into a corner, keeping a wary eye out for Coxhill. There was no sign of him, thankfully, though I did spot Jack Scholes of the
Euston
Evening Bugle
looking around sharp-eyed and taking notes. I was not sad to miss the first half, but when the dancing girls appeared for the finale, I gazed in awe at Hester, resplendent and lustrous in the reflected lamplight, kicking up her skirts and twirling magnificently. Near the end, she seemed to catch my eye, though perhaps I was imagining it.

As I slipped out ahead of the rush, an usher gently touched my jacket. “Sir, I have the information you were asking for.”

“The information?”

The usher screwed up his eyes in concentration. “Yes, sir. Miss Hester kindly requests that I recommend to you the elocution teacher employed on occasion by herself and her friends. A certain Groggins, sir. Groggins, of forty-four, Shepherd Market.”

THE ELOCUTION TEACHER

There was trouble waiting for me at work the next day. I glanced, as usual, into Darlington’s office, to find him sticking pins into a large map on the wall.

“Playing war games?” I joked.

“Murderous games, old man,” said Darlington gleefully. “I’m on the Whitechapel garottings.”

“Woe betide the lunatic when he meets you and your drawing pins.”

“It’s the pattern, old man.” He lowered his tone with gravitas. “We’re establishing his
modus operandi
. Speaking of lunatics, though, your man’s on the rampage.”

I hurried in to meet my fate. Wardle was at his desk, snorting like a bull, newspapers scattered everywhere.

“You’re early, sir,” I said weakly.

“What have you got? On Paxton and the rest.”

I took a deep breath. My mind had been so full of my own investigations, I had made no progress with the thefts. “I’m finding it hard to get solid information.”

“I’ll give you solid information. I’ll give it you all right. Paxton does own the
Bugle
, or good as. He was a shareholder in Dickens’ old paper, too. What about the others?”

“Nothing that I’ve found, sir, not as yet.”

“If you’re not too busy swanning about the theatres of London, you might find time to uncover something.” He picked up
Punch
and threw it at me. “Because there’s a mite more to be checking now.”

I squirmed beneath that formidable gaze, trying to think if I had mentioned my trips to the Evans to anyone in the Yard. But there was nothing to be done but pick the thing up and sit down to find out what he was talking about. It didn’t take long. The newsmen had unearthed a string of other thefts over the last year, details comparable to our skeleton thefts. Now I understood the music hall sketch. They were calling it an epidemic. “But, sir, how can we have missed all these?”

“Look where they happened.”

I scanned the article again. The City, most of them at least, that was the jurisdiction of Wardle’s
bête noir
, the City Police Force. No wonder he was disgruntled. “I’d better gather information on this lot.”