Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (22 page)

EUSTON EVENING BUGLE

1st July, 1861

SETTING THE THAMES ALIGHT—WHY SHOULD THE TAXPAYER PAY?

The constant cries of so-called liberal thinkers for the government to spend, spend, spend on issues undeserving of public attention have reached a shrill pitch in the wake of the Tooley Street Inferno.

Granted, the destruction of eight six-storey buildings, despite the presence of fourteen fire engines, merits a parliamentary inquiry. Granted, too, the image of the brigades disputing whose responsibility it was, while long-suffering fire chief, James Braidwood, and others burned to death, is gruesome. It is, however, ludicrous to hold that a single Metropolitan brigade might have saved the day. What incentive for a service that receives wages regardless of its efficacy? A service answerable to financial backers has long proved itself effective; a brigade answerable to God is a utopian nonsense.

The prudent among property owners already pay vast sums to insurers, who are in panic over the two million pounds of goods and property destroyed in the blaze. If the payments prove the highest ever recorded, all well and good, those insurers must drill more efficient brigades.

Rumours are rife of warehouse managers sighing in relief at the blaze. What with the cotton crisis, they had insured the stock to the hilt, anticipating record profits. But the sales bonanza never materialised, and the insurance will pay far dearer for the lost stock than any Savile Row tailor would have. Meanwhile, the value of stock laid aside elsewhere will also rise. The
Bugle
suggests to the parliamentary committee that suspicion will only by allayed by tough-minded convictions for fraud, or arson.

FROM FIRE TO FLOOD

The late Dr John Snow of the Middlesex Hospital, who styled himself an epidemicist, claimed that much of our drinking water simply revisits disease upon us. Tracing numerous deaths to the pump in Marlborough Street, he demanded fanciful government investment in free drinking fountains, fed from reservoirs in the Walthamstow marshes, of all places. Snow’s henchman, Henry Mayhew, who writes for the agitatory gazette,
Punch
, is now imploring the government to cleanse the river. He claims to have found in Father Thames dead dogs and kittens, dung of stables and pig-styes, kettles and flower-pots, chemical substances from breweries and gasworks, and slaughterhouse offal. The
Bugle
is nevertheless assured by the Sacred Guild of Water Bearers that the source of the cholera, which killed sixty thousand Londoners in 1848 and 1849, remains moot. If the river is to blame, they point to the vast investment in Bazalgette’s sewers. His processing plant east of London at Crossness is already running its first massive engine, built by James Watt and to be named “Albert Edward”, which nomenclature will surely delight the Prince of Wales.

COLONY’S LOSS IS SICK CHILDREN’S GAIN

More pleas to help the unhelpable. Charles Dickens gave a reportedly rousing address to raise funds for the Hospital for Sick Children. Perhaps the popular novelist should look a little more to his own affairs. He repeatedly turned down a lucrative offer from Spiers and Pond of the Café de Paris in Melbourne, Australia, for a reading tour. The rebuffed entrepreneurs have instead invited H.H. Stephenson’s All England team to tour the colony, where they plan to cash in on the public’s obsession with cricket, the latest euphemism for gambling and gaming. Dickens, meanwhile, will mount another royal command drama at the Gallery of Illustrations to raise funds for the hospital.

Should we not remember Samuel Smiles’ dictum that “No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober”? The claims of the Association for the Preservation of Infant Life, that unwanted children are being murdered for the sum of £12 by unscrupulous widows, though serious, are not credible. In the last twelvemonth, the four hundred and sixty-four cases of suspicious child deaths investigated have produced just fourteen prosecutions and seven convictions, presenting no reason to amend the Bastardy Clause of 1844. After all, if Mr Darwin is to be believed, the Survival of the Fittest is only part of the Great Struggle for Life. Thus, for mankind’s sake, all these sickly unwanted children would be better off left to fend for themselves.

***

Passages in Mudie’s Lending Library Books Marked with Cipher Annotations:

… Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that Caesar?

Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

Write them together, yours is as fair a name;

Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;

Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em,

Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.

Now, in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,

That he has grown so great?

— Cassius,
Julius Caesar
, William Shakespeare

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,

Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,

But leech-like to their fainting country cling,

Till they drop, blind in blood…

—England 1819
, P.B. Shelley, writing of the House of Hanover

DIRTY?LAUNDRY

It was on my way to Charles Dickens’ house that I stopped in at Brunswick Square and had an unpleasant run-in with Glossop, the carrot-haired companion of my first months in the police.

Wardle had fallen into a dismal funk. They were still thieving, up in Hampstead, over in Bayswater, and right under our noses along Whitehall.

“And what have we got?” Wardle exploded. “Nothing. They’ll be taking Victoria’s petticoats next.”

Several puzzles baffled us. The list of the robbed made impressive reading: industrialists, parliamentarians and literary men, the well-heeled and the well-known. There were a couple of gentlemen’s clubs, a music hall, a brothel and a lunatic asylum. It made sense, of course, to rob the wealthy, yet, having gone to so much trouble, why take so little? And how did our thieves get in and out without leaving a trace?

At first, Wardle stuck doggedly to his theory from Pearson’s, that we were sniffing out industrial saboteurs. While it was unlikely that servants in each household were executing identical crimes, it was nonetheless possible that a contact paved the way in each case, passing crucial details to the thieves and allowing them access. We gathered lists of tradesmen and the like, but no recurring names jumped out. What kind of mind would it need to orchestrate the thing? When Wardle started demanding full guest lists for the month prior to robberies, I realised he was considering the notion of gentlemen thieves, who might be best placed both to steal ideas and to sell them on, if one can sell ideas. Continually we asked if any blueprints or manuscripts had gone astray. Continually the answer came in the negative, and we remained confounded.

I had also failed to find Wardle his bargaining chip with the
Bugle
, but I had confirmed that they, like every newspaper in town, were owned or part-owned by railway barons. The press had got bored of the story, though, thank goodness, which took the pressure off a little.

Reports of other thefts kept drifting in from other boroughs, some so minor they were barely noticed, others unmistakably like ours, with pennies taken and a piece of furniture, and a bone left behind. Everyone dragged their heels in sending the information I requested, especially the recalcitrant City Police.

And then there were the bones. Why leave a bone in houses that had no dog?

“Can we not have someone look at them?” I asked Wardle. “Find what kind of bones they are, or where they’re from?”

He shot me a withering glance. “What’s the use? If they’re dog bones, the man’s from the Isle of Dogs? If it’s a cat, he’s a Manxman? Come off it, Watchman. This isn’t an after-dinner puzzle, and I don’t need poxy zoologists soliloquising over skulls in my office.”

Though I knew he had no time for newfangled ideas, his derision stung. There were days he arrived grumpy and morose, with little will to work on the thefts. I often wondered what other cases he had on the go, hidden from my eyes.

Then a terse note from Jackman arrived, proposing that I check on the theft at Dickens’ house. It struck me as odd that a man who had worked with Wardle for years sent no word of greeting to his old inspector. I went straight to the cabinet. The Dickens theft was two months before Pearson’s. The file mentioned only petty cash, but Jackman hinted something about a bone.

On my way to Tavistock House, I took the chance to drop in at the old constabulary. Coxhill’s blathering about the importance of insurance had piqued my curiosity. I wanted an address for Mr Wetherell, the retired insurance man I’d saved from the over-zealous publican. Perhaps he could shed light on the HECC’s dealings.

“Enjoying life at the top, Yard boy?” Glossop smirked, flicking through the files. He had clearly been preparing quips for months.

“Surviving,” I replied. “How are things here?”

He ignored me, concentrating on writing out the address in laborious script.

“Oh, come on, Glossop. Out with it, if you’ve something to say.”

“All high and mighty, are you now?” He pushed the address across the desk with a filthy look. “I know why you got the nod.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why it was you got promoted.”

“And not you, Glossop?” I had to hold back a laugh. “Is that your meaning?”

“I asked the superintendent,” he insisted. “Your great inspector asked for someone biddable. He wanted someone easy to order about and they gave him Campbell Lawless. Because you’re weak-willed. Ha!” He wiped his nose and looked at me squarely. “I’m doing fine too, thanks, since you ask.”

I took the address and walked out.

Dickens’ residence was in disarray. When the butler opened the door, after a long wait, servants were flitting hither and thither and I could hear voices raised. With my heart accelerating at the prospect of an interview with a famous man, I asked if might speak to Mr Dickens.

“No, sir.”

“Is he out of town?”

“No, sir.”

“Where is he, then, may I ask?”

“Mr Dickens is at home, sir.”

The man was beginning to irk me. “Then why mayn’t I speak to him?”

“Mr Dickens is writing, sir.” He spoke as if the subject were distasteful to him. “It doesn’t do to disturb him. Could you come back in the afternoon?”

With so much traipsing ahead of me, I had no wish to return to what was most likely a dead-end enquiry. “Is Mrs Dickens available?”

The butler’s jaw tightened. “I am instructed to say that Mrs Dickens is down in the country.”

“No family members at all?”

“Miss Dickens, Miss Dickens and Miss Dickens are at home, sir.”

“Then, I pray you, ask the eldest’s indulgence for an interview.”

He sighed, as if he wished I would vanish. “Is the matter pressing, sir? Only the house is rather occupied at the moment and the Miss Dickenses are not of age.”

“The matter is urgent,” I said.

No sooner was I ushered into the reception room than I fell under that spell which entrances us members of the public when first confronted with fame. Was this the desk at which the great man thought of Pickwick? No, that was of course upstairs, for he was writing at it. Were those the windows against which he pressed his nose as he dreamt up David Copperfield? Of course not, for this house was bought on the proceeds of that novel.

“Officer?” The young woman who interrupted my daydreams was not beautiful, but appealing in the flush of her excitement. “I am sorry, but you have been needlessly summoned. Really, all’s well. You needn’t have come. A storm in a teacup. Father will be appalled at the hullabaloo when he comes down.”

“The hullabaloo?”

She bit her lip and sniffed nobly. “It was just my mother departing, again. This time I fear it is for good.”

The butler, till then silent, coughed.

The girl looked round in annoyance, but returned to me with a charming smile. “I’m sorry. I have forgot my manners. Catherine Dickens. And you?”

I took her hand. “Miss Dickens. I am Sergeant Lawless, of Scotland Yard.”

“Scotland Yard?”

“I have come on quite another business, about the theft, a year and a half back. But if I can be of help in your current crisis–”

“Oh, it’s nothing, really. A misunderstanding on all sides. Come now, sit down.”

“Thank you. I need to confirm some details. Did you discover anything further missing, beyond money?”

She sat opposite me, warmth returning to her face, as if glad to be distracted from domestic cares. “Money? I’m not sure there was any money taken.”

I frowned. “Nothing at all, then.”

“I recall father was concerned about his manuscripts. He used it as an excuse to take an office in Camden, which only roused mother’s suspicions. Ridiculous, of course.”