Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (30 page)

“Sir, the man must hate the young Prince, if he stole his girl. He may be quite reckless. The affair’s already caused Albert’s death. Shouldn’t we take it seriously?”

“We don’t dignify every prank with a response. They’d have us jumping around like a cat o’nine tails.” He looked at me stonily. “I thought it best to sit tight. Never thought it would come to this.”

“Are you sure Bertie’s under control now? It sounds like nobody’s ever refused him anything before. And these high-living friends, don’t you think they’ll lead him back into temptation?” I tried to put from my mind the image of Coxhill’s gambling hell, dotted with Madame Lorraine’s ladies of the night.

“You must find me a right old stick-in-the-mud,” Wardle said, looking old and worn. “Gabbling on about the crimes of yesteryear, Sadleir and Brough and the others, when all this was unfolding beneath our noses. You sometimes wonder, Watchman. You wonder why one man lives and another dies. Why are they up there in the castle and we down here? Why do I drive myself mad running around for a flibbertigibbet of a prince?” He slapped his hands upon his knees in frustration, then put his hands to his face.

I stood there dismayed. “How long had you been working for Prince Albert?”

“What’s that? I don’t know. Fifteen years. Twenty, I suppose, since the Mary Ann Brough case. What does it matter? I’ll be out of it soon enough.”

I stared at him.

“Yes, yes. It’s all settled. A year hence I’m retiring. Please God this is the last shake of my time. Let’s hope that Bertie sees sense. His bit of skirt can go back to the crazed cuckold of hers, and I can retire without further fussing.” He sat there pondering and there was nothing I could do but walk away. He called out weakly as I left. “Watchman? Come for dinner some time. The wife would like to meet you.”

I nodded, touched by the thought that he had discussed me with her. He was right, I knew. We must make sure things settled back to normal. Yet I couldn’t suppress a contrary yearning: for everything to melt down, for the lies and machinations we were burying along the way to break through in a vast eruption. I couldn’t help recalling the envelope Albert had passed Wardle and wondering how much of Wardle’s grief was for the envelopes. I could have no doubt. Albert had been doing him the handsome, in royal style. Still, I had heard much worse. Older officers spoke of the bad old days when inspectors took cuts from criminals to overlook crimes, and retired with their pockets lined with gold.

THE FIFTH PERIOD

(EARLY 1862)

THE BUGLE – THE ELEMENTS OF DESTRUCTION
AND STILL LONDON STANK – WARDLE GETS THE CALL
PANIC IN THE STREETS – THE METROPOLIS SURGEON
BAIT FOR A WORM – EXCERPTS FROM A LADY’S DIARY
(MISS DICKENS’ NARRATIVE) – 1857: THE AMATEUR DRAMA
1858: THE SEMI-PROFESSIONAL DRAMA AND THE SOIRÉES
1859: THE LIGHTHOUSE – INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONIST
BAD ODOUR

EUSTON?EVENING?BUGLE

28th January, 1862

WHAT A JUBILEE!

This is not the time to criticise our gallant Queen.

The outpouring of grief for the Prince Consort is unprecedented, the mountain of flowers outside the Palace testifying to the nation’s depth of feeling. We respected him. We loved him. Mr Disraeli did not overstate when he declared, “This German prince has ruled for twenty-one years with more wisdom than our kings ever showed.” He had the absolute touch of a gentleman, which is that everybody takes him for one of their own. He was all things to all men.

Yet time marches on, and Queen Victoria’s refusal to celebrate her Silver Jubilee, honourable though it be, casts a pall over the decade. The Prince of Wales lacks the statesmanship to step into her boots and there seems no alternative but that the new Exhibition, which the Prince planned so brilliantly, will be a crass failure. The authorities moot an “Albert Memorial” for the old site of the Crystal Palace, while this year’s event is sadly neglected.

Let us mourn, by all means. But let us not make jackasses of ourselves. The workforces of important exhibitors have been decimated by sick leave taken under the masquerade of national sorrow.

FLUSHING OUT ILLS

The Marlborough Works of the Thos. Crapper Co. have monopolised demand throughout London’s better boroughs for his fine apparatus. With a 250 gallon water tank on the roof, his works continuously test flushing mechanisms. For no extra charge his men install it with an airtight seal preventing the escape of noxious aromas. Detractors may deplore the apparatus’ discharge into culverts not intended for such abuses, but Mr Crapper’s is the sort of Great British invention to take the world by storm.

Bear in mind, however, rumours that footpads and mountebanks are using Bazalgette’s sewers to access houses. Last year’s Skeleton Thefts, solved by Inspector Wardle, may have links with the new network. Lock up your water closets.

The Elements of Destruction: a Series of Threats Sent Between 1859 and 1862
:

Oh, fat foul false friend,

The time of judgement draws near.

Guy Fawkes was a genius.

Cromwell had the right idea.

The writing is on the wall

For the family blind in blood.

Across the Styx go I, go I,

Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.

When you descend where you belong,

I shall know in which circle to place you.

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

The monster is slain in his tortuous lair,

Despatched to the belly of hellfire.

The common man throws off his shackles.

Vive la république!

The Monstrous Rotundity has had its day.

AND STILL?LONDON STANK

Darkness fell rapidly in these times. The dusk crept in and seized hold of the smog. Together they extinguished the daylight at a glance. The lamplighters could barely keep pace.

Individual woes were forgotten in an embarrassment of emotion, as London became a prison of overwrought mourners, exuding grief for the dead Prince. He may have been the finest king we never had, but the glowing eulogies, tears and wreaths left a sour taste in the mouth.

I had my own sadness too. On Hogmanay I had word from the Clockmakers’ Guild, Edinburgh division, that my father had passed away on Christmas Eve. Typical of the old beggar to miss the feast. It was too late to get back for the funeral. His friends would mutter, but what could I do? It was the last in a long series of disappointments I caused him.

I kept my own company that night. Walked myself ragged. From Primrose Hill, I looked down at the city huddling under its blanket of smog, as there drifted up to me the plaintive roar of the lions in the Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens. I crossed Hampstead Heath, careless of robbers. I did not stop until the cheering lamps of the Spaniard’s Inn. There I drank a solitary toast to the old man and drowsed away the wee small hours in an old leather chair, as the carousing outside died away. Then I trudged homeward, down the hill and along the canal. At the sight of my frosty home, though, restlessness overtook me and I set off down towards the river.

And still London stank. On that brisk winter morning, the drains were frozen over with filth. Nightsoil sellers still flouted the regulations. Poor Josiah Bent. If Wardle could shamelessly pin our thefts on innocents, why should I have believed the prison warden’s word over Josiah’s? Where were his wife and children now, I wondered? I heard of a family given shelter against the bitter cold by a kindly landlady of Clerkenwell. Each night she locked them in the cellar, fearful of prying eyes, now we police were to enforce the regulations against cellar dwellings. One morning she discovered the whole family drowned in filth. The neighbouring cesspit wall had given way. Through the stout oak door nobody had heard their cries.

Some other things smelt none too sweet. The freezing fog that crept up oppressively from the docks could not hide the stench of two million unhappy people. But what matter? Come the summer, remove to your house by sea, and you barely noticed. After all, the Empire has made us all rich. And there is no shame in that because nobody is really poor, leastways no one worth speaking of.

As I neared the river, the streets were fuller than ever with Scots and Irish vagrants, come to look for those streets paved with gold. But the gold remained elusive, busy underwriting stocks, standing as insurance on houses, or against loans for ventures to the Southern Seas. The Bank of England’s notes promised to pay the bearer on demand the stated sum, but it seemed folly to believe that the accounts would be squared at some great final reckoning.

I walked along the Embankment, considering my future. What profit was there in chasing Berwick? My pursuit was less a series of revelations than a slow confusion. Likewise, though the skeleton thefts were quieted rather than solved, Wardle had no enthusiasm for pursuing the real culprits. Devoted as he was to Albert, I would not have expected him to go and admire the sea of flowers left at the Palace by the bereft public.

I had seen his son just before Christmas. Wardle was out the day Charlie popped in to say goodbye. The cotton crisis had deepened. He could foresee no end to it.

“I’m off to Australia, me. Sick of famine, strikes and riots.”

It filled me with yearning, his talk of the vast prairies of Queensland. I envied him the chance of starting again. I envisaged great green bays and cavernous waterfalls beneath soaring mountains. Leery natives and monstrous vegetables, wild horses and implausible creatures loafing across vast plains.

“One other thing now I’m off, though,” he said. “Couldn’t tell you before. Union regulations. There was a Skelton, you know, in the Reform League down here. Highly regarded. Great hopes held for him. Last I heard, he’d gone a bit strange. Lost patience with the movement. Taken his unit underground.”

Yet Mr Wetherell’s words of encouragement stayed with me, when the Tooley Street enquiry proved fruitless and a high-ranking Inspector of the Yard retired to the South of France. Clearly someone was gaining; and if somebody was gaining, someone else must be losing; and it wasn’t the rich that were losing.

Walking there by the Thames, as the city drew its breath for a doleful year, I felt for the first time a swell of pride in the terrible beauty that was London. The Guild’s letter mentioned certain business affairs of my father’s. If I chose not to interfere, they would deal with the business, and I might expect a small stipend. Or I could return to Edinburgh, escaping London’s feverish speculations. With father gone, I found myself considering a return. I could take over the workshop, live quietly there. Could I? Go back to the life I had long left behind me?

WARDLE GETS THE CALL

I knew something was wrong as soon as Wardle opened the letter.

“What is it, sir?”

He crumpled the letter tight in his hand. “He’s had another bloody threat.”

“May I see it, sir?”

“Just when you think you’re clear,” he said. “One prince is already dead from this foolishness. I won’t have it any more.”

“Sir, the threat?”

“You can see it when I have it,” he burst out. “There are things you don’t send by letter.”

I nodded, unsatisfied. I was tired of not being taken into his confidence. “What about the first threat, sir, before the spout? Do you have that?”

Narrowing his eyes, he pulled an envelope from a drawer and handed me a telegram. “See if you can make any sense of it.”

“That’s all it is, sir?”

“That’s all. That’s where the whole mess started.”

I read it aloud in puzzled excitement. “‘Guy Fawkes was a genius.’”

“Bloody pranksters weren’t.”

“Why do you say that, sir?”

“Don’t know their bloody history. Fifth of November, you’d expect from that, wouldn’t you? That’s what I expected. Spout went off on the eighth.”

“Early on the ninth,” I corrected him. “I wonder. Why did he get it wrong?”

“Quite simple. I kept Bertie out of town. They couldn’t get at them when they wanted.” For a moment Wardle looked satisfied, then his face darkened.

I looked at him. “No other threats, sir? Before the Evans, for instance?”

“Nothing.”

“Seems strange. Why give warning of one and not the other?”

“Why give warning at all?”

“To make us puzzle. Make us try to understand.”

“Taunt us, you mean.” He stepped absently over to the window and stood silent a few moments. “The boy sounds like he’s had a real scare. I just want it stopped. He’s dropped the tart. What more can we do?”

“Maybe it’s gone beyond that now, sir. Or…” I frowned. “Are we quite sure that he has dropped her?”

“The gentlemen,” I said with curled lip, “will kindly remove themselves from the corridor.”

I was stationed outside a room in the Oxford and Cambridge Club. Wardle had burst in and ejected several young men in cravats and blazers, smirking like schoolchildren. They passed me without acknowledgement, as if I were a manservant, conceiving the notion of skulking around to listen. I took pleasure in standing up to my full height, some inches above them all, and telling them to leave. They looked at me, unable to muster defiance, and melted impishly away. With their clatter gone, I could hear Wardle’s voice distinctly within.