SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments (27 page)

She pulled at her lip with her teeth and then asked sullenly,

'What's the questions about?'

'That's better!' said Verity in his most encouraging manner. 'First off, about Charley Wag.' He saw the flicker in her dark, narrow eyes. At fifteen years old she might seem hard as brass to threats and even beatings, but the fear of the Wag was going to live with her for many years yet.

'Now,' Verity resumed, 'you wrote that letter for Charley, to blackmail Lord Henry, some time before his lordship died. When might it have been?'

'Dunno, exactly. Bac
k just before the summer begun.’

'And just why might he want
you
to write it?'

'A-cos
of
the ring he heard I'd got. Another girl told 'im.'

'What ring?'

As though she had abandoned her animosity against them, Elaine's belligerent manner softened and she slipped into a rambling narrative.

‘I
had it when I was younger. Mother was going fine with a soldier and we was to sail with him, hoping for India or 'Straliar in the end. I don't remember exactly what happened, only that the boat we was on was wrecked and I was carried and put in a little boat with a lot of others. It was dark and in the middle of the sea. And then there was a fight and one of them in the boat was put in the sea for being a man. Then I don't remember more 'n half of it. We was days and nights in the boat, and seemed to sleep longer and longer. And I'd wake a bit and see no one else stirring. It was mother give me the ring, last of all. She said it'd come from the finger of the man that was put in the water. She made me take it and said I was to see what I could make on it if ever I found a story that could be told against the wretch. Course, I never really saw him nor had any idea who he might be. And it could a-bin any ring. There was writing on the inside, but not such as I could read. Foreign. Then we slept and when I woke I was on another boat. They said mother and the rest was on different ships, only of course I knew later they was dead. They didn't tell me at first, for fear of making me lose heart to recover."

'And Charley Wag?" asked Verity.

Elaine pulled a face.

‘I
never did use the ring, 'aving been stolen from a man while they killed him, it wasn't worth the candle to sell it and be took for helping the murder. And there was no way to tell who he might be, no way I could find, so I 'adn't even the means to tell the tale to his family and see what might be made by that either. Only I told another girl in the spring and showed her what was engraved on the inside, which she wrote down. A few weeks later, though I never saw Charley Wag before, he came and gave me money for the ring and made me write the note. Later I heard he been coopered by one of the jacks from
"A" Division. But he never was!
I seen 'im plain as I see you now, every hair of his head and every look of his eye the dead spit!'

'Phantasm of a disordered imagination,' said Samson knowledgeably, 'Charley been snug in Kensal Green the past month. Why, the turf they laid over 'im ain't even been disturbed.'

Elaine tossed her hair again and said with adolescent defiance,

'Bugger you and your phantoms!
Didn't I feel his hands round my throat? And ain't I got the bruise of his thumb there still? Look!'

There was no mistaking the faded shadow of the injury on her white skin.

' 'ave the goodness to keep her 'ere a minute, Mr Samson,' said Verity. 'I shan't be gone long.' He trudged out of the booth and disappeared among the tents and flags.

'Biggish, darkish cove, Charley was," said Samson conversationally.

The girl nodded.

'That's 'im.'

'Only thing is,' said Samson, 'it was Mr Verity as coopered 'im and me that felt his heart stopped and saw his head broke in, And saw him buried, what's more.'

He stooped a little and peered at the bruise on her throat again. One of his hands went round her shoulders and sampled the soft weight of Elaine's young breasts.

'Course,' he said, 'in the matter of being returned to Mrs Rouncewell, you could have it hard or easy. And Mrs Rouncewell takes notice of what I say in such matters."

The hand dropped, full-length, and began to travel up the backs of the girl's tightly-clad and sturdy thighs. Simultaneously, he planted a resonant kiss on her lips.

'Ain't no reason a good-natured girl shouldn't find things go easy for her,' he said.

She tossed her hair back furiously. 'Bastard!'

Samson's hand reached the fattened cheeks of Elaine's bottom, stroking and patting.

'Quite a big girl already,' he said optimistically, the hand darting between her tightly closed legs. 'And you ain't averse to a touching there by the feel o' things! Now, you'll have all the way from 'ere to London Bridge in a closed carriage to show just 'ow grateful you can be to a friend that's.
..."

'Mr Samsonl' said Verity from the opening of the booth. 'If you please!'

Samson released the girl reluctantly with a final lingering pat and a sigh. Verity was standing at the canvas flap with a little man who was a total stranger to Samson.

'This,' said Verity with an air of proud ownership, 'is Mr Adam Jump, Lightning Sketch Artist and Silhouette-Maker to the Crowne
d Heads of Europe. He been good
enough to leave his tent for a bit to help us in the investigation.'

'Why?' said Samson, irritated by the intrusion on his private negotiation with a fifteen-year-old mistress.

'A-cos,' said Verity, 'Mr Adam Jump has a speciality, which is li
kenesses of Dear Departed Ones.’

'You'd hardly credit,' said Jump with soft owlishness, 'how they sell. Ladies and gentlemen describe a dear one to me and I fashion the likeness to suit. Seeing it done brings back all manner of other details even while I'm working on the sketch. It's a shilling in pencil and twice that if shaded with coloured chalks.'

Verity addressed Elaine sternly.

'Now, miss. Let's 'ear you give Mr Jump a notion o' Charley Wag. And remember what's waiting for you at Mrs Rouncewell's if it ain't a ringer for him.'

Jump sat on the steps of the wagon with his board, paper and chalks. He drew shapes of faces until there was one which, the girl swore, was the contour of Charley Wag's.

'Dark 'air, sort o' tight curls,' she said. Verity and Samson nodded at one another in agreement.

'Like that?' asked Jump, showing her the board.