The Deadly Fire (13 page)

The problem was his leg, he thought. The pain from it stopped him thinking straight. As time wore on it was getting worse and worse. By the light of the fire he took off the rag and examined it carefully.

Now the cut had closed over, but in its place there was a red, throbbing swelling.

And his head ached. And he felt shivery, and slightly weak.

He looked over at Sammy, sitting peacefully by the fire, his sightless face alive with intelligence. What would happen to him if Alfie died of blood poisoning?

The next morning, Alfie boiled some water again and this time, as well as putting the two rags in it, he held the blade of his knife in the bubbling water for as long as he could bear the heat.

Then, gritting his teeth, he put the sharp edge of the knife against the swollen lump and sliced into it. A flood of yellow pus came out, and then a little blood followed it.

Now the cut looked much better. It was clean and the swelling was less. Alfie began to feel cheerful as he wiped away the fluid and then tied the rag over it again. His head still felt heavy and he was still unusually cold,
but he buttoned an old waistcoat of his father's over his jacket and set to work to wash Sammy's hair and get him as tidy as possible.

There were only a few good pieces of clothing in the cellar. Alfie borrowed a scarf from Jack, a pair of breeches without too many holes from Tom and then found a white shirt which he had snatched from a stall in Petticoat Lane and added his own good tartan waistcoat. Carefully he rubbed out any clots of dirt, cobbled a few holes together with a needle and thread, attacked some grease spots with a piece of stale bread and helped Sammy dress in all the finery. By the end of it, his brother looked pretty good, he thought. Alfie had done his best with his own clothes – they didn't look too different – but he reckoned his appearance didn't matter as long as Sammy looked respectable.

‘Where are you off to, then?' Jack re-knotted the red scarf around Sammy's neck. It had been kind of him to lend it. It was a good warm scarf and had been given to Jack by a woman whose husband had drowned in the river. Jack had helped to drag the body out and had gone back to the house to console the weeping woman. She had given him the scarf when he went away. He was a nice fellow, Jack;
everyone along the riverside liked him.

‘Thought we'd drop into the hospital and see the inspector.' Alfie did not explain any further and was thankful that Jack did not press him.

‘Will they let you in?' Tom was very cheerful this morning. They had taken out the tray of marbles from under the coals and found that all, except one or two, had baked hard. The pale green had turned a dark green, and where they had mixed the copper powder with some rust, the marbles were a dark red.

Tom and Charlie practised with them for a while, sending them scooting across the stone floor of the cellar and deliberately crashing them, one against the other. Not one of them was damaged – they were as hard as pebbles. Mutsy watched with interest, his head cocked to one side, and one large ear half-raised in an effort to understand what was going on.

‘I'll try, anyway,' said Alfie. ‘You and Charlie should go on with the marble-making. You could do with a few hundred before you start selling. We've plenty of clay left. If people buy them, then we can supply them.'

‘That looks like St Bart's Hospital, there, Sam, don't it?' Alfie stared thoughtfully at the tall building,
carefully spelling out
St Bartholomew's Hospital
.

Sammy laughed quietly. ‘I'd be more of a help if my eyes worked better.'

Alfie punched him on the arm and chuckled. There was no doubt that Sammy had a great sense of humour. In some ways, it hurt Alfie when he heard his brother say things like that, but in other ways he was proud of him. He knew that Sammy did not want pity. What he felt about being blind he kept to himself and did not ask for sympathy.

Alfie also kept to himself the feelings of terror and panic that sometimes overwhelmed him when he wondered where the next meal, the next week's rent would come from. He did not want ever to confess that weakness to Sammy or the rest of the gang.

‘How's the leg?' asked Sammy.

‘Fine,' said Alfie.

‘Pity we can't find someone who could give you something for it,' said Sammy.

Alfie did not reply; it was obvious that his brother did not believe him. The bond between the brothers was very strong and both always knew when the other was hurt or worried. But nothing could be done without money to pay a doctor, so there was no point in Alfie talking about his leg. ‘Let's go in
and visit Inspector Denham,' he said.

St Bart's Hospital was huge. Inside the door was an immense space, the ceiling high above their heads and the tiled floor cool and smooth beneath their bare feet.

‘Looks like a church with big high windows and all that,' Alfie whispered in Sammy's ears.

‘Bit spooky, like, ain't it?' returned Sammy and Alfie squeezed his brother's arm.

Sammy was right. There was an odd echo from the hurrying footsteps of the doctors and nurses and well-dressed men and women who hurried past, and it did give a weird feel to the place.

At the far end of the hall, there was a woman sitting behind a desk. She looked very forbidding, thought Alfie. He took a deep breath, placed Sammy on a chair by the window, then took one of Mr Elmore's leaflets from his pocket and approached the desk, holding it folded in his hand.

‘Message for Inspector Denham from Bow Street police station,' he said curtly.

‘Give it here,' the woman said impatiently, holding out her hand.

‘Has to be given into his own hand,' said Alfie firmly. ‘That's my orders. Inspector Bagshott said
that. These were his very words.
Into his own hands.
' He stared boldly at the woman and kept the folded leaflet slightly tilted so that she could see the print, but not read it.

After a minute she shrugged her shoulders, consulted a large ledger full of neatly written names in front of her and then said dismissively, ‘First floor, room number 222.'

Alfie nodded in an off-hand manner, went back to his brother, grabbed his arm and marched towards the steep stone stairs as quickly as he could before she could change her mind.

By the time that they reached the first floor, Alfie felt as if he could not climb another step. His leg was on fire with pain and he was shivering so much that Sammy noticed. Alfie saw him turn his head with concern on his face as they walked down the corridor. He was in such pain by the time they reached number 222 that he just walked straight in without knocking and immediately sat on a chair, still keeping a tight hold of Sammy's hand. To his relief, only Inspector Denham himself was there in the small room, lying on a high iron bedstead.

‘Well, well, what wind brought you two here?' The inspector's voice was weak and hoarse. He was
tucked into bed, well-propped up with pillows. He looked pale and he needed a shave.

Alfie wasn't feeling well, but the sight of Inspector Denham wearing a striped nightgown and a nightcap with a tassel, instead of his usual smart, well-brushed uniform, brought a smile to his lips and his courage began to come back.

‘Here to investigate your disappearance from Bow Street police station, sir,' he said cheekily. ‘Glad to see that you are still with us.'

Inspector Denham gave a grin. He looked more human there in the hospital than he did in the police station.

‘Nothing for you to find out. I can tell you the name of what struck me down; it was pneumonia,' he said, his voice a little stronger. ‘That's the culprit, but I'm on the road to recovery now. Have some of my hothouse grapes.'

Alfie had never tasted grapes, but he took two, put one in his own mouth and popped the other into Sammy's. It was an astonishing taste, sweet and yet sharp. It made his sore throat feel better.

‘You don't look too well yourself,' said Inspector Denham, eyeing Alfie with a sharp glance.

‘Just a cut on my leg,' said Alfie. He didn't want the
inspector to think that he was bringing some disease into the hospital.

‘So what brings you here, then? Eat the grapes, I don't like them, myself. I'd prefer a whisky but they don't let me have it in here.'

‘I've got a bit of evidence for you in the case of the murder of Mr Elmore,' said Alfie.

‘Go on.'

He didn't contradict the word ‘murder', Alfie noticed. Perhaps Inspector Denham had thought it over and had begun to come round to Alfie's view that the deadly fire was more than a simple accident.

So Alfie told him about the piece of clay, next to the empty oil tin, about Albert the monitor, his witness, and about Mary Robinson's fury when she saw that he had tricked her into leaving an imprint of her foot on another piece of clay.

‘I'd swear that she understood what I was doing,' he said.

‘Maybe, or maybe not,' said the inspector. ‘She's a woman, after all. Women don't like getting dirt on their shoes.'

‘She wears boots,' said Alfie dryly. ‘Man-sized boots, and the boots looked about the same size as the fire-baked print that I have at home in the cellar.'

‘Tell Inspector Denham about Thomas Orrack,' said Sammy.

‘You tell him,' said Alfie. A violent fit of shivering had seized him. He had just about been able to say that sentence with his jaw set rigidly to stop his teeth chattering. He swallowed a few more grapes in the hope that they might make him feel better and half-listened to Sammy's account of how Thomas Orrack had opened a fee-paying school in the room by the church of St Giles.

‘So you have two suspects.' The inspector sounded thoughtful.

‘Three,' said Alfie. ‘There's Mr Elmore's younger brother, Mr Daniel Elmore. He will inherit all the money now when the father goes, and the father is in bad health. And then there's Joseph Bishop. He tried to murder me two nights ago. That's how I got this cut on my leg. He hit me with his shovel.'

‘Let me see; take off that filthy rag.'

Alfie obeyed. It was true that the rag, which he had boiled clean that morning, was no longer a pale grey, but was covered with the mud and filth of the street.

‘Doesn't look too good to me. Just ring that bell there, Alfie, will you?' Inspector Denham sounded more like himself. ‘Could you ask one of the doctors to
step in here, Nurse,' he said as a starched, uniformed women came bustling in.

A few minutes later, the door opened and a young man, wearing a white coat, came in.

‘Ah, Doctor, could you do me a favour and have a look at this boy's leg. He was hit by a shovel that had been used in a burying ground . . .'

Alfie saw the young doctor frown at those words and his heart sank. His guess was right. There was something poisonous about the earth that buried those dead bodies near Drury Lane.

Inspector Denham saw his look and gave him a cheerful wink. ‘He's tough. He'll soon be well again,' he said to the doctor.

The doctor already had his hand on Alfie's forehead. ‘He's running a fever. I'll take him off and get the leg bandaged up, sir.'

‘Just a minute.' Inspector Denham fumbled in the cupboard next to his bed and then produced his purse. ‘Here you are,' he said, placing a shilling in Alfie's hand. ‘Now you look after your leg and no more investigating. Wait until I'm back at the station and then we can talk about it. Off with you now, go with the doctor. And keep away from that man, Joseph Bishop!'

‘Have you always been blind?' The young doctor had taken several looks at Sammy, touching him lightly on the arm before he spoke.

‘Since I was about two or three.' Sammy's voice was placid and he stood very still as the doctor gently pulled down his eyelid and examined his eye by the light of a gas lamp. Alfie looked hopefully at the doctor; he had often wondered whether, if they could pay for medical help, something could be done about Sammy's eyes, but he saw the young man sigh and shake his head.