The Return of Moriarty (19 page)

 

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Rackets.
Like so much criminal slang, it is often thought that the word “racket” (meaning a criminal dodge, swindle or particular series of illicit operations) has only come to us in recent times, and then from the United States of America. In fact the term appears to have originated in England. (See Grose,
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
) One presumes that this word, and many others, crossed the Atlantic, went out of use for a while in England and then returned, possibly in the 1920's, as a newly coined Americanism.

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  Here one has to give the villainous Moriarty the benefit of the doubt. It is natural to suspect the worst, yet it is a fact that while the details of the various stages by which Moriarty learned the art of disguise from Hasledean are meticulously documented in the diaries, the actor's death is only briefly recorded, with no details.

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  It is, of course, still maintained by many that the professor's youngest brother ended his days as a stationmaster in the West country. Undoubtedly he did hold such a job for a time, but we have no hint of when and how he left to further his criminal activities.

Friday, April 6, 1894

(A DAY IN THE COUNTRY)

I
T HAD ALSO
been a long day for Pip Paget.

After seeing the punishers with Moriarty in the morning, he had taken the train from Limehouse station to Paddington and from thence out to Harrow. The day was cold, yet the sun bright, and the journey proved a pleasant novelty for Paget, who did not often travel by the railway—underground or surface.

At that time Harrow still retained much of its rural charm, now unhappily long departed, and when Paget finally alighted at the station, he was immediately filled with a sense of freedom. From where he stood, outside the main entrance, he could see but a few houses and the general backdrop of the vista was one of trees and rolling fields. The bustle and grime of central London had vanished with the outward thrust of the steam engine, and this feeling of space and room to move, experienced by Paget even while sitting alone in the third-class carriage, acted like a tonic. In his mind the heavy, almost cloying, burdens of Moriarty's business disappeared, replaced by an overriding image of Fanny Jones.

Paget, brought up among the teeming back streets and tenements of the city, had never experienced this kind of feeling before. For as long as he could remember, life had been one long battle for survival—a war waged with cunning and deceit, with the craft of knavery and, for much of the time, the hard and ruthless rule of fist, bludgeon, boot, razor, knife and even pistol.

There had been few moments of tenderness in Pip Paget's life; rather it was in retrospect peopled by men and women who were constantly in the front line of battle—with the authorities, poverty, each other, even with life itself. His mother had been a thin, tough and foul-mouthed woman, and his childhood had never known a steady or permanent setting. Countless uncles shared the meager and filthy two rooms occupied by his mother, two brothers and three sisters, and the nearest thing to true affection Paget had ever experienced was the occasional spilling out of lust that began in his early teens—first with his eldest sister, and later with the line of young women whose beds he had shared in return for small sums of money stolen during his daily work.

The dramatic change in Paget's life had come in the early eighties when—he was some twenty-six or -seven years old at the time, a certain vagueness surrounding his exact age—Professor Moriarty came into his life, gave him a place in his not inconsiderable household and a more tranquil, if still villainous, existence. In return he had remained loyal to Moriarty and had become possibly the most trusted of his entourage. Now a further dimension was added in the person of Fanny Jones. She had shown, to the big strong and graceful man, a new kind of respect, not born of fear, but of desire and gentle persuasion.

As Paget walked down through the main street of Harrow, he allowed his fancies to play upon a dream—impossible to realize, yet undeniably firm and disturbing—of life with Fanny Jones in the kind of world Paget now saw moving gently around him. The women, graceful, many with their children, some with their men, passed along the pavements, intent on making purchases at the many well-stocked shops that flanked the street. An errand boy cycled past, his basket heavy, a dog barking as it ran beside him. A pair of well-dressed men talked at the corner, occasionally doffing their hats to acquaintances who passed by. What was more, there was an air of contentment, people smiled, there was no crush of hansoms or omnibuses, and none of the more unpleasant odors that hung heavy in the city.

The house the three cracksman—Fisher, Clark and Gay—had their eyes on lay a mile to the north of Harrow proper. Paget enjoyed the walk, taking an interest in the small natural things he observed around him, the dream of Fanny and himself set up in a small cottage in a place like this or even further afield in the country growing and glistening in his head. The image of himself as a man who went off to some job (as yet, naturally, indefinable) from a door surrounded by rose trellises, Fanny smiling and waving, cheeks rosy from the country air and several children clinging to her skirts, was strong, so deep rooted by the time he reached Beeches Hall that Paget had to impose an unusually strict mental discipline upon himself in order to shake the thoughts from his mind and get back to the professional work at hand.

Beeches Hall was a large Georgian mansion, which, Paget deduced, contained some eighteen or nineteen main rooms and bedrooms. It was quite visible from the road, standing as it did in some twenty acres of open lawns, flower beds and rose gardens, while a small copse could just be seen behind the house.

Access to the front of Beeches Hall was gained through large iron gates opening on a long drive that curved between bushes to end in a wide sweep before the façade. Paget ignored this, slowly working his way, first by road and then across some meadowland, to the rear, where he effected an entrance to the grounds by way of the copse. There was plenty of cover there and he lay for the best part of an hour at the edge of the trees taking in every point of interest the view afforded.

There was plenty to be noted. The rear of the house would give them a number of easy entrances; people were strange, Paget mused, they would spend a great deal on bolts and locks for a good stout front door, yet leave the back door, or tradesmen's entrance, with an old-fashioned lock and no bolts. If that door proved harder than it looked, there was a small, insecure pantry window, or an easy climb across an outhouse roof to an upstairs window, which, he judged, opened onto a landing.

He also saw that there were dogs about: two of them, big sloppy looking creatures, overfed and probably docile, but the cracksmen would have to be prepared.

Once the necessary information was firmly stored in his head, Moriarty's lieutenant carefully made his way back through the trees and over the meadow to the road, heading for a small knot of houses grouped together, at what he presumed was the furthest boundary of the estate. To his left were a farmhouse and outbuildings. Paget supposed this was also part of Sir Dudley Pinner's property. Beeches Hall, Moriarty had told him, was the second-generation home of the Pinner family.

The group of houses consisted of a dozen or so cottages, a public house—The Bird in the Hand—and a shop that bore the legend
GENERAL STORES.
Paget pushed open the shop door, a sprung bell jangling loudly at his entrance. An elderly man wearing wire spectacles, his trousers and shirt covered with a white apron, looked up from serving a pair of girls, cutting with a wire through the large crusted cheese that rested on his counter.

The shop was small, but it bulged with provisions and goods of all kinds. Glass jars full of boiled sweets and lollipops nudged each other on the shelves, next to jams, custard powders and tinned goods; two hams hung from the ceiling; a large side of bacon offset the cheese at the other end of the counter. Paget saw that between them stood an oval plate of homemade toffee apples. The scents of the variegated foods mingled together, producing a delicious and mysterious aroma that pervaded every corner of the shop. Around the walls signs advertised Bovril, Eiffel Tower Lemonade, and the prices of tea (“of Sterling Value”), 1/4, 1/6, 1/8. Margarine was priced at four pence a pound, in big red letters beside the box, wherein nestled the greaseproofed drums of butter-colored fat.

“And what can I do for you?”

The man in the white apron rubbed his hands, the bell clanging once more as the girls went giggling out into the street, clutching their packet of cheese.

Paget asked for a quarter of humbugs. It was a long time since he had sucked on a humbug and, though conscious of the seriousness of today's mission, he still felt a sense of relief about the outing. His job was to make a serious appraisal of the proposed robbery but, as he had to do the job properly, Paget saw no reason why he should not indulge himself.

“Nice day,” commented the shop man.

“Nice little business you've got an' all,” returned Paget.

“I worked for it all me life,” the man grinned.

“I tell you what”—Paget hunched himself confidentially over the counter—“do you know of any cottages for sale or to rent round here?”

“Looking, are you?”

Paget sighed. “Yeah. The wife is fed up with living down by the river. Damp and so bloody crowded.”

“Well …” He scratched his head. “What's your trade, mate?”

Paget smiled. He had a very open and friendly smile.

“You know. A bit of this and a bit of that.”

“General.” The shopman grinned, nodding.

“You might say that.”

“If you can turn your hand to laboring, you might get something up the estate. Most of the cottages here have been in the same families for a long time, and they all belong to Sir Dudley.…”

“Sir Dudley?”

“Aye, Sir Dudley Pinner, baronet. The big house back there. Beeches Hall. This is all Sir Dudley's land round about. But there's work going—I heard one of the lads talking in The Bird last night. There could well be a cottage with it. Well-set-up man like you shouldn't have no trouble. Why don't you go down to The Bird and have a word with Mr. Mace—he's the publican. Say Jack Moore sent you.” He placed the paper bag with the humbugs in it on the counter. “That'll be a ha'penny, if you please.”

Mace, the landlord of The Bird in the Hand, was a large, wide-shouldered fellow, bald-headed and of some forty-five summers. Paget propped himself against the bar and ordered a tankard of ale, and when Mace placed the foaming brew before him, Paget told him of his errand.

“Yes, I had heard there was work—up at the house and at the home farm. George!” the landlord shouted to one of his other two customers, who had been drinking at a table set in the small bow window, “there's a fellow here asking about cottages and work for Sir Dudley. George is up at the house,” he confided to Paget. “Assistant groom.”

“Aah.” George, a sallow-faced, thin little man, nodded knowingly. “Sir Dudley's takin' on one new man for odd jobs. ‘T was goin' to be two, but old Barney's son's goin' laboring up at the farm and he's to marrying Becky Collins.…”

“Sly young devil,” the landlord laughed. “So 'twas him that swelled her.”

George cackled, and the man sitting with him gave a snort.

“They're to have the cottage up at the farm, but there's one goin' after Easter for a married man for to chop the wood and do the outside work at the house.”

“And help at harvest,” grunted George's companion.

“Aah.” George nodded again. “You're not from these parts though, are you?”

“Stepney.” Paget took a pull at his ale. “The missus wants to move out to the country. Who would I see about the job?”

“Nobody as yet.” George looked at his empty tankard, and his companion tipped back the rest of his drink. They both looked at Paget, their eyes empty.

“Will you take a guzzle with me?” Paget pushed his own tankard back toward Mace. “And you, landlord.”

George and his friend came across the room like a pair of chickens at the sight of an axe.

“You can see nobody as yet.” George examined the depths of his ale as though looking for fish. “Nobody, because the job ain't goin' till Easter. Anyways, Sir Dudley don't do no hirin' till after he's been up north. Every year like clockwork, him and her ladyship. Up to that uncle of his. When he comes back, he'll start hirin' and grantin' the cottage. You look strong enough though. What about your wife? She done kitchen work or anything that would help?”

“She was in service once.”

“Well, there you are. You could have the luck.”

“When will Sir Dudley be back?”

“Let's see.” It appeared to take considerable mental effort on George's part to recall dates. “Sometime after the twentieth, I think. Yes, I heard Mr. Beard talkin' of it. They goes away on the fourteenth and they're still away at the weekend. It'll be the twenty-third or twenty-fourth they'll be back.”

“So if I return then?”

“If you tell me your name, I'll pass it on to old Reeves.”

“Mr. Reeves manages the estate,” muttered Mace.

Paget nodded. “Name of Jones. Philip and Fanny Jones. I'd be obliged if you'd do that, and I'll return on the twenty-third. If Mr. Mace is agreeable, you could leave a message for me.”

It was all playacting, but Paget was strongly pulled toward the idea of him and Fanny working out of London, living a life untainted by fear. However, his foot was already inside the door of Beeches Hall, or, if not the door, at least the stables and outhouses.

He spent the next hour or so talking with George, Mace, and George's friend Herbert, the ale freeing their tongues so that they spoke without restraint on matters concerning Sir Dudley and Lady Pinner, about life at Beeches Hall, of the staff and the day-to-day trivial matters.