Ann Granger (22 page)

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Authors: The Companion

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Fletcher’s flush deepened. ‘I have the honour to be engaged to his daughter,’ he said stiffly.
‘My congratulations, sir,’ I said politely.
He mumbled, ‘Yes!’ but then turned his head to look out of the window and obviously wished no further conversation.
It occurred to me that Fletcher’s prospective father-in-law was probably making life very difficult for him and it was hardly surprising he had responded by harassing the police. The master kicks the valet who kicks the footman who kicks the kitchen boy who kicks the dog. I wasn’t sure where, in this order, the police came. I still had no sympathy for the fellow.
Our arrival in Limehouse caused some stir. It is not an area where many private carriages venture. As we progressed at a snail’s pace through the busy streets we were soon accompanied by a gaggle of urchins who ran alongside us whistling and shouting. Numerous mongrel dogs joined in and snapped at the horses’ hooves. They took exception and the carriage rocked and lurched as they tossed their heads, snorting and bucking in the traces. The coachman’s language was fit to turn the air blue.
The lane in which Adams’s lodgings were to be found was too narrow to allow our vehicle to pass without completely blocking it so the driver stopped at the top of it to allow us to descend and Fletcher and I continued on our way on foot. In a poor area this street was one of the poorest, all the buildings old and dilapidated, naked of paint or outer plaster. There was a creeping mist swirling about us as the day’s sun dried the damp air. A washing line had been strung from one side to the other above our heads and from it dangled a pair of men’s woollen combinations which dripped
on to the heads of passers-by beneath and probably still wouldn’t be dry by the end of the following week. Over all hung a stench compounded of boiling bones, sewage and Thames river mud. The tide must have been going out.
‘I don’t like this at all,’ moaned Fletcher, rolling his eyes as he gazed about him.
‘Come, come, Mr Fletcher,’ I encouraged him. ‘Take heart. You are accompanied by an officer of the law.’
‘But do they know it?’ he wailed. ‘You are not in uniform.’
‘You may depend upon it that they know it,’ I returned briskly. ‘They have an unerring instinct in such matters.’
Our motley array of camp-followers came with us as we made our way down the lane, their ranks growing by the second until the whole narrow thoroughfare was blocked with a surging sea of unwashed humanity: not only the urchins and the dogs that had chased the carriage, together with some new ones, but various idlers with nothing else to do. There was a drunken seaman or two, a crippled beggar who hopped along on his crutch shouting out that he had lost his leg in the service of Queen and Country and would we be so good as to give him a shilling apiece, and a sprinkling of slatternly girls who shouted out invitations to us, couched in the most explicit terms, causing Fletcher to splutter indignant protest. An elderly Chinaman, his sparse hair plaited into a long thin pigtail, completed the array of bystanders. He seemed to believe us some kind of street entertainment and clapped politely. Perhaps he had judged it right, at that. Entertainment we most certainly provided. People came to their doors as we passed and shouted out, ‘What’s to do?’
‘Someone’s died!’ shouted back one fellow. ‘And here’s the undertaker!’ He pointed at Fletcher whose face contorted in anger.
I must admit it caused me to smile but the smile was soon wiped from my face by another lout who called out, ‘Hah, the other one is the law in plain clothes, all done up like a gent! Someone must have tried to rob the Bank of England!’
This witticism was greeted with great merriment and repeated throughout the growing crowd so that by the time it reached the outer fringes of it, people there were informed of it as a fact. The news that an attempt had been made to rob the Bank and the perpetrators were hiding out in Limehouse now generally accepted, it would spread like wildfire and probably appear in that evening’s newspapers.
I could see that Fletcher was becoming increasingly nervous and more than regretting his offer to accompany me. The boisterous crowd alarmed him. He grasped his umbrella as he would have done a cudgel.
‘We may be robbed; assaulted and stripped of everything we carry. Let us go back!’ he begged.
I ignored him and continued. As he feared to forgo the insurance of my company and return to the carriage alone, he was obliged to do the same, whimpering beside me. At last he grabbed my arm, halting us before a cheap lodging house outside of which hung a creaking sign announcing that rooms were available, payment strictly one week in advance, no exceptions.
‘Here it is,’ panted Fletcher, taking off his silk hat and mopping his brow. ‘Inspector, cannot you use your official capacity to disperse the crowd? This is most unpleasant.’
‘They wouldn’t go,’ I said simply. ‘And alone I can’t make them. Ignore them.’
‘That is easier said than done!’ he muttered.
I rapped on the door and we waited. Behind us the crowd waited too in anticipation. Someone chuckled.
The door flew open and there appeared in the frame a fearsome virago wearing a dirty apron over a grubby dress with the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms which would not have disgraced a coal-heaver. With her issued a strong odour compounded of sweat, cabbage water and burnt fat. It completed Fletcher’s discomfort. He muttered, ‘Faugh!’ and pressed his handkerchief to his nose and mouth.
The woman’s sharp little black eyes in her doughy face made her visage look like nothing so much as unbaked Chelsea bun. She stared at one and then the other of us and clearly had no trouble identifying my calling.
‘What is it?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve got no trouble here.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ I said. ‘I am Inspector Ross. Who might you be?’
‘I’m Mrs Riley and I run a decent establishment what is well spoken of by all. Ain’t that right?’ She appealed to the bystanders who obediently chorused agreement.
One wit at the back ventured, ‘She’s got the healthiest bedbugs between here and Buckingham Palace!’
This inspired a drunk, who had staggered from an alehouse tankard in hand to see what was going on, to cry, ‘God save the Queen!’
His loyalty was ignored. As for the others, such was their awe of the lodging-house keeper that few had laughed at the sally. I wouldn’t have given much for the chances of the joker if Mrs Riley had got her muscular hands on him, if the evil look thrown by her glittering black eyes in his direction was anything to go by.
‘We are seeking a man by the name of Adams …’ I turned to Fletcher. ‘What’s his first name?’
‘Jem,’ came from beneath the handkerchief. ‘But I don’t know whether it is Jeremiah or Jeremy.’
‘Jem Adams, then. We understand he lodges here.’
‘He does,’ said Mrs Riley. ‘But he ain’t here.’
‘Did he leave at his usual time this morning?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Riley.
‘What time did he leave, then?’
‘He didn’t.’
Getting information from Mrs Riley was akin to drawing the proverbial teeth. ‘Does he or does he not lodge here?’ I demanded sharply. ‘You say he does, but isn’t here and hasn’t left. Be so good as to make sense.’
‘He’s paid till Sunday,’ said Mrs Riley. ‘I only accept those who pay one week in advance on a Monday morning. So today being Saturday he still lodges here. Come Monday morning if he’s not come back he won’t be lodging here no longer and I shall be free to let the room, there!’
My heart was sinking fast. Confound it! Had I left it too late to speak to Adams? What could have become of the fellow?
‘May we come in?’ I asked.
Beside me Fletcher moaned a protest which I ignored.
Mrs Riley stepped back to allow us into her cramped dingy hallway. We entered and she slammed the door in the face of the audience which, robbed of its entertainment, raised a derisive jeer.
‘When did you see him last?’ I demanded sharply.
‘Last night. He come home as usual and he went out as usual.’
‘Do you know where he went?’
‘To an alehouse, I suppose. He’s a working man and a working man likes a pint of an evening. He never came back drunk, mind! I don’t stand for it. No drunkenness, no dogs and no loose women.’
‘Can we see his room?’
She turned and led us up the creaking uncarpeted stair to the top floor where she flung open a door and stood aside to allow us to enter.
The floorboards here were also uncarpeted and dusty. It was a small room with one window which looked out over the street below and had a torn scrap of net curtain hanging from a rail above it. The furnishings consisted of a single chair, a bed with grimy linen on it, a rickety marble-topped washstand bearing a cracked basin and jug and a piece of cheap soap in an odd saucer. Also upon it was an enamelled mug painted with forget-me-knots and holding a shaving brush. Alongside it, neatly sheathed, lay a cut-throat razor. The remaining piece of furniture was a chest of drawers topped with a mirror in a wooden frame and a candlestick.
Only the top drawer contained anything and that but a pair of socks, a spare shirt and some woollen underwear felted with much use and washing. I pushed the drawer in with some effort, as the wood had swollen and warped in the damp atmosphere, and turned to the landlady.
‘How long has he lodged here?’
‘Six months,’ she said promptly. ‘He’s been a good tenant, has Jemmy Adams.’
‘He has not taken his personal possessions,’ I pointed out. ‘That means he left intending to return.’
Fletcher, the handkerchief still well pressed to his nose against the evil miasma of his surroundings, had sidled to the window and was peering from it down to the street below and the heads of the crowd. They glimpsed him and raised a cheer which sent him scuttling back into the room again.
‘So he may have done,’ Mrs Riley said. ‘But if he don’t return by Sunday night, I let the room. If he don’t claim his belongings, then I’ll sell ’em to old Jones the rag man. Not that he’s left me anything much to sell.’ She stared round her discontentedly. Then her eye lit on the razor and her expression brightened momentarily.
I too had made note of the razor. I surmised that if Adams had anything of value he would not have left it here when he quitted the house, even for a normal working day. Anything in the way of a pocket watch, say, or any money, he would have carried on him at all times. He might leave his shaving equipment here of an evening against his return from the alehouse, but if he had decided to bolt permanently for whatever reason, he would have taken the razor. It was a relatively expensive item and it had more uses than skimming whiskers from his chin.
‘If he returns, tell him Inspector Ross wishes to speak to him immediately at Scotland Yard!’ I told her.
From behind Fletcher’s handkerchief his voice said indistinctly, ‘Tell him his employers are also desirous of a word!’
‘What’s Jemmy done?’ demanded Mrs Riley.
‘Nothing that I know of,’ I told her. ‘He may be able to help in some enquiries.’
‘I don’t like having the p’lice in my house,’ she said. ‘It lowers the tone. Neighbours talk. But you’re not in your uniform, at least. I suppose that means you’re important and these enquiries of yours are important, too.’
‘Give her two shillings,’ I muttered to Fletcher.
Fletcher spluttered but dug one-handed in his pocket and handed over the coins.
‘I’m obliged,’ said Mrs Riley, secreting the coins safely in a pocket in her skirts. ‘I’ll tell him. You may depend on it.’
Her manner had cheered up somewhat on payment but turned sour again in an instant when I picked up the razor and slipped it into my pocket. ‘You may also tell him I have taken possession of the razor. I’ll give you a receipt.’
I tore a sheet from my notebook and wrote on it, ‘Received of Mrs Riley, landlady, one cut-throat razor in leather case and property of Jem Adams.’ I signed and dated it and handed it to her. She stared at it with blank incomprehension, turned it the other way up and frowned. Clearly she could not read.
We found the crowd still waiting patiently outside the house. It sent up another cheer as we emerged.
‘Wot?’ shouted someone, ‘no prisoner?’
Despite this disappointment they trailed behind us back to where we had left the carriage. When we reached the spot we found the coachman in conversation with the one-legged beggar who had preceded us and was awaiting our return. Unable to get near to us in the crowd, he had astutely placed himself between us and our escape.
‘What are you doing, Mullins?’ demanded Fletcher furiously of the coachman. ‘Why are you encouraging this wretch?’
The beggar spoke up. ‘I was telling him my sad story, sirs.’
‘Well, don’t tell it to us,’ I advised him. ‘I am a police officer
and to importune people on the highway and demand money of them is against the law.’
‘Gawd bless you, sir, I ain’t a common beggar man!’ he replied, unoffended and also unabashed. ‘I’m an old soldier. I lost this leg when I was nothing but a boy at the great battle of Waterloo, serving under the Iron Duke himself.’

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