Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (11 page)

As we walked in he stood up, nervously rubbing his hands against the sides of his trousers, looking from one of us to the other, no doubt dismayed by our get-up. His most obvious quality was his extreme thinness. His bony wrists protruded several inches from his coat, and his trousers were almost worn through at the knee. A thick knitted comforter was wound several times around his neck, his skin had a waxy pallor, and he seemed to be in want of at least one good meal. His gauntness, it seemed to me, was not dissimilar to the austere intensity of Lord Allington, but His Lordship’s angularity had been flattered by wealth and comfort. Dearlove looked, in other words, most unloved, and indeed the picture of a hard-pushed school-master.

‘May I help you?’ His words steamed in the cold air.

‘Mr Dearlove,’ said Blake, bringing out His Lordship’s letter, ‘we are the men who have been asked to look into the two murders by Lord Allington.’

Dearlove took the letter – his fingers were almost blue – and looked over it.

‘Oh, yes. I am afraid you have not chosen the best moment. The children will be arriving for evening lessons soon. They expect something hot when it is this cold.’ He gestured at the kettle, then took out a handkerchief and blew his nose.

‘Please, continue your tasks,’ Blake said. ‘We will not take up too much of your time.’

‘Perhaps I might help you?’ I said.

He brightened. ‘If you could bring in some logs from by the door, and help me fill the kettle?’

I busied myself with the logs.

Blake said, ‘Mr Dearlove, I am told you are the one who informed Lord Allington of the fact that the police had dropped the matter of Wedderburn’s death, and made the connection to the earlier murder of Blundell.’

‘I did.’

‘Why do you think no one seems to know about these murders?’

‘I … I cannot say for sure.’ He coughed, a shallow, rattling sound, and dabbed at his mouth with the handkerchief.

‘Have you spoken to the new police?’

‘Of course. I was taken aback when I found that so little had been done – indeed, nothing at all – to pursue Mr Wedderburn’s murderer. And then to hear some days later that a similar crime had taken place barely half a mile away – I felt I must take the matter up. I first spoke about the murders to a constable on the Strand, then to another who walks Monmouth Street by Seven Dials. As a rule I enjoy good relations with the new police, the constables know me. When I pressed them, both more or less admitted that nothing more would be done. And so I went to Bow Street station and was given short shrift. They said I should not bother them.’ He lowered his voice. ‘There was no doubt in my mind that they did not want to know about the connection between the two deaths. I was shocked. I know there is no love lost between the new police and the people around here – but I considered the police honest and did not think that they would go so far as to leave a monster upon the streets.’

‘A monster?’

‘If you had seen Nat Wedderburn’s body, what had been done to it, you could not but believe that it was the work of some godless monster.’

‘Do you have any thoughts on their inaction?’

He shook his head. ‘The Bible says, “Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked” and “Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.”’

‘Do the poor cry?’

‘Have you not heard? And if it were not enough, in the streets
they are saying it was some supernatural sprite, Spring-Heeled Jack or somesuch, come to take souls to hell. All the foolish superstition against which we fight is resurrected by this dreadful crime.’

‘The people in Holywell Street are very reluctant to speak of the murder at all.’

‘I believe they are frightened.’

‘Of whom?’

‘Oh, I mean of the murder. They would rather not think of it. What do you mean?’

‘I meant, someone has told them not to speak of it.’

‘I had not thought of that. It is, I suppose, a possibility.’

‘Who would have the power to frighten a street into silence?’

Dearlove looked perplexed. ‘I do not know. The printers in Holywell Street work for themselves and jostle with each other for crumbs.’

I filled the kettle, and helped him haul it on to the hook over the fire.

‘I suppose Dugdale is something of a bully and likes to give himself airs. There are, of course, the criminal gangs who inhabit the courts behind Drury Lane, but I believe they remain in the courts; I know little of them in any case – my task is to bring God and learning. But I would be most surprised if Mr Wedderburn had any dealings with them.’

‘What about Eldred Woundy?’ said Blake.

‘Who?’ Dearlove shook his head. ‘The newspaper proprietor? Why should he take an interest?’ He knelt down to start the fire.

Blake changed the subject. ‘Did you not say at the coroner’s court that Mr Wedderburn deserved his fate?’

‘I said his death was the Lord’s judgement.’

‘Because of what he did, or what he believed?’

Dearlove twisted round awkwardly to look at Blake. ‘He was a godless man. He called himself an infidel. His publications corrupted the mind. He laughed in the face of the Lord.’ He lowered his voice again. ‘That does not mean I would wish such a death upon him. And I was happy to teach his children. He understood
the importance of reading and writing and they would send the little ones to me from time to time.’

‘How did you hear of Blundell’s death?’

‘From a woman in the rookeries off Seven Dials. She told me that a man had been murdered, and that when the body was found a candle was brought into the shop and all caught fire. I work for the London City Mission. We strive to bring the gospel into the darkest courts. Apart from us there are not many who venture into those places and speak to the unfortunates who live there. Lord Allington is a patron of the mission and his office at Exeter Hall helps the school here with food and other necessities. After my brush with Bow Street I bethought myself of him and brought the matter to his attention.’

‘What do the people in the courts and rookeries make of you, Mr Dearlove?’

‘They know me now. The children come to the school. At first most simply see it as somewhere they may get some food and shelter, but they are learning too. At Seven Dials it has taken longer.’

‘There are some streets both here and there that I would think twice about venturing into,’ said Blake.

‘I have had my fair share of tribulations. But it does not deter me.’

‘What kind of tribulations, if I might ask?’ I said curiously.

‘Oh, I have been spat at, thrown downstairs, had ordure emptied over my head. But, as I say, it does not stop me. It is nothing compared to the sacrifices of our Lord.’

‘And in Holywell Street? They know you there?’

‘They do. I walk through on my way to Exeter Hall and I persevere among the street sellers.’

‘Do you know Matty Horner?’ I said.

‘Her brother Pen comes sometimes to the school, but he is a wild and wayward child. She found Wedderburn’s body. It must have been a dreadful shock for her.’

‘Does she come to you for instruction?’ I said.

‘No, like many older children round here, she denies herself that her brother might reap the benefits of education.’

Drury Lane, famous for its theatre, had a shabby and disreputable air. We had barely set foot upon it when, with no warning, Blake slipped between two tall buildings into a dark lane barely wider than our shoulders and exceedingly muddy.

‘Stay close and mind your feet,’ he called back at me, ‘if you want to keep those boots shiny.’

‘Where do we go?’ I asked.

‘To see a man who knows the lie of the land,’ he said. ‘Trap shut now, William, and follow briskly.’

After a distance of perhaps fifty yards we turned left into a wider, more crowded thoroughfare, from which three further lanes led off. Blake took the rightmost. It was dirty, odiferous, piled with debris and thick with life, though I should say the poorest, meanest, dirtiest, and bleakest I had seen in England – far worse than Holywell Street. The despairing, the cunning, the dangerously vigorous: all pressed in upon each other. We strode on through a maze of mean lanes, divided in the middle by an open trench down which pure effluent flowed. Had I not been with Blake I should have immediately been lost. As it was, I felt as if I had entered another city, and I was glad now of the rough clothes; in my own attire I should have feared for myself. Lines of ragged grey laundry fluttered enervatedly above the lanes. Below, livestock snuffled. Old women wrapped in dirty shawls, their faces masks of ill use, sat against damp walls in the mud. Hard-faced urchins minded swaddled infants and played at knucklebones. Pinched-looking men in greasy corduroys lolled aimlessly. Down the middle of the lane a knot of bulky, ill-meaning youths in tight trousers, loudly patterned calico waistcoats and over-oiled curls and whiskers barged into whomsoever they liked, the threat of violence in every noisy laugh. The buildings were crammed in like nothing I had ever seen. Doors swung off hinges, broken windows were packed with straw and old clothes. On one side a small beaten-down premises advertised itself as a skinner’s: ‘Good money paid for dogs and cats’.

‘Don’t look so avidly,’ Blake muttered, seizing me by the cuff and dragging me forward.

We stopped at last before a ramshackle public-house, ‘The Cock
o’ the Hoop’ by name, before which more degraded humanity was carousing.

The interior could not have been more different from the Crown and Anchor. It was a crush of bleary-eyed men, women, children and dogs in various stages of inebriation, excitement and collapse. The smell of soured beer, wet sawdust, dried herring and bodies was overpowering. The noise was deafening. Standing at the threshold, Blake surveyed it for a moment, then pulled me out of the way as a man in the last stage of angry intoxication prepared to hurl himself upon me, though I felt quite equal to the challenge. Grabbing my fists Blake pushed me towards the edge of a long table crowded with drinkers, where we took two empty stools.

‘Pull your cap down, keep your own counsel,’ he muttered. A large florid woman slapped a jug of beer down before us, together with two none-too-clean pewter mugs. Blake said a few words and she jutted her chin in the direction of another table.

A tall, thin man in a white shirt with a gaudy silk handkerchief about his neck, a beaver hat and moleskin trousers, skin taut over gaunt cheeks, a moustache long and narrow as a shoelace, his expression as guarded as Blake’s: there was no mistaking him for anything other than a villain. As he talked quietly to his neighbour, his eyes – small and shrewd – fixed upon Blake. He finished his business, picked up his stool and brought it down next to Blake. The other drinkers at the table at once and sheepishly shuffled as far as they could away from us.

‘Jem,’ the thin man said by way of greeting, his face quite expressionless.

‘Joe,’ said Blake steadily. They might have been competing for whose face revealed the least. ‘Thought you might be up in the Holy Land tonight.’

‘Down here, as you see. Who’s your friend?’ He looked me over.

‘My friend.’

‘Doan know him. Doan like him.’

‘He has no interest in you. Nor I. Want a head’s up. And you owe me.’

‘Mebbe.’

‘It’s none of your pies, Joe. A murder in Holywell Street and another in Seven Dials. Two printers. Wedderburn and Blundell. What d’you know about it?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Both selling bawdy books, perhaps a bit of black and fencing on the side. Maybe whoremongering. Any bad blood in the courts? Someone out to get them? A commission even?’

The villain Joe thought for a moment. Then shook his head. ‘Means nothing to me.’

‘Wedderburn was the printer found dead on his press. Heard about that, didn’t you?’

Joe nodded. ‘Heard of it but I didn’t know him or the other. Far as I know, they got nothing down here and there was nothing out on them. If there was, I reckon I’d have heard.’

‘You’ll ask?’

‘I’ll ask. But I’d say their deaths ain’t nothing to do with our’n.’

‘Wedderburn has a son. Angry-looking cove.’

‘Doan know him.’

‘What of Eldred Woundy?’

‘What of him?’

‘You know him, then?’

Joe looked up at the ceiling. ‘Respectable gent these days, they say.’

‘And before?’

He grimaced. ‘Had a few lodging-houses down here. Said to own a tailshop up near Tottenham Court Road. A few years since it was said he was in the business of paying for dirt. Slippery cove. Never pin anything on him.’

He rose, carrying his stool with him, and returned to his previous spot, for no one had commandeered it, though the place was heaving. He sat down, tapped the table and two men instantly attended him. He muttered something and they both moved off.

‘Don’t watch him,’ said Blake. ‘He doesn’t like it.’

‘Who is he?’

‘A man with influence. The less you know of him, the better.’ He filled my mug. ‘How does it compare with Calcutta?’

I recalled the chaotic, midden-filled streets of the native parts of that city. There was little to choose between these streets and those. Not that I would admit as much to Blake.