Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (12 page)

‘What is the Holy Land, and what is “black” and a “tailshop”?’ I said. ‘And how in heaven’s name are fencing and the courts involved?’

‘Lord. And I ask myself why I brought you. The Holy Land is the great rookery around St Giles by Oxford Street. Much bigger than this. Black is blackmail. A tailshop is a whorehouse, a fence is someone who receives and deals in stolen goods, and a court is the name for these slum lanes.’

‘You think Wedderburn was engaged in such things? And that Woundy owns a whorehouse?’

‘It’s possible. Such things can fit with their line of work. Pimping and smut shops often go together. Gentleman Joe would know, as he would if Wedderburn and Blundell had enemies here, or if someone was paid to knock them off. If their deaths were rookery killings it might explain why the coppers ignored them.’

‘But he says he has never heard of Wedderburn and Blundell.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is he to be trusted?’

‘Unless he has a good reason to lie.’

We sat quiet while the maelstrom went on about us. Gentleman Joe’s attentions apparently encouraged others to leave us alone. Once or twice I saw Blake look up to meet the eye of someone I guessed he knew, but not a word was exchanged. Meanwhile at the villain’s table there was a deal of toing and froing. At length Gentleman Joe returned to us, leaning intimately across Blake.

‘However they met their ends, it weren’t none of our doing. I’d swear to it.’

Blake nodded. ‘Know anything about Lord Allington?’

‘The churchy toff who wants to save the poor? Not much. Owns a netherskens round here.’

Blake looked surprised.

‘Nah. It’s a “model” lodging-house. Even the bed bugs get a bath and go to church Sunday. Strict hours and the clergy exhorting you as you eat your dinner. Not for everyone.’

‘You hear anything …’ Blake gave Gentleman Joe a look square in the eye.

‘You’ll know,’ the other said, dropping his gaze. ‘Now, you’re giving my men the jitters.’

‘We’ll be off.’

‘Tell your friend next time he comes to the Drury Lane courts, he’d better change his fine boots if he wants to keep them.’

Back we went through the maze of darkling alleys, Blake walking swiftly. Having had my fill of following several steps behind, I strode to catch him up, almost walking into an open cesspool; wordlessly he thrust his arm out to bar me just in time. It was only then that I saw the glint of the dark greasy water. Ruefully, I took my place behind him. In Drury Lane the theatre had brought out food sellers, their wares lit by smoky red lamps, and brightly dressed courtesans idling under the gaslights. Blake turned left and, apparently lost in thought, trudged towards the corner where the cabs stood.

‘Take a hackney cab,’ he said. ‘You’ll never find your way back from here on foot. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll visit Woundy then. His premises are just south of Temple Bar.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Jeremiah, you are barely over your fever. Come with me, I will drop you off on the way.’

‘I’ve things to do,’ was all he would say. He raised his hand and limped off north up Drury Lane.

That night I dreamt again.

My men are dropping off the ledge to their deaths and there is nothing I can do to prevent it. This time, however, I can hear someone laughing behind me: a long, scornful, hearty laugh. Then I too feel the thrusting hands, and fall.

The offices of
Woundy’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper
, ‘Proprietor Mr E. Woundy’ – the letters picked out in smart gold edged with black and embellished at each end by a design of pretty leaves in white – took up the ground floor of a soot-blackened warehouse with a large yard by the Thames at the end of Arundel Street just south of Temple Bar. On the far side of the yard there was a smaller door over which were painted in black the words ‘Woundy’s Penny Miscellany’ and ‘Woundy’s Penny Atlas’, with the same design of white leaves. In the yard a pair of dray horses stood patiently while rushing boys unloaded boxes from their carts and ran with them into the building. There was so much coming and going, it was easy to wander in unchallenged.

Inside, the impression was of constant, fervid activity accompanied by the relentless clacking and grinding of machinery.

On one side there was a beehive of small rooms with low partitions from which issued a stream of shirtsleeved clerks. On the other was a flight of stairs and beneath them a pair of large double doors from which the noisy clack emanated. Through the doors came men in plain cotton shirts, coarse waistcoats and aprons spattered with ink, carrying metal plates and frames full of metal letters. In the midst of all this activity, two large heavy-set men in matching rough homespun blue jackets stood at the entrance, each leaning on a long walking-stick which might also have been a cudgel. Both had faces that had evidently taken a good share of blows, and one had the great splayed red nose of a hardened drinker.

‘See the nobblers?’ Blake muttered.

‘Those two bruisers by the door?’

He nodded. ‘Why should a newspaper require the services of such men?’

‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ A slight young man detached himself from the fray.

‘We are here to see Mr Woundy,’ said Blake.

‘Yes, he is expecting you. Will you come upstairs?’

Blake nodded.

At the top of the stairs it was quieter and the large room was dominated by two great workbenches perhaps thirty feet long; dozens of men were working at them. At the first, men pored over sheafs of paper and checked over ledgers. At the other, men loaded boxes with what appeared to be little pieces of lead. Small boys darted between them, carrying paper, boxes and metal trays.

‘He won’t be long,’ said the young man. ‘Perhaps in the meantime I might furnish you with two copies of
Woundy’s Weekly
itself?’ He smiled happily, pressing them into our hands.

Mine was eight pages long, like
The Times
, but there the resemblance ended. Along the top of the front page was a panorama of London, with St Paul’s, and the river filled with small boats. In the sky ran the legend ‘Woundy’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper’. The front page was devoted to a surprisingly radical article exhorting the Chartists to fight ‘those rich factory owners, namely the Anti-Corn-Law Leaguers’, who campaigned for free trade and low wages, and who would ‘give our labour to the foreigner’, and telling them to guard against being ‘gulled’ by the Whigs, who in government had been ‘inflexible tyrants and the oppressors of their families, the destroyers of their homes, engineers of the Poor Law and the workhouse, the plague of the poor’.

The rest of the paper was filled with alarming headlines: murders, rick-burnings, accidental shootings. In among these were reports on the happenings in the law courts, police stations and racecourses, some poetry, a review of Mrs Forbes Bush’s two-volume
Memoirs of the Queens of France
, and a page of ‘goings-on about town’, which consisted largely of innuendo about the activities of the aristocracy. There was an article purporting to describe the life of the Emperor of China, with whom of course we were at war, and a small column labelled ‘Foreign Intelligence’ in which it was reported that British troops had taken the mouth of
the Pearl River and had moved on Canton. There was no mention of the war in Afghanistan. The last page bristled with more bloodcurdling headlines. In ‘Cannibalism in Liverpool’, a certain Mr Griswald ‘averred that he had indeed acquired a taste for human flesh that could not be satiated’. In ‘Stepson murdered by his father in Kensal Green’, the victim, little Jim, was said to have cried out, ‘Oh! Mother! Oh! Mother!’ as his father beat him to death. It all seemed unutterably vulgar.

A man in a worn black suit appeared at my elbow. ‘Mr Woundy will be with you very soon. Perhaps you would care for a tour of the premises?’

‘We would indeed,’ said Blake, quite unconcerned at being mistaken for someone else.

‘Well, as you know, the paper has been a remarkable success. Mr Woundy’s idea: a Sunday paper for the working man. This is the editorial office. See, here at the bench, our editors work to make the copy fill the page. Of course, it is quieter today than it sometimes is, as we have put this week’s paper to bed. You can hear it printing now downstairs.’ He smiled fondly. ‘Mr Kean over there is one of our best penny-a-liners: he has a wonderful turn of phrase when it comes to a parricide or a house burning. And over there we are fitting in advertisements. We have found there’s a deal of interest in advertising due to the numbers of copies we are selling.’ His voice grew husky with pride. ‘Here,’ he pointed at the second bench, ‘our typesetters make up the pages.’ He stopped a boy carrying a box full of metal letters. ‘Type,’ he said with a grin. ‘May I show you the presses?’

Blake nodded, and we were led down the stairs.

‘Who are these gentlemen?’ said Blake innocently, pointing at the bruisers.

‘They are Mr Woundy’s men,’ said our guide brightly. ‘Through here,’ he said, beckoning us towards the double doors, ‘and here’ – he pushed through the doors and the sound was suddenly deafening – ‘are the presses. Two genuine Koenig and Bauer double-cylinder steam-powered printing presses,’ he bellowed proudly. ‘Just like the ones at
The Times
. Six thousand sheets an hour! And we have laid orders for two more.’

The steam presses were like nothing I had ever seen or heard before. They were distinctly odd-looking, resembling nothing so much as giant winged insects with two large eyes, settled upon a long table. The eyes were two long cylinders which spun round, bringing with them at great speed leaves of blank paper that slid across one wing, disappeared, and then emerged a moment later covered in printed words, spilling from the other end with whirling proliferation. Each machine was fed with paper at one end by two boys, while at the other another two boys carried away piles of printed pages to a bench where more boys folded them. The black iron printing press in Wedderburn’s shop was to these a phosphorous match to a bonfire. They were remarkable, but within a few minutes the noise had become almost unbearable to me. Blake, however, was entranced. I retreated to the relative quiet of the other side of the doors.

Even without Matty Horner’s description one would have picked out Eldred Woundy in a crowd. He was above six foot in height and immensely broad, and his large, emphatic gestures were the kind that drew attention. He was impatiently divesting himself of a heavy greatcoat with a large fur collar, and, as he did so, he was addressing a group of young boys whom I concluded must be hawkers for his newspaper. His deep voice was such that even across the room one could hear snatches of words. Underneath his coat he wore a snug-fitting green frock-coat and trousers, a green-and-black satin waistcoat that strained around his considerable girth, and a fob watch attached to this waistcoat by a large and shiny gold chain. Having concluded his lecture, he tossed the boys a coin each and they departed remarkably cheerful, given how sharply he had harangued them. As they left, a new column of supplicants swarmed about him. Once or twice he glanced in my direction and it was with some relief that I saw Blake emerge from the printing room, just as Woundy surged purposefully towards me.

‘Gentlemen!’ he cried, stretching out the great hams of his arms.

I cleared my voice. ‘I am Captain William Avery and this is my colleague, Mr Jeremiah Blake.’

‘Blake, eh?’ said Woundy, looking him over appraisingly.
‘Welcome! I am, as you have no doubt guessed, Eldred Woundy, proprietor, creator and editor of
Woundy’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper
and a host of other titles, including
Woundy’s Penny Miscellany
and
Woundy’s Penny Atlas
. Honest radical, and man of the people.’ The voice was Welsh but overlaid, I now recognized, with London vowels. He smiled broadly. ‘I am delighted you have come. May I offer you one of these?’ From his pocket he produced two coins, half-crowns.

‘See what it says?’ he said, handing one to each of us. Stamped on the tails side of the coin, over the usual coat of arms, were three words, ‘Woundy’s Illustrated Weekly’.

‘Is this legal tender?’ said Blake.

‘It is until they say it is not, and in the meantime it is a pleasing – and most inventive, do you not think? – little advertisement for our publication,’ said Woundy. ‘I am paying my staff with them. They will be all over London in a week. I understand you have had at least a brief tour of our premises. Let me explain a little more about our heroic undertaking.’ He brought his hands together and rubbed them in a gesture of anticipation. ‘I can assure you that
Woundy’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper
is a genuine innovation in the history of journalism! As you know, we launched only a few months ago and already our circulation outstrips that of every other publication in the country! We have created a Sunday newspaper that the working man can enjoy, and from which he may also learn, and which he chooses to purchase again and again. We are selling upwards of 90,000 copies each week!

‘We have employed the most skilled writers and the most talented illustrators. We utilize the finest and most up-to-date steam presses! We are in talks to purchase our own papermill! We are expanding everywhere and for this reason we are looking for a select few investors to join us on this journey to the heights of creative endeavour and even greater profits!’