Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (35 page)

‘A hunger to kill?’ Lord Allington said warily. ‘My dear Agnes, I do not think this appropriate for your ears.’

‘I have spent my life facing down evil,’ Lady Agnes said. ‘I do not shy away from it now.’

‘We have discovered that Woundy and the others had a line in blackmail,’ Blake said. ‘They regarded it almost as a calling – an infidel calling, if you will. They regarded those wealthy men who
bought their books, or visited Mr Woundy’s brothel, or who would pay to keep suppressed the stories of their less salubrious habits, as hypocrites of the worst order. Men who wished to present a respectable face to the world in order to justify their domination of it and their enjoyment of an unjust portion of its spoils. Men who rejoiced in condemning the poor and powerless for profane habits, minor vices and chaotic lives, while secretly indulging their own vices. They delighted in uncovering the secrets of these men and pursued them avidly, and believed they deserved what they got. Perhaps they blackmailed the wrong person, someone with an urge to kill, and thus they met their fate.

‘You met Mr Woundy some months ago, did you not, Your Lordship? Did he and Wedderburn try to blackmail you?’

It was such a very odd thing to say that I was for a moment unable to believe my ears. Lord Allington and Lady Agnes meanwhile stared at Blake, astonished.

Lady Agnes was the first to recover. ‘How
dare
you speak to His Lordship thus! You vile, discourteous little man! You
want
to drag his name into the mud! You are expressly forbidden to pursue the matter of the dead printers. We shall see that it is so!’

‘
Agnes
,’ said His Lordship, ‘enough! Mr Blake, evidently I have offended you. I did not intend it, but I think it better that you leave.’

A footman rushed into the room. Blake raised his hands, walked out into the hall and was swiftly ‘helped’ into the street. I gabbled an apology at Lord Allington and then Threlfall took my arm and drew me out into the hall. Lady Agnes was not far behind.

‘Captain Avery,’ she said, ‘I want you to swear that you will never reveal what you saw here the last time you came. You must see, His Lordship’s reputation cannot be sullied by such rumours. It would affect everything he does.’

‘I swear on my honour, My Lady.’

‘I thank you for it. I regret that we part on such terms.’

And at that moment I almost liked her.

I could not see Blake in Charles Street, so I strode, muttering angrily to myself, all the way to Hanover Square until at last I was outside the Oriental Club.

He was standing in the square, waiting for me.

I could hardly bring myself to look at him.

‘For God’s sake, we could have persuaded him,’ I said. ‘He
wanted
us to continue. Could you not see it? And I spoke up for you. If you could have just kept a civil tongue in your head for a few minutes. Now we have nothing. No commission, no patron, no authority in this case. And we have lost sight of Matty. How are we to discover how she is, or if she is a spy? We are pursued by Chartists and the new police. Look at you, you can hobble a little, but how will you defend yourself if they come for you? The truth is that you prefer it that way. Jeremiah Blake, abjured by all, alone against the world! Well, you may have your wish. For I have had enough. You may take on the police and the Chartists and the toffs and the madmen all on your own. I shall return home tomorrow.’

‘I told you, William. There are times when I just cannot bear to dance for them another minute.’

‘Well, this time you chose your moment particularly ill.’

He took something from his pocket and put it in his mouth.

‘Is that opium?’

He nodded. I marched up the steps and into the Oriental.

I had a vain hope that I would pass the evening quietly, but I was seized upon by one of the old Oriental Club hands. ‘Have you been at some secret heroics?’ he said hopefully. ‘Perhaps you will dine with us?’

I gave my excuses and said I was retiring to my room.

‘Ah, but afterward, sir? A man must eat.’

So I agreed. An evening of familiar pleasures to put away the memory of the afternoon and to prepare myself for the return to Devon. I bathed and put on clean clothes, dined, and drank enough good claret to put myself into a good humour. The talk was of the cost of the repairs to the Tower of London, the wars in China and Afghanistan (of which there was little definite news), Mr Carlyle’s lectures on heroes, and Monsieur Lafontaine’s marvellous demonstrations of animal magnetism.

Sometime near eleven o’clock there was a commotion in the hallway. I could hear a voice protesting loudly. We ignored it for some time, but at length a footman came to the table and with many apologies asked if I might accompany him to the entrance as there was a certain gentleman very insistently asking for me. With sinking heart I excused myself and followed.

‘My dear Mr Avery!’ Looking somewhat the worse for wear, his hair teased into chaotic corkscrews, his coat flapping open, his arms revolving widely, Henry Mayhew was seeking to push his way between two liveried members of the club’s staff. He was very excited.

‘They will not let me in! I have news,’ he said, rather more loudly than was necessary.

‘Mr Mayhew!’ I said. ‘Please, let the gentleman in.’

The footmen fell disdainfully away. Mayhew, surging forward, seemed hardly to notice them.

‘Call me Henry, please, Avery! I wanted to show you our editorial. I have written something very strong about the obscenity of children in prisons! I think you will approve! I must admit I am just a little ripped.’ His eyes were unfocused, but from his pocket he managed to bring forth a slim white journal. The title was
Punch, or the London Charivari
, and below it Mr Punch was shown grinning evilly, his head in the stocks but his hands grasping tomatoes, as a gathering of little cherubs hovered above him on clouds, holding little scrolls and quills as if calling him to account.

‘See, our new issue! It has just come from the presses. And inside on the first page, this.’

The page read:

In the puppet drama of Punch, our hero is cast into prison. He sings, it is true, but we hear the ring of the bars mingling with the song. We are advocates for the correction of offenders; but how many beings are there pining within the walls of a prison, whose only crimes are poverty and misfortune? In certain prisons in our fair capital, moreover, the prisoners cannot sing and laugh, or talk at all, for while they climb the productless treadmill hour after gloomy hour, the rules forbid all speech and sound, and the heart can only hear the ring of the bars.

But worse than this, the incarceration of children in such places meant for grown men crushes and taints the child’s spirit when their removal from the places of their fall should surely rather be an opportunity for instruction and renewal, not one of dull, unthinking punishment. We never looked upon a lark in a cage, and heard him trilling out his music as he sprang upwards to the roof of his prison, but we felt sickened with the sight and sound, as contrasting, in our thought, with the free minstrel of the morning, bounding as it were into the blue caverns of the heavens. Such treatment is destructive of the child’s spirit. It is nothing less than a crime against childhood!

 

I was touched by Mayhew’s enthusiasm, if a little bemused by his determination to show me his handiwork so late at night, and had not the heart to tell him I would be returning home in the morning.

‘This is most kind of you,’ I said.

‘It’s nothing. No really, it is. I have no idea if we will be able to get the thing off the presses.
Punch
is dreadfully in debt and on the very edge of bankruptcy, my dear fellow.’ He began to sag a little, then to topple in earnest.

‘Might I invite you in for a nightcap?’ I said, casting around for somewhere I could prop him up. The footmen kept their distance and pursed their lips. ‘We could take it in the library.’

‘Ver’ kind of you, Avery,’ Mayhew said. ‘Ver’ decent of you indeed. But no, I have more news to impart to you. I have taken more leaves out of your and Mr Blake’s books, so to speak.’ His mouth broke into a wide, sweet grin. ‘I have been looking into young Pen’s accuser, Mr Taylor, the shopkeeper. He is on Wych Street you know, hard by the Shakespeare’s Head where we write our modest publication. I have been speaking to anyone I could think of who might know of him, including the street people … in the streets. It has, I must say, been most exhilarating. Most exhilarating. I have learnt much …’ His voice, loud and excited, rang about the hall. ‘But I digress. I have news and have made a most interesting discovery, though I do not know if it can help the boy.’

‘Come, Mr Mayhew – Henry – let us discuss this more quietly and privately, one never knows who might be listening,’ I said, realizing with some disappointment that I was now entirely sober.

‘No, Avery,’ he said in a very loud and indiscreet whisper, holding on tightly to my sleeve. ‘I will not detain you long. But you should know that Mr Taylor is not at all what he seems. The shop may seem entirely respectable, but he is well known as a receiver of stolen goods, and also as one who rents out rooms in his premises for, ahem,
assignations
.’

‘Indeed?’

‘A most unpleasant creature altogether. I have it on good authority – well, I have it on distinctly disreputable but probably truthful authority – that his enterprises are perfectly well known to the local new police. I was told that in return for turning a blind eye, they benefit from his industry to the tune of … well, to no small tune. I was also told that he recently went to some considerable effort to
have a small thief transported. There it is, for what it is worth. I hope there may be something you can do with it.’ He let go of my sleeve and patted it a few times. ‘Now I must to my bed, Avery. I am exceedingly sleepy. Good night, a pleasure as always.’ And with that he turned tail and staggered out into the dark.

I rose early the next morning and sent a note to Lord Allington describing my regret and horror at Blake’s rudeness, explaining I had not expected it, nor been party to it. I said it had been an honour to meet him and thanked him for his interest in me. I said I wished him only success in his philanthropic and reforming efforts. I requested that I might call briefly before I returned to Devon to see Matty Horner. I signed it, ‘Your affectionate (if I may) servant’. I breakfasted. There was no answer. I set off for Charles Street. The doorman allowed me in, but I was informed that Matty Horner was not at home, and His Lordship and Lady Agnes were abroad too. The doorman thought the girl had been taken to the orphans’ home in Norwood, but he could not swear to it. I waited half an hour in the hallway then returned to the club, debating what I should do. There was a note from Blake requesting I meet him by the Crown and Anchor in the Strand.

It took me a moment to recognize Blake. He was bent over a stick like an old man and wore an eyepatch over his more swollen eye. With his battered face, the effect was uncanny. He
was
an old man. He wore a corduroy jacket, torn at front and back, a greasy old cap and a pair of ragged gloves, which nevertheless were stuffed in the two fingers he was missing, so as to make his hand appear whole. He carried a large hessian bag over his shoulder.

‘I have news,’ he said. No preamble. No apology.

‘I, too.’

‘Thomas Dearlove was murdered last night.’

It was as if the air was boxed out of my lungs all at once. ‘What?
No!
’

‘At his school. Knife cuts and a long slash through the guts.’

‘Like the others?’

‘Some resemblance, perhaps. That’s as much as I know. Can’t exactly ask the coppers. I had a message from Gentleman Joe this morning. An old man looking for shelter found him late last night.’

‘Thank God a child did not find him. Oh, I should have gone to the police station with him. I should have. Perhaps—’

‘You might have ended up dead too. There’s more. Joe says the body in the cesspool was Woundy’s bruiser. The other skipped town: took passage on a boat to America a couple of days ago, said he’d come into money. Both were in the rookery the day after Woundy’s death, avoiding the coppers, drinking mostly. He says one of them said Woundy had dismissed them the night he died. Said he was meeting someone privately. It happened from time to time.’

‘Does Gentleman Joe know who killed either of them?’

‘He says someone had been inquiring after Woundy’s men. Not a copper. A man. But I have no description.’

‘Dearlove … I cannot believe it. Where is he?’

‘Police deadhouse in Bow Street.’

‘What shall we do?’

‘I must see Dearlove’s body. And I’ve been thinking about Wedderburn and the others. I am sure now that what bound them was not blackmail or lewd books but politics.’

‘Politics?’

‘For one thing, Dearlove called Wedderburn an infidel, and Heffernan said he met Wedderburn twenty years ago at Spa Fields. In those days an infidel was not just a non-believer, but someone who heaped scorn on the Church and held republican opinions too. In the early ’20s a community of radicals called the Congregation lived on Spa Fields. They held everything in common, shared earnings and labour and everything else, it was said – lots of stories about free love and revolutionary plots. I reckon Wedderburn and Connie lived there. And perhaps Heffernan and the others too.’