Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (36 page)

‘How do you know about Spa Fields?’

‘I always know about such things.’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘No. I used to throw stones at them when I was a boy. Vicious little brutes we were, and my pa said they were mad, but that if they
shared the women they couldn’t be all wrong.’ It was the first time I had ever heard him refer to his life before India. ‘There must be a reason why the coppers are so concerned with Wedderburn and the others when they are also so preoccupied with Chartism. I was thinking about that copper outside Heffernan’s: was he on the beat, was he following us, or was he watching him?’

‘But Wedderburn hated Chartism. He fell out with Daniel over it,’ I said. ‘That cannot be it. There could be so many other possibilities. What about Daniel’s fury with his father? What about that unpleasant fellow Dugdale? A rivalry, perhaps, a falling-out among thieves? Or perhaps the police are protecting some fallen notable.’

‘You think evil old Cumberland has been creeping down to Holywell Street to murder publishers of lewd books? I never thought to hear you wonder aloud at corruption in high places, Avery.’

‘We have seen it before,’ I said glumly.

He shook his head. ‘I believe the key is in the past. I want to talk to Connie, try to get her to speak about Spa Fields.’

‘But even if Wedderburn was a radical he gave it up long ago, and Woundy’s main preoccupation was money. It is the Chartists that Loin minds – Daniel, not his father. In any case, we cannot go near Heffernan again.’

‘We may have to. So you’re with me?’

I nodded. ‘What of the new police and Loin?’

‘We’ll have to do our best to keep out of their way.’

He passed me his hessian sack. Inside there were a large greasy military coat long since out of commission, an appallingly garish dirty cotton waistcoat, a labourer’s cloth cap, a pair of stiff canvas trousers and two square-toed boots such as the working poor wore. I sighed.

‘You said you had news too,’ he said.

‘I had a visit from Mayhew last night. It appears Pen Horner’s accuser is far from honest himself. I want to try and do something for the boy. And I wish to make sure Matty is content.’

He nodded.

‘Have you eaten opium today?’

‘Yes. It helps with my ribs.’

‘Have you heard anything from Theo Collinson? I cannot but believe that Allington will make a complaint against you.’

‘No.’

‘And what of O’Toole?’

‘Miss Jenkins is nurse-maiding him today in my rooms.’

There was a constable in Holywell Street, the first either of us had seen there. For a moment he lingered outside Wedderburn’s shop, then continued up the street. We wove between the stalls and shops, keeping as far from him as possible. The usual grim lines of handkerchiefs, neckties and coats were pinned outside Abraham Kravitz’s shop, but the old man was nowhere to be seen. Inside, the musty smell of clothes assailed us and Kravitz appeared. For once he was divested of his many layers, revealed as a skinny, wiry creature, all hair and beard. Blake removed his cap and his patch and stood upright; I took off my cap.

‘You two again!’ He took in our togs and Blake’s face and raised his eyebrows. ‘What you been up to? No good, I’ll bet. I s’pose you heard about Woundy? And they’re saying the school-teacher copped it this morning. Where’s Matty then? I’ve not set eyes on her since the day before yesterday. I’ve got something for her.’ He waved a dog-eared magazine at us. ‘Next bit of her story. What’ve you done with her?’

I explained that Lord Allington had taken up Matty and was looking into Pen’s case. He looked sceptical.

‘Lord Allington is famous for his charitable works and his religious observance,’ I said. ‘If anyone can get the child out of prison it is he; and he may well be able to find a good position for Matty. Either way, she would have received a hot meal and a warm bed.’

‘As to the boy, it’ll take more than a miracle to get him off,’ the old man said, sniffing dismissively. ‘What d’you want then? Nice new coat? You could do with one.’

‘How long’s that copper been there?’ said Blake.

‘Turned up yesterday. Seems we’re back on the beat.’

‘We need to speak to Connie Wedderburn without drawing attention to ourselves.’

‘Thought you was on the law’s side,’ said the old man beadily. ‘Yer face says not.’

‘If you’ll go and ask her to come to the shop to see us, I’d be grateful and I’ll pay you too. Tell her we’ve news. If you won’t, we’ll be off.’

‘Dunno as you’ve done much good to that family. Raising all that heartbreak again. Or to Matty.’

‘We’ll leave then.’

‘Didn’t say I wouldn’t though,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ll go. Ask her if she wants to see you.’

Connie Wedderburn hurried across the street, head down, her shawl clasped over her head and around her shoulders. For the first time since I had met her she did not look like someone stupefied by grief. If anything, her movements had a pained precision to them, as of someone who had woken up to an unbearably bright sun.

As she came into the shop she caught sight of our garb and Blake’s battered face and brought her hand to her mouth.

‘Just a blinker. I’ve had worse,’ he said.

She took off her shawl, and under her eye was the unmistakeable shadow of a bruise.

‘I too,’ she said. She looked haunted and, truth to tell, the look became her. ‘You got something to tell me about Nat’s death then?’ she said to Blake quickly, before he could speak, but with no sense of anticipation. ‘You know who it is?’

‘Connie, you’re—’

‘I don’t want to speak of it.’ Her hand stole up to the bruise and she pressed it.

‘I don’t have an answer yet, but I figure we’re close.’

‘Why’d you call me over then?’

‘I’ve things to ask. There’s more to say,’ he said, very gentle.

She sat then, and put her head in her hands. Abraham bustled over, patting her on the shoulder.

‘You doan have to talk to them if you doan want to.’

‘Blue bastards gave me these, Connie,’ Blake said, pointing to his face. ‘They told me to leave Nat’s death be. Three days ago. Then Avery had to use his fists against two men we think the Chartists sent.’

The hand pressing the bruise withdrew.

‘Mr Kravitz,’ Blake said, ‘I wish to talk to Connie privately. If she will.’

The old man tutted. Connie put her hand on his and he gave her an uncharacteristically soft look and took himself off to the front of the shop, grumbling quietly, then stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

‘You must have heard about Woundy?’ he said.

She gave the briefest of nods.

‘It was the same man that did for Nat,’ he continued. ‘I know it. There are things I need to know.’ He looked at her almost pleadingly.

She shook her head.

‘Woundy paid for your food and the firewood?’

She nodded.

‘What will you do now?’

‘Shift for myself. Eldred always said he’d give the building to me. If it is mine, I can sell it, or take lodgers. If not, seamstressing – it’s where I started. Or even teach school again.’ She gave a humourless laugh. ‘Take up my grammar. And if it comes to it, I have family out east, Lincoln way. We won’t end up in the spike.’

‘It’s a big thing, to leave you the building. He must have felt he owed you a good deal. There was a lot of history between you.’

She gave him a sharp look. ‘Between the three of us.’

‘Will you tell me about Spa Fields?’

‘I know what you’re thinking and you are wrong. You don’t understand. I’ll not talk about it.’

‘All right,’ said Blake mildly. He paused, and I realized he had got the answer he wanted. ‘Do you know where Eldred lived? Did he have family?’

‘No. There was some house he bought but he never went there. He kept a room in Charlotte Street.’

‘With the “Governess of love”?’

She gave him a cool look. ‘Yeah. Her. But he always kept a bed wherever he worked. Work, money, that was what he loved.’ She smiled sadly.

‘Children?’

She shook her head.

‘There’s something I must tell you, Connie. The coppers who came to see me. There’s word there’s a Chartist plot. They have names. A man called Neesom.’ The colour seeped out of her face. He spoke very quietly now. ‘Can you tell me why one of them is outside your door for the first time since before Nat died?’

‘So you was never looking for Nat’s murderer. It was always this?’

‘You know that’s not true, Connie. But I think they are connected and I am trying to understand how.’

She closed her eyes and began to rock slowly back and forth. He took her hand.

‘I am so afraid for him,’ she said. ‘So afraid. But what can I do? He won’t listen to me. He looks at me as if he hates me. I can’t lose him too, I can’t.’

‘Why’d he hit you?’

‘Doan ask.’

‘He’s one of Neesom’s young men, isn’t he?’

She nodded. ‘I think so, but I know his head is full of pikes and knives and death to the toffs. He’s so young. He won’t listen.’ She thrust her hand to her mouth as if to push back a cry. ‘He’s gone so far from me. He got hisself baptized. He won’t eat sugar cos the government taxes it. He took the temperance oath cos drink is sin. I laughed when I heard. After all we went through. Nat went to prison for blasphemy and sedition over and over. I did time, we sold
The Rights of Man
and the
Republican
. We were reported to the beaks for sedition and infidelism by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. We reckoned we were fighting for the rights of freethinkers, for freedom, for land, the vote for men and women, to stop child labour, for the rights of infants not to be brought up hungry. See where it’s brought me: I live in Holywell Street, my husband sold smut and my son is a temperance Christian.’

‘So Daniel has no idea that his father was a radical?’

‘And his mother too. No, he doesn’t know. After Nat got out of gaol in ’31, I told him enough. They’d tried to turn him informer. He could have come out and kept the appearance of a radical, all the time reporting back, plenty did. But he couldn’t do that. And Daniel
was growing and we had one more and another coming. We needed to feed them and keep them safe.’

‘So he hid his past?’

‘
We
hid our pasts,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t afford no more trouble. So we cut ourselves off from our old friends. But work was hard to find. I’d taught school before the babes came, but I couldn’t with two and one on the way. Then six years ago Eldred offered Nat regular work, running the shop, selling his bawdy books. He said yes. It wasn’t all I’d hoped for, but we’d’ve starved else, and Eldred kept us when Nat was arrested a couple of times for obscenity. The books were a joke on them – the swells and gentry who bought them, the only ones who could afford them. They guyed their hypocrisy, the way they come down on the poor for their immoral ways, while they do what they like where nobody sees. You’d be amazed at who bought the stuff. Never had much time for respectability. I’ve even less now. The old days felt more honest.’

‘Nat didn’t join the Chartists then.’

She looked away. ‘Our radical days were in the past. And the Chartists, there’s no love lost between us and them. The National Union of the Working Classes expelled Matthew Blundell for bad morals. He was a drunk and a lecher, they said, and he ran his infidel chapel, made people laugh by preaching blasphemy and insurrection, but truly it was because he hated the Church with all his being. Chartists have no place for people like us. It’s all church-going and respectability now. Nat and Woundy were even accused of trying to bring down certain Charter men. Nonsense! We fought for equality for all, for women too. For freethinking, fighting the lies of church and state, for what Nat called the Republic of Letters. That was what we believed in twenty years ago. But now, seems like all that has gone. It’s church and Sunday best, and votes for men.’

‘What about Neesom?’

Her eyes welled. ‘We knew him from years back. He’s Charter now, but I always thought him a good man. A kind man even. I thought he might make Daniel understand. But what he wants are soldiers and martyrs.’

‘Do you know anything of the plot?’

‘If I did, do you think I would tell you, Jem Blake?’ she snapped. ‘No, I know nothing. But I …’ She took hold of Blake’s sleeve, dragging his hand up to her face, and stared at him desperately. ‘I found two knives under Daniel’s bed just before Nat died. Please, you both said you came to help us. Help me now. Please. Save my son from this. I can’t lose him too!’

Gently, Blake pulled his hand back. ‘I can’t promise when I can’t be sure of succeeding, Connie. But I’ll do what I can. Do you know where Daniel is?’

‘He won’t tell me, but Neesom lives out east, Brick Lane way.’

‘Have you tried to find him? Been down the rookery?’

‘Why would I go there?’ she said.

‘Good place to get lost. Will you tell me how it ties up – this and Spa Fields?’

‘Don’t ask me about that.’ She stood up, suddenly angry. ‘It has nothing to do with it. I’m going back to the littl’uns. You said you’d help us. It’s my son that wants helping.’ She swept her shawl back across her face and marched out of the shop without a backward glance.

Blake rubbed the top of his ragged ear uncomfortably. I thought it prudent to remain silent. Kravitz hobbled back inside. His eyes slid over us with distaste.

‘Made a fine confusion of that, I’d say. Now she’s unhappy and angry. Wish I’d never set eyes on you. Now ’op it. I’ve done my bit.’

‘Come on, Abraham,’ said Blake. ‘Who can I speak to about Nat’s past? I reckon you know more about him than you said.’

‘Told you, gave you a name first time you was in here. Carn help it if you doan remember it.’

Blake stood for a moment, his head bent so his eyes were entirely shadowed. ‘Dick Carlile,’ he said at last. ‘But you said he was dying and he’d moved long ago.’

Abraham Kravitz sniffed. ‘There’s someone in the street might know. But he won’t talk to you.’

Blake said, ‘Dugdale.’

‘He was an infidel like the rest, twenty years ago. Seems like old republicans make fine purveyors of dirty pictures.’

Blake was already on his way out of the shop and shuffling over the road. I had to run to catch up with him as he pushed open the door of Dugdale’s shop.