SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments (27 page)
Read SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments Online
Authors: Francis Selwyn
Tags: #Historical Novel
She pulled at her lip with her teeth and then asked sullenly,
'What's the questions about?'
'That's better!' said Verity in his most encouraging manner. 'First off, about Charley Wag.' He saw the flicker in her dark, narrow eyes. At fifteen years old she might seem hard as brass to threats and even beatings, but the fear of the Wag was going to live with her for many years yet.
'Now,' Verity resumed, 'you wrote that letter for Charley, to blackmail Lord Henry, some time before his lordship died. When might it have been?'
'Dunno, exactly. Bac
k just before the summer begun.’
'And just why might he want
you
to write it?'
'A-cos
of
the ring he heard I'd got. Another girl told 'im.'
'What ring?'
As though she had abandoned her animosity against them, Elaine's belligerent manner softened and she slipped into a rambling narrative.
‘I
had it when I was younger. Mother was going fine with a soldier and we was to sail with him, hoping for India or 'Straliar in the end. I don't remember exactly what happened, only that the boat we was on was wrecked and I was carried and put in a little boat with a lot of others. It was dark and in the middle of the sea. And then there was a fight and one of them in the boat was put in the sea for being a man. Then I don't remember more 'n half of it. We was days and nights in the boat, and seemed to sleep longer and longer. And I'd wake a bit and see no one else stirring. It was mother give me the ring, last of all. She said it'd come from the finger of the man that was put in the water. She made me take it and said I was to see what I could make on it if ever I found a story that could be told against the wretch. Course, I never really saw him nor had any idea who he might be. And it could a-bin any ring. There was writing on the inside, but not such as I could read. Foreign. Then we slept and when I woke I was on another boat. They said mother and the rest was on different ships, only of course I knew later they was dead. They didn't tell me at first, for fear of making me lose heart to recover."
'And Charley Wag?" asked Verity.
Elaine pulled a face.
‘I
never did use the ring, 'aving been stolen from a man while they killed him, it wasn't worth the candle to sell it and be took for helping the murder. And there was no way to tell who he might be, no way I could find, so I 'adn't even the means to tell the tale to his family and see what might be made by that either. Only I told another girl in the spring and showed her what was engraved on the inside, which she wrote down. A few weeks later, though I never saw Charley Wag before, he came and gave me money for the ring and made me write the note. Later I heard he been coopered by one of the jacks from
"A" Division. But he never was!
I seen 'im plain as I see you now, every hair of his head and every look of his eye the dead spit!'
'Phantasm of a disordered imagination,' said Samson knowledgeably, 'Charley been snug in Kensal Green the past month. Why, the turf they laid over 'im ain't even been disturbed.'
Elaine tossed her hair again and said with adolescent defiance,
'Bugger you and your phantoms!
Didn't I feel his hands round my throat? And ain't I got the bruise of his thumb there still? Look!'
There was no mistaking the faded shadow of the injury on her white skin.
' 'ave the goodness to keep her 'ere a minute, Mr Samson,' said Verity. 'I shan't be gone long.' He trudged out of the booth and disappeared among the tents and flags.
'Biggish, darkish cove, Charley was," said Samson conversationally.
The girl nodded.
'That's 'im.'
'Only thing is,' said Samson, 'it was Mr Verity as coopered 'im and me that felt his heart stopped and saw his head broke in, And saw him buried, what's more.'
He stooped a little and peered at the bruise on her throat again. One of his hands went round her shoulders and sampled the soft weight of Elaine's young breasts.
'Course,' he said, 'in the matter of being returned to Mrs Rouncewell, you could have it hard or easy. And Mrs Rouncewell takes notice of what I say in such matters."
The hand dropped, full-length, and began to travel up the backs of the girl's tightly-clad and sturdy thighs. Simultaneously, he planted a resonant kiss on her lips.
'Ain't no reason a good-natured girl shouldn't find things go easy for her,' he said.
She tossed her hair back furiously. 'Bastard!'
Samson's hand reached the fattened cheeks of Elaine's bottom, stroking and patting.
'Quite a big girl already,' he said optimistically, the hand darting between her tightly closed legs. 'And you ain't averse to a touching there by the feel o' things! Now, you'll have all the way from 'ere to London Bridge in a closed carriage to show just 'ow grateful you can be to a friend that's.
..."
'Mr Samsonl' said Verity from the opening of the booth. 'If you please!'
Samson released the girl reluctantly with a final lingering pat and a sigh. Verity was standing at the canvas flap with a little man who was a total stranger to Samson.
'This,' said Verity with an air of proud ownership, 'is Mr Adam Jump, Lightning Sketch Artist and Silhouette-Maker to the Crowne
d Heads of Europe. He been good
enough to leave his tent for a bit to help us in the investigation.'
'Why?' said Samson, irritated by the intrusion on his private negotiation with a fifteen-year-old mistress.
'A-cos,' said Verity, 'Mr Adam Jump has a speciality, which is li
kenesses of Dear Departed Ones.’
'You'd hardly credit,' said Jump with soft owlishness, 'how they sell. Ladies and gentlemen describe a dear one to me and I fashion the likeness to suit. Seeing it done brings back all manner of other details even while I'm working on the sketch. It's a shilling in pencil and twice that if shaded with coloured chalks.'
Verity addressed Elaine sternly.
'Now, miss. Let's 'ear you give Mr Jump a notion o' Charley Wag. And remember what's waiting for you at Mrs Rouncewell's if it ain't a ringer for him.'
Jump sat on the steps of the wagon with his board, paper and chalks. He drew shapes of faces until there was one which, the girl swore, was the contour of Charley Wag's.
'Dark 'air, sort o' tight curls,' she said. Verity and Samson nodded at one another in agreement.
'Like that?' asked Jump, showing her the board.
'Bit bald at the front, though,' she said, 'and sort of grey, like it was powdered just on top.'
Samson looked at Verity in bewilderment, but Verity was grinning like a schoolboy. He put his mouth close to Samson's ear.
'
I thought I'd got it, Mr Samson!
And I have tool'
They watched the artist at work, peering over his shoulder.
'I'll be damnedl' said Samson, as the finishing touches were added to the sketch.
'Very probably, Mr Samson,' said Verity jovially, 'and you'll still feel comfortable compared to this young person i
f she's told us a pack of lies.’
'I swear it!’
she howled. 'Ask the other girls that saw 'im!'
'Charley Wag!' said Verity, his shoulders jogging with mirth.
'Captain Jack Ransome!' Samson murmured dismally.
'But how!
'
'Ain't difficult, Mr Samson. He may have been in league with Charley or he may not. If he was, then some girls that paid their dues to Charley never saw him but in the person of Ransome. Natural enough to think he was the Wag if he said so. Then, if the law was ever to move in, Jack Ransome goes down and Charley stays free. Even when Captain Jack got his hooks into the Jervis family, he may have worked the dodge with Charley. The faked pictures of Lord 'enry was done on Charley's premises.'
'Then what you heard the night Charley was killed was thieves falling out?'
said Samson.
'I half thought so, Mr Samson. No wonder Honest Jack was so quick to destroy the evidence! It was more faked letters to squeeze Mr Richard and Lord William. It must a-bin! And it was all to do with Lord 'enry or someone being put in the sea from a little boat after a ship went down. And then Jack Ransome made his mistake. Seeing the Wag dead, he goes straight out next morning, round all the girls, and this time he keeps for himself every penny that he takes.'
'And now he might cooper Mr Richard Jervis, seeing as he's got him.'
Verity shook his head.
'Not ‘im!
Poor Mr Richard's too usef
ul to him for that!
Why, even when three medical men found him lunatic, Captain Jack wasn't going to part with him but got some poor delirious wretch and had him entered at Friern House in Mr Richard's name.'
'He's never holding him to ransom?'
Verity shook his head.
'No. And it ain't for Mr Richard's little allowance that passes through Captain Jack's hands. There ain't enough and I daresay it stops altogether if he's supposed to be in an asylum.'
Dismissing Adam Jump and taking Elaine with them, the two sergeants retraced their steps towards Trafalgar Street and the train for London Bridge. As Verity chose a carriage, Samson escorted the girl to the refreshment room. The pair reappeared just in time to catch the train but not in time to reach Verity's carriage. With a shrug of resignation he heard them in the next compartment to his own. He tried to concentrate his thoughts upon Richard Jervis and John Ransome, upon the seemingly pointless compromising of the dead Lord Henry, and the charge of murder made against Lord William. From the other side of the wooden partition he was aware of the descending slither of cotton against female flesh, soft patting noises and the murmur of voices rising occasionally to audibility.
'You got strong hips for a girl just starting off,' he heard Samson remark, 'but I'm partial, meself, to a girl what's big in the right places.'
It was Verity's second meeting with Dr Jamieson, whom he had not seen since his preliminary inquiries into Lord Henry's death. But the atmosphere in the room with its partners' desk, Orleans clock and nymphs, the fine cabinets and the fire burning in the grate, was entirely changed. Dr Jamieson's meagre jowls and watering eyes expressed an incalculable weariness and melancholy. He had even invited Verity to take a chair opposite to him.
'Sir,' said Verity gently, 'I must have the truth this time, all of it. There's a man's life in peril, the law's already been broke, and if you was to conceal matters now, you might soon be accessory to the most serious crime of all.'
Jamieson nodded, as though he understood all this, and Verity resumed.
"The picture Miss Elaine gave of the so-called person Aldino, or Charley Wag, was shown to other girls that had "seen" him after he was killed. It was Captain Ransome in every case. And it was 'im that got the blackmail letter written to Lord 'enry, though
his lordship was already dead.’
Jamieson sighed.
'No, sergeant. The girl wrote the letter, as you describe it, to the man who lost that ring in the struggle when he was put into the sea. It was not Lord
Henry's ring but Mr Richard's.’
'See. sir.'
'I very much doubt that you do. Mr Richard was a subaltern with his regiment in 1852, shipped on the
Birkenhead
for the Cape. The truth
of
what happened has long been known to his brothers and I, as their physician. We knew it from his ravings and his nightmares, waking and sleeping, in the months after he was found. He was picked up after he had been carried shoreward clinging to a timber for support. The hours
of
cold and the battering of the
r
eef
had done such damage to the nerves of his body that he was never to feel, let alone use, his legs again. He had been struck a fearful blow on his spine, perhaps as he was being put into the sea. If he was a coward, sergeant, he paid dear enough for it. Ransome put the letter in Lord Henry
's bureau to stop your inquiry.’
'Very sorry I am to hear it, sir.'
'The injury to his mind was worse than the damage to his body. He was possessed by hatred of his would-be murderers. Lord Henry was a loving brother to him but Lord William never forgave the cowardice. For nearly two years, from 1853 until 1855, Mr Richard was confined in a private sanatorium. In 1855 he was judged recovered enough to return home and, in time, Captain Ransome was employed to care for him, a comrade from his old regiment. And still the secret was kept. But who knows what ravings Ransome may have heard and how long he may have searched for the girl who had the ring and could tell her tale! Lord William thought Ransome a bluff honest fellow but I never held him in much esteem. He fed Mr Richard's obsession, till that young man loved Lord Henry and hated Lord William as his deadliest enemy.'