The Victoria Vanishes (21 page)

'That makes no bleeding sense at all but I suppose you know what you're doing,' said Golifer. All right, here, first one up, the Seven Stars, back of the law courts. A nice little boozer; I've been there a few times myself.'

'It's where the second victim, Naomi Curtis, died. Does it say how the pub got its name?'

Golifer turned the photograph over and read the typed caption that ran across the back.'"Penderel's Oak is the name of the oak tree which Charles the Second hid inside after the Battle of Worcester, which is why so many public houses are named the 'Royal Oak.'"'

'No, Oliver, that's the wrong caption.'

'Bugger, they've been transposed. I had an assistant here for a while but had to fire him. Hang on.' They searched for the photograph of the Penderel's Oak pub, and checked its description. 'Right, here's the Seven Stars.
"Built 1602, this public house was originally named The League of Seven Stars, the sign representing the seven provinces of Holland." Is that any help?'

'I don't know.' Bryant screwed up one eye in thought. 'The number seven, a Dutch connection, could be anything. Go back to the first pub, The Old Dr Butler's Head in Mason's Avenue.'

Golifer riffled through the folds of photographs, but came up empty-handed.
'No pictures, but I know about that one. It's named after some nutter, Dr Butler, who claimed he was a neurologist, but his treatment consisted of chucki
ng his pa
tients down a trapdoor into the Thames from London Bridge to scare the
merde
out of them. Apparently James the First thought it was a worthwhile pastime because he appointed him Court Physician, but then James was obsessed with the idea that witchcraft would destroy the fabric of England. He wrote a barking-mad treatise on demonology that resulted in hundreds of Scottish people being put to death and buried under the streets of Edinburgh. Old Butler developed a brand of ale with so-called medicinal properties, and set up a string of taverns to sell it in, and that—The Old Dr Butler's Head— is the last surviving pub. Try me on another.'

'You're a mine of fantastically useless information, Ollie. How about this, the Old Bell tavern, Fleet Street, scene of the fourth victim's death. Anything on that?'

After a few minutes of diligent searching, the archivist pulled out a dog-eared Victorian photograph. He flipped it before Bryant.

'The frontage is right, but that's the wrong name.' He tapped the picture. A sig
n hanging above the entrance de
picted seven golden bells.

'Maybe it used to be called the Seven Bells. Doesn't mean anything.' Bryant consulted his list. 'All right, how about The Victoria Cross, Bloomsbury, which Carol Wynley died out-side?'

They dragged out several
mouldy cardboard boxes from be
neath the counters and emptied their contents across the planked floor. 'You're a pain in
the arse, Arthur,' Golifer com
plained.'Do I get anything out of this disruption and chaos?'

'The sense of inner calm that arises from knowing you've helped London's finest in the course of their duty,' said Bryant promptly.
'This place is a fire risk. Have you got insurance?'

'Don't you threaten me, mate. Here we go, look at that.' He slipped a creased sepia photograph from its protective sleeve and held it up for Bryant to
examine. Two straw-hatted publi
cans stood proudly in front of the pub window. Above them

part of the signage could be read:
Ales — Stouts — Porter

Established 1845 — The Vict—.

'That's the sign I saw. What
exactly is porter?' Bryant won
dered.

'The name of the drink changed. It used to be called Three Threads, because it was made up of stale old ale mixed with good young beer to freshen it, plus a third stronger beer called Twopenny. The threads refer t
o the taps on the casks. The re
sulting mixture was dirt cheap, so it became the chosen tipple of the Covent Garden porters, and the name "porter" stuck.'

'How could I have seen a pub called The Victoria Cross eighty years after it was demolished?'

'You couldn't, old chum.' Oliver chucked down the picture. 'There wasn't such a place.'

'What are you talking about?'

'The Victoria Cross wasn't awarded until 1857. When this pub was built, the medal didn't yet exist. The name must have been changed after that date. Old pubs sometimes dumped their original names if they got bad reputations.' Golifer pulled out a photographers' magnifier and examined the lettering above the window.
'Judging by the width of this frontage I reckon the first name was shorter, probably The Victoria.'

'But I specifically remember the date, 1845. I remember the painted sign depicting the medal.'

'There's a simple explanation,' said Golifer. 'They changed the sign but not the etched detailing on the glass.'

'No. All of the other building details match the pub I saw,' Bryant insisted. 'It's some kind of deliberate anachronism, put there to trick me.'

'Do you realise how bloody paranoid that sounds?' Golifer handed him the photograph.
'Go on, take it, at least I'll be able to bill you.'

'I agree, it's utter madness,' Bryant said miserably, 'but how am I supposed to rationalise what I saw? Try one more for me, the Exmouth Arms, Exmouth Street. It's where three of the victims were photographed together.'

Golifer sighed and began searching the alphabetised racks again. This time he found a more recent photograph, colour, taken in the 1970s, featuring hipsters with tiresome haircuts forcing a pose outside the pub, surrounded by black plastic rubbish sacks left in one of the many refuse collectors' disputes of the time.

'Okay, a case in point, the sign carved into the wall of the saloon says 1915, see?' Golifer held the picture so close that Bryant had to back away to examine it clearly.
'But the back of the photo has 1816 as the pub's foundation date. Says here it was originally named the
Viscount Exmouth, presumably af
ter the first Viscount Exmouth, as his dates were something like 1757 to 1833. He was a British naval officer, actually a vice-admiral, who turned u
p in the Horatio Hornblower sto
ries. He was the hero of the bombardment of Algiers in 1816 that ended Christian slavery. And according to this, he was also the father of one Pow
noll Bastard Exmouth. Bloody ex
traordinary choice of name for his son, I must say. So, as the pub was there before the rest of the street, it must have lent its name to Exmouth Market. Anything of use so far?' 'Not that I can think of.'

'Exmouth's family motto:
Deo Non Fortuna
—Through God Not By Chance. Nice family crest, silver argent, red chevron, three silver mascles. Natty painting of the admiral on the pub's sign.'

'What was the viscount's actual name?' 'Edward Pellew.'

Bryant's eyes widened. 'Holy jumping Moses, I think my memory suddenly improved.' 'Why do you say that?'

'I remember that name. Let me think. I need a cup of char, strong, Indian, lots of it.'

Golifer had been hoping to get some work done, but now resigned himself to acting as a butler to his old friend. 'It was back in 1994,' Bryant told him once they were seated in Golifer's cramped kitchen behind the store.
'We had a case of suspected kidnap come in. A teenaged girl had been missing for over forty-eight hours, and it seemed clear to us that her boyfriend was somehow involved in the disappearance. At first he refused to speak to anyone, but John and I tricked him into admitting that he had been with her on the night of her disappearance. During the subsequent interview, we discovered that he had rendered her unconscious and imprisoned her in the basement of his mother's pub. Luckily, we found her and were able to effect her release. T
he odd thing was that he really
seemed to care for the girl, and simply couldn't help himself. It was a very unusual case.' 'What happened to him?'