Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (22 page)

He shook his head. ‘His bruisers have gone missing. You heard from either of them?’

She shook her head. ‘Didn’t know much about them. Common run of nobblers, no better or worse than the rest.’

‘They been with him long?’

‘Not long. He’d had a nobbler from time to time in the past – his line of business, sometimes it was useful to look well protected. But having two all the time was new. Didn’t make nothing of it though, just said the paper brought more attention and you couldn’t be too careful. Never gave the impression of being fearful; but then he wasn’t the kind to show it, and these last months he was so taken up with the paper.’

‘Did he bring his bruisers here?’

‘Sometimes, not always.’

‘And he slept here?’

‘He had a room here. But often he slept at the paper.’

‘Can we see it?’

‘You’ll find nothing.’

‘Nevertheless.’

She took us up the stairs and along a corridor, lavishly decorated with more fine wallpaper and a new carpet. One door was open and as we passed I glimpsed a collection of what I could only describe as instruments of torture, mounted on the walls like trophies: whips, flays, rapiers, something resembling thumbscrews, various cuffs and tethers, and two metal helmets that looked designed to pinch the head or impede the breathing.

‘Ah, my sweet innocent, you are shocked,’ said the Governess. She opened a door further along. An empty room. By which I mean a room quite empty of all character: richly decorated in velvet swags, a large feather bed with a silk bedspread, elegant tables, but nothing that volunteered that it belonged to anyone. One suit in the wardrobe with nothing in the pockets. No books, no papers. Nothing.

‘Do you imagine he would have left anything here that might have been found by one of my clients or even one of my girls?’ she said scornfully. ‘He would never have been so careless. Anyway, he was hardly here after the paper took off. This was small fry.’

‘Didn’t have a taste for your skills?’

‘He tried it once or twice but his heart wasn’t in it. What got him going was making his way. That was his first love. But I’ll shed a tear for him. We were fond of each other. He was fair with me. Good to me even.’ She dabbed at her eye. ‘Now,’ she said, recovering herself, ‘you’d better go or I’ll have my bruisers on to you. And we don’t want that.’

Blake paused a moment as if deciding how far he might press her. ‘My card, madam. You send to me if you hear anything. You know I’m discreet.’

She glanced at it, her sangfroid quite returned. ‘Mr Blake – yes, I recall now. I hope you find them, and I hope they hang. If I think of something I’ll send to you. If I’m still here.’

‘Good day to you, Mr Kravitz,’ Blake said to the old clothes seller.

‘Is it though?’ said the old man. He was puffing on his thin pipe and dressed in so many layers that one wondered if he would be able to prise himself out of his chair.

‘Seen Matty Horner today?’

‘She was out early. She went home.’

‘Tell me where her lodgings are. We need to speak to her.’

‘Do you.’ Abraham Kravitz gave a long suck on his pipe and blew out a thin twist of smoke that snaked into the air. ‘Don’t trust you, Mr Blake, or your friend. Something tells me your meddling ain’t going to do her no good, nor the Wedderburns neither.’

‘You care so much for her,’ I said, ‘yet you let her go barefoot through the streets.’

He had the grace to look abashed then.

‘I need to speak to her today, old man,’ said Blake, his voice cold. ‘If I don’t, believe me, it will go hard for her and you’ll be the cause.’

‘Why don’t you ask the Christian boy?’ Kravitz said sarcastically, waving over our shoulders. The school-master Dearlove was walking past, hands and wrists folded under his arms against the cold, head bowed, his bulky comforter wrapped clumsily around his neck and shoulders. Blake had already stopped him.

‘It relates to the murders,’ he was saying.

‘Why yes,’ said Dearlove, startled. ‘I know where it is. Hard to find though. I suppose I could lead you there. But I must be quick, I have preparations to make, a deputation including Lord Allington and his sister are coming to inspect the school in a few hours.’

At the Drury Lane end of Holywell Street Dearlove stopped, with a sense of dutiful laboriousness rather than ease, to ask an old flower seller how she did; on the corner of Wych Street, he called to
a group of running boys that he had not seen them at school in a while. Then, without warning, a stout man barged into Blake, who in turn stumbled into me. The man’s face was a mask of rage. He grabbed Blake’s arm, bared his teeth and hissed into his face, ‘Stay out of the street. You’re not wanted here. You hang around, we’ll finish you. Understand?’

Unperturbed, Blake extricated himself from the man’s grasp, and drew me after.

‘You’re a familiar face round here, Mr Dearlove,’ he said.

‘I have been here a while now,’ the other said, quite oblivious to the scene that had just been enacted, ‘they know I am sincere.’

‘What are we to make of that?’ I muttered.

‘Someone who thinks it’s bad for business. Someone with a hand in the murders, perhaps,’ Blake replied.

‘You seem remarkably unconcerned.’

‘I’d say we’ll find out soon enough.’

Off Drury Lane we passed into another labyrinth of grim passages and alleyways as poor and broken down as anything I had seen before. I knew that I should never be able to navigate them on my own. At last Dearlove pointed us into a bleak dead end of flat-fronted tenements calling itself Vinegar Yard.

‘It is the tenth house along. In the cellar,’ he said. ‘I must be on my way.’ He marched away, a spindly figure, his thin jacket flying up in the wind and his hands still clasped under his arms against the cold.

A gutter ran down the middle of the alley and overflowed with puddles of filthy water, the cold allaying the filthy smells. To one side of the front doors were stands of steps down to cellars crudely gouged out of the ground. We descended. It was as dank as anything one could imagine, the door at the bottom little more than a few slabs of rotten timber. On this Blake knocked.

‘Who is it?’

‘Matty, it’s Mr Blake and Captain Avery. Will you let us in?’

‘Could it not wait? I’ll be in Holywell Street soon. I have been watching, honest.’

‘It cannot wait.’

‘I’m … I’m not decent.’

‘Then we will wait. Get yourself ready.’

At last there was a shifting of a bolt and a pulling and a pushing, and the door opened.

Matty Horner stood there, her hair falling about her shoulders, wearing her old grey dress, a blanket about her. She looked startled and not altogether pleased to see us.

‘May we come in?’

She nodded diffidently.

Behind the door the cellar was divided in two by a flimsy partition. Matty led us into a small dark space, longer than it was wide, reeking of fetid damp. Yellowing plaster peeled from the ceiling and walls; most had long since come away, exposing the old dank brick. The floor was uneven stone flags, though she had contrived a scrap of blanket to cover a little of it. At the back, the bottom half of a window, two of its broken panes stuffed with rags, let in a little light. To the side a recess had been dug out of the wall to make a fireplace, next to which there were a few pieces of coal. Two old produce boxes, such as I had seen at Covent Garden, were upturned. One had a candle upon it and a buttonhole in a small jar filled with water, the one pretty thing in the room, and a well-thumbed copy of a periodical,
Master Humphrey’s Clock
.

‘Abe gives them to me sometimes,’ she said, seeing my gaze rest upon it. ‘It’s got
The Old Curiosity Shop
in it. It’s the story about Little Nell, the pauper girl.’

On the floor was the seat of a chair without its back that had been dragged in from the street, and a little further away a moth-eaten mattress and a box filled with straw. In a corner a tin pail and an old china jug. Some hooks had been screwed into the brick and upon these were hung a few pieces of clothing, including Matty’s old bonnet. A makeshift shelf had been set up on a wall for storing food.

I did not know what to say.

‘It is not much, I know, but at least we’re not in a lodging-house or the spike – the workhouse,’ she said, ‘and that’s
something. I do not have much to report, Mr Blake,’ she went on hurriedly. ‘I heard that Daniel left and you stood guard—’

‘Where is Pen?’ said Blake.

‘He’s out,’ she said. She rubbed her nose and looked away. ‘I was meaning to talk to you about him.’

Blake shook his head. ‘There’s been another murder, Matty.’

She slipped on to one of the old boxes, aghast. ‘Not in the street? I was there this morning. I didn’t see anything.’

‘Not in the street. The fat man, Eldred Woundy. We found him this morning, spread out over his press, just like you described Nat, just like Jesus. I need to ask you again about Nat.’

‘Blake,’ I said, ‘not this again.’

‘I need you to describe it once more so I can compare them, so I can be quite sure—’

‘That they was killed by the same person,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

She took a deep breath as if to steady herself.

‘Blake,’ I said, ‘can this not wait?’

‘It’s dark in here,’ he said, ignoring me. ‘Let’s light the candle.’ He brought out a phosphorous match and lit the poor candle stub. It seemed surprisingly inconsiderate of him to use it up by daylight.

He led her through her description, once again watching her intently, scrutinizing every expression, every fidget, every shift of the voice, but he was gentler than he had been the first time. She rehearsed it all again, her voice low, her eyes downcast, and I marvelled at the vividness of her memory, and wished she might have exercised it in more benign circumstances.

‘Eldred Woundy was just as you described him,’ said Blake. ‘Your memory is very, very good. So I need to ask you, Matty, can you think of any other small detail you might have forgotten to tell us before?’

Matty shook her head. ‘I told you everything I remember, truly.’

‘You see,’ said Blake, ‘the other victims each had something different, something extra when they were killed. The first man – his name was Blundell, Matty – he was killed in just the same way, but he had red paint thrown over his hair. Woundy, he had these twigs
scattered all about him.’ Blake drew the twigs out of his pocket and began to twirl them between his fingers.

‘Captain Avery says they come from the elder tree. Does that make you think of anything, remind you of anything? Is there anything you can think of now?’

She scratched her nose and shook her head. But she could not pull her gaze from his.

‘I got to thinking about these murders, Matty, these terrible deaths. And I started to think about betrayal.’

Her eyes never moved from his.

‘You’re smartish, Matty, you’ve had some education. You write a good hand. I’m sure you read well too. Do you remember who the greatest betrayer is in the Bible?’

She did not answer.

‘It is Judas, isn’t it? There are lots of stories about Judas. Not the ones in the Bible, but other stories. I knew an old woman who used to tell me those kinds of stories, as if Jesus had lived in her village and Judas had been a neighbour that had gone to the bad. She told me that when Judas hanged himself, his stomach burst open so his soul could escape his body and descend to hell. It could not come out through his mouth because his mouth had kissed Jesus and so it was too pure.’

Matty’s hands pressed hard on her knees.

‘The first victim, Blundell, had red paint splashed all over his hair. I saw a book of Bible stories once with pictures and Judas had red hair. Do you remember that, William? The old stories say he had red hair.’

‘I think I remember something about it.’

‘Eldred Woundy had piles of twigs cast about him. William says they’re elder. In the stories elder’s the tree Judas hanged himself on. Is there anything else that might have been left around Nat?’

She shook her head.

He sighed. ‘Tell me, Matty, do you recall your Bible? What else did Judas do? What did he betray Jesus for? Do you remember?’

Matty hung her head and whispered, ‘Thirty pieces of silver.’

There was a silence.

Slowly Matty dragged herself up and took herself over to the wall by the shelf. She prised out one brick, then a second, then a third. She slipped her hand into the space behind and drew out first a small box and then a dirty knotted bundle. Not meeting our eyes, she placed both upon the upturned crate. In the box was a pretty hairbrush and comb, several metal tools that looked like pens, a small ragged doll and a few pieces of metal type, an ‘x’ and an ‘m’: a pitifully poor collection of her prized possessions. Then she untied the bundle. Within there was a pile of silver coins.

‘Thirty half-crowns,’ she said, tonelessly.

‘Matty!’ I said. ‘What have you done? You could be transported for less. Much less.’

‘I know it,’ she said, her voice dull, her head bowed. ‘I needed it. I’m sure it wasn’t Nat’s. No one asked after it.’ Her voice became thicker with every word, whether with anger or tears I could not say. ‘I haven’t spent none – any – of it.’

For a long moment no one spoke.

Blake said, ‘Where is Pen, Matty?’

‘I told you. He’s out.’

‘He hasn’t been here for a while. There’s barely enough food for one. One dress on the hook. One mattress slept on. It’s plain you’re on your own.’

‘I was going to tell you, I was. I just thought you wouldn’t listen.’

‘Tell me now,’ said Blake.

‘Pen was caught by the blue bastards the day before Nat died. They charged him with larceny. He’s going to be transported. He’s twelve.’

‘What’d he do?’

‘He took a penny tart from a shop, Taylor’s in Wych Street, and a finny – five pounds – too, though he swears he didn’t. Look, I know what thieving means. It’s near as bad as murder to the law. But the thing is, no matter how hard I worked, crossing-sweeping, walking to Hackney for winter cress, running errands, I couldn’t bring in enough to feed him and me – he was always hungry. That was how he started.’