Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (24 page)

Blake tried to disengage himself but Soyer was insistent.

‘You must! And bring
votre ami
. I will send’ – he made a gesture with his fingers to show someone walking – ‘my sous chef to summon you. It will please you. And I will cook for you.’

Mr Soyer took his leave, assuring us that the ‘dobe’ was good. The French proprietor, a man in shirtsleeves and an apron who greeted Blake with only marginally less eagerness, led us to a small table by the fire, already laid with cutlery and two glasses. In swift succession, there appeared a bottle of red wine and a loaf of pale bread shaped like a long baton. At other tables, men in soft French caps and, to my surprise, even ladies sat over plates of cold meats and stews, murmuring to each other. There seemed to be not an English voice among them. A plate of something heavily dressed in a thick dark sauce and smelling strongly of garlic, which proved to be the ‘dobe’, was placed on our table. Blake launched into it without hesitation.

French cuisine might be the height of fashion in London, but in Devon we were used to plainer fare. Warily, I took a little off a spoon, for I was very hungry. It had a rich, robust, almost rank flavour, and despite the strength of the garlic, it was extremely satisfying. The bread had a marvellous thin crust on the outside and was impossibly light and fluffy and white within. For several minutes we did nothing but eat.

When I glanced up, Blake was giving me one of his bland hard looks. I fidgeted under it.

The Frenchman brought to our table a plate of winter cress and a slice of something yellow, melting and exceedingly pungent.

‘Ugh, what is that?’ I said, though I knew.

‘It’s cheese,’ Blake said.

‘It reeks! Dear God, you cannot mean to eat it?’

In answer he cut himself a sticky wedge, spread it upon a corner of bread and put it into his mouth. ‘It’s no different from Stilton.’

I pushed the plate with its stinking contents as far from me as possible. Blake’s lips twitched.

‘I suppose this is a hostel for displaced Frenchmen?’

‘There are French round here and Germans and Italians. They meet their compatriots at such places and eat the dishes that remind them of home.’

‘You live near here,’ I said, accusingly.

Again he fixed me with that look. ‘What is it you really want to say?’

‘Nothing. But may I congratulate you on the manner in which you put the crumbs together with Matty: Judas, the money. How you persuaded her to confess. I am in awe.’

I knew that was not what he meant. ‘For God’s sake, Blake,’ I said at last, ‘she is a thief. And in such circumstances, and you knew and said nothing.’

‘And you wanted to believe that she is’ – he cast about for a moment – ‘an innocent, untouched by her surroundings. Now you see the reality of her life, and you dismiss her.’

‘You cannot talk. One minute you have barely a kind word for her, now you lecture me?’

‘No one could live that life in those streets and be untouched by it.’

‘By God! I think you like her better as a thief.’

‘I think I know her better.’ He wiped his hands on his handkerchief.

‘Oh, it is the old story: William sees only what he wishes to see or what others tell him to see. But the great clear-sighted Jeremiah Blake sees everything clearly.’

‘No, but I could see you forming some fancy idea of helping her, of raising her hopes. Now you can hardly bear to speak to her. She is not a plaything. When you return to Devon, her life goes on here.’

I flinched and he saw it. ‘I have said I will go to the prison with her,’ I said stiffly.

‘If the magistrates are determined to send the boy down, there may be nothing we can do. And it may be that transportation to Australia is better than a life in London in the shadow of the workhouse. He’d be better fed and free by the time he was eighteen, with a chance to make a new life.’

‘How can you think that? Can you not see how it would be for her to be parted from him? I suppose not, since you keep yourself so resolutely apart from everyone else!’

I regretted the words as I spoke them. ‘I am sorry, Jeremiah,’ I said humbly.

‘You forget, transportation transformed my life.’

And mine too in a way, I thought.

We paid, and as we made to leave, the proprietor, Monsieur Dubourg, brought Blake a generous bowl of the beef stew covered in a clean white cloth, with a pewter spoon.

‘
Pour madame
,’ he said. Even I, with my sorry schoolboy French, understood this to mean, ‘For the lady’, or indeed, ‘For the wife’.

Blake shook his head, ‘
Pas aujourd’hui
,’ he said.

‘
J’insiste
,’ said Monsieur Dubourg, and thrust the bowl into his hands, smiling benevolently. Blake awkwardly drew out a few coins, but the proprietor waved them away.

‘
C’est mon plaisir
,’ he said magnanimously.

‘Where now?’ I said innocently.

‘We’ll go and find the MP, Heffernan,’ he said.

‘With that bowl of stew?’

Blake puffed crossly, sighed, hunched his shoulders as if the world were against him and turned right. It was a cobbled lane named Dean Street, not especially prosperous, but busy with life. Two respectable-seeming women with baskets of purchases exchanged news; they nodded at Blake. There was a French shop selling bread
and cakes, a barber’s advertising itself as ‘Figaro-coiffeur’, and a place apparently under German management selling cigars, snuff and tobacco. Though the houses had seen better days, some had elegant details and fine windows. Down the middle of the street came a large, ugly-looking man with an only slightly less large and ugly dog on a string; all who passed them gave him a wide berth.

‘This is where you live,’ I said.

Blake said nothing.

Halfway up on the left he stopped. A small shop. It was hard to tell precisely what it sold: there were bits of ribbon and small handkerchiefs in the window, along with tins of tea. Before Blake could open the door, a woman in a black bonnet appeared.

‘Oh, Mr Blake!’ There was no mistaking the pleasure in her voice.

She looked to be in early middle age, her clothes much mended but very neat, lines of worry about her eyes, a warm smile.

‘Monsieur Dubourg insisted,’ Blake said, presenting her with the bowl.

‘Oh, Mr Blake, that is too kind!’ She looked inquiringly at me. ‘And this is your friend?’

‘May I present Captain William Avery, lately back from India. Avery, may I introduce Miss Jenkins.’

‘A pleasure, ma’am,’ I said.

She blushed. ‘Mr Blake’s famous colleague from India! How marvellous! How do you find London, Captain Avery?’

‘Most stimulating, ma’am, if rather colder than India.’

‘Well said, Captain! Oh, Mr Blake, how I shall enjoy this. You must let me repay you for your kindness.’

‘The kindness is all Monsieur Dubourg’s. Besides, I think I must owe you …’

‘Oh no! I have taken no messages today. You owe me nothing. Now do tell me, what is the dish’s name?’

‘It is called a daube – beef, red wine, carrots and bacon,’ Blake said.

‘Captain Avery, you should know your friend – though so very busy – has been the soul of kindness ever since I acquired my shop.’ She hesitated as if she had said too much, and looked anxious. Blake smiled awkwardly.

‘Miss Jenkins takes messages for me, and her maid of all work does for me.’

‘Mr Blake,’ and she gestured at her bowl, ‘has introduced me to some of the interesting customs of our foreign neighbours. As a lady, of course, I cannot venture into their “restaurants” and “cafés”, but occasionally he brings me a choice dish so that I may enjoy it in respectable circumstances, and I must confess to having acquired quite a taste for French cuisine!’

‘You must eat it while it is hot, Miss Jenkins,’ Blake said. ‘And we, I fear, must be on our way.’

‘Another of your mysterious inquiries, Mr Blake?’

‘Another of my mysterious inquiries.’

I never discovered precisely how the officer at Westminster Hall knew Blake, but clearly he did, and when Blake arrived at the gates claiming to have an appointment with the Honourable John Heffernan to discuss a ‘thorny’ matter, a boy was at once despatched into the building’s depths. He soon returned, however, with the information that the Honourable Gentleman had not been seen in the Commons for some weeks. Blake sighed irritatedly. The officer nodded us inside and the boy led us to a clerk in a black gown who also regarded Blake with wary recognition. Blake explained he had papers for John Heffernan MP but the gentleman was absent and he did not have the precise address; it was either Cheyne Walk or Row in Chelsea. Nervously, the clerk initiated an investigation which yielded the address: 23 Cheyne Walk.

‘How is it that the clerks of the House of Commons quail before Jeremiah Blake?’ I said afterwards.

Blake shrugged. ‘Collinson’s clients. I’ve spared the blushes of a few men in there.’

We were preparing to take a hansom cab – I had suggested we arrive at the gentleman’s home without our feet and trousers drenched in city mud, and was also beginning to feel the effects of the night’s sleeplessness and the day’s length – when we were hailed
by a lively shout. Henry Mayhew was labouring across the muddy sward next to the great sooty church of Westminster Abbey, intermittently waving. He was, as he had been the night before, a little chaotic in appearance: his hair stood up in tufts, his coat was mis-buttoned, and he was struggling to keep in order a bundle of papers which threatened to spill out of his arms. He seemed very pleased to see us, if a little abashed.

‘Mr Blake! Captain Avery! I fear I was somewhat in my cups last night. Have you heard about Eldred Woundy?’

‘Blake and I found the body,’ I volunteered. ‘After O’Toole’s words, we decided to beard him at his offices early this morning.’

‘Fire and fury!’ said Mayhew, looking back and forth between us. ‘But I suppose you make rather a habit of finding yourselves in dramatic situations. I wish I did. How extraordinary! I don’t suppose you would care to describe the circumstances in which you found him? It will certainly be a big story. I can promise that I won’t cheapen it – well, not as much as some others would.’

‘I can’t tell you now,’ said Blake. ‘But if you are willing to wait, I fancy there will be something to tell later.’

Mayhew smiled and shrugged. ‘Ah well, murders were never really my métier. But I am serious about writing something on the London poor, Mr Blake. I was hoping I might visit Tothill House of Correction behind the Abbey there, but it seems I shall have to make representations to the Governor first, which may take weeks. Douglas, of course, thinks I am foolish, but then he does most of the time.’

‘It so happens that we have another story which may interest you, Mr Mayhew,’ I said, and gave a brief account of Matty and Pen Horner, explaining that I would be visiting the boy at Coldbath Fields. I asked if he would accompany me.

‘I should be most gratified,’ Mayhew said. ‘I cannot promise that I will definitely be able to publish something, but I should very much like to come.’

We said farewell, and Mayhew was knee-deep in mud again when he turned back to us.

‘Bless me, I had forgotten! Renton O’Toole has vanished! At
lunchtime today there was a notice delivered at the Cyder Cellars. O’Toole paid for it to be read aloud. It announced that as a result of certain circumstances he has elected to leave town for his own safety. No one knows where he has gone. We assume it is because of Woundy’s murder. At the Cyder Cellars they have opened a book on whether he is in fear of his life or is in fact the murderer himself!’

Cheyne Walk was a picturesque row of houses that looked on to the Thames in the quiet suburb of Chelsea. In the gathering dusk, a low mist from the water spread the contours of the gaslights and threw a gentle illumination over the bare plane trees and the crooked wooden fence which marked the river’s edge. The sounds – grinding cartwheels, boatmen’s shouts and occasional foghorns, dampened by the water – were a pleasant respite from the constant clamour of the city downriver. Down the road, however, was the unmistakeable figure of one of the new police in his hat and high-necked tunic.

Number 23 was a tall, handsome red-brick town house with elaborate iron gates and a fine plum tree which held on tenaciously to its last, half-crisped leaves. A maid answered the front door. At first she intimated that we should do better to return via the servants’ entrance. My affront at the suggestion, however, changed her mind and she reluctantly agreed to take our names to her master, while we waited on the doorstep.

‘He is not in,’ she said briskly on her return.

‘Then we shall wait,’ said Blake, pushing his foot in the door and sliding into the hall despite her efforts to close the door upon us. ‘We have no pressing engagement.’

‘You will be waiting a long time then,’ she said crossly. She stood there for some minutes, then took herself upstairs.

‘He’s here,’ Blake murmured.

Some fifteen minutes later she descended, followed by a gentleman who clearly took his toilet very seriously. He was dressed immaculately in a modish, tight-waisted, cut-away dark-blue frock-coat, cream trousers, a cornflower-blue silk patterned waistcoat with a fine gold watch chain, blue silk ascot and muslin shirt with fashionably long cuffs. One hand mopped his temples with a
handkerchief; the other gripped the stair rail as he descended slowly. His face seemed familiar but I could not tell why.