Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (29 page)

‘Well, it so happens that I have become party to some confidential deliberations. I might have pretended to more enthusiasm for radical politics than I actually felt. I might have striven – for reasons of my own – a little harder than some might consider necessary to discover all the details. And now certain people have discovered what I know and are very displeased.’

‘Mr O’Toole,’ I said, ‘you make no sense at all.’

‘He means,’ said Blake, sitting down again heavily and beginning to look quite ill, ‘that through a mixture of lies and guile he’s got word of some Chartist plan, and now the men concerned have discovered what he’s done, and are out to get him. What I’m asking myself is why, Mr O’Toole, you should go to such trouble to find such things out. As you say, you are no Chartist yourself. And the
answer that comes to me is that you’re a nose for the blue bastards, which is why you enjoy such good relations with them, and they set you to finding out as much as you could about it.’

‘A nose?’ I said.

‘An informer.’

‘That is perfect nonsense!’ said O’Toole, outraged.

‘Is it? I had a visit early this morning from a pair of coppers, very much in earnest. These are souvenirs of their visit.’ He pointed to his face. ‘They went on about Chartist threats and Chartist plots. I think that on one of those occasions when you crossed the censor, or libelled some toff, or when some blackmail plan went bad, the coppers came to you and said they’d go easy if you would pass on any useful intelligence that came your way. That was how it started, wasn’t it? I am familiar with the practice, Mr O’Toole. It’s no rare thing, believe me.’

I had an intimation that O’Toole might bolt for the door. Sure enough, he picked this moment to hurl himself towards it, but not before I had stepped across and caught him. With a pathetic wail he fell back on the settle next to Blake.

‘All right! But I must have help! I must leave London. They are looking for me. They are a bloodthirsty lot and they mean me no good.’

‘What about your friends among the coppers?’

O’Toole gave him a weary look.

‘Tell me your story and I shall see what I can do.’ Blake propped his head up on his hands.

‘Get a move on, O’Toole,’ I said, ‘Mr Blake is sickening again and I have no patience for you.’

O’Toole wriggled uneasily. He fiddled with his cane, put his head in his hands, then sat up. He said, ‘Some of them have set up what they call a “Committee of War”. Very secret.’

‘Who is on it?’

‘You would not know them.’

‘Names,’ said Blake.

‘A Marylebone shoemaker called William Cardo; a physical-force Chartist delegate called Joseph Williams; a bookseller – a
Northerner – called Charlie Neesom; a Scottish doctor, very cool customer, Peter McDouall; and a crazed Polish major called Beniofsky, a military man. He is to drill the men and plan the assaults. He loves to talk about blood and he is all for setting light to the city with bonfires. He talks of torches and little else. And knives. To my mind he is quite mad. There are a few other hangers-on.’

‘A doctor called McDouall?’ I said, suddenly struck by this.

Blake closed his eyes. ‘I should have recognized him.’

‘You were hardly in a fit state,’ I said. ‘I certainly didn’t.’

‘McDouall was here?’ wailed O’Toole.

‘Calm yourself,’ said Blake. ‘He is not here now.’

‘They are watching you too! Why are they watching you?’ He stood up and sidled to the window again to look out.

‘If you were seen coming here,’ Blake said, ‘there is little we can do now. Let us proceed one step at a time. We will think about McDouall later. We saw him and the Pole and met Neesom at a Chartist meeting.’

O’Toole looked as if he might burst into tears. ‘You were at a Chartist meeting?’

‘One thing at a time, sir. Who are the hangers-on?’

The little man gathered himself. ‘A writer called Harney, George Harney. Likes a swig. Likes to talk. Cannot decide if he is in or out – he wants to frighten the authorities with the threat of force, but is less eager to carry through. And there is a second tier of hothead young fools who have taken hard to revolution and fancy the notion of swinging a pike. I don’t know all their names. They are all devoted to Neesom.’

‘Do you know Watkins? Small, lively man, a lay preacher,’ I said. ‘Is he part of it?’

O’Toole shook his head. ‘He is a moral-force man. Dead against such notions.’

‘How did you get in with them?’

‘Through Harney. I’ve known him for years. Offered them my lodgings for meetings. I have a reputation among them of being a sympathizer, but not a signed-up Charter man. No one would
suspect me, so they could meet in my rooms without fear of being suspected themselves.’

‘But it was the blue bastards put you up to it.’

O’Toole hung his head and nodded.

‘And now they’ve discovered you’re a nose.’

‘They suspect me.’

‘How widely is this plan known?’

‘It is a close secret. I think some other London organizers like Watkins may have an intimation and would not go along with it, being strong moral-force men, but equally would not give away their comrades. There are others who will hang back in order to see how it turns out.’

‘If they can no longer meet at your lodgings, where will they be based?’

‘Neesom has a bookseller’s shop in Brick Lane.’

‘What of the Chartist leader, Feargus O’Connor?’

‘They do not trust him. Neesom’s very much a temperance man and wants to make it part of the Charter. O’Connor disagrees and has attacked him for it. But the Committee believe that if their plans are successful, O’Connor will join them soon enough.’

‘And the plan?’

‘They are convinced that the London poor are close to despair and sufficiently hungry and angry to rise. They have gathered a stockpile of pikes, guns and knives. I do not know where. They were to pick an organizer in each city division where there is a Chartist group. They may already have done this. Beniofsky, the Pole, was to train the organizers, who in turn would select members they considered ready to fight. As I say, they may already have started. The plan is to organize meetings in taverns about London. At these, instead of talking of the Charter they will press home the terrible injustices perpetuated by the government, the tragic plight of the poor, hunger, unemployment and all that.’ O’Toole laughed cynically; Blake stared at him. O’Toole’s levity quickly gave way to an embarrassed cough.

‘These meetings are to gather support for a great outdoor assembly and march. I do not know the precise route or date – it is to be
kept a tight secret from the new police and they are still arguing over it: whether to go to Clerkenwell Green, then to Lincoln’s Inn and, from there, east to St Paul’s, the river and the Tower; or around the other way, towards Parliament. But the marchers are to assemble at Coldbath Fields prison. They call it “the Steel”, you know, after the Bastille, where the French revolution began. There will be speeches to rouse the crowd. Weapons will be secreted among group leaders and hidden nearby.

‘Even if the people do not rise, there are still plans to set fire to property and to the London docks, and the Major wants to kidnap certain prominent men who have opposed the Charter or spoken against attempts to help the poor, and even to assassinate them. Most of the others were wavering on this and considered it too extreme. I must say I find him frighteningly intemperate.’

‘You have no idea when this will take place?’ said Blake faintly.

‘In the next week I should say, but I cannot be sure. There was word that the price of wheat was to rise again. Food will be more expensive. People will be angry.’

‘Have you told all of this to the coppers?’

‘Most of it. They have not afforded me the protection they promised me,’ O’Toole said sulkily.

‘I think you knew they wouldn’t. That is why you came to me at the Cyder Cellars.’ O’Toole wagged his head in reluctant admission.

‘I will help you,’ said Blake, ‘if you answer my next questions, understand?’

The little man stared at him, his eyes big with apparent sincerity; he nodded.

‘What hand did you have in Eldred Woundy’s death, and how are he and the other dead printers connected with this?’

‘I had none!’ O’Toole protested, stung. ‘And as far as I know, they are not connected in any way.’

I could not remember ever having seen Blake more surprised.

‘But you went into hiding the day Woundy was murdered!’ I said. ‘Because of you, we had him down as our chief suspect for the Wedderburn murder.’

‘I cannot help that. It was the merest coincidence. I did dislike –
all right, hated – the man. But this has nothing to do with him. After I left the Cyder Cellars that night, I returned to my lodgings and found Harney, Neesom and the surgeon, McDouall, waiting for me.’

It must have been only hours after Blake and I had seen them at the Chartist meeting.

‘McDouall is like stone, he gives nothing away. Neesom was angry but tried to hide it. Harney was hardly able to look me in the eye. He has never been a good liar – at least in the flesh – so I knew they had a notion. They wanted to know if anyone had come asking questions about them. I assured them that no one had and that I myself had been the soul of discretion. It was only afterwards that I realized I had made a mistake – they must have known the police had heard something, and by denying all I made myself suspect. I judged it sensible to disappear.’

‘Instantly thereby confirming their suspicions of your guilt,’ I said.

‘Why did you have your disappearance publicly announced at the Cyder Cellars?’ said Blake.

‘I cannot help a small flourish here and there,’ O’Toole said. ‘It is in my nature. Besides, I wished them to think I had left the city.’

‘Why did you not?’ Blake asked stonily.

‘Well, to be honest, I did not wish to leave town as old Cumberland is back to visit the Queen. I have a little outstanding business with members of his entourage. I immediately holed myself up in a room not far from here, and then became concerned about going further. I cut quite a figure in London, you know. I did not know who might recognize me and who might blab. But I must leave tonight. I must. Though,’ he added, looking faintly abashed, ‘I am also short of steven.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

‘He hasn’t enough money,’ said Blake impatiently. ‘Did you have an idea of where you might go, O’Toole? Do you have family in Ireland?’

‘I’m not going back there!’

‘Can you ride a horse?’

‘I prefer not to.’

‘What precisely did you think I might be able to do for you?’

‘Well, those who know say you are a man of great resource, Mr Blake, of elegant solutions.’

Blake put his face in his hands, then lifted it up again as it had plainly hurt.

‘Mr Blake,’ said O’Toole, his desperation reasserting itself, ‘I have weathered many threats and beatings; I have always confounded my pursuers. But I have not left London in twenty years, and I have no idea where to go. Still, I must go tonight.’

‘You say I owe you a debt. But the information you gave me brought me no closer to the murderer of Woundy, Wedderburn and Blundell. In some respects it actually made matters worse. The conspiracy you claim to have caught yourself up in has nothing to do with our case either. What you have done, however, is to draw us deep into a matter in which we have no business or interest. The coppers think I know something about this Chartist plot – they also appear to think Wedderburn and the other dead men had something to do with it – and now it seems the conspirators do too.’

‘But McDouall was here hours before I arrived,’ said O’Toole brightly. ‘I am not the cause, so.’

‘But if they are watching, your arrival will only have confirmed their suspicions,’ I said. ‘Can you not see, Mr O’Toole, why Mr Blake might not feel entirely obliged to help you? You might check the window again, by the way. I thought I saw a shadow pass across one of the gaslights.’

O’Toole scurried to the window.

‘McDouall does not seem to have done you any harm,’ I murmured to Blake. ‘He could have if he had wished to. Did he ask you any questions? Would you stoke the fire, Mr O’Toole?’

‘I cannot remember,’ Blake muttered back. ‘The fever and the beating loosened my wits and the laudanum slowed me down.’

‘What did he want, then?’

‘He knows Neesom; Neesom knows the Wedderburn boy. Maybe that’s why.’ He glanced at O’Toole, who was now piling the last of the firewood on to the grate and energetically poking it.

‘Is anything missing?’ I ventured.

‘Will you look on the table?’ he said.

I walked over. ‘Your notes are gone.’

‘All of them?’

I nodded.

‘Well, they won’t do him much good, unless he can read shorthand.’

‘Read what?’

‘Never mind.’ He closed his eyes.

‘Jeremiah, I am taking you back to bed.’

‘What about me?’ said O’Toole, who was now stretching his feet out towards the crackling flames.

‘Mr O’Toole,’ said Blake, ‘I am sick. My mind is not at its sharpest. We are most likely watched. Give me time and I’ll work out something elegant for you.’

‘By no means!’ O’Toole cried. ‘I cannot stay here any longer, I cannot bear the thought. I must have a solution tonight.’

Blake raised his palms in supplication. ‘I advise you to wait. But if you insist on leaving I can arrange something. I give you no guarantees that it will work, however. None at all.’

‘I shall take that chance. I have faith in you, Mr Blake,’ said O’Toole fervently. ‘Now, I do not suppose you have something I could eat? I am quite famished. And perhaps a little something to quench a man’s thirst?’

At the rear of Blake’s house there was a door that led out into an evil-smelling backyard. Upon reaching it, I let myself out, awkwardly picking my way through a veritable mountain of broken furniture, wooden shards and rotting rubbish, made all the harder as the moon was enveloped in cloud. Following Blake’s instructions, I clambered through a hole in the old fencing into the yard of Miss Jenkins’s building and then into the one further along. There was an old gate in the back wall here, and I pushed it open and stepped into a quiet cobbled lane. On the other side were the back gates of an ostler’s yard, described in detail to me by Blake. At my arrival the horses shifted uneasily in their stalls, and a man stepped out from a corner with a bull’s-eye lamp.