Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (48 page)

‘How will you live?’ he said.

‘Woundy left us some money. I don’t know what we shall do. We might return to Lincoln or Daniel may take over the press. I may set up a small school to teach reading and writing, now the teacher is gone. Come and see us, Jem.’

He looked down, again awkward. ‘John Heffernan wishes to do something for Daniel. He may write to you.’

Her face clouded. ‘It is too soon,’ she said.

The old man was in his familiar position, sitting amid his pipe smoke, wrapped in his many layers of musty cloth. He affected not to notice us until we were standing before him, and only then did he slowly raise his eyes to acknowledge us.

‘You,’ said Abraham Kravitz, his voice thick with irritation. ‘I knew you was trouble. What have you done with her? I’ve not seen her for days.’

‘She is sleeping in the rooms of Mr Blake’s neighbour Miss Jenkins.’ Briefly I explained what had happened.

‘So you delivered her to the evangelicals and they nearly did for her,’ he said. ‘And her brother’s to be transported Tuesday. I knew you’d be no good for her.’

‘Yes. It’d take a miracle to get Pen Horner released,’ said Blake.

The old man conceded this with a suck upon his pipe.

‘But you could make it happen.’

Kravitz laughed incredulously. ‘Don’t take your meaning.’

‘Come now, Abraham, you know which shop Pen was accused of stealing from.’

‘I heard the tale. Never been in there. No reason to go.’ Another suck.

‘Really?’

‘Why should I?’

Blake pulled his shoulders up to his ears as if he were stretching. He yawned. He said softly, ‘You said you had a brother who’d converted. I saw the resemblance the moment I laid eyes on him. Kravitz means tailor in Yiddish, doesn’t it, Abraham?’

He started to sputter, waving his pipe around. I was not sure who was more surprised, Kravitz or I. Blake smiled at him.

‘You can shout all you like, you can’t deny it. Now, shall we go inside, Mr Kravitz? I think there are matters arising.’

Reluctantly the old man shuffled into his shop, leaving the door to slam into our faces. ‘When did you see this?’ I muttered to Blake.

‘Did a little work for some Jew clothes dealers in the Houndsditch, picked up a few words then of Yiddish. When I saw Taylor I recalled the translation.’

The old man stood among his musty damp mounds, bullish and mutinous. Now that Blake had named it, I could see that he was a taller, finer-featured version of his smaller, paunchier sibling.

‘So?’ said Blake.

‘Chaim, his name was. I don’t like him, he don’t like me,’ he said gruffly.

‘Didn’t stop you from doing a little trade together though, eh? Those old copies of
Master Humphrey’s Clock
that you gave Matty are
from your brother’s shop. No one else round here has them. So some exchange is going on. Get those nice silk neckties from him too?’

‘Not against the law.’

‘It is if he’s a fence.’ This said with an air of weariness. ‘It wouldn’t take long for me to put it together. And my currency’s high with the police just now. But the fact is I don’t want to.’

‘What do you want then?’ said Kravitz sullenly.

‘You claim to care for Matty. What would you do for her?’

‘Look, the boy may not be a pickpocket yet, but mark me, he’s bound for no good. The girl, she’s special. One way or another she’ll make something of herself. But the boy – he’s a millstone. Transportation’s the best thing for him.’

‘Maybe you’re right, maybe you aren’t. You’ve not answered my question though, and he isn’t guilty, or not of what your brother set him up for. She’ll take it very bitter too, if he goes. Worse if she knows that you knew.’

‘You’d tell her?’

‘I would.’

He made a sour face. ‘And I must do what?’

‘Tell your brother he must retract his accusation against Pen Horner. If he won’t, then you’ll take what you know to the police.’

‘So I’ll land myself in it.’

‘So he’ll know you are in earnest.’

‘Or what?’

‘I shouldn’t need to threaten. But I can.’

He lifted his eyes to Blake and met his gaze at last without ire. ‘The boy’ll just be back in there in time. A few months, a year.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Blake. ‘Or perhaps if she has a steady place and clean lodgings he won’t.’

‘If,’ said Kravitz.

‘Come on, old man. Let’s finish this.’

Herbert Taylor, formerly Chaim Kravitz, was putting a taper to his gaslights, for the morning was dark. The peculiar assortment of
objects looked most macabre; the dust on the merchandise seemed to catch the light in such a way as to give the curling irons a sinister gleam so they resembled nothing so much as a pair of torture instruments, while the murderer’s cloak from
Macbeth
was lent an eerie volume, as if it might get up and leave of its own accord. When Taylor saw Blake, he rested his taper and folded his arms.

‘I told you I’d call the police on you,’ he said. ‘Be off.’

‘We brought Mr Kravitz with us,’ said Blake. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Mr Taylor?’

The sight of his brother brought the shopkeeper up short.

‘What do you want?’ he said, looking away from his sibling.

‘It’s all up, Chaim,’ said Abraham quietly.

‘Don’t call me that!’ said Herbert Taylor angrily. He peered out of the shop window, then pushed us aside, locked the door and pulled the shutter across the window. ‘What nonsense is this!’

‘You must withdraw the accusation against the boy,’ said Abraham. ‘You went too far.’

‘And what have you to do with this, Abraham? What’s brought you across my threshold for the first time in decades?’

‘I told you, you went too far.’

‘You didn’t protest when he was taken. They got something on you, have they?’

Kravitz took a breath. ‘No, they got something on you. You withdraw it or I’ll go to the authorities and tell them about your dodges, my brother.’

‘You’d not escape, you’re up to your ears in it.’

Abraham rolled his shoulders back and stretched his hands out before him. ‘It’s a wrong that should be righted, brother. I told you, it’s all up.’

‘You’re mad! That girl turned your brain. Fancy you’ll get under her skirts, dontcha? Dream on, old man.’

Abraham stared balefully at Taylor. ‘Always with the filthy mouth, brother. Shall we be along then, or shall I accompany these gentlemen to the station alone?’

Glowering, Herbert Taylor considered the alternatives.

‘You need do no more than withdraw the accusation,’ said Blake.
‘Say it was a misunderstanding. Say that the boy’s youth and his sister’s goodness have softened your heart.’

‘What of the constable?’

‘The one you bribed? I daresay you can come up with something on that front.’

Pen Horner was released the following day. Mayhew and I met him at the gates of Coldbath Fields, dressed in the clothes in which he had entered prison – a grimy assortment of items both too small and too large. At first he was almost dazed by the great muddy green space outside the prison walls and extremely wary of us. He looked anxiously around for some sign of his sister as we tried to make him understand what had come to pass – needless to say, the authorities had told him nothing of why he had been released. Once he realized Matty was sick and abed, he began to cry, and it was all I could do to persuade him that she was somewhere safe and warm. He cheered up a little at the prospect of travelling to Dean Street in a hackney carriage. Then we presented him with pastries from the French bakery. He inspected them initially with great distrust, then fell upon them with great enthusiasm.

As for Matty, I took my turn watching her over the days, cursing myself for my misplaced desire to help her, wishing that I had never introduced her to Allington. The drug’s progress was cruel. At one time she was dreadfully feverish, at another she was wracked with coughing, then gripped with cramps. It appeared that Agnes Vickers had begun to dose her with laudanum the morning after she arrived at Charles Street, when Matty had let slip that she had seen Lord Allington in Holywell Street.

We took Pen to see his sister at once. We had hoped she would make steady progress but it was still not clear if she would fully recover. We left them to their reconciliation, but it was hard to ignore the sound of tears through the walls of Miss Jenkins’s small apartment.

The singularity of Lady Agnes Vickers’s crimes, let alone the horror of them, meant that it was on every newspaper’s front page. She was variously denounced as a she-wolf and as monstrously unnatural. Among atheists and freethinkers her case was chewed over and brandished as evidence of the hypocrisy of the evangelicals and religion. The evangelical community denounced and disowned her at once. As he had promised, Blake gave a complete version of our investigation to Mayhew and Jerrold, who wrote an admirable account of it, leaving our names as far as possible out of the story. Thus it was that Sergeant Loin got a good deal of credit for Blake’s discoveries.

After a week, however, the stories began to diminish. There were few new details, and Lady Agnes was soon removed from prison and placed under the care of a doctor well known for his treatment of rich lunatics, until the trial. Allington’s parents publicly disowned her, but other members of the family endeavoured to have her declared insane. Jerrold believed that she would thus avoid the noose, Mayhew that she would hang. There was no doubt, however, that Threlfall would swing.

The public turned in preference to other stories: news of the Queen’s baby son, the story of the foiled Chartist plot, and the failed attempt of that other notorious murderer of the day, Brealey, to plead madness just before his execution, which was followed by his wife’s suicide. It occurred to me that people simply did not want to dwell upon the fact that a woman could perform such terrible acts.

Allington immediately gave up all his charitable and political work, retired from Parliament and ceased to go into Society. He was said to be distraught. For myself, I feared that he would never recover. His retirement was seen as a terrible loss to the philanthropists and social reformers.

O’Toole was rumoured to be visiting relatives in Ireland. Neesom was questioned for several days, but the authorities released him without charge. The Polish major was charged with various crimes. The police seemed convinced that he had taken some part in the Tower of London fire but could not produce any proof. He was given seven days to leave the country. Blake told me that Neesom had written to inform him that the Chartists were planning to
collect another vast petition of names to present to Parliament to ask for the vote. ‘Perhaps,’ the message went, ‘this time we may persuade you to sign it.’