Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (34 page)

' 'ello, Verity!' said Sergeant Albert Samson. 'I'm yer escort!'

The journey on the hard wooden seat of the third-class carriage was a test of physical endurance beyond anything he had known on the
Galloper.
Exeter, Bristol and Bath, the mock-gothic stations of Brunei's Great Western line passed with agonizing slowness. Discomfort, numbness and the aching cramp of returning sensation, formed the cycle of Verity's personal misery. At every station, Sergeant Samson would position himself with his head poking from the carriage window. Verity heard him addressing hopeful passengers.

'Police escort in here, ma'am . . . Lots o' places in the carriages further along ... No place for a genteel young person like you, miss, not in 'ere . . . Got address in London, 'ave yer? Ever in the penny gaff down Monmouth Street? Cider Cellars? Samson, miss, just ask for the name . . .'

On the subject of the escort duty, Samson remained taciturn.

'Couldn't say, Mr Verity. Mr Croaker's orders. Course, I never been told you was under arrest or anything like that. Just that you gotta be took off that ship and fetched to 'im direct. P'raps he thought you might make a run for it without me to watch over you.'

'Mr Samson, I been out o' the country! I ain't been 'ere to do anything, right or wrong!'

Samson leant forward confidentially from the opposite seat of the wooden carriage.

'All I can say, my son, the way Mr Croaker was carrying on, I reckon he's going to have you on the biggest charge since the Heavy Brigade at the field of Balaclava.'

'But, Mr Samson, I ain't done nothing!'

Samson shrugged. They crossed green meadows and saw the broad gleam of the Thames below Oxford, the first red-brick villas rising near its banks.

'Here,' said Samson, 'them three doxies on the boat! You must have heard a thing or two through that canvas, Mr Verity. Go on! Let's 'ave the tale told. What I can't make out is whether it was that blonde Miss Maggie and that Indian piece jigging round together with Jolly watching, or whether Jolly took one of the others and left one in the cold, or whether all three was head to tail like snakes in a circle. What was it then, old son?'

Verity glowered at his colleague.

'Mr Samson, you got a simple mind ain't yer? Young persons don't indulge themselves like that.' Samson laughed.

'Much you know, Verity! Ain't we broke into bawdy-houses and such places? And ain't we seen two doxies loving one another as if their lives depended on it?'

'Like I said, Mr Samson, you got a simple mind! You think what poor fallen creatures do in front of men to cam a guinea is what they want to do? You never 'ave understood the female sex, 'ave you? If you had, you'd know that such things don't happen. It's debauched men, not unlike you, Mr Samson, that forces 'em into such displays. As for doing it voluntary, it ain't in feminine nature. And I ain't particular to discuss the matter further.'

'Tribades,' said Samson.

'Eh?'

'It's what it's called by men of learning.'

'Then you get a proper Latin-and-Greek gentleman's education, Mr Samson, and p'raps I'll listen to you. Until then, I hope you won't mind keeping such nastiness to yerself.'

At the Great Western terminus, Verity looked wistfully toward the chimney-pots of Paddington Green. But there was a black cabriolet waiting. He and Samson, and even Verity's box, were loaded into it. As they rattled toward Whitehall, he gazed out on the familiar beats of central London which seemed by now almost to belong to another life. Down the long Regency bow of Nash's Quadrant, the whores were parading in pink or green crinolines and pork-pie bonnets with waving feathers. They stood like statues or like waxwork models, painted and wide-eyed, among the pushing throng of silk-hatted swells and the sporting 'aristocracy' of the night-houses. In the winter afternoon, the first bright glare of gas lights had appeared by the time that the cab turned down the Haymarket. Verity watched the coffee-stall with its tall steaming urns and saw the coquettish twirl of parasols, held slanting above eyes that sparkled with the excitement of cheap spirits. The raucous laughter, the glow of painted cheeks, the jostling of race-course 'snobs' in their loud clothes, passed before him like the easy reassurance of home. For all the exhilaration of the royal presence, it was to this seething mass of rowdy tricksters and hard-faced women that he belonged, not to the retinue of kings or princes.

Approaching Whitehall, and the office of 'A' Division. Metropolitan Police, in Scotland Yard, his eyes surveyed the old familiar territory. The ragged child with a broom taller than himself stood alert on the pavement, ready to sweep a crossing through the mud and filth of the road for anyone who might tip him with a small coin. The raddled whores from the Westminster slums, wearing the shabby cloaks and grimy feathers which had once been the pride of Regent Street, sidled out from their ramshackle lodgings to ply their trade in the dark alleys close to the great Parliament buildings, where their ravaged beauty was concealed by the shadows and the night. Here and there, the homeless poor huddled in pathetic family groups of three or four in the doorways of buildings, seeking an archway for the night where they might rest, undisturbed by the footsteps of Verity's uniformed colleagues on their beat.

They turned into Whitehall Place, where stood the old house which had been a gentleman's residence with views of the Thames over Westminster Bridge, until it had been acquired by the police commissioners for their own purposes. Verity entered the door which led from the police office yard. He heard the drunken voices from the cells, smelt the familiar carbolic which overlaid more offensive odours, and felt a deep sense of foreboding.

'Sergeant Verity! I trust I still have your attention!' 'Yessir! Course, sir!'

From the swivel chair behind his oak desk, Inspector Croaker looked up at the plump, hatless sergeant who stood at attention with chin up, facing his superior. The gleam in Croaker's dark little porcine eyes might equally well have been anger, or triumph, or a combination of both. With his frock-coat buttoned up to his leather stock, his face the sickly yellow of a fallen leaf, and his dark whiskers finely trimmed, his appearance was an enduring image in Verity's mind. 'Sour as vinegar and mean as a stoat', Verity had described him to Bella. The dry, withered tones of Croaker's voice were expertly adapted to the flights of official irony with which he lashed his subordinates. Verity held himself rigidly at attention, his gaze directed over Croaker's head to the dark river beyond the uncurtained window.

'You would make a fool of me would you, sergeant?' said Croaker, his words hardly more than a whisper. 'You would make me a laughing-stock in America, would you?'

'Sir? Ain't sure what you mean, sir. With respect, sir.'

'Are you not, sergeant?' Croaker was swallowing greedily in anticipation of his vengeance. 'You are seconded from this detail to guard His Royal Highness. On your first day you break into a New York police office, commit aggravated assault upon two officers, and have to be extricated from a prison cell to the embarrassment of the Prince and his staff. You then persuade the United States Treasury that Lieutenant Dacre, who died three years ago in London, has robbed the Federal Mint! Were you not aware, sergeant, that I and the other responsible authorities had already given our word to the Treasury that the man was seen dead?'

'No, sir. No one told me what you said.'

'Do you choose to lie to me, sir?' squealed Croaker, gripping his desk as if in a desperate attempt to restrain himself from violence. 'I tell you, this is some plan of yours! Would you play the lawyer with me, sir?'

Verity eased his neck gently free of the sharp edge of his collar.

'Stand still!' shouted Croaker. 'I will have you at attention till tomorrow morning, if I choose. I will keep you here till you take root, unless I am afforded satisfaction over your conduct!'

' 'ave the honour to state, sir,' said Verity firmly, 'that I seen Lieutenant Dacre three times in America. Once on the steamboat
Fidele
at St Louis. Second time on the little boat, the
Anna,
near Sulphur Springs Landing. Third time, by the river at West Point. That's facts, sir. With respect, sir.'

'Ah,' said Croaker sardonically, ‘I thought we should

come to this. It rests on your own word, does it?' 'And Miss Jolly's, sir.'

Croaker's dark eyes glittered with animal delight.

'Yes, sergeant. The United States Treasury had already made arrangements to employ that young person before I was able to assure them of Dacre's death three years ago. That brave young woman saw more of the villain on this occasion than you ever did. She is prepared to swear on her oath that it was not Verney Dacre.'

'Bleedin' little liar, sir. With respect, sir.'

'Really, sergeant? Are we to believe instead the word of a man who was nearly killed on the after-deck of the
Fidele
because he could not tell the difference between Lieutenant Dacre and a wire clothes-frame?'

'Wasn't like that, sir.'

'The word of a man who was so stupid that at Niagara Falls he arrested his own colleague instead of the supposed criminal ?'

There was a pause. Verity's face glowed a deeper port-wine shade.

'I been put up, sir!' he said furiously. 'But I ain't going to be seen off!'

'On the contrary,' said Croaker, 'the Metropolitan Police is very probably going to see you off, as you put it.'

Verity's face tightened in alarm.

'Sir?'

'I did not bring you here this afternoon, sergeant, for the pleasure of hearing your American reminiscences. My duty in another matter requires me to decide whether to suspend you from duty pending investigations, or to have you arrested forthwith to face criminal charges.'

'Sir?'

Croaker sniffed and glanced at a paper lying before him.

'In July, sergeant, while investigating the death of Lord Henry Jervis, you and Sergeant Samson had occasion to escort a young person, Cox, from Brighton to London by railway. That young person now alleges that you and Sergeant Samson removed her clothes during the course of the journey and - ah - performed certain acts.' Verity's checks puffed out with indignation. 'Lies, sir!'

'Really, sergeant ? Young women seem to tell lies rather a lot about you, to judge from your protests this afternoon.'

'Sir,' said Verity firmly, 'she can be proved a liar. She and Mr Samson nearly missed that train, sir. They scrambled into the last carriage by the luggage-van while I was further up. There's two gentlemen in my carriage I could find again if I 'ad to, who'd swear to the truth of it. I never was with that young Cox person. And if she lied about me, then she'd lie about Mr Samson too.'

The inspector pursed his lips.

'Very well, sergeant, then we need only proceed against vou for a serious breach of discipline.' 'Sir?'

Croaker held up a worn volume, bound in dark brown cloth.

'Where detective officers are obliged to escort a female suspect, they are to ensure that the suspect is never privately alone with less than two officers. You have, therefore, just pleaded guilty to a flagrant breach of that regulation. The penalty would lie somewhere between six months' loss of seniority and dismissal.'

'What I saw in America, sir, I saw. The Mint robbed by Dacre, sir.'

'What robbery, sergeant? The United States is no longer complaining of one. Gold may be erroneously delivered to banks without anyone being robbed. It was held safely enough by the banks themselves.'

Verity stared incredulously at his antagonist as he sensed Croaker's trap closing upon him. Croaker wagged the brown book again.

'The penalty, in the other matter, is to apply with equal severity to your colleague, Sergeant Samson.'

Verity fell silent. The gas light hissed steadily in the stillness. At last Croaker spoke again, his voice hardly a murmur.

'Box clever with me, sergeant, and I will have you! Yes, damn you, sir! Cross me, and I will see you broke for it!'

The glitter in the dark little eyes was now one of unambiguous triumph. At a gesture from the inspector, Verity stamped about and marched smartly from the room.

'Off 'ome now, are yer?' asked Samson cheerfully. 'Conquering 'ero? Haifa minute. This come for you, day or two back.'

He gave Verity an envelope. Too full for speech, Verity thrust it into his pocket.

The cab turned into the shabby little street beyond the Edgware Road. Half-way down the row of houses was a wide archway in the facade, filled by a wooden door. It marked the stable where Stringfellow kept his own cab and the ancient horse Lightning. Above and around the stable were the rooms of the little dwelling where the old cabman lived with his daughter, Bella, and Verity, once his lodger but now his son-in-law. Weary of everything but the prospect of seeing Bella and the two infant Veritys again, the sergeant got down from the cab and approached the little door at the side of the stable entrance. He knocked and waited, guessing that the bolts might be across it on the far side by now. He heard them drawn back. Prepared to gather Bella in his arms, he stepped back in dismay.

The door had been opened by a stranger, a girl of about sixteen, small and pretty with large brown eyes, a halo of cropped fair curls and an attractively solemn little face. Verity's heart beat faster at the certainty that some disaster had overtaken his little family while he was away. He thought at first that, in his weariness, he had gone to the wrong door, but the little passageway beyond it showed the familiar green wash upon its walls and the cracked wood of the stairs. Fearful of the answer to his question, he gasped,

' 'ere! Where's Mrs Verity?'

The girl gave him a wide-eyed look and bobbed a half-curtsey.

'I'll see if madam is at home.'

The absurdity of the pretentiousness and the relief from his worst apprehensions struck him equally.