The Hellfire Conspiracy (4 page)

“No, sir, ’pon my honor. We learnt our lesson, hain’t we, Alice? Just scrapin’ by like. Doin’ some rag pickin’. Caught a few rats for the ratman, enough for a pint and a pasty twixt the two of us, but we hain’t made so much as a farthing today.”

Barker lit another match and held the photograph up to the light. “A child has gone missing today. Girl, twelve years of age, blue sailor dress, white collar with a stripe around it. Black hose and petticoats. Brown patent leather boots. The peelers will be checking every fence and pawnshop in the East End.”

Annie put out a pudgy hand. “Oh, stop, yer worship, please. You’re making me mouth water. Sounds like Rowes of Bond Street. Very high priced. Couldn’t ask for better.”

“I want you ladies to know if any of these articles should appear in the area, I’ll be laying for both of you unless you find them first. Am I getting through to you?”

“Yes, yer worship,” Annie said, her voice high and trembling with fear. Alice had begun to mewl again.

“You girls hear of any slavers in the area?”

“No, no,” Annie said, and Alice shook her head emphatically. “If they’re here, they keep to themselves. They ain’t local—not permanent, anyways.”

“Off with you, then. Give them sixpence and not a farthing more, Thomas.”

Both hags scuttled forward and circled me. I could smell the rank odor and see the dirt that gave Annie her sobriquet. I slipped a sixpence into her hand and wished I could wash my own.

“Find some gainful employment,” Barker ordered, “or I’ll find it for you. I’m watching you.”

“Yes, sir,” they said, shuffling off. “Fank you, yer worship!”

We emerged again in the opposite direction into the welcome light of a gas lamp.

“What is a kinchin lay?” I asked.

“It’s stealing the clothing off children. It’s the first thing I thought of when I heard Miss DeVere had gone missing. The child is not usually hurt and generally comes home crying and embarrassed. If such a thing had happened to Miss DeVere, however, she would have returned by now, surely.”

“I’d never realized how easy it was for a child to go missing,” I said aloud, as we returned to Globe Road and resumed our search. “Bethnal Green’s got to have one of the highest populations per square mile in all England. Hundreds of eyes are watching one every day. Surely, if a child disappeared, someone would be able to say, ‘I saw her on Friday morning at ten on Green Street.’”

“One would think such would be the case, lad, but the sheer population means the average citizen on the street might see hundreds of individuals in a single hour. I want you to think of this, too: the disappearance of Miss DeVere is a tragedy, and I fear no good will come of it, but suppose the child had been poor. Would our dragnet be put out then? Would any official notice have occurred if ten were missing, or twenty?”

“’Ello, gents,” Soho Vic said as we came out of the alleyway. He was leaning nonchalantly against the side of a building, picking his teeth with a splinter of wood, looking as sloppy and mismatched as only a street urchin can. “What gives, Push?”

“We would consult, Vic,” Barker stated. He always treated Vic like an adult, rather than the species of vermin he was. I’ll grant that on occasion he was useful.

He shrugged his slender shoulders. “Step in my or-fice, then.”

“I need your lads here in the Green for a week or so, if you’re willing,” the Guv continued. “A girl has gone missing, a West End girl, and we believe slavers are about.”

“Got it. Anyfing in p’tic’ler we’se lookin’ for?”

Barker showed him the photograph. “The young lady and any signs of white slavery. Keep a watch on her father, who will be searching for his daughter on a gray horse. Oh, and I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to watch our backs as well.”

“It’ll cost you,” Vic warned. “Yer talkin’ an even dozen.”

“Then it will cost me,” Barker said philosophically.

“Right. I’ll get on it. ’Night, sir. ’Night, Ugly.”

The latter was for my benefit. Someday he would be eighteen years of age and I was going to treat myself to a hard one right on the point of his chin. I’d half a mind to take a leaf from Barker’s book and consider him an adult already.

We plodded along through the gaslit streets. The few lamps had been put here as a deterrent to crime, but this only pushed it into the dark alleyways on either side. The faces of the few people we passed were sunk in the shadow of their hats, save for the chalky white tips of their noses. Everyone was anonymous, which was good for the criminals and bad for the solitary bobby trying to protect people on his beat.

By eleven o’clock I had run out of energy and was going on sheer endurance. I toddled along beside my employer, trying to keep my eyes open. It was a bad feeling to know that for all our efforts, we had failed to locate Gwendolyn DeVere. Failure is not a word Cyrus Barker takes lightly.

When the Bow bells finally rang twelve, I nearly fell to the pavement. We had paced these streets for over ten hours.

“Right,” Barker said with finality. “Let us find a cab, then.”

His harsh whistle summoning a cab to Mile End Road was the sweetest sound I had heard all evening. I scrambled up into the cab when it arrived and propped myself in the corner. I would need all the sleep I could get; knowing Barker, we would start all the earlier in the morning. I let the steady clop and jingle of the horse, taking us away from this terrible district, lull me to sleep, a London lullaby.

T
HE NEXT MORNING I WAS DOWN IN THE KITCHEN
having a
pain au chocolat
and a cup of coffee while waiting for our chef, Etienne, to prepare my omelet. I was still half asleep and ruminating on how different life was here from the harsh reality of Bethnal Green, but a mile away. Then out in the garden I saw that Barker’s ward, Bok Fu Ying, had arrived and was speaking with her guardian while in the act of attaching a leash to Harm’s collar. My employer’s dog was rarely leashed. Washing down the last of the bun with my coffee, I went out the back door to see what was going on.

“Where is he going?” I asked, for it was obvious she was taking him somewhere.

“We are going to Yorkshire, where he have union with a lady Pekingese,” she explained. As always, the girl wore a jet-black mourning dress and a heavy veil.

“It is time to go to the office, Thomas,” Barker said. He tries to curtail any conversation between us, claiming that I am susceptible to female charms. I wished her and her charge a safe journey and followed my employer.

A note was waiting upon our arrival at Whitehall. There was now a telephone set in Scotland Yard, but old habits die hard. Barker took the message from the salver Jenkins presented and read it.

“A child’s body has been found in the sewers of Bethnal Green,” he announced. “We had better look into it. Come.”

The day had started badly and was getting steadily worse. I had not yet prepared myself to see a corpse. Viewing corpses was one of my least-favorite parts of private enquiry work. Children are like fireworks, energy bursting forth in every direction. To see one lying still, never to rise again, is hard. I am no sentimentalist, but if they, with all their energy, can be brought so low, what hope is there for the rest of us?

“How did Scotland Yard know we are investigating Miss DeVere’s disappearance?” I asked.

“I rang Terry Poole last night, but it looks like Swanson’s handling the case.”

In Grafton Street, a grate had been pulled out of the gutter and a tall ladder set at an angle in the hole. A constable guarded the ladder as if all Bethnal Green were waiting for him to leave so they could steal it. Barker identified himself and was just about to take hold of it when a head popped out of the hole like a badger from its sett, and soon a pair of wide shoulders squeezed out of it as well.

“Barker,” the man stated in greeting. He wore a tan mackintosh, with greasy spots where it had rubbed against tunnel walls, and a bowler hat. He and the Guv were of like size and shape. He even had the same Scottish accent, but that was not surprising. Detective work, both public and private, was an occupation that seemed to attract Scots. In fact, so many were in Scotland Yard that some jested they had taken up the work when the Scottish kings the street was named for had died out.

“Swanson,” Barker responded. “Bad business, this. Is it Gwendolyn DeVere, do you think?”

“That’s for the coroner to decide. I’m just here to drag out the body and fill out the forms.”

“Who found the body?” my employer asked.

“A lunger, crawling after pennies and such in the sewers. Thought it was old clothes when she first came upon it. Her scream must’ve echoed for miles through the tunnels. You after having a gander?”

“I’ve seen both sewers and dead bodies before, unless there is something else of interest.”

The inspector gave a grim smile. “Not unless you are a connoisseur of sewer pipe.”

“The body, man. Tell me about the body.”

“I’ve got two men bringing it up in a tarp. She’s a’most the right size as the DeVere girl, but, no, it ain’t her. The body is too decomposed. Must’ve been down there a fortnight, at least.”

We stepped back as the first constable’s helmet appeared out of the hole. The second constable was pale as death and wobbly on the ladder. They set the burden down on the pavement and moved away. Without preamble, Barker lifted the tarp. The little face inside was bloated, the eyes swollen, the mouth set in a rictus. The stench of decay hit me then, and the hand of the grave clutched me about the throat. For a second, I thought I would be ill. But the feeling passed, which in itself was alarming. How dulled was my soul becoming to this work?

Cyrus Barker removed his hat and then gently laid a hand upon the little corpse. Inspector Swanson and I watched his lips move in prayer, and in unison we removed our own bowlers. Then slowly the Guv shook his head.

“I’m sorry ’twas not the child you were searching for, Cyrus.”

“Perhaps it’s a blessing, Donald, and the girl lives yet. You’ll send word after the postmortem, will you not?”

“Aye, I will.” Swanson turned his head, looking between the two of us. “Oh, bloody hell,” he muttered. “This is just what I need. Here comes Stead.”

“The newspaper editor?” Barker asked.

“The gadfly, you mean. The commissioner would rather have him behind bars than any criminal alive. No photographs, Stead!”

I dared glance over my shoulder. Stead was young for the editor of a newspaper as widely subscribed to as the
Pall Mall Gazette,
not yet forty, I should say. He was of average build, with curly hair and a short, thick beard, and he looked a perfect fireball of energy. He had been directing a young companion to set up a large tripod and camera. Stead had been the first to print photographs of people in his newspaper but had raised the ire of the British government a number of times. Surely, he could never put such a tragic sight as this corpse into his newspaper.

“What have we here, then?” he said, skirting Barker and bending over the body. “Oh, my word, it is a child. Who could have done such a thing? Do you know how she died, Swanson?”

“Won’t know until the postmortem, Stead, you know that,” the inspector said peremptorily. “We just brought her up and have no statement to make.”

“She is clad only in a chemise and bloomers. Another piece of humanity lost in the machinations of the slave trade.”

“It is just like you, Stead,” Swanson said, “to start editorializing before you get the facts. There is no proof that this girl was a victim of the trade. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. The whole purpose of their operation would be to get a girl safely and in one piece to France, or wherever it is they send her.”

Cyrus Barker, who up until that moment had neither spoken nor moved, knelt down, pulled the handkerchief from his pocket, and delicately wiped the sewer muck from the thin neck of the little corpse. The throat was a battleground of bruises and pale, graying flesh.

“Strangled,” he pronounced. “Two-handed, by the look of it. I’ll hazard a guess that the neck bones are snapped—the child is so small.” He set the handkerchief in a ball on the cobblestones beside her.

“We haven’t met before. William T. Stead,” the newspaperman said, putting out a hand. “And you are?”

Barker looked at the hand warily, as if it were a cobra about to strike, then took it in his own. “Cyrus Barker. Private enquiry agent.”

Stead repeated the name for the benefit of his photographer, who had taken out a notebook and was now scribbling it down.

“It isn’t often the Yard works with private agents,” the editor noted. “How did you become involved in this case?”

“He’s not,” Swanson spoke up, anxious to take control of the situation. “Mr. Barker is investigating a child’s disappearance in the area. I called him in because I thought this might be the child in question, but it is obvious this one has been dead for some time.”

“Barker. Barker…” Stead snapped his fingers. “You’re the chap who advertises in our rival
The Times.
”

“I hardly call
The Times
the
Pall Mall Gazette
’s rival, Mr. Stead,” Barker said drily.

“Touché, Mr. Barker,” he responded, flashing a strong set of teeth.
“‘A touch, a touch, I do confess.’”

“Hamlet, act five, scene two,” Barker murmured.

“Very good, sir. An educated detective. Truly a rarity.”

I thought Barker was going to correct him and say that he was a private enquiry agent, but instead he said modestly, “Self-educated, I’m afraid. My assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, is the Oxonian.”

I thought it politic to follow the photographer’s example and take notes, so I merely tipped my hat to him, and took out my notebook.

“Marvel upon marvel. It’s a wonder that the Yard has not snapped up such talent. Actually, no, I suppose it isn’t.”

“All right, Stead, move along,” Swanson ordered. “We don’t have time for idle chitchat. This corpse must go to the morgue.”

We all stepped back as the mortuary cart was wheeled down the street toward us by a constable. The lifting of the body released a fresh wave of effluvia, and Stead turned away with a grunt. He handed my employer a card.

“I should like to interview you for an article sometime,” he said.

“I decline to speak about myself, sir, but if it relates to a case and is a matter of public record, certainly. I do not approve of all you do but appreciate the campaign you ran to get Gordon relief in Khartoum, though it proved too late for Gordon himself.”

“The man deserved better than the shabby treatment Gladstone’s government gave him.”

“Is it usual for an editor of your prominence to stalk the streets of the East End?” Barker asked. “Surely you have men for that.”

“Oh, gaggles of them,” he replied, “but this is a personal crusade. Scotland Yard wishes to sweep the issue of the white slave trade under the carpet, as does Parliament. It is not a pretty subject, you see, and they think it better to avoid it. However, I intend to send the facts into every library, public house, and parlor in London and to force Parliament to pass a law against it, no matter what the cost.”

“That is quite a crusade,” Barker said. “But, then, if my history serves me, all the crusades ultimately ended in defeat.”

“That is true,” the newspaperman admitted, “but they must have been glorious battles nonetheless. I hope we shall speak again, Mr. Barker. You are more of a surprise to me today than that poor wretched body pulled from the sewer. Come, Ronald.”

“Odd johnny,” I noted as they left. “Do you think he really tries to do it all for the public good, or is he merely selling newspapers?”

“An editor not concerned with the public good is a churl, lad, but one not concerned with selling newspapers is a fool.”

“You would do well to avoid him,” Swanson warned. “He’s got a bee in his bonnet over this slave trade business. Bloody socialist.”

We bid our adieus to the inspector, and as we walked away, Barker gave me a nudge on the elbow.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Follow the sewer.”

I looked down beneath my feet. I didn’t have a knowledge of the sewer plan of London, as I’m sure Barker had, but I could tell which way the pipes went: north and south. I saw what he was thinking. A good rainstorm would have washed the body into the Thames if it had not been discovered. Whoever found it would have assumed the child had fallen into the river. “And just where would such a body, collected from the river, have been taken?” he asked.

“Wapping,” I said.

“Aye,” Barker grunted. “The Thames Police.”

“You think there is a connection between the two girls?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence. One child is lost and another is found. As far as I’m concerned, it is worth an immediate inquiry.”