Czytaj książkę: «Arrowood»

To Anita, John and Maya

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Read On

Chapter One

South London, 1895

The very moment I walked in that morning I could see the guvnor was in one of his tempers. His face was livid, his eyes puffy, his hair, least what remained on that scarred knuckle of a head, stuck out over one ear and lay flat with grease on the other side. He was an ugly sight, all right. I lingered by the door in case he threw his kettle at me again. Even from there, I could smell the overnight stink of gin on his foul breath.

‘Sherlock blooming Holmes!’ he bellowed, slamming his fist down on the side-table. ‘Everywhere I look, they’re talking about that charlatan!’

‘I see, sir,’ I replied as meek as I could. My eyes tracked his hands as they swung this way and that, knowing that a cup, a pen, a piece of coal might quick as a flash get seized and hurled across the room at my head.

‘If we had his cases we’d be living in Belgravia, Barnett,’ he declared, his face so red I thought it might burst. ‘We’d have a permanent suite in the Savoy!’

He dropped to his chair as if suddenly tuckered out. On the table next to his arm, I spied what had caused his temper: The Strand magazine, open at the latest of Dr Watson’s adventures. Fearing he’d notice me looking, I turned my attention to the fire.

‘I’ll put the tea on,’ I said. ‘Do we have any appointments today?’

He nodded, gesturing in the air in a defeated manner. He’d shut his eyes.

‘A lady’s coming at midday.’

‘Very good, sir.’

He rubbed his temples.

‘Get me some laudanum, Barnett. And hurry.’

I took a jug of scent from his shelf and sprayed his head. He moaned and waved me away, wincing as if I were lancing a boil.

‘I’m ill,’ he complained. ‘Tell her I’m indisposed. Tell her to come back tomorrow.’

‘William,’ I said, clearing away the plates and newspapers scattered across his table. ‘We haven’t had a case for five weeks. I have rent to pay. I’ll have to go work on Sidney’s cabs if I don’t bring money home soon, and you know how I don’t like horses.’

‘You’re weak, Barnett,’ he groaned, slumping further in his chair.

‘I’ll clean the room, sir. And we’ll see her at midday.’

He did not respond.

At twelve o’clock sharp, Albert knocked on the door.

‘A lady to see you,’ he said in his usual sorrowful fashion.

I followed him down the dark corridor to the pudding shop that fronted the guvnor’s rooms. Standing at the counter was a young woman in a bonnet and a billowing skirt. She had the complexion of a rich woman, but her cuffs were frayed and brown, and the beauty of her almond face was corrupted by a chipped front tooth. She smiled a quick, unhappy smile, then followed me through to the guvnor’s rooms.

I could see him weaken the moment she walked in the door. He began to blink and jumped to his feet and bowed his head low as he took her wilted hand.

‘Madam.’

He gestured to the best seat – clean and next to the window so there was a little light thrown onto her handsome physique. Her eyes quickly took in the piles of old newspapers that lined the walls and were stacked in some places to the height of a man.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘It is my brother, Mr Arrowood,’ she said. It was clear from her accent she was from the continent. ‘He’s disappeared. I was told you can find him.’

‘Are you French, mademoiselle?’ he asked, standing with his back to the coal fire.

‘I am.’

He glanced at me, his fleshy temples red and pulsing. This was not a good start. Two years before, we’d been thrown into the clink in Dieppe when the local magistrate decided we were asking too many questions about his brother-in-law. Seven days of bread and cold broth had crushed all the admiration he had for the country right out of him, and to make it worse our client had refused to pay us. The guvnor had held a prejudice against the French ever since.

‘Mr Arrowood and me both have a great admiration for your race, miss,’ I said before he had a chance to put her off.

He scowled at me, then asked, ‘Where did you hear of me?’

‘A friend gave me your name. You are an investigative agent, yes?’

‘The best in London,’ I said, hoping a little praise would soothe him.

‘Oh,’ she replied. ‘I thought Sherlock Holmes . . .’

I could see the guvnor tense again.

‘They say he is a genius,’ she continued. ‘The best in all the world.’

‘Perhaps you should consult him then, mademoiselle!’ snapped the guvnor.

‘I cannot afford him.’

‘So I am second best?’

‘I mean no offence, sir,’ she replied, now noticing the edge to his voice.

‘Let me tell you something, Miss . . .’

‘Cousture. Miss Caroline Cousture.’

‘Appearances can be deceptive, Miss Cousture. Holmes is famous because his assistant writes stories and sells them. He’s a detective with a chronicler. But what about the cases we never hear about? The ones that do not get turned into stories for the public? What about the cases in which people are killed by his blundering mistakes?’

‘Killed, sir?’ asked the woman.

‘Are you familiar with the Openshaw case, Miss Cousture?’

The woman shook her head.

‘The Case of the Five Pips?’

Again she shook her head.

‘A young man sent to his death by the Great Detective. Over the Waterloo Bridge. And that isn’t the only one. You must know the Case of the Dancing Men? It was in the newspaper.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Mr Hilton Cubitt?’

‘I do not read newspapers.’

‘Shot. Shot dead and his wife almost killed as well. No, no, Holmes is far from perfect. Did you know he has private means, miss? Well, I hear he turns down as many cases as he accepts, and why do you think? Why, I wonder, would a detective turn down so many cases? And, please, don’t think I’m envious of him. I am not. I pity him. Why? Because he’s a deductive agent. He takes small clues and makes large things of them. Often wrong, in my opinion. There.’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘I’ve said it. Of course he’s famous, but I’m afraid he doesn’t understand people. With Holmes, there are always clues: marks on the ground, the fortuitous faggot of ash on the table, a singular type of clay on the boat. But what of the case with no clues? It’s commoner than you think, Miss Cousture. Then it’s about people. About reading people.’ Here he gestured at the shelf holding his small collection of books on the psychology of the mind. ‘I am an emotional agent, not a deductive agent. And why? I see people. I see into their souls. I smell out the truth with my nose.’

As he spoke, his stare fixed on her, I noticed her flush. Her eyes fell to the floor.

‘And sometimes that smell is so strong it burrows inside me like a worm,’ he continued. ‘I know people. I know them so badly it torments me. That is how I solve my cases. I might not have my picture in the Daily News. I might not have a housekeeper and rooms in Baker Street and a brother in the government, but if I choose to accept your case – and I don’t guarantee that until I hear what you have to say – if I choose to accept it, then you’ll find no fault in me nor in my assistant.’

I watched him with great admiration: when he got into his stride, the guvnor was irrepressible. And what he said was true: his emotions were both his strength and his weakness. That was why he needed me more than he sometimes understood.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Miss Cousture. ‘I do not mean to insult you. I know nothing of this detective business. All I know is how they talk of Mr Holmes. Forgive me, sir.’

He nodded and harrumphed, and finally sat back in his chair by the fire.

‘Tell us all. Leave nothing out. Who is your brother and why do you need to find him?’

She clasped her hands in her lap and composed herself.

‘We are from Rouen, sir. I come here just two years before to work. I’m a photographer. In France, they do not accept a woman as photographer, and so my uncle he helps me gain employment here, on Great Dover Street. He is a dealer of art. My brother Thierry worked for a patisserie at home, but there was a little trouble.’

‘Trouble?’ demanded the guvnor. ‘What trouble?’

She hesitated.

‘Unless you tell me everything, I cannot help.’

‘They accuse him of stealing from the shop,’ she said.

‘And did he steal?’

‘I think yes.’

She glanced humbly at him, then her eyes brushed my own. I’m ashamed to confess that even though I was married more than fifteen years before to the most commonsensical woman in the whole of Walworth, that look stirred up an urge in me that hadn’t been stirred in a while. This young woman with her almond face and her single chipped tooth was a natural beauty.

‘Continue,’ he said.

‘He had to go very quick from Rouen so he followed me to London. He found a job in a chophouse. Four nights ago he comes back from work very scared. He begs of me some money to go back to France. He will not tell me why he must go back. I’ve never seen him so much scared.’ She paused here to catch her breath and dab at her eyes with the corner of a yellowed handkerchief. ‘I say no to him. I could not let him go back to Rouen. If he returns he will be in trouble. I don’t want this.’

She hesitated again, a tear appearing in her eye.

‘But perhaps more I wanted him here in London with me. This is a lonely city for a stranger, sir. And a dangerous one for a woman.’

‘Take a moment, mademoiselle,’ said my employer nobly. He sat forward in his chair, his belly hanging on his knees.

‘He left in a great anger. I have not seen him since. He’s not been at work.’ The tears began to flow properly now. ‘Where does he sleep?’

‘Now, my dear,’ said the guvnor. ‘You don’t need us. Your brother’s no doubt hiding. He’ll seek you when he feels safe.’

She held her handkerchief over her eyes until she had control of herself. She blew her nose.

‘I can pay, if that’s what concerns you,’ she said at last, pulling a small purse from inside her coat and withdrawing a handful of guineas. ‘Look.’

‘Put them away, miss. If he’s that frightened, he’s probably back in France.’

She shook her head.

‘No, sir, he is not in France. The day after I refuse him I come from work and see that my clock is gone, and my second shoes and a shift I bought only this winter last. The landlady says to me he was there that afternoon.’

‘There! He’s sold them to pay his fare.’

‘No, sir. His papers, his clothes, they are still in my room. How he enters France without the papers? Something has happened to him.’ As she spoke, she dropped the coins back into the purse and withdrew some notes. ‘Please, Mr Arrowood. He’s all I have. I have nobody to turn to.’

The guvnor watched as she unfolded two five-pound notes: it was some time since we’d seen banknotes in that room.

‘Why not go to the police?’ he asked.

‘They will say what you say. I beg you, Mr Arrowood.’

‘Miss Cousture, I could take your money, and no doubt there are many private agents in London who would happily have it. But it’s one of my principles that I never take money if I don’t think there’s a case, particularly from a person with limited means. I don’t mean to insult you, but I’m sure that money you have there is either hard saved or borrowed. Your brother’s probably holed up with a woman somewhere. Wait a few more days. If he doesn’t return, then come back and see us.’

Her pale face flushed. She rose and stepped to the grate, holding the banknotes to the glowing coals. ‘If you do not take my case I put this money in your fire,’ she said sharply.

‘Please be sensible, miss,’ said the guvnor.

‘The money’s nothing to me. And I think you prefer it in your pocket than your fire?’

The guvnor groaned, his eyes fixed on the notes. He shifted forward on his chair.

‘I will!’ she said in desperation, moving them down to the flames.

‘Stop!’ he cried when he could bear it no more.

‘You will take my case?’

He sighed. ‘Yes, yes. I suppose.’

‘And you will keep my name secret?’

‘If that’s what you wish.’

‘We charge twenty shillings a day, Miss Cousture,’ I said. ‘Five days’ payment in advance for a case of missing persons.’

The guvnor turned away and began to fill his pipe. Although he was usually short of money, he was always uncomfortable receiving it: it was too open an admission for one of his class that he needed it.

Once the business was conducted, he turned back to us.

‘Now, we need the details,’ he said, sucking on his pipe. ‘His age, his appearance. Do you have a photograph?’

‘He’s twenty-three. Not so well-grown like you, sir,’ she said, looking at me. ‘In the middle between Mr Arrowood and you. His hair’s the colour of the wheat and he has a long burn on the ear, on this side. I have no picture. I am sorry. But there are not many in London with our accent.’

‘Where did he work?’

‘The Barrel of Beef, sir.’

My heart fell. The warm five-pound note I held now felt cold as cabbage. The guvnor’s hand, holding the smoking pipe, had dropped. His eyes gazed into the fire. He shook his head and did not reply.

Miss Cousture frowned.

‘What is it, sir?’

I held the money out to her.

‘Take it, miss,’ I said. ‘We cannot take the case.’

‘But why? We have an agreement.’

I looked at the guvnor, expecting him to answer. Instead, a low growl came from his lips. He took the poker and began to stab the glowing coals. As I held out the money to her, Miss Cousture looked from me to him.

‘There is a problem?’

‘We have a history with the Barrel of Beef,’ I said at last. ‘The owner, Stanley Cream, you’ve probably heard of him?’

She nodded.

‘We came up against him a few years back,’ I said. ‘The case went badly wrong. There was a man who was helping us, John Spindle. A good man. Cream’s gang beat him to death and we couldn’t do nothing about it. Cream swore to have us killed if ever he saw us again.’

She remained silent.

‘He’s the most dangerous man in South London, miss.’

‘So you are afraid,’ she said bitterly.

All of a sudden the guvnor turned. His face was glowing from staring so intensely into the fire.

‘We will take the case, miss,’ he declared. ‘I do not go back on my word.’

I bit my tongue. If Miss Cousture’s brother was connected to the Beef, there was a good chance he really was in trouble. There was a good chance he was already dead. At that moment, working on the cabs seemed like the best job in London.

When Caroline Cousture had left, the guvnor fell heavily onto his chair. He lit his pipe and stared into the fire as he thought.

‘That woman,’ he said at last, ‘is a liar.’

Chapter Two

We were just finishing the pie and potatoes I’d fetched for our dinner when the door from the shop burst open. There on the hearth, carrying a carpetbag in one hand and a tuba case in the other, was a woman of middle age. She wore grey and black; her bearing spoke of a well-travelled soul. The guvnor was immediately struck dumb. I jumped to my feet and bowed, quickly wiping the grease from my fingers onto the back of my trousers.

She nodded briefly at me, then turned back to him. For a long time they looked at each other, him with a look of surprised shame, she with a righteous superiority. Finally, he managed to swallow the potato he held in his mouth.

‘Ettie,’ he said. ‘What . . . ? You’re . . .’

‘I can see I’ve arrived just in time,’ she replied, her noble eyes travelling slowly over the pill jars and ale flagons, the ash spilling from the fire, the newspapers and books piled on every surface. ‘Isabel hasn’t come back then?’

His big lips pursed and he shook his head.

She turned to me.

‘And you are?’

‘Barnett, ma’am. Mr Arrowood’s employee.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Barnett.’

She returned my smile with a frown.

The guvnor eased himself from his chair, brushing the flakes of pastry from his woollen vest.

‘I thought you were in Afghanistan, Ettie.’

‘It appears there’s much good work to be done amongst the poor of this town. I’ve joined a mission in Bermondsey.’

‘What, here?’ exclaimed the guvnor.

‘I’m going to stay with you. Now, pray tell me where I shall sleep.’

‘Sleep?’ The guvnor glanced at me with fear on his face. ‘Sleep? You have a nurse’s quarters of some kind, surely?’

‘From now on I’m in the employ of the good Lord, Brother. It’s no bad thing, by the look of this place. These mountains of papers are a hazard, for a start.’ Her eyes fell on the little staircase at the back of the room. ‘Ah. I’ll just see the space now. No need to accompany me.’

She put her tuba on the floor and marched up the stairs.

I made tea for the guvnor, while he sat staring out the murky window as if he was about to lose his life. I broke a piece of toffee from my pocket and offered it to him; he put it greedily in his mouth.

‘Earlier, why did you say Miss Cousture is a liar?’ I asked.

‘You must watch more closely, Barnett,’ he said as his teeth worked on the toffee. ‘There was a point in my speech when she flushed and refused my eye. Only one. It was the moment I told her I could see into a person’s soul. That I smelled out the truth. You didn’t notice?’

‘Did you do it deliberate?’

He shook his head.

‘It’s a good trick, I think,’ he said. ‘I might use it again.’

‘I’m not sure it is. Lying’s a way of life where I come from.’

‘It is everywhere, Barnett.’

‘I mean they won’t flush if you accuse them.’

‘But I didn’t accuse her. That’s the trick. I was talking about myself.’

He was making hard work of that toffee, and a little juice escaped the side of his mouth. He wiped it away.

‘What was she lying about, then?’

He held up his finger, grimacing as he tried to work the toffee off his molar.

‘That I do not know,’ he replied when he’d freed it. ‘Now, I must remain this afternoon and find out what the deuce my sister intends to do here. I’m sorry, Barnett. You’ll have to visit the Barrel of Beef yourself.’

I was none too pleased with this.

‘Maybe we should wait until you’re able to come,’ I suggested.

‘Don’t go inside. Wait across the street until a worker comes out. A washerman or a serving girl. Someone who could do with a penny. See what you can find out, but do nothing that’ll put you at risk. Above all, don’t let Cream’s men see you.’

I nodded.

‘I’m quite serious, Barnett. I doubt you’d get a second chance this time.’

‘I don’t intend to go anywhere near his men,’ I said unhappily. ‘I’d as soon not be going there at all.’

‘Just be careful,’ he said. ‘Come back here when you have something.’

As I made to go he glanced up at the ceiling, where the scrape of furniture being moved could be heard.

The Barrel of Beef was a four-storey building on the corner of Waterloo Road. In the evenings it was patronized mostly by young men arriving in hansom cabs from across the river, looking for some life after the theatres and political meetings had shut down for the night. Downstairs at the front was a pub, one of the biggest in Southwark, with two floors of supper rooms above that. The rooms were often booked out by dining societies, and on a summer’s night, when the windows were open and the music had begun, it could be like walking past a roaring sea. On the fourth floor were gaming tables, and these were the most exclusive. This was the respectable face of the Barrel of Beef. Around the back, down a stinking lane of beggars and streetwalkers, was the Skirt of Beef, a taproom so dark and so fugged with smoke you’d start to weep the minute you stepped in.

It was a cold July so far, more like early spring, and I cursed the chill wind as I set myself up on the other side of the street, slumped in a doorway like a tramp aside the warm cart of a potato man, my cap pulled low over my face, my body covered in an old sack. I knew too well what Cream’s men would do if they discovered me watching the place again. There I waited until the young men got back into their cabs and the street went quiet. Soon a group of serving girls in drab grey clothes came out and marched down eastwards towards Marshalsea. Four waiters were next, a couple of chefs behind. And then, at last, just the kind of old fellow I was looking for. He wore a long ragged coat and boots too big for him, and he hurried and stumbled down the street as if in urgent need of a crapper. I followed him through the dark streets, barely bothering to keep hidden: he’d have no reason to suspect anyone would be interested in him. A light rain began to fall. Soon he arrived at the White Eagle, a gin palace on Friar Street, the only drinking place still open at that late hour.

I waited outside until he had a drink in his hand. Then I strode in and stood at the counter next to him.

‘For you?’ asked the fat bartender.

‘Porter.’

I had quite a righteous thirst and downed half the pint in a single swallow. The old fellow supped his gin and sighed. His fingers were puckered and pink.

‘Troubles?’ I asked.

‘Can’t drink that stuff no more,’ he growled, nodding at my pint. ‘Makes me piss something rotten. Wish I could, though. I used to love a drop of beer. Believe me I did.’

Sitting on a high stool behind a glass screen was a man I recognized from the street outside the Beef He wore a black suit, rubbed thin at the elbows and ragged at the boot, and there was not a hair on his head. His match-selling business suffered on account of his habit of exploding into a series of jerks and tics that made people passing him jump back in fright. Now he was muttering to himself, staring into a half-pint of gin, one hand grasping the other’s wrist as if arresting its movements.

‘St Vitus’s Dance,’ whispered the old man to me. ‘A spirit got hold of his limbs and won’t let them go – least that’s what they say.’

I sympathized with him about drinking beer and we got to talking about what it was like to get old, a subject about which he had much to say. Presently I bought him another drink, which he accepted greedily. I asked him what was his occupation.

‘Chief sculleryman,’ he replied. ‘You know the Barrel of Beef, I suppose?’

‘Course I do. That’s a fine place indeed, sir. A very fine place.’

He straightened his beaten back and tipped his head in pride. ‘It is, it is. I knows Mr Cream as well, the owner. You know him? I knows all of them as run things down there. He give me, last Christmas this was, he give me a bottle of brandy. Just comes up to me as I was leaving and says, “Ernest, that’s for all what you’ve done for me this year”, and gives it to me. To me especially. A bottle of brandy. That’s Mr Cream, you know him?’

‘He owns the place, I know as much as that.’

‘A very fine bottle of brandy that was. Finest you can get. Tasted like gold, or silk or something like that.’ He supped his gin and winced, shaking his head. His eyes were yellow and weepy, the few teeth left in his mouth crooked and brown. ‘I been there ten years, more or less. He ain’t never had one reason to complain about my work all that time. Oh, no. Mr Cream treats me right. I can eat anything as is left at the end of the night, long as I don’t take nothing home with me. Anything they ain’t keeping. Steak, kidneys, oysters, mutton soup. Don’t hardly spend any money on my food at all. Keep my money for the pleasures of life, I do.’

He finished his gin and began to cough. I bought him another. Behind us a tired-looking streetwalker was bickering with two men in brown aprons. One tried to take her arm; she shook him off. Ernest looked at her with an air of senile longing, then turned back to me.

‘Not the others,’ he continued. ‘Only me, on account of being there longest. Rib of beef. Bit of cod. Tripe, if I must. I eat like a lord, mister. It’s a good set-up. I got a room over the road here. You know the baker’s? Penarven the baker’s? I got a room above there.’

‘I know a fellow who works down there, as it happens,’ I said. ‘French lad name of Thierry. Brother of a ladyfriend of mine. You probably know him.’

‘Terry, is that him? Pastryman? He don’t work with us no more. Not since last week or so. Left or given the push. Don’t ask me which.’

He lit a pipe and began to cough again.

‘Only, I’m trying to get hold of him,’ I continued when he’d finished. ‘You wouldn’t have a notion where I can find him?’

‘Ask his sister, shouldn’t you?’

‘It’s her who’s looking for him.’ I lowered my voice. ‘Truth is it might do me a bit of good if I help her out, like. Know what I mean?’

He chuckled. I slapped him on the back; he didn’t like it, and a suspicious look came over him.

‘Bit of a coincidence, ain’t it? You happening to talk to me like that?’

‘I followed you.’

It took him a minute to work out what I was saying.

‘That’s the way it is, is it?’ he croaked.

‘That’s the way it is. You know where I can find him?’

He scratched the stubble on his neck and finished his gin.

‘The oysters is good here,’ he said.

I called the barmaid over and ordered him a bowl.

‘All I can say is he was very friendly with a barmaid name of Martha, least it seemed that way to anybody with their eyes open,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they left together. You ask her. Curly red hair – you can’t miss her. A little beauty, if you don’t mind Catholics.’

‘Was he in any trouble?’

He drained his glass and swayed suddenly, gripping the counter to steady himself.

‘I keep my nose out of everything what happens there. You can find yourself in trouble very quick with some of the things as goes on in that building.’

The oysters arrived. He looked at them with a frown.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘It’s only as they go down better with a little drain of plane, sir,’ he replied with a sniff.

I ordered him another gin. When he’d just about finished off the oysters, I asked him again if Thierry was in trouble.

‘All I know is he left the day after the American was there. Big American fellow. I only know ’cos I heard him shouting at Mr Cream, and there ain’t nobody who shouts at the boss. Nobody. After that, Terry never come back.’

‘Why was he shouting?’

‘Couldn’t hear,’ he said, dropping the last oyster shell on the floor. He held onto the counter and stared at it as if he wasn’t sure he could get down there without falling over.

‘D’you know who he was?’

‘Never seen him before.’

‘You must have heard something?’ I said.

‘I don’t talk to nobody and nobody talks to me. I just do my work and go home. That’s the best way. That’s the advice I’ll give my children if ever I have any.’