The Deadly Fire Read online

  THE LONDON MURDER MYSTERIES

  Cora Harrison is the author of many successful books for children and adults, including the Drumshee series set in Ireland. She lives on a small farm in the west of Ireland with her husband, her German Shepherd dog called Oscar and a very small white cat called Polly.

  Find out more about Cora at:

  www.coraharrison.com

  For Noah, Peter, Abe, Alexander, Joel and Reuben

  First published in Great Britain in 2010

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Cora Harrison, 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Cora Harrison to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 082 2 (paperback)

  eISBN: 978 1 84812 217 8

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  Cover design by Patrick Knowles

  Cover illustration by Chris King

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1. The Betrayal

  Chapter 2. Shoot That Dog!

  Chapter 3. The Body Snatcher

  Chapter 4. The School

  Chapter 5. The Brickworks

  Chapter 6. Fire!

  Chapter 7. Is Tom Alive?

  Chapter 8. Evidence

  Chapter 9. The Body in the Cart

  Chapter 10. The Tarpaulin Boys

  Chapter 11. The Boy from the Brickworks

  Chapter 12. Murder Hunt

  Chapter 13. A Clue to the Murderer

  Chapter 14. A Scream in the Night

  Chapter 15. The Burying Ground

  Chapter 16. Flight From the Body Snatcher

  Chapter 17. Blood Poisoning

  Chapter 18. The New Inspector

  Chapter 19. A New Suspect

  Chapter 20. Inspector Denham

  Chapter 21. The Goldsmith at Ludgate Hill

  Chapter 22. Sammy Sings

  Chapter 23. Stop, Thief!

  Chapter 24. The School is Gutted

  Chapter 25. The Building Site

  Chapter 26. The Bootprint

  Chapter 27. The Threat

  Chapter 28. The Inspector Arrives

  Chapter 29. The Chase

  Chapter 30. Stop That Boy!

  Chapter 31. Celebration

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  THE BETRAYAL

  Alfie gulped nervously and looked around. Night was falling and the fog was thicker and more yellow than ever. One by one, the costermongers were blowing out the torches in their stalls. The unsold fruit and vegetables had been packed into carts and wheeled away. Soon the entire square would be emptied of people. Those who were still there turned their gaze away uneasily from the sight of a twelve-year-old boy in the vicious grip of the most feared and hated person in the whole of Covent Garden market.

  Mary Robinson, known as the Queen of the Costermongers, was the tallest, widest, strongest woman that Alfie had ever known. She always dressed in a man’s overcoat and a man’s hat, and under her calf-length gown she wore a pair of men’s trousers. Her voice was like a man’s also, deep and hoarse, and she had the strength of the strongest dock labourer. Now she took hold of Alfie and shook him, knocking his head against the wooden struts of a nearby stall until he began to see stars in the fog surrounding him.

  ‘I’ve got you now,’ she hissed, holding his throat with one large rough hand while rummaging in his pocket with the other. ‘So it’s you that’s been spreading this poison among the stallholders, you pestilent little beast. Don’t think that I don’t know where you live, neither!’ She had taken the leaflets from his pocket, screwed them viciously into the shape of a corkscrew and thrust it at him like an accusing finger. Alfie knew what was printed on them.

  DO NOT ALLOW MARY ROBINSON TO CHEAT YOU.

  SHE LENDS YOU EIGHT HALF-CROWNS ON MONDAY.

  SHE TAKES BACK NINE HALF-CROWNS ON SATURDAY.

  MARY ROBINSON MAKES A FORTUNE EVERY YEAR

  WHILE YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN STARVE.

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ she spat. ‘I mean it. No one will miss a slum kid like you. It’s going to be a frosty night tonight – your body won’t be the only one to be swept up by the street cleaners in the morning and no questions asked. Come on, answer my question. Who got those leaflets printed? Don’t tell me any lies, neither. I’ve my fingers on your throat and you wouldn’t be the first that I have choked the life out of.’

  She was in earnest, this Mary Robinson. Alfie knew that. He cast a quick, desperate glance around to see if his cousins Tom and Jack were near, but no one was around except his blind brother, Sammy. Sammy sang for the stallholders and their customers, and charitable people put a few coppers into the bowl at his feet. Now, however, there was no one left to sing for, and Sammy waited patiently for Alfie to lead him home.

  The woman saw his glance and Alfie heard her chuckle. ‘And he’s your little brother, isn’t he? Perhaps I’ll choke the life out of him first. Let you watch him die! Have you ever heard a man die from strangulation? I have, and I’ll tell you that it’s not an easy death. A boy would be quicker, but he’ll suffer just as much.’

  And then she was walking over towards Sammy, dragging Alfie along, her hard fingers still at his throat, the first finger and thumb pressing in so that he could not yell, could not even whisper, could not warn Sammy, could not tell him to run. Desperately, he reached up and clawed at her hand.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he managed to say, his breath wheezing like that of an old man.

  ‘That’s better. Seeing a bit of sense, are you?’ Her grip eased a little, just a very little, just enough so that he could gasp out the name.

  ‘Mr Elmore!’

  ‘Who’s Mr Elmore?’ Once again the grip tightened warningly before release.

  ‘He’s the teacher. The teacher at the Ragged School, at St Giles.’

  ‘I know him. The son of the goldsmith in Ludgate Hill, son of a rich man. So that’s who is trying to rob a poor woman like me! Well, Mr Elmore won’t see you again, and he won’t see that blind brother of yours neither. He’ll just be a burden on the parish when you’re dead, so I’ll get rid of him as well as you.’

  And then Alfie knew that it was all over. He had betrayed Mr Elmore for no reason. He was still going to die and so was Sammy. He had broken his promise to his dead mother to look after his blind brother. That was his last thought as the life was slowly squeezed out of him and a deadly faintness came over him.

  CHAPTER 2

  SHOOT THAT DOG!

  And then there was a whistle. A sharp, high whistle and then a note: just one note. A note pitched almost impossibly high. A boy’s voice. Sammy’s. His whistle, too. Sammy could not see, but his hearing was pin-sharp. He knew that Alfie was in danger and he had called for help.

  Then a bark. A deep bark. A scrabble of paws on the cobbled surface of Covent Garden. A shout of warning from one of the costermongers. Another bark, a whole series of barks and then, from deep down in the chest of a large dog, an angry growl.

  The grip on Alfie’s neck slackened. He opened his eyes. Mary Robinson was no longer holding him. She wasn’t even looking at him. She was s
taring fearfully ahead.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed. One of her helpers approached with a torch and then another. The pitch on the torches flamed up and lit the scene.

  It was Mutsy! Faithful Mutsy. Mutsy, who had followed Alfie home one day from Smithfield market to make his home with the four orphan boys and to love and protect them. He was a very large, very hairy dog with enormous paws and a heavy fringe of hair hanging down, a dog who made most people smile, but there was nothing comic about him now. Every fibre of his body bristled with menace.

  Step by step, he advanced on Mary Robinson. Each hair of his coat seemed to be standing on end, making his body appear almost twice as big as normal. His brown eyes, usually so soft and loving, were now hard, and fixed on Mary Robinson’s face. His lips were stripped back from his teeth.

  Pace by pace, his huge paws moved threateningly across the ground.

  ‘Help!’ screamed Mary Robinson again. ‘Police! Help!’ Her loud harsh voice rang through the square. She let go of Alfie. Quickly, she snatched a torch from one of the men and threatened Mutsy with it. The big dog did not flinch, though. Still he growled, standing so close to his owner that Alfie could feel heat from Mutsy’s body against his bare leg.

  ‘Police! Help!’ screamed Mary Robinson once more and this time there was an answering shrill sound of the police whistle. A few of the people standing around disappeared, but most stayed.

  Alfie put a hand on Mutsy’s back and looked over at Sammy. Was there any way that he could get himself and his brother away from this place? He took a hesitant step backwards, but Mary Robinson flourished the torch again, and Mutsy growled and snapped at her.

  ‘Kill that dog! Shoot him! He’s mad. He has rabies! He tried to attack me. Everyone saw him. Listen to him growl,’ she screamed at the breathless policeman who had just arrived, still blowing on the small whistle attached to his uniform.

  ‘I haven’t got a gun, ma’am,’ said the policeman diffidently. He probably knew Mary Robinson. He sounded scared of the woman.

  ‘Well, hit him with your truncheon, then. What do we have policemen for if they can’t defend us against a mad dog?’ Mary Robinson looked around at the crowd, inviting them to agree with her.

  The policeman took one tentative step towards Mutsy, swinging his truncheon in a half-hearted way. Mutsy glanced at him, then settled his gaze back on Mary Robinson and gave another ferocious growl.

  The policeman blew his whistle again. ‘I’ll have to get the dog catcher, ma’am. He’s got a net and he can kill the dog when he’s safely trapped in the net.’

  ‘He’s not mad. He was trying to defend me and my blind brother,’ croaked Alfie, his throat so sore that he could hardly speak. He kept his hand on Mutsy’s collar and moved cautiously over to join Sammy. Now the three of them were together and his courage came back to him. ‘That woman tried to strangle me,’ he said, bravely pointing at Mary Robinson.

  ‘You little . . .’ Mary Robinson took two steps towards him, and then backed away hastily as Mutsy showed his teeth and growled again.

  ‘Here’s another peeler,’ shouted one of the costermongers as a second policeman came panting up through the crowd.

  ‘We want a dog catcher,’ bawled the first policeman. ‘There’s a mad dog here.’

  ‘The dog’s not mad,’ repeated Alfie. His voice was beginning to come back, though his throat was still very sore. To his relief, he could see a familiar face above the navy-blue uniform and the number on his collar. ‘You know me, PC 29. Inspector Denham knows me – Alfie Sykes from Bow Street.’

  The second policeman hesitated. A glance passed between him and his colleague and then he nodded. He spoke in a low voice, but Alfie could hear the words ‘Runs errands for Inspector Denham’.

  Cautiously, he drew in a deep breath. ‘Is it all right if I take my brother home out of this freezing fog, sir?’ He did not look at Mary Robinson, but addressed the first policeman with as much politeness as he could manage to get into his croaking voice.

  Once again the two policemen exchanged glances and then the first said, with a jerk of his head, ‘Go on; hop it!’

  Thankfully, Alfie seized his blind brother’s hand and put his other on the rope collar around Mutsy’s neck. As he made his way towards the edge of Covent Garden Square, he could see his two cousins waiting for him.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Mutsy just took off when I was doing a trick with him,’ complained Tom, Jack’s younger brother.

  Alfie opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again. Someone had tapped him on the back and then thrust a piece of paper into his hand. Alfie looked at it curiously. It was one of the leaflets that he had been handing out, the leaflet that Mr Elmore of the Ragged School had printed in an effort to stop the costermongers being robbed by Mary Robinson.

  The back of the paper should have been blank, but this one had something drawn on it.

  It was the picture of a boy – crudely and badly drawn with a piece of charred wood from a torch. But that was not all.

  The boy in the picture had a rope around his neck and he dangled from a gallows.

  Alfie drew in a long breath and felt his heart thump wildly.

  There was no mistaking the meaning of Mary Robinson’s message.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE BODY SNATCHER

  ‘Stop arguing, Tom. I say you go to school, and you go to school.’

  Alfie had had a hard day and his throat still ached from Mary Robinson’s fingers. He spoke angrily: he was tired of Tom. They had this argument every single night. Tom did not enjoy the Ragged School. He was finding it almost impossible to learn his letters and he was still in the lowest class in the school. Alfie bent over the fire in the cellar they called their home, carefully dampening it down with a mixture of coal dust and water. No sense in wasting fuel while they were all out.

  ‘I could stay at home with Sammy if you’re worried about that Mary Robinson,’ grumbled Tom for the tenth time as the four of them made their way down Monmouth Street. ‘Me and Mutsy – we wouldn’t let nobody in. You could trust us. You’ll only get into trouble bringing a blind boy and a dog to school.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Alfie. Mary Robinson’s remark about knowing where he lived lingered in his mind. He knew there was some truth in what Tom said. He didn’t think that Mr Elmore would mind him bringing Sammy. Sammy was quick and sharp and even if he couldn’t see, he could join in the chanting of the alphabet with everyone in the first class. No, it wasn’t Sammy he was worried about – it was Mutsy. Even a man as kind as Mr Elmore might refuse to have a dog in his school.

  On the other hand, Alfie did not want to walk through the dark, fog-filled streets without Mutsy’s protection. He wasn’t just scared of Mary Robinson and her gang of toughs – it was said in the market that some of those fellows would knife a man as quickly as they would cut a cabbage stalk – but she was not the only menace that stalked the gas-lit streets of this part of London.

  Alfie caught his breath in a gasp of fear as he saw a burly figure approaching them from the direction of the Drury Lane burying ground.

  Joseph Bishop was feared and loathed by all. Even the poorest of the poor – even people who rented one corner of a room in the crazy, tumbledown houses in the parish of St Giles – would not do what Joseph Bishop did.

  He was a grave robber, a body snatcher.

  In the darkness of the night, even in the dim twilight of foggy days, Joseph Bishop went into the burying ground of Drury Lane and dug up bodies which he sold to the medical students at St Bart’s Hospital for dissection. But, even worse, people said that he also murdered children to sell their bodies. Perhaps it was easier to kill a child than to dig one up from the stinking earth of the over-crowded burying ground.

  ‘Keep well out of his way,’ Mr Elmore had warned a week before. He had looked all around the room, making sure that every child in his Ragged School was listening to him, before continuing. ‘There was a young boy who used t
o come here, a boy with a twisted leg. The last that anyone saw of him, he was talking to Joseph Bishop. I have spoken to the police about this, but nothing is done. It seems as if only the murders of the rich and the powerful are investigated by them.’

  Alfie had known what Mr Elmore meant. Ever since then he had kept a sharp eye on Sammy. Perhaps the body of a blind boy would be of interest to the medical students.

  ‘Ugh,’ muttered Tom now, pinching his nose between his finger and thumb, as Joseph Bishop approached them.

  ‘Shut up,’ muttered Alfie. Tom had no sense. His older brother Jack was quiet and easy-going – a loyal member of the gang and a hard worker, but Tom was a trouble-maker, always rebelling against Alfie’s rule and challenging every decision.

  Joseph Bishop looked at the four boys narrowly as he passed, transferring a sack of something bulky and evil-smelling from one shoulder to the other. He said nothing, though – just looked at them, then at Mutsy, and then passed on. A deep growl rumbled in Mutsy’s chest, but it was low and Alfie covered it by exclaiming quickly, ‘There’s Sarah!’

  ‘Hello, Sarah,’ said Tom.

  ‘Why are you looking so glum, Tom?’ Sarah asked, and Tom scowled.

  ‘You’re late, Sarah,’ said Jack hurriedly with an eye on his brother’s annoyed face. ‘You’re usually at the school before the door even opens.’

  Sarah was the scullery maid in one of the posh houses in Bloomsbury Street, just to the north of the parish of St Giles. The mistress at her previous house had overheard Sammy singing in the streets and had got her coachman to bring him back to her drawing room to sing there. Sarah had taken Sammy home to the cellar afterwards and had made friends with the other boys. She, Alfie and the rest of the gang had worked together in solving the murder of Mr Montgomery for Inspector Denham. The puzzle could not have been worked out if Sarah had not been able to read and that made Alfie determined that he, Jack and Tom would also learn.

  ‘Is Sammy coming to school, too?’ Sarah sounded surprised as she stroked Mutsy.