The Body in the Fog Read online

  ‘The statue of King Charles,’ said Alfie after a moment. ‘We’re in Trafalgar Square!’

  ‘No! Is it morning or night?’ Jack sounded confused.

  ‘Getting on towards evening.’ Alfie didn’t like to admit that he too was bewildered. It seemed like a lifetime since they had gone down into that sewer. He narrowed his eyes. The fog was coming down thickly now, soaking up all the wet from the streets into a choking cloud.

  And then Sammy’s clear voice said, ‘Alfie, Jack.’

  ‘Sammy?’ Alfie was on his feet in a second, gaping in amazement and running headlong into the fog to find his brother pulling himself up from the ground, rubbing one arm. ‘What are you doing here? What’s happened to you? Where’s Mutsy? And Tom?’

  ‘That was just old Mick – had a bit too much beer,’ Sammy informed them, ignoring his brother’s questions. ‘Thought he had seen Jemmy come up from hell.’ He hesitated for a moment, but the bad news had to be told. ‘There’s one of Flash Harry’s mob still after you, Alfie. He’s got a gun. He wanted to keep hold of me until he could get his hands on you. Mick was taking me to him.’

  ‘I’m a popular lad,’ observed Alfie. ‘Half of London seems to be looking for me. I know what they want . . .’ He stopped and felt with his left hand inside his shirt front. It was no good, though; he knew that. His shirt and jacket had been torn when he’d pulled himself out of the manhole cover and now there was nothing there – not even a sodden piece of paper. ‘Problem is, I’ve gone and lost it!’ Oh, well, he thought. I remember what was on it, and perhaps it will make more sense to Inspector Denham than to me. The important thing now was to get Sammy home and out of danger.

  ‘Let’s get going, Sam,’ he said. ‘Take his other arm, Jack. Let’s run. We need to get changed. All right by you, Sammy?’

  With Alfie holding firmly to one arm and Jack to the other, running was one of the things that Sammy liked to do best. It was wonderful to go flying along without hesitating, without feeling his way tentatively, without worrying about bumping into anything. And the boys knew the way home so well that even the fog couldn’t slow them down.

  Jack and Alfie were both so wet that water was flying from them and, by the time they reached the top of Bow Street, Sammy was as wet as them. He didn’t care, though. Two days ago Jack had collected plenty of coal from the riverbed. They would soon have a good fire going and Sammy had enough in his pocket to buy something for supper.

  ‘Stop here,’ said Alfie, suddenly coming to a halt. ‘We should just check that none of my friends are waiting for me on Bow Street with a pistol in their pocket.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Jack. ‘They don’t want me. They only want you.’

  ‘Pity you can’t let them know that you don’t have the paper any longer,’ said Sammy after Jack had gone. ‘That’s why they want you, isn’t it? Perhaps you could ask the inspector to put a poster out describing it – that might work. Then Flash Harry and his mob will know you don’t have it any more. It could say something like Lost near Trafalgar Square – what about that?’

  ‘Why didn’t I think of that? You’re a lad with brains,’ said Alfie, giving Sammy an admiring punch on the arm just as Jack came back to say that there wasn’t a sign of any of Flash Harry’s mob around, but there was one very cold policeman watching the cellar from across the road.

  The policeman was the same man who had questioned them in Trafalgar Square, the night they found Jemmy’s body. He looked very cold indeed, thought Alfie. A large drop of moisture hung from his prominent red nose.

  ‘You going indoors?’ he barked. ‘Going to stay there, are you? No need for your personal guard any longer, what? I can tell Inspector Denham that you’re all safely tucked up in bed, is that right?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he strode off towards Bow Street police station, stamping his boots heavily on the pavement and swinging his arms, clapping himself loudly on the back in order to warm himself.

  ‘Shame,’ said Alfie with a grin as he took out the key to the cellar. ‘It would have been good to have him standing outside our door all night.’

  They had just finished changing their clothes and were piling more coal on the fire when the door to the cellar burst open and Mutsy raced in, licking Alfie, licking Jack, giving a quick wag of the tail and a touch of a wet nose in Sammy’s hand and then going back to licking Alfie again. Tom and Sarah followed him.

  ‘That dog’s got a brain the size of a football,’ said Alfie proudly. ‘You don’t need to tell him anything. He knows it all. He knows that I’ve been down the sewers. He don’t need to learn to read, do you, Mutsy? His nose will tell him any story. And you needn’t go sticking your nose in the air, Sarah. After all that floodwater, I don’t stink of anything. I’m as clean as a baby after a bath. Wait till you hear all about it! How much did you get, Tom?’

  ‘Four sixpences, two groats, one thruppenny piece and ten pennies,’ said Tom proudly. ‘Your board worked really well, Jack.’

  ‘Three shillings and nine pence!’ said Sammy wonderingly.

  ‘Enough for the rent,’ said Alfie. And then he took pity on Tom. ‘And a slap-up supper!’ he added.

  ‘Is the board all right, Tom?’ asked Jack anxiously.

  ‘Cracked a bit,’ said Tom. ‘Big fat woman. Nothing would do her, but that Mutsy had to ride with her and rescue her if she fell in!’

  ‘Thought she was crossing the River Thames, I suppose!’ Although he was cold, tired, wet and bruised, Alfie could not help giggling at the thought of this fat woman crossing the puddles on Jack’s board with Mutsy sitting demurely beside her like the guard on the stagecoaches.

  ‘You’ll have to rig up a sail next, Jack.’ Tom was laughing so hard that tears were running down his face.

  ‘Should have charged extra,’ said Sammy. ‘An extra groat for Mutsy to ride blunderbuss.’

  ‘Let’s have an early supper,’ said Alfie after they had told about their adventures. ‘That way, Sarah can have some before she has to go back to work. What do you think? Shall we have slices of salted beef? And a nice loaf of newly-baked white bread? What do you say, Tom?’

  ‘I say yes,’ said Tom. ‘I’ll go and get it. I earned it after all!’ He grabbed the money from the table and went off.

  Alfie rolled his eyes at Jack. ‘Of course, you were the one who had the good idea and made the board, not him,’ he said, but Jack just shrugged and Alfie said no more. He had too much else on his mind to be annoyed by Tom.

  ‘We’re thinking so much about Flash Harry and his mob of cracksmen that we’ve forgotten about the death of Jemmy,’ said Jack after Sarah had told them how she visited Inspector Denham.

  ‘Yes, Inspector Denham still says that’s the root of the whole matter,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Well, I think that we need to make sure that Bert the Tosher had nothing to do with it first,’ said Jack.

  ‘And Opium Sal,’ said Alfie. ‘I’ll question her tomorrow and you can talk to Bert, Jack.’

  In his mind he felt that it wasn’t too likely that Bert the Tosher had murdered Jemmy. After all, the whole affair of the gold cufflink was over and done with. What good would Bert do to himself by murdering Jemmy? He would just get himself hanged and leave his wife a widow and his children fatherless. In any case, thought Alfie, Inspector Denham was a smart man and if he felt that Jemmy’s death was connected with the post office raid – well, the chances were that he was right.

  And then he remembered Inspector Denham’s advice to keep away from Flash Harry and his story about the man who ended up in the Thames with a lump of lead tied to his feet. Chances were that he was right about that, also!

  CHAPTER 15

  POLICE PROTECTION

  As soon as Alfie had had some breakfast next morning, he went to see Inspector Denham. He had combed his rough curly hair carefully and put on the boots that Inspector Denham had given him money to buy. They were too big because he had got them so that they fitted Jack’s feet as well, bu
t they probably did make him look more respectable and might put the inspector in a good mood.

  He needed the inspector if he was going to get through this affair without being knifed or shot.

  ‘Next time I see a piece of paper flying through the air, I’ll remember to let it fall into the gutter,’ he said dramatically as soon as he was allowed into the inspector’s room.

  Inspector Denham looked up from the papers on his desk with a frown.

  ‘What piece of paper?’ he asked and then smiled at the sight of the large pair of boots.

  ‘Well,’ said Alfie, who loved to tell a good story. ‘There I was standing over Jemmy’s dead body, when Flash Harry himself came driving those post office horses across Trafalgar Square. He let this piece of paper drop, and I picked it up – and he saw me do it and ever since then he’s been hunting me.’

  ‘Where’s the piece of paper?’ asked the inspector eagerly, but Alfie shook his head.

  ‘Probably down in the Thames with the flood water,’ he said and then told the whole story of how he and Jack escaped by going down into the underground river under the cellar of the White Horse Inn and how the flood waters had swept them down until they managed to hold onto the wooden barrier gate.

  ‘Well, you must be born to be hanged! You’ve had more lucky escapes in your short life than any man I know. Whatever was written on that piece of paper must be of vital importance to Flash Harry and his mobsters. You can read, can’t you? You read it, I’m sure.’

  Alfie nodded and then remembered Sammy’s words. ‘Would it be possible, sir, to put some sort of notice outside the police station to say that the piece of paper was lost – between Haymarket and Trafalgar Square? That’s the truth, too. You see, sir, I can’t put my mind to solving your murder while I’m being chased all over London by men with guns in their pockets.’

  ‘I can see that.’ The inspector nodded. He took a steel pen from a tray in front of him, dipped it in the ink bottle, rapidly wrote a few lines and then showed it to Alfie, ringing a small brass bell on his desk at the same time.

  The red-nosed policeman came in immediately, scowling slightly at Alfie. ‘Take this down to Monmouth Street, Constable,’ said the inspector authoritatively, ‘and get the printer to make half a dozen copies. Tell him that it’s a rush job and that you’ll wait until he has finished. Then put one outside this station, one in Trafalgar Square, one in Haymarket outside the White Horse Inn and the rest anywhere nearby. Be as quick as you can.’

  The door had hardly closed behind the constable when Inspector Denham leaned across the desk and said, ‘Tell me what was on the piece of paper.’

  ‘Well, the paper itself was interesting,’ said Alfie, who liked to tell a story in his own way. He eyed the man’s impatient face and added sweetly, ‘Very interesting.’

  The frown was knitting the black bushy eyebrows again so Alfie continued quickly, ‘You see, sir, it was toff’s paper. Real thick stuff – very white – and that doesn’t come cheap, does it? Very thick too, and with wavy bits around the edge, all done in gold.’

  ‘Toff’s paper,’ murmured the inspector. ‘Well, well, well, that’s very interesting. Fits with what I was thinking. Tell me what was written on it.’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Alfie, but then, as he saw the disappointment in the man’s eyes, he added slowly, ‘but there was something drawn on it.’

  ‘Drawn?’ The inspector looked confused.

  ‘Can’t read, poor old Flash Harry, I bet. Not too bright.’ Alfie pushed away the memory of how recently he had learnt to read himself. ‘There was a picture of a moon and a clock beside it with the hands pointing to twelve – twelve at midnight, I suppose.’

  ‘Hmm.’ There was a disappointed note in the man’s voice. ‘Hardly seems worth all the fuss, does it?’

  ‘There was a signature, too, though I couldn’t read it – more a sort of scrawl at the bottom of the page. We thought that Flash Harry might use it for blackmail – getting money from the cove that wrote it.’

  ‘Now that, I suppose, would make it worthwhile trying to recover it.’

  There was a silence. The inspector shuffled papers on his desk and Alfie looked into the fire. It was a pity that he had taken the piece of paper from its hiding place and then lost it, but there was no use crying over spilt milk.

  ‘I’ll be going now, sir, unless you want me for something else.’ Alfie rose to his feet. He knew what he was going to do with his day, but for the moment he didn’t want to talk about it to the inspector. This was a job that he could manage better than any flat-footed policeman.

  ‘I’ll tell you something about that scrawl, sir,’ he added. ‘I’d say it were a toff that wrote it. Ordinary coves just print their name.’ He noticed with satisfaction that the man looked more cheerful at that news.

  ‘I still think it might have been someone from the post office that did it,’ said the inspector as he slipped something from his pocket into Alfie’s hand. ‘The thing I can’t make out, though, is why that old beggar man was murdered. That’s the real mystery in this business. Solve that and we might solve everything else.’

  Sarah was in the cellar when he got home. She smiled to herself as she heard Alfie coming down the steps, whistling. His interview with Inspector Denham must have gone well, or else given him ideas.

  ‘Lumme, you’ve been tidying up here, haven’t you,’ said Alfie when he came in. Whenever Sarah felt nervous she always organised the boys into a clean-up.

  ‘I can’t think when there’s a mess around me,’ she said.

  ‘Doesn’t bother me,’ said Sammy with a quiet smile.

  ‘Not Mutsy, neither.’ Alfie hugged the big dog exuberantly and placed the shilling that the inspector had given him into the rent box. Then he sat down beside the newly-cleaned window and told them about his talk with the inspector.

  Sammy listened thoughtfully, then spoke. ‘I was thinking that the link might be between Jemmy and the cove who drew the pictures. It might be nothing to do with Flash Harry.’

  ‘Flash Harry wouldn’t bother about someone like Jemmy,’ Tom chipped in. ‘Old Jemmy couldn’t tell the police anything they didn’t already know about Flash Harry and his mob.’

  ‘I was thinking about that, too, Sammy,’ said Alfie with a nod at Tom. ‘But I don’t suppose this toff who wrote the note, whoever he might be, was around that night, directing operations. There’d be no point in writing that note if he was going to be on the spot, unless he was just there secretly, of course.’ A sudden idea occurred to him and he turned to Jack.

  ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘could Jemmy read?’

  ‘Yes, he could,’ said Jack readily. ‘I was telling him about going to the Ragged School and how I was getting on well with my reading and then he got a bit down and told me that he and his brother had both learnt to read and write before their mother died, and that the only good it did him these days was that he was able to write down Opium Sal’s orders for drugs.’

  ‘Opium Sal,’ said Sammy thoughtfully.

  Alfie punched his brother on the arm. ‘That’s what I’m thinking too. It’s not just sailors, lascars and such like, who take opium. You get toffs there too. What do you say that a toff, perhaps someone working at the post office who was in league with the robbers, wrote the note down there in Opium Sal’s place – safer than at the post office? Perhaps Jemmy saw him . . .’

  ‘Saw the name of Flash Harry on the envelope.’ Sarah was starting to look excited.

  ‘And then when Mr Unknown Toff was walking through Trafalgar Square, just strolling around to see everything was going well, Jemmy saw him . . .’

  ‘And put two and two together . . .’ finished Jack. ‘Jemmy was a clever fellow. I told you that, didn’t I?’

  ‘And the toff raises his stick and hits him on the head.’ Sammy looked a bit doubtful. ‘But that would be a great risk, wouldn’t it? To do it right in the middle of all the crowds. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to get Jemmy another time – perhap
s at Opium Sal’s place?’

  ‘I think Sammy is right,’ declared Sarah. ‘I can’t see a toff behaving like that. They’ve got too much to lose, these fellows with money and good positions. If anyone murdered Jemmy on the edge of Trafalgar Square like that – well, I’d say it would be Flash Harry or one of his mob. They don’t care. They have so many hiding places that they can get out of the police’s way in minutes and be running along a roof, or down a cellar. Once they get into St Giles or Devil’s Acre they’re safe. No one in those places would dare to squeal to the police.’

  ‘I’ve thought of something else,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t think that hole in Jemmy’s forehead looked like it were done with a stick. More like something really heavy rammed into him. I remember seeing the bones pointing backwards.’

  ‘Well,’ said Alfie, ‘we’d better get to work. The thought of that ten-pound reward makes me hungry. Even a quarter of it would make us rich. We need all the information that we can get about how Jemmy spent the day – who he talked to and all that sort of thing. Jack, you do the fish market, Sammy and I will have a chat with as many of the other beggars in Trafalgar Square as we can find. Tom, you try the street sweepers. They often know something.’

  ‘What about the place that he dossed down in?’ asked Tom.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ said Alfie. ‘As soon as it’s dark I’ll go down to Opium Sal’s place and have a few words with her. I have a feeling that the solution to the mystery is there.’

  ‘Don’t go down to that opium den on your own,’ said Sarah with a shudder. ‘You never know with people who take opium. They’re fine when they have it and then after a few hours they need it again and they turn violent. They say Opium Sal would rob or murder to get the money for it. A girl I knew at the Coram Fields place – her mother took opium; she had to have it or she got the shakes, or else started screaming. Patsy told me that it costs more than a week’s wages to buy a thimbleful – imagine that!’