A Very Unusual Pursuit (27 page)
BAIRN
a Scottish word for ‘child’
BALLAST HEAVER
a person who loaded ballast into the holds of empty ships
BASILISK
a legendary reptile said to cause death with a single glance
BEAK
a magistrate
BEDLAMITE
an insane person
BOGLE
a monster, goblin, bogeyman
BROUGHAM
a one-horse carriage with an open seat in front for the driver
BUGGANE
a huge ogre-like creature, native to the Isle of Man
CADGER
a beggar
CAFFLER
a rag-and-bone man
CHINK
money
COAL WHIPPER
a person who unloaded coal from ships
COSH
a blunt weapon
COSTER
a street-seller
COVE
a man
CRACKSMAN
a burglar, lock-picker
CRIB
a house
CROW
a lookout
DEADLURK
an empty building
DIPPER
a pickpocket
DIMMICK
a counterfeit coin
DUNNAGE
clothes
EARTH CLOSET
a seat placed over a deep hole in the ground
FLAM
lie
FLUX
diarrhoea
FUATH
an evil Gaelic water spirit
FUSTIAN
coarse, cotton-linen cloth
GAMMONING
lying
GANGER
a supervisor
GLOCKY
half-witted
GRIDDLER
a beggar
GRINDYLOW
a bogeyman from Lancashire or
Yorkshire, typically found in bogs or lakes
HACKNEY CAB
a two-wheeled carriage for hire
HANSOM CAB
another term for hackney cab
HACKNEY CARRIAGE
a four-wheeled carriage for hire
HOBBLER
a boat tower
HOBYAH
an English fairytale goblin
HOIST
to steal or shoplift
HOOK IT
move it
HURRIER
a girl aged five to eighteen who drew coal in a mine
JACK
a detective
JEMMY
a crowbar
KNUCKER
a kind of water-dragon from Sussex
LAGGED
gaoled
LAY
a method
LURK
a trick or scam
LURKER
a criminal
LUSHERY
a low public house
MOOCHER
a tramp
MUCK SNIPE
a tramp
MUDLARK
a child who scavenged on riverbanks
MUMPER
a beggar
NAVVY
an unskilled labourer, especially one who did heavy digging
NIBBED
arrested
NOBBLE
to hurt
OMNIBUS
a very large horsedrawn vehicle for moving large numbers of people
POTTLE
a container holding half a gallon
PRIG
to steal
PRIVY
a toilet
RACKET
a shady or illegal pursuit
SENNIGHT
a week
SHELLYCOAT
a Scottish goblin that haunted rivers and streams
SHIRKSTER
a layabout
SLAVVY
a maid-of-all-work
SLOPS
old clothes
SPIKE
workhouse
TOFF
a well-to-do person
TOFFKEN
the dwelling of well-to-do people
TOGS
clothes
TOOLING
pickpocketing
TOSHER
a sewer scavenger
WHITE LADIES
ghosts of a very particular type
WIPE
a handkerchief
WORKHOUSE
an institution that housed and fed
paupers
WORRICOW
a Scottish hobgoblin
Catherine Jinks was born in Brisbane in 1963 and grew up in Sydney and Papua New Guinea. She studied medieval history at university and her love of reading led her to become an author. Her books for children, teenagers and adults have been published all over the world, and have won numerous awards.
Catherine lives in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales with her husband, journalist Peter Dockrill, and their daughter Hannah.
BOOK
2
– A SNEAK PREVIEW
The man stationed at the door was small and stout. He had a red face, blue eyes and wispy grey curls. His satin-breasted coat was trimmed with silver lace. His top hat was the colour of mulberries.
‘Walk in! Walk in! Now exhibiting!’ he boomed. ‘The best show in London, ladies and gentleman! A Menagerie of Mythical Beasts! Living, breathing monsters for only one penny!’
The narrow shop-front behind him was plastered with brightly coloured advertisements. One of them showed a picture of a very young girl cracking a whip at something that looked like a giant toad.
‘See our griffin! See our mermaid! See our erlking!’ cried the man in the purple hat, tapping at the picture with his bamboo cane. ‘See Birdie McAdam, the Go-Devil girl, tame a fierce bogle and a dainty unicorn!’
Across the road, Jem stopped short. He stood goggle-eyed as the crowds surged past him. In one hand he carried a cheap broom. On his feet he wore nothing but a thick layer of mud.
For a moment he stared at the man in the purple hat. Then he darted forward, dodging a pile of horse manure and the rattling wheels of a carriage.
‘See the world’s greatest novelties, ladies and gentleman! Marvel at the legendary two-headed snake of Libya! Touch a genuine dragon’s egg for only one penny!’ The red-faced showman raised his voice a little, drowning the chant of a nearby coster selling nuts and whelks. ‘Now exhibiting! Satisfaction guaranteed! The World’s Greatest Wonders, here in Whitechapel Road!’
He was perched high on a wooden box, with a good view of all the bobbing umbrellas that filled the street. But he didn’t see Jem until the boy tugged at his coat.
‘Sir? Hi! Sir?’
Glancing down, the man saw only a filthy little crossing-sweeper in a ragged blue shirt and striped canvas trousers, torn off at the knee. A cap like a cowpat cast the boy’s gleaming brown eyes into shadow.
It also concealed most of his thick, black, glossy hair – which was his best feature, though it made his head look too big for his body.
‘Hook it,’ the man growled. ‘Go on.’
‘Please, sir, I’m a friend o’ Birdie McAdam. Will you let me in? She’ll want to say hello.’
‘Get out of it, I said!’
Jem flushed. ‘I ain’t gammoning you, sir! Jem Barbary’s the name. Why, Birdie and me – we used to knock around Bethnal Green together when she were just a bogler’s girl. Ask her if we didn’t!’
The only reply was a quick swipe with the bamboo cane, which left a red welt on Jem’s knuckles. He jumped back, grimacing. Then he retreated a few steps to take stock of the exhibition venue. It was a small, two-storeyed building wedged tightly between a pastry-shop and a public house. Over the door was a faded sign, but Jem couldn’t read it. Nor could he see any side-alleys piercing the impenetrable wall of shop-fronts breasting the street.
But the public house was on a corner, and would probably have a rear yard of some kind. Jem’s gaze moved up a drainpipe, along a brick ledge and across a roof that bristled with chimneys. He’d burgled many a house in the past, and this one was no strong-box.
He thought that he could probably find another way in – without paying a penny for the privilege.
‘Begging your pardon, lad, but is it true?’ a soft voice suddenly asked. ‘Do you really know Birdie McAdam?’
Startled, Jem spun around. He found himself staring up at a pretty young woman in a velveteen mantle. She had rosy cheeks, grey eyes, and lots of rich, brown hair piled up under a hat that was barely big enough to support all the feathers, flowers, veils and ribbons sewn onto it.
She was sheltering from the rain under a pink silk parasol.
‘What’s it to you?’ he said, wondering why a decent-looking female would approach him in the street like a common beggar. The young woman glanced around nervously before leaning down to address him.
‘I’m Mabel Lillimere,’ she murmured. ‘I’m a barmaid at the Viaduct Tavern in Newgate Street. If you are a friend o’ Birdie’s, and can persuade her to talk to me, then I’ll stump up your fee so as you and I both can get in.’ Eyeing his grubby face with a touch of suspicion, she added fiercely, ‘But if you’re lying – why, I’ll box your ears so hard you’ll have your left ear on the right side o’ your head, and your right ear on the left!’
This threat didn’t worry Jem. He’d suffered worse.
‘Why not talk to her yerself?’ he wanted to know.
‘Because she’ll not see me! Or so he says.’ Mabel gestured at the man in the purple topper, who was now reminding all the damp pedestrians scurrying past him that Birdie McAdam was ‘well known to the public’ owing to ‘newspaper reports of her bogle-baiting prowess’.
‘Mr Lubbock, he calls himself,’ Mabel continued. ‘Claims he’s in charge. Says Birdie’s not inclined to speak to the public. Says she’s too shy, and needs to rest her voice.’
Jem snorted. ‘Well, that’s a flam,’ he declared. ‘Birdie’s as forward as they come. Did you offer him extra?’
‘Twopence.’
‘Then he’s a-humming you.’ His suspicions confirmed, Jem scowled at Mr Lubbock. ‘I’ll wager Birdie ain’t here. Last time I saw her, she were living with a fine lady near Great Russell Street, eating plum cakes every day and wearing lace on her petticoats. Why would she want to come back to the east and work in a penny gaff like this ’un, when there’s fine folk as think she’s too good for the life?’
Mabel’s face fell. Her troubled gaze slid towards Mr Lubbock. ‘You think that there feller is lying, then?’
‘Why not?’ Jem shrugged. ‘He’s a slang cove. Lying’s what they do best.’ Studying the barmaid with frank curiosity, he added, ‘Why d’you want to speak to Birdie? You can’t be kin – she ain’t got a soul to call her own.’
Mabel hesitated. At last she said, ‘I read about Birdie in the newspapers last summer, and never thought of her again till I passed this here gaff. Then I saw her name and recollected how she killed them monsters that you find in privies and coal-holes and chimneys and such.’ Seeing Jem shake his head, Mabel frowned. ‘Didn’t she?’
‘Birdie helped kill ’em,’ Jem corrected. ‘She were bait for the bogles. Alfred Bunce did all the killing.’
‘Alfred Bunce?’
‘The bogler. Didn’t you read about him too? He were in the papers, same as Birdie.’
Mabel bit her lip. ‘I daresay,’ she mumbled. ‘But the little girl is what stuck in my head. There was a picture, as I recall. Such a pretty thing, with all them golden curls . . .’
‘And Mr Bunce ain’t pretty, which is why there wasn’t no pictures of him.’ By now Jem was feeling confident. He knew that he was onto something, so he fixed the barmaid with a shrewd and penetrating look. ‘You got a bogle problem, Miss?’
The barmaid sighed. ‘I think so.’
‘Why?’
‘On account o’ poor Florry.’ Edging further beneath the jutting first-floor window of the pastry-shop, Mabel suddenly blurted out, ‘Florry was our scullery maid. She went down into the cellar last month, and never did come out. And not a trace of her was left, though Mr Watkins and me looked high and low—’
‘Who’s Mr Watkins?’ Jem interrupted.
‘The landlord. He keeps the place. And would never have took it on, had he known.’
‘Known what?’
‘About the beer-cellar.’ Mabel shuddered, as if someone had walked over her grave. ‘The tavern’s fresh-built, but the cellar’s old. There used to be a prison on that very spot, for debtors and the like, and our cellar was where they put ’em. I never go down, if I can help it. Not without Mr Watkins. Even before Florry vanished, I misliked the air. It felt . . .’ She paused for a moment, frowning. ‘It felt bad,’ she said at last.
‘Unwholesome. As if someone had died there.’
Jem thought back to the previous summer. He thought about Alfred and Birdie. He thought about the two bogles that still haunted his dreams; the one he’d glimpsed at a gentleman’s house near Regent’s Park, and the one he’d helped to kill some four months later, in a cutting on the London and North Western Railway.
‘How old was Florry?’ he inquired.
‘That I can’t tell you. Twelve, perhaps? But she was very small.’
‘Then it could have bin a bogle as took her.’ Jem tried to inject a note of authority into his voice. ‘You should talk to Alfred Bunce. Mr Bunce will know what to do. He’s a Go-Devil man. He kills bogles with the same spear Finn McCool used to kill fire-breathing dragons, in times past.’
‘But how can I talk to Mr Bunce if I don’t know where he is?’ Mabel objected. Then she narrowed her eyes at Jem, who grinned when he saw her sceptical, measuring look. ‘I suppose you do,’ she said wryly. ‘Is that your lurk? Are you touting for this cove?’