A Glimpse at Happiness (48 page)

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Authors: Jean Fullerton

Tags: #Romance, #Historical, #Fiction

BOOK: A Glimpse at Happiness
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Ma stared soundlessly after her as she disappeared.
 
When I get my hands on her
. . . Ma stopped and, swivelling her eyes in their sockets as far as they would go, she caught a glimpse of her flaccid right hand. She tried to move it but it didn’t even twitch.
 
As she studied her motionless hand her mind began to drift, conjuring up memories she didn’t know she still carried. A dim image of the dirty cellar she’d lived in as a child flared up for second, then the face of her dead sister floated by and merged into Harry her husband’s winning smile, then Harry her son’s thick features loomed up, and finally the image of Charlie.
 
He was such a pretty boy
.
And sharp? Why, my Charlie was so sharp he could cut himself. And such a dandy. Dapper, that’s what he was, with real style . . .
 
The old images faded to be replaced by a picture of Charlie as he’d looked that morning with his withered arm and dribbling mouth. She felt something crawling on her cheek and realised, with some surprise, that it was a tear.
 
‘He was a beautiful boy, my Charlie,’ she whispered.
 
Her mind reached for him, but instead of his dear face, other images crowded him out. Men whose names she’d forgotten swirled around with their eyes full of hatred and lips snarling, reminding her that it was she who had sent them to their early graves. A black fog started to creep in from the side of her vision but she pushed it away.
 
From a long way off, Harry’s voice called. She opened her eyes and the fog in her mind retreated. Although she was suddenly very weary she forced herself to focus and then found herself looking up at a different angle. Harry was there, and she realised he’d lifted her from the floor.
 
‘
Ha . . . Ha . . . Ha,’ she choked out.
 
‘It’s me, Ma,’ he said, his piggy eyes swimming with tears, his shoulders shaking. Harry hugged her and the sweet pomade he slicked through his hair filled her nostrils. ‘I’m here, Ma. Don’t worry I’m here.’
 
Something gurgled in her throat and Harry put his ear near to her mouth. ‘What did you say, Ma?’
 
‘I said, where the feck have you been?’ she asked with her last breath.
 
Chapter Twenty-Eight
 
Sergeant Plant’s boots rang out as he climbed the stone stairs to the superintendent’s office. Superintendent Jackson had only returned to H-division the day before and Plant had managed to keep himself well away all day. Unfortunately, he had been summoned by his superior officer, so couldn’t very well avoid him any longer. Besides, it was tipping down and now at least he could spend the last hour of his patrol in the dry.
 
Since Patrick Nolan had been arrested, things in H-division had settled back into their old ways. The villains had gone back to filching anything that wasn’t nailed down and killing and maiming each other, whilst any bobby with his head screwed on turned a blind eye, only arresting the odd drunk or two to show willing and draw his pay in good conscience without putting life and limb at risk to earn it.
 
Stopping halfway up the stairs to catch his breath, Plant reflected that, all in all, he was content with his lot. With the money Ma had promised him for turning in Nolan and his cut of the reward for the recovered Pettit silver, he was considering quitting the force and taking the lease on a pleasantly situated public house in Forest Gate, right by the new railway line. After all, he’d done his duty to Queen and country and was now entitled to take it a bit easy.
 
Grasping the brass handrail he mounted the last dozen or so steps and marched along the landing to the door at the end. Pulling down the front of his jacket and straightening the shiny belt around it, he rapped on the door.
 
On hearing the superintendent bark, ‘Enter’, he stepped into the room.
 
‘Sit,’ Superintendent Jackson said, without looking up from the collection of papers in his hand.
 
Plant took the chair in front of the desk and a faint sneer rolled his lip under his moustache.
 
Why couldn’t Jackson be more like the old super, he thought as his eyes ran over the papers and warrants scattered across the desk. Old Chalky White didn’t upset the apple cart. Live and let live was old Chalky’s way and the lads under him were the better for it.
 
Plant glanced at the window where the rain lashed against the glass. Yes, on a night like this a glass of ale in your hand in front of a warm fire was better than checking the constables on their beat. Maybe it
was
time to call it a day.
 
Jackson set the papers down and Plant gave him his full attention. Even though the superintendent could only have been a few years younger than he was, by the look of his massive frame, he could still take a fellow to the floor and handcuff him if the need arose. Jackson sat back and the chair creaked under his weight. There was a hint of amusement in his grey eyes as they settled on Plant.
 
‘It’s very good to see you back sir,’ Plant said.
 
Jackson smiled. ‘Thank you, Plant, and I must say my first day back has already turned into a very interesting one.’
 
‘Has it sir?’ Plant replied.
 
‘Indeed. Do you remember Patrick Nolan, who came to us some while back about the Tugman gang?’
 
‘Vaguely.’
 
‘Well, I had his—his wife in here this afternoon and she gave me this.’ Jackson drew a small silver dish from his side drawer and placed it gently on the desk.
 
Plant put a puzzled expression on his face. ‘Did she hand it in?’
 
‘No, she found it.’ Jackson leant across the desk. ‘She also told me a very interesting tale of kidnapping, theft and corruption. Involving you, Sergeant Plant.’
 
Plant blinked. ‘Really, sir?’ he answered as a rivulet of sweat trickled down his spine.
 
‘Yes, really. She found the plate, and the Nolan children, in a boarded-up cellar - along with a whole haul of interesting bits and pieces.’ Jackson fixed Plant with an icy stare. ‘Like canvasses from Mount Finching House and Orsett Manor, rare medieval church fittings, jewellery, and all other manner of stolen objects which have yet to be identified, but which I am certain will be found to have come from burglaries from all over Essex and probably beyond.’
 
Alarm shot though Plant but he cut it short. There was no evidence to link him with Finching or Orsett, or with Nolan and his brats, and if Ma was in trouble she wouldn’t turn him in. She’d need all the friends she could get to keep herself out of gaol.
 
Jackson set the plate down in the centre of the leather inlay on his desk. ‘Mrs Nolan tells me that on the night before he was arrested, Patrick Nolan came to see me to alert me that he was springing the trap the next day.’
 
The moisture evaporated from Plant’s mouth.
 
I told Ma
, he thought, forcing his ingenuous expression to stay where it was.
I said that she was asking for trouble snatching Nolan’s kids. But would she listen . . . !
 
Superintendent Jackson continued, ‘The desk sergeant on duty that night, PC Woolmer, remembers a man fitting Patrick Nolan’s description asking for me, but leaving after finding out I was not on duty. In court, Patrick Nolan’s defence was that he had informed
you
that night, when he met you on patrol.’
 
‘That was a bare-faced lie,’ Plant answered, hotly. ‘He ought to have the key to his cell thrown away for trying to implicate me, an officer with a spotless record.’
 
‘So the magistrate at Queen Anne’s Gate court believed, after your statement to that effect was read out at Nolan’s hearing,’ Jackson agreed.
 
‘They’re cunning fellows those boatmen, as you know yourself, sir.’
 
‘So you say.’
 
Under the stiff, tailored navy jacket of his uniform, Plant’s shoulders relaxed. He’d been in tight squeezes before but believed that things would right themselves if he held his nerve. He’d had a few sleepless nights after Nolan’s trial and no mistake, but who would be believed - a jumped up bog-trotter, or that old fleabag Ma, against one of London’s finest? It would go against reason and nature.
 
‘I do say so,’ Plant replied. ‘And with Ma Tugman in the cells—’
 
‘Oh, Mrs Tugman’s not in the cells,’ Jackson said calmly. ‘She’s on a slab in the morgue at the London Hospital with her neck snapped.’
 
Even better! Plant suppressed a grin and asked, ‘And Harry?’
 
‘Missing. I sent the morning patrol to storm the Boatman but they only found Charlie, who’s now been taken to the incurable ward at the workhouse.’ Jackson’s tone was matter of fact.
 
Deliverance! With Ma dead and Harry on the run, he was definitely in the clear. Harry didn’t have half his mother’s brains, and without her he was no more a threat than any of the other drunken thugs in the area. With a bit of luck, someone would slit Harry’s throat before the constabulary cornered him.
 
Yes, it was definitely time to hang up his truncheon and start pulling pints.
 
‘Good show,’ Plant said. ‘I’m sure that the commissioner will be pleased that you’ve uncovered Ma’s stash in Burr Street.’ He ventured a comradely smile. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if there isn’t a promotion for you in this, sir. And well deserved I’d say, and so would the men, every one of them.’
 
A wry smile curled the superintendent’s lips. ‘Why, thank you, Sergeant,’ he replied. ‘But you haven’t heard the best bit of the story yet.’ A jovial expression crept over Jackson’s face, which was strangely more alarming that his tough one. ‘Mrs Nolan informed me that not only did Patrick Nolan
tell
you everything about the operation the night before he ferried Mrs Tugman’s stolen goods upstream but also that he made you
write it down
.’
 
The pocket book!
The small, manila-covered book with its notated pages and serial number that the officer had to sign for and keep safe or incur a fine of three days’ pay.
 
Fear and panic now engulfed Plant as his pocket book seemed to burn through the lining of his jacket.
 
‘Ha!’ he forced out, as he held himself back from bolting for the door. ‘Bunch of liars the lot of them,’ he said. ‘Of course you can’t blame her, poor woman, but surely you don’t believe the ranting of some ignorant Paddy skirt? And I tell you something, if it’s the woman I think it is - curly auburn hair and mature figure, if you know what I mean - well, she’s not his wife just his bit of tickle. She’d say anything to get him out of clink for her own sake.’
 
Jackson’s expression remained implacable and he leant back in the chair again. ‘Do you remember Danny Donovan’s trial?’ he asked conversationally.
 
Plant relaxed again. ‘I do. You were the one who sent him to the gallows,’ he said, thankful to have the conversation move from Patrick Nolan on to Jackson’s past triumphs.
 
‘Well, not me alone,’ Jackson replied. ‘Dr Robert Munroe gathered most of the actual evidence, along with his wife.’
 
Plant smiled, encouragingly. ‘I remember some such, sir.’
 
‘Of course she wasn’t his wife then, she was Mrs O’Casey, the mother to one Miss Josephine O’Casey, who, because of an assault by Harry and Charlie Tugman, is now under Patrick Nolan’s protection. It was Miss Josephine O’Casey, educated stepdaughter of Dr Robert Munroe, Medical Officer of the London Hospital and adviser to Her Majesty’s government, whom you have just described as “an ignorant Paddy skirt” and “a bit of tickle”, who brought me this silver salver as proof of Patrick Nolan’s innocence. It was
she
who told me about the cellars under
Burr Street
, that
you
seem to know all about, too.’
 
The sweat on Plant’s spine turned cold as the Superintendent stood and loomed over him.
 
‘
And
the notes in your pocket book.’ Jackson’s long fingers stretched out. ‘Hand it over.’
 
 
As her grandmother went to the window for the fourth time in a quarter of an hour, Bobby glanced at her sister sitting next to her and grinned. Lottie grinned back. Bobby looked across at George and Joe opposite in one of their best outfits and smiled at them. George smiled back, showing his missing front tooth, and Joe put his fingers in his mouth and pulled a face at his grandmother’s back.
 
Since Papa’s letter had arrived last week telling them that their parents were cutting short their holiday and coming home a month early, the happiness in the house was fair bubbling over. Bobby had wished she could somehow get word to Josie that Pa was on his way back and that all would be well but she could not.

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