Dodger of the Dials (39 page)

The only other sound I could hear was that of some heavy male snoring and when I reached the open door of that close drawing room – the one where Tom and I had been invited in to drink with Slade and where we had heard the half-naked harpist – I was able to peep in and see who the snorers was. There was two men in that room, one of them was sat in an armchair with his back to me but I could see his red bowler on the floor beside him and two extinguished cigar butts in an ashtray. The other man was laid out on the long settee with his red hat over his face, an empty bottle of brandy in one hand and the other around one of several sleeping whores what was draped on the furniture. There was some lacy underwear thrown over the harp and the man on the settee was fully dressed from the waist up but bare-legged below. I gathered that the trousers in the hallway was his. It must have been a very debauched night for this handful of Slade boys and girls and the scene supported Bolter’s assertion that the master of the house was
not present. I cast my eyes around the women to see if any was Lily but none even resembled her so I continued onwards through the house.

The other doors along the hallway was all shut but, as I approached the staircase, I could hear the murmur of voices from behind the one what led into the kitchen parlour. Bolter had informed me that in there was a handful of more alert Slade men playing cribbage and I knew that if any occupants of the place were to hear me creeping around then it would be these ones. I braced myself for a confrontation as I passed the shut kitchen door but the thick red carpet served me well and my movements was not heard. I made it onto the staircase without being detected and I made even less noise as I continued upwards.

The whole place was still dark as every curtain was drawn and there was the strong smell of tobacco and rich perfume throughout. I reached the next floor up and I saw another door unlocked and ajar. Although I had been told that Slade had Lily locked in the garrett room in the top of the house, I thought it worth poking my head through there to inspect if she was within. I inched the door open in as soundless a way as I could and peeked inside. There, under the thick blankets of a wooden four-poster bed, was a large form and it took some squinting before I guessed from the shape that it must be Molly Gay, the official proprietress of this upmarket den. There was also a number of kinchins both sleeping under the sheets there with her and around the room on mattresses. These was the children what had been presented to myself and Tom on our first visit and whose presence here had angered me so much then. Now I just felt ashamed of myself for ever having entered into business with the devil who really ran this wicked place. The sight of these innocents just confirmed to me that there was few men in this city what wanted murdering as much as Billy Slade
did. I shut the door on the roomful of kinchins and continued upwards knowing that I could not leave Oliver waiting outside in the curricle for long.

As I made it to the top floor of the building, treading over more items of clothing what was strewn about on this much rougher carpet, I tried to guess which of these many doors would lead up into the garrett room. I then noticed a discreet door what was half the height of all the others and on the far wall. I was sure that that this would be the one what led up to the garret. I slipped Bolter’s key into the lock though and it fitted and turned with ease. Inside was a low box room but one what had a wooden step ladder inside. I crouched in and saw that this indeed led upwards. I climbed the steps and released the metal clasps what was locking the entrance.

‘Lily!’ I called out as I shoved the door over and climbed up. ‘Are you here?’

This garret had some light hanging from the beams but it was still darker than the other rooms in the house and I needed to blink for a few seconds while forms took shape around. As I pulled my body further up into this high-beamed attic, I saw an empty bed and a tiny dormer window with bars across it out of which escape would have been impossible. At first glance this dark little place appeared to be empty. It was only when I turned my head up to the sloping roof that I discovered where she was.

I saw her shadows first, all three of them rocking against the light of the lanterns. And then I spotted her, dangling up high, her black shoes swaying beneath her familiar green dress, her neck lurched over to the side of the rope. The noose had been tied around the highest rafter and a broken chair had been kicked away beneath.

It seemed that London had not been denied its Monday hanging after all.

I cried out her name and then slipped down some steps of the
ladder back at the horror of it, almost dropping Oliver’s gun. But then I gripped it even tighter and forced myself up again so I could see better what had happened to her. She looked dead all right and her neck seemed as crooked and as grotesque as any I had ever seen at a public hanging. I could not tell at first whether or not Lily had done this to herself in despair or whether Slade had strung her up but for me it did not matter. Either way, he was a dead man the next time I saw him.

The agony I felt at seeing her hanging there like that was so sharp that it took me some moments to stand to my full height in that garret and I could not even cry or speak. I crossed over to her and at last managed to whisper her name again as I felt for her dress and shook it to see if it would move. She was strung up high enough so I could not touch her face but I looked for her hands to feel how cold they was. I could not find them as they seemed to be tied behind her back and this, I realised with a coldness, meant that she had not killed herself. The roof had a number of other nooses hanging from the rafters and I knew that this garret room, like the outhouse, was a place of execution.

My eyes became blurry with tears as I looked up to her face what was hanging down towards me. Her eyes was shut and I wiped my own on her emerald dress and then I found voice at last. All I could think to whisper in that moment was that I loved her.

‘Yeah?’ came a voice from above. ‘You’ve a funny way of showing it.’

I snapped my head up towards her in surprise and saw her blinking down at me as her neck straightened. I would have cried out in joy at such a miracle but I instead I was hit in the face by a wooden stick being swung out from behind her back.

‘Ow!’ I staggered backwards against the wall and felt the pain sear through my cheek and up to my temple. It was no soft blow
and I dropped the pistol. My hands stopped my fall by grabbing the mattress of the bed and I looked up to where Lily was now swinging. She still had that stick in her hand, what I now realised was a leg from that broken chair, and her body was bent over and struggling with the rope what was tied around her waist. This rope had been hidden by the folds in her dress and I saw that it was the one what was tied to the rafter. The rope around her neck was tied to nothing.

‘What did you do that for, Lil?’ I complained, clutching my hurt face as she dipped forward like a circus performer and tried to free herself from her own knot. ‘I’ve come up here to rescue you, you ungrateful cow.’

She jerked her head over to me as I spoke and her expression changed from one of wild attack to sheer wonder as she pulled at the knot around her waist. ‘Jack!’ she squealed as she did so. ‘You’re alive!’ Then she crashed down onto the floorboards, face first.

‘As are you!’ I cried out in sheer relief as I crossed over to help her up. ‘I thought you’d been hanged.’

‘I thought
you’d
been hanged,’ she replied, as she’d thought that I was just another Slade trick. ‘You was set to die this morning, my love?’

‘Morning ain’t over yet,’ I replied as I reached her and went to help her. ‘I still might be at this rate.’

She got to her knees and looked at me with astonishment on her face. Then a smile broke out and she reached forward for an embrace.

‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, becoming all emotional. ‘I thought you was done for. Sorry, love, I didn’t mean to hit you. I thought you was Billy Slade come back.’ She apologised more by kissing the spot on my face where the chair leg had hit. ‘I’ve been hanging
like that for the past hour waiting for him and I was going to make my lucky while he was down on the floor.’ Despite the joy with which she was now greeting me I could see the exhaustion in her face and knew that she had passed a hell of a night in Molly Gay’s garret. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

‘As I say,’ I said after kissing her back. ‘I’ve come to rescue you, you silly mare.’

‘Well, as you can see,’ she yanked at the loose rope from around her neck and we both got to our feet, ‘I don’t much require rescuing.’ She reached down for her wooden stick then but I was so overcome with love for the girl that I had to pull her close again. I had just spent a fortnight in prison so having a woman in my arms again was producing a powerful sensation within me.

‘When I saw you dangling there,’ I told her, once I broke off to give her lips a rest, ‘I was going to kill Slade for it. And I still will if he’s hurt you, Lily!’

‘No, Jack,’ she said, as we continued embracing. Her face was nuzzled into my shoulder as I stroked her back and felt her tears on my neck. ‘You can’t kill him.’ I was about to respond by saying that Billy Slade was a man undeserving of our pity but she lifted her head up so I could see her wet and angry face again. ‘Cos I’m going to do for the rotten pig before you!’

‘That’s the spirit!’ I cheered as I brushed the loose tendrils of her hair behind her ears. It was then that Lily started to crack and I realised that she was not joking. It was clear that whatever horrors I had been through that morning, it was nothing compared to what Lily had endured and her whole self began to surrender as her arms dropped. Her chest was breathing hard though and whole attitude was like I had never seen it before. In truth, I was most taken aback by how fierce she seemed when she talked about Slade and I did not have to ask if she had been suffering at his hands. ‘Let’s just get
out of here,’ I said in the hope that this would snap her back into action, ‘I’ve a friend outside in a curricle who is waiting to speed us away.’ I let her go and went to collect the fallen pistol. I was glad that it had not fired when it fell but I was worried that we had made enough noise without it.

‘A friend?’ asked Lily as she wiped her eyes. ‘Who’s that then?’

‘Oliver Twist,’ I answered, trying to avoid her searching gaze. ‘You might have heard me mention him on occasion.’ There was a pause as I went over to the hatch in the floor I had just crawled up through and I could hear Lily repeating the name behind me as if trying to recall it.

‘Isn’t he the peaching boy?’ she said as I peered down to see if anyone was listening in below. ‘Oliver. The one what you’re forever ranting about after you’ve had too many gins. The one you’re always saying that you would batter to bits if you ever met him again? That Oliver?’

‘That’s the fella,’ I said feeling a bit embarrassed about my recent shift in allegiances. I waved her over to follow me. ‘We’ve made it up, you know. Bygones and that.’

‘How nice,’ she remarked with a hint of irony as she took my hand and let me lead her downwards into the space below. ‘And he drives a curricle, you say? Sounds quite the dandy.’

I was about to explain that the vehicle did not belong to him so she shouldn’t be too impressed when a woman’s voice was heard from behind that short door what led back out into the landing. ‘Mr Slade?’ she called through, ‘are you all right up there, lover?’

It sounded like Molly Gay was awake and had come to investigate all the noise we must have made. The sounds of children padding about was also heard as one of them went to silence a crying baby. I turned back to Lily and it looked like she was already steeling
herself for a fight, but I had my hands on this side of the door so Molly could not burst through.

‘The Lennox girl giving you aggravation, is she?’ Molly persisted on the other side. ‘Just tell me to mind me own business and I’ll scuttle off back to bed.’

‘It’s all right, love,’ I called out in as close a mimicry of Billy Slade’s northern accent as I could manage. ‘We’re good here, thanks.’ Lily looked at me in alarm but I think I made a good job of it. ‘Go to back to bed, woman!’

Outside went quiet then and I placed my ear against the door to hear if she were leaving. Lily came over to join me and I took her by the hand while we waited to hear whether the ruse had worked. We paused for as long as we dared and then I whispered that I thought the path must be clear. This Molly Gay would no doubt be used to all sorts of bizarre noises coming from rooms in this house. So she would not be lingering out in that hallway now, I hoped as I opened the door at last, and we would be able to pass down the staircases and to the front door in as unobserved a way as I had come up them. However, as soon as I dipped my head underneath the low doorway, I saw that Molly Gay was still standing there. When she saw me coming through with a gun in one hand and the other holding Lily’s, she let loose a wild scream. I pointed my pistol right at her and told her to shut her fat mouth up.

‘Bernard!’ she cried out, even louder. ‘I have a husband in that room and he’ll kill you if you hurt me.’ Then she turned towards the door behind her and banged on it. ‘
Bernard!
Leave the strumpet alone and get out here! I want defending!’

The door on the opposite side of the landing opened, a naked man appeared, took one look at me and then slammed the door shut again. It seemed that Bernard would not be giving us any
trouble. His wife, however, had an enormous set of lungs on her and was happy to use them regardless of the pistol pointed at her.

‘
INTRUDER!’
she hollered out for the rest of the house to hear. Molly Gay then began backing down the stairs and created a blockage what we could not pass. By the time she had reached the floor below she had become even more hysterical.

‘Where are the men in this house?’ she cried. ‘Gerrup here!’

From further down in the house I could hear the sudden rush of footsteps. As we turned onto the next set of stairs we saw several naked bodies appearing out of every door and they all panicked at the sight of us. In her rush, Molly Gay tripped and fell at the bottom of this flight and landed straight down on her face. Prostitutes scurried out from Molly’s room and headed downwards, and I heard them push past some men what was coming up the stairs. The men in their red bowler hats was here to confront us and, by the time Lily and myself had reached the bottom of these stairs, the first of these Slade men had made it up to this part of the house. I turned and pointed my pistol at the three of them and told them to let us pass.