SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman (29 page)

When he had finished, he swung the bed back, bolted the door, and returned to the other room. Bella sat on the bed in her freshly-laundered underclothes, while Jolie appeared in the lavender-blue dress, bonnet, and veil. It was far from a perfect fit but this, to some extent, improved the disguise.

"Now, Miss Bella," said
Verity gentl
y, "you got to be left here for a l
ittle while, but only for a littl
e while. Take heart and never say die! It won't be long before I come back and the men downstairs ain't likely to come up here before this evening. If they do, you got a whistle. Blow bravely, and our friends down in the mews shall hear you."

"I ain't a
fraid, Mr Verity," she said softl
y.

He took her little hands between his own large warm palms. Then he motioned Jolie out, followed her, and closed the outer bolts. He helped Jolie to climb the gate first, and repeated his own hazardous negotiation of the wooden pillar. They walked slowly down the stairs. Tyler stood ox-like in the hall below them.

"Drop the veil," said Verity softly, and the girl obeyed.

Tyler saw them coming down the final curve of the stairs, and he went into the little parlour to seek instructions from Coggin. By the time that Verity and the girl had reached the door, Tyler had reappeared to open it, staring incuriously at the couple as they passed through the arch of it.

" 'appy to see you again, miss, when your sergeant's given you the chuck," he murmured as the girl slipped by him. Then the door closed and they stood in the street. Verity led Jolie round the first corner into Mortimer Street and subjected her to a determined catechism.

"Now, miss," he said, gripping her by the upper arm, "let's have an understanding. You stand here, free, only because a good, brave girl has taken your place in there, so that you might be rescued. If you want to save 'er, in turn, and you want to save Ellen Jacoby, you must act as I say."

"I ain't sayin' I won't," she said softly. "She's the only chum I've got, Ellen is."

"You know what's being done to her in there?"

Jolie nodded.

"She ain't long for this world," she said, "that's why I tried to get out when I 'eard that Ned Roper wasn't coming back, after the sessions."

"Would you tell Ned Roper what's being done to Nell Jacoby?"

"Fat chance of that!"

"Would you tell him if you could?"

" 'e wouldn't believe me!"

"Would you tell him if you had the chance, miss?"

"Not if I've got to be leathered again," she whimpered.

"You won't be leathered again. But Nell may be, if you don't help her."

"All right, then," she said uncertainly.

Verity took her by
the arm and led her out of Morti
mer Street and across the road.

"Mr Samson!"

Samson paused in mid-stride and turned round. He looked blank at first, until Verity removed the forage cap.

"Verity! You can't go round in them things! You ain't a soldier anymore! It's an offence!" "Mr Samson, do you know this young person?" Samson eyed Jolie. "Yes," he said, "sorry to say I do." "Then you'd best just listen to what she has to say." Samson listened.

"Now," said Verity, "she must be let speak to Ned Roper."

"Must she?" said Samson sardonically. "Ned Roper is safely locked in one of the old refractory cells at Newgate. He goes to Chatham tomorrow, to the hulks, and he'll be bound for Australia on the next tide."

"She'll have to speak to him today," said Verity undeterred. "There's Bella Stringfellow in there, risking her life and worse, so that you may 'ave all the glory of the thief-taking for every crime these villains have committed. You must take this young person to Newgate. They'll let you through the governor's house and give you a turnkey."

"I can't go to Newgate!" said Samson miserably, "it's Langham Place and you that I'm to keep a watch upon."

"Albert Samson," said Verity sternly, "if you want to watch me, you must come to Newgate. In twenty minutes more I shall be ready. A chemist at Regent Circus will have brightened some plates for me and I shall be in a proper uniform. Now, you ain't got so much of your watch left to go that an inspector is likely to come by here. If he should, why, you may say you saw me acdng suspiciously, and you thought it wise to follow me."

"Look 'ere. Verity," said Samson pleadingly, "ain't you supposed to be attending the railway inquiry this afternoon?"

Verity ignored the question. He said, "You may accompany me and this young person to Newgate or not, Mr Samson, just as you choose. However, if I should reach Newgate, and you ain't there, I shall take a walk down so far as Blackfriars Bridge, and there I shall take your Captain Fowkes camera and pitch it in the Thames."

20

"Don't it seem rum?" said Verity conversationally, "to think that all these crowds in the street is walking along free and happy no more than a yard away from poor mortals in irons who may all be on the hulks or the gallows this time tomorrow? Nothing but a few inches of wall between the two."

Samson grunted as, with J
olie almost running to keep pace, the two sergeants plodded up Newgate Street, past the small grated windows set high in the prison wall. They walked quickly towards the main facade of George Dance's famous prison, a classical design built in massive blocks of stone, looking like the fortified palace of some Renaissance prince.

At the door of the governor's lodging, Samson rang the bell and handed the servant his warrant card. Bodi he and Verity were now dressed in familiar black coats and tall hats. Verity having changed from
his military uniform in String
fellow's cab before they left Langham Place. The servant returned, the two men and
the girl were admitted to a littl
e room where two clerks on high stools worked away at their ledgers, as though it had been a counting house rather than a prison office. One of the clerks presented a book for the signatures of the three visitors.

After a few minutes' wait, they were joined by a tall man of clerical appearance, dressed in black and wearing a broad-brimmed hat. But for his heavy bunch of keys, he might have been a clergyman rather than a turnkey. As soon as Samson had explained their business, this new arrival led the visitors down a passage, past the prison lodge, its walls hung with sets of leg irons and manacles and casts of murderers' heads. The heavy oak gate beyond, bound with iron and studded with nails, opened into the prison itself. At every turning of the passage after that there seemed to be yet another barred gate, which the turnkey unlocked, and then locked again as soon as the party had passed through.

Verity had never before been inside the famous prison. He found that it was possible, from the few small windows which they passed, to see down into the old paved yards, where prisoners awaiting trial for lesser felonies spent their days wandering more or less at will. One corner of each yard was walled across and roofed with bars, through which the families of the prisoners were allowed to talk to the inmates. In the women's yard, there was a small crowd of visitors at the bars, but in the men's yards Verity saw only a very young girl, shivering in her thin clothes as she spoke to an elderly man who squatted dejectedly against the wall.

Leaving the yards, they passed several of the wards where men or women lived together in groups of twenty or thirty, their sleeping mats hung upon the walls during the day to make more space. In one of these bare, whitewashed rooms, the men had already sat down to their dinner of stewed beef and coarse bread.

At length, the turnkey unlocked two massive gates, set at a distance of about twelve feet apart, and led them across the famous press yard, where prisoners were prepared for the gallows on the morning of their execution. Then the party entered the condemned ward with its refractory cells. The passage ended with an iron grille from pavement to vaulting. Several yards beyond this was a similar grating, forming part of the wall of a room into which a prisoner could be led from the cells. In the space between the two sets of bars, a prison guard patrolled to and fro. The turnkey who had led them to this point called out to the guard.

"Let Edward Roper be fetched to the attendance room."

They waited for a few minutes and then saw a figure beyond the further set of bars, a man in coarse jacket and trousers, his feet shackled by an iron chain and fetters. He shuffled into view, his shoulders bowed and his hair cropped to a light-coloured stubble. When he raised his head he appeared clean-shaven and the lines of his pale face were deeply etched. It took considerable effort on Verity's part to convince himself that this was Roper.

"Ned
!
"
said Jolie softly, and he stared incredulously at her.

"You!" he said hoarsely. "You little shickster!"

"She ain't a shickster, Roper," said Verity calmly, "she's the best friend you and Nell Jacoby ever had."

Roper clutched the bars like an animal in its cage. He stared stupidly at them.

"What's 'appened to Nell?"

"She's dying," said Verity. "Your friends in Langham Place are killing her, slow but steady. You'd 'ardly know her. She drinks enough shrub every day to pickle a side of bacon, and her face is all swole up from where they hit her."

"You go and suck your inspector's bum, Verity!" roared Roper, "I've seen 'er all right. Don't you come 'ere with your bloody twicer and try them tricks on me
I
I can take a licking and not squeal
!
Ain't I seen her letters, blast your eyes?"

"They beat her!" whimpered Jolie. "Oh God, Ned, they beat her till she'd 'ave signed her own death warrant to end it!"

"But I
read
her letters," howled Roper. "She wasn't beaten
!
"

"Look 'ere! Look!" Jolie turned her back and, in a sudden gesture, scooped up her blue skirt at the back. Roper started, and the turnkey patrolling between the bars hurried forward with murmurs of protest.

"That's what they did to me, Ned Roper! When I 'eard you'd been quodded for forgery, I managed to get out of the attic, where me and Nell is locked up, and run for it. I was going to get help for her, Ned. They caught me and that's what they did! And it ain't the half of what they're doing to Nell!"

Roper turned his back to the bars.

"Go to hell the lot of you," he muttered, folding his arms, "Ned Roper don't peach on his chums!"

"Chums!" said Samson incredulously, but Verity waved him to silence.

"Listen, Ned Roper," said Verity quietly, "you say you never penned that draft for seven hundred and twenty pound. Now perhaps you didn't, but you'll spend the rest of your very unhappy life atoning for it. However, I think you know a lot about quarter of a ton of bullion that went missing. You were on that train. This young person here has told us how she was driven to Reigate to deliver one set of luggage and collect another. In a little while more, your bully boys from Langham Place will be in the lock-up, and I daresay they'll have something to say for themselves too."

"Let 'em," said Roper defiantly, "it don't touch me."

"That's your misfortune," said Verity. "Now, if it did touch you, if you had taken all the bullion, why, you might have been quodded for five years, p'raps seven. You'd lose the gold, but you lost that anyhow, ain't you? And Nell Jacoby never saw a half-sovereign of it. And tomorrow, Ned Roper, you go to the hulks, to a slow living death, for a forgery which you may never have committed. You ain't a match for some of the real swell mob, my son. Sentences for forgery is stiffer than for several bullion robberies rolled into one."

Roper stood in silence, his back still turned on them.

"You ain't half made a mess of it, Ned Roper," said Verity gently, " 'aven't you?"

Roper bowed his head, but said nothing.

Verity beckoned the turnkey and handed him two glass plates.

"P'raps you'd just hold these with the black card behind, so as the the prisoner may see them."

The turnkey took them nervously and held the first up to the other bars.

"Look at it, Roper!" said Verity sharply: "Miss Ellen Jacoby in the Langham Place attic this afternoon. Look at her face, Ned! Look at it, damn you
I"

Roper turned and stared at the glass picture.

"Trick!" he said uncertainly.

"Then look at the next one."

The turnkey held it up. Roper looked for a long half-minute. Then he turned away, put his face in his hands, and began to weep.