SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (28 page)

Verity dashed to the window of
the upstairs drawing-room. He almost expected to see the body of the
private-clothes guard lying on the pavement as Cosima's murderers forced their
way in to seize him. But the murderers would surely find an easier way, as they
had already done. The carriage outside was unmistakeable. So was a dark police
van parked several yards down the road. Among the voices he could now hear
Inspector Croaker's impatient braying.

The
confusion in his mind vanished. Of course, he thought. Sergeant Verity in
burglar's clothes, discovered in the act of ransacking a house and, indeed,
standing over the dead body of its recently-murdered tenant. There was only one
thing to be done.

Jolly's dark
almond eyes were a study in simple fear.

'Move!' roared Verity at her.
'Downstairs and out the back window, 'fore they get a man on the mews gate!
Run! And don't stop till yer see Mr Stringfellow's cab up Western Road!'

She
scuttled like a frightened mouse down the stairs and into the housekeeper's
room at the back. Verity threw up the window, pushed her out, saw her scamper
across the lawn at the back and disappear into the narrow mews of Brunswick
Street West. He had given her a start but he knew that Jolly would never
out-distance Inspector Croaker's men to Western Road once they took up the
pursuit. There was a bolt on the inside of the door in the housekeeper's room.
He ran back, grateful to his own foresight in providing the Balaclava helmets
with their woollen masks which concealed the face. As he reached the hall, the
private-clothes men burst through the shattered panels of the front door,
Inspector Croaker at their head, followed by a dozen powerful shapes, each with
its truncheon drawn and held out at the approved angle.

'Stand
where you are!' Croaker shrieked, bearing down on the masked figure.

They would overwhelm him in a
minute, Verity knew that. But in the doorway of the housekeeper's room they
could only get at him singly. With improbable speed and agility, he delivered a
resonant blow with his fist, which took Mr Croaker full on the mouth, and drove
his knee into the inspector's belly. Croaker doubled up with a scream of nausea
and fell back into the arms of the constable behind him. For a precious moment
the way was blocked. Verity slammed the door, shot the bolt across, and
sprinted for the open window.

As he dived
through it, he heard the first splintering of the door under the axes of the
private-clothes detail. By the time that it gave way, Verity had reached the
wall beyond the grass, scaled it and raced away up Brunswick Street West.
Croaker's men watching the back of the house would, of course, see the two
fugitives from their attic room above the little tavern, but they would be in
no position to give chase. He turned into Western Road and saw Jolly ahead of
him, close to Stringfellow's yellow hackney coach. Verity had snatched off his
mask as he emerged from Brunswick Street West, relying on his speed to keep him
clear of the pursuit. He scrambled after Jolly, through the open door of the
coach, and heard Stringfellow yelp at the old horse. Then the wheels moved and
the cab turned sedately into the stream of carriages rolling toward Hove. It
was well on its way by the time that Verity pressed his face to the little rear
window. He was just quick enough to catch the first sight of men pelting out of
Brunswick Street West, pausing and looking to right and to left, before they
slowed down with abrupt indecision.

Far
away from him now, as they approached the sunlit streets of Hove and the sea
glittering at the far end, Old Mole sauntered down Brunswick Place towards the
square and the promenade. Mole made his way beyond Brunswick Lawns where an old
invalid man took his ease under the canopy of a swan-neck carriage. The
scrub-haired mobsman spoke half a dozen words to the frail gentleman. Whereupon,
Sealskin Kite's genial old smile faded. His lips drew back on his teeth in a
sharp little snarl of displeasure.

' 'ave
some sense, Stringfellow!' said Verity for the seventh or eighth time that
evening. 'What else could I a-done? Stood there over the poor dead person with
a mask on me face, having broke into the house, 'n just shook Mr Croaker by the
hand? It's my neck they'd bloody stretch for it, me being suspended already!'

Stringfellow wiped his whiskers on the back of his
hand.

'All I'm saying,
Verity old sojer, is that you ain't made things easier for finding Bella. Even
with that mask on, Mr Inspector Croaker might a-known you. Them villains has
got you on a short string, my son. You don't know who they are, you can't go to
Mr Croaker no more. They lures you to Brunswick Square then tips the nod to the
law that there's a burglar in there, and you and Jolly gets out by a whisker.
And where's that leave Miss Bella?'

Tears of self-pity were starting in the old cabman's
eyes.

'All right, Stringfellow,' said Verity consolingly,
'all right.'

'As for Miss
Bella,' moaned Stringfellow, 'we ain't no nearer seeing her now than the day
she was took. . .'

'All right!’

There
was a silence of mutual reproach. Jolly, in the nursing chair, picked unenthusiastically
with her needle at a half-mended petticoat. Ruth sat in a wooden chair by the
grate. In her hand was a printed tract which she appeared to study with
frowning concentration as she held it upside down.

'They killed 'er, that young
Cosima person,' said Verity, trying to make peace. ' 'eaven knows how many
others they done for as well. After Miss Bella was took they sent me that
message, knowing I'd leave me post to run to the sands. And while I was away
they must a-got in easy. They snuffed Cosima later, somehow. P'raps she knew
where their heathen clasp was. If they was prepared to take Miss Bella just to
have me out of the way like that, they must want something pretty bad. Still,
now they got all they want in that way, no reason they shouldn't send her
home.'

'No
reason they shouldn't do something else either,' said Stringfellow darkly.

Verity felt that sudden
coldness along his spine which he had been brought up to believe was caused by
someone walking on the patch of ground under which he would one day lie in
death. Against the worst that the Swell Mob and Mr Croaker could do, his little
army numbered old Stringfellow, Ruth and Miss Jolly. To divert himself, as
much as the others, he changed the subject of conversation.

'What a man'll do for a few
heathen baubles,' he said philosophically. 'Now I suppose they got it, the
beastly thing. Whoever Shah Jehan was, he'd best have kept it and all the bad
fortune what it seems to bring.'

Stringfellow shook his head.

'If
your Mr Croaker and his insurance chums wanted it that bad,' he said, 'couldn't
they a-had its picture done to put on all the walls? Same as they do with faces
o' friends in 'uman form as coopers young girls and so on?'

Verity snorted.

'Old Croaker 'ad its likeness done. Photographic engraving
handed out to all of us in the detail. Much bloody use it is if you're never to
see the original. Eh?'

He
reached into his capacious frock-coat and drew several frayed scraps of paper
from an inner pocket. Sifting through them he found a piece of thin card, about
four inches square. Even in the coloured engraving there was an aura of malignancy
and brooding evil in the funereal purple of the rubies and the sick green of
the emerald leaves. Stringfellow pondered it, holding the card this way and
that in his hand. Then he looked up at Verity with a grimace of toothless
incomprehension.

'Is 'er only one of these
heathen clasps, then?'

'Course there is,' said Verity
irritably.

'And all the jacks
from London has been looking for it and not finding it?'

'Yes.' A deep unease began to
stir in Verity's mind.

'And you can't find it?' The
old man's face was lined with incredulity.

Verity's head thrust forward
like a fighting-cock.

'If I’d a-found it,
Stringfellow, I wouldn't be sitting here like this now with Mrs Verity gone and
me pay stopped! Would I?'

The old cabman shook his head
wonderingly. 'Then you don't none of you know where 'tis?' ' 'ow should we
know?' Verity bellowed in his exasperation.

Stringfellow looked at the
coloured engraving. ' 'Cos,' he said,' 'alf of bloody Brighton knows where this
is!'

There was a
profound silence. Verity felt as if someone had just punched him very hard in
the pit of the stomach.

'You never said it was this
jewel,' gabbled Stringfellow defensively. 'I never so much as seen this card
before. You never said. .

'Where?'

'Eh?'

'Where
does half of Brighton know it is?' 'Oh!' said Stringfellow, relieved and
anxious to be helpful. 'Lots of places, 'ccording to the time o' day.' 'The
time of day!'

'Yes,' said the old man
impatiently, 'as it might be the Dog and Duck at noon, the old Union tavern bit
later on. Always in the public eye.'

'How?'

Stringfellow's
voice dropped to a stage whisper as if to keep the words from Ruth and Jolly.
Their two heads moved perceptibly in his direction as he spoke.

'Young tavern dancer, Jane
Midge. Street-girl what dances for coins to be thrown. ‘bout fourteen years old
with fair skin and dark brown hair.'

'Yes?'

'Well,'
said Stringfellow, as if fearing his son-in-law's wrath, 'she do wear it pinned
to her knickers when she dances. Gives her a certain class.'

'The Shah Jehan clasp? The
clasp of the Mogul emperors?'

' 'f that's what you say it
is,' said Stringfellow obligingly. ' 'f that's what's in your picture. Same
thing whatever the name.'

Verity thumped the kitchen
table.

'Act
sensible, Stringfellow! What's a fourteen-year-old street-girl called Jane
Midge doing with a jewel that might buy the whole of Brunswick Square? No one
murdered and thieved to get it just so's it could be Worn by a dancing orphan!'

'See for yourself then,' said
Stringfellow sulkily.

'Yes, Mr Stringfellow, that's
exactly what I mean to do!'

On the
eve of race week the Swell Mob ordinary in the tavern room was crowded by men
and women on either side of the wooden partition dividing the bar. The half of
the room reserved for unaccompanied women was exceptionally full now that a
hundred or more London street-walkers had arrived in Brighton for the
festivities. It was the room which Stunning Joe had seen in company with Jack
Strap. There was the same mahogany gloom, the coloured bottles, an acrid fog of
cigar smoke, a perfume of cheap champagne. The space at one end, where
street-girls had performed casual dances, was now reserved for a 'select party'
of race-week entertainers, with a master of ceremonies in a battered silk hat.

The
programme opened with a London favourite, Janet, the plump Female Hussar. She
was about twenty years old, her pale face soft and lightly freckled, her brown
eyes coyly timid, the dark hair cut in a helmet-shape round her head and its
length built into a little topknot with a tortoiseshell comb. Her dark brown
tights and short coatee showed off her stocky thighs and the plumpness of her
hips, confirming that she lately 'dropped a cub' on her keeper.

The pantomime of the girl and
a country clown shocked Stunning Joe on Jane Midge's behalf. Janet was
presented pushing a scarecrow in an invalid carriage. Behind her sauntered the
country clown with his spyglass, crowing with delight over the vision. As she
leant harder and harder over her labour the seat of Janet's brown tights became
a pair of vulgarly fattened globes which threatened to split the brown cotton
under their pressure. The clown's fingers fiddled busily in the air, an inch
or so from her. Janet turned her face to the audience, miming simultaneous fear
and eagerness. Then the clown performed an unambiguous phallic comedy with his
spyglass, opening and closing it rhythmically.

These performances alternated
with turns by comic singers, most of whose offerings were well known 'flash ditties'.
Standing just off-stage, holding Jane Midge's hand, Stunning Joe had only to
hear the first lines and he could have recited the rest faultlessly. In the
tap-room the spectators roared their appreciation loudly enough to match the
raucous chanting of the singer.

Of all the
blowens on the town,

There's
none like my flash Sally;