Read The Body in the Fog Online
Authors: Cora Harrison
The Body in the Fog
Cora Harrison is the author of many successful books for children and adults. She lives on a small farm in the west of Ireland with her husband, her
German Shepherd dog called Oscar and a very small white cat called Polly.
Find out more about Cora at:
www.coraharrison.com
To discover why Cora wrote the London Murder Mysteries, head online to:
www.piccadillypress.co.uk/londonmurdermysteries
The London Murder Mysteries
The Montgomery Murder
The Deadly Fire
Murder on Stage
Death of a Chimney Sweep
The Body in the Fog
Death in Devil’s Acre
(coming soon)
First published in Great Britain in 2012
by Piccadilly Press Ltd,
5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR
www.piccadillypress.co.uk
Text copyright © Cora Harrison, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
The right of Cora Harrison to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 1 84812 169 0 (paperback)
978 1 84812 205 5 (ebook)
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Cover design by Patrick Knowles
Cover illustration by Chris King
For my friends Cath Thompson and Marie Neal who inspired me to investigate the fascinating subject of the underground rivers of London.
ONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
HY
K
ILL A
B
EGGAR
?
Alfie saw the body just before all hell broke loose in Trafalgar Square.
It was after midnight and the streets were filled with a choking yellow fog, but there was no mistaking the fact that the man sprawled on the ground was dead.
Alfie and his cousin Jack were making their way home after a night’s fishing. They stopped and stared at each other at the sight of the body. They knew who it was. As far back as they
could remember, Jemmy the beggar had sat under that statue every day of his life – and now he was dead.
The next moment, there was a sudden explosion and a whoosh of orange flames from Morley’s Hotel, above the post office. All eyes on Trafalgar Square went up to the hotel balcony. Screams
rang out and the foggy air was filled with a smell of smoke. Men began to yell and women to shriek. There were shouts of ‘Fire! Get the fire brigade, someone!’
A minute later, two horses pulling the mail van shot out through the archway beneath the hotel. The screams on the balcony were drowned out by yells of ‘Stop, thieves!’, as a crowd
of post office men in red uniforms came running out after the mail van.
A policeman in the centre of Trafalgar Square blew a shrill whistle. There was an answering blast from another policeman across the road. A masked man was driving the mail van, lashing the
horses on, and the van almost overturned as it wheeled around the statue of King Charles, where Alfie and Jack stood beside the dead body.
A piece of paper fluttered from the hand that held the whip and fell to the ground. Alfie bent down and grabbed it and, as he looked up, the glittering eyes behind the driver’s mask seemed
to pierce right through him. Then there was another lash of the whip and a screech of wheels, and the mail van was gone towards the River Thames.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Alfie in a low voice. He had begun to guess what was happening. He knew the man who drove the horses. That scar on the chin was unmistakable. It
was Flash Harry himself.
But it was too late.
A policeman’s hands gripped their collars.
CHAPTER 2
ROUBLE
The policeman had a narrow face, a massive bright red nose and a piercing gaze. His eyes moved from the dead body to the two boys. Jack shuffled his bare feet uncertainly and
Alfie gazed back with as much innocence as he could manage.
‘Know anything about this?’ The policeman jerked his thumb at the lifeless body on the pavement, lying just beneath the enormous statue of a king mounted on a horse. ‘Any idea
what happened to him?’ he asked.
‘No, sir,’ said Jack earnestly.
‘Got kicked by that stone horse,’ ventured Alfie and then he forgot his own joke as something about the body took his attention.
Old Jemmy looked much the same as usual, except for the huge wound on his forehead. He wore the same filthy old coat, three sizes too big for him and the same pair of old boots gaping wide. He
had the same ginger moustache and the same ginger beard. And yet, there was something different. Alfie moved a little closer and peered at the face of the dead man. Yes, he thought, that’s
strange. But he said nothing.
The policeman did not wait. It was more important to deal with live robbers than dead beggar men, so he released the boys and joined the crowd of whistleblowing, truncheon-waving police who were
charging after the stolen mail van. A few shots rang out, but there were no answering shots.
‘I reckon that was Flash Harry and his mob raiding the post office. Let’s get out of here,’ said Alfie to his cousin.
‘And leave
him
?’ Jack indicated the body on the ground.
Alfie shrugged. ‘Why not? None of our business! The law has seen him. Up to the policeman, now. We’re lucky that he had the robbery to occupy him – otherwise we’d be
arrested on suspicion of murder.’
‘You think someone murdered him?’ Jack was reluctant to move. He bent down over the body. ‘He’s been here a while – look at the way the water has run off his body
and left little bits of ice all around him. Funny, that! There ain’t been no rain – just fog. Do you reckon it were the post office robbers that killed him, Alfie?’
‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ grunted Alfie. ‘Probably a drunken fight. You know Jemmy. He’d fight with his own shadow.’
‘He didn’t drink,’ said Jack. ‘You remember the time he rescued me from that drunk cracksman? Well, he told me then that he hadn’t had a drink for five years. He
said that drink was the undoing of him. He told me that the aunt who brought him up was always drunk and she taught him to drink and that’s what landed him on the streets. He used to warn me
to stay out of public houses.’
Alfie didn’t answer. He was busy looking at the piece of paper that had been dropped by the masked robber. It puzzled him. The paper was thick and very white and the edges were scalloped
in gold. Costs money, paper like that, he thought. Not the sort of thing that you’d expect robbers or cracksmen to have. There was a sort of mark woven into the paper – letters, were
they, perhaps a G and an O twisted together? – that he could only see when he held it up to the nearby gas lamp. It seemed to be a note, though it was not addressed to anyone. The signature
at the bottom of the page was just a scrawl, but the message was the strange bit.
Right at the top of the piece of paper was the drawing of a clock face. The hands were set to twelve o’clock. Beside it was drawn a slice of moon. Midnight, thought Alfie.
And that was all. No words – nothing.
Alfie’s mind worked quickly. He had learnt to read at the Ragged School, but many people couldn’t. The raid and all the details had probably been worked out beforehand. All the
robbers needed was the day and the time.
And today the message had been sent to Flash Harry to tell him that something worth stealing was going by the midnight post.
‘Alfie,’ said Jack urgently, ‘let’s get going. Look at them two men coming over. I reckon they’re part of Flash Harry’s mob. They’re looking at us. One
of them is pointing.’
Alfie acted instinctively. Hastily, he screwed up the piece of paper and shoved it into the carved stone pattern of the base beneath the statue beside them.
‘Run!’ he said in Jack’s ear and in a minute they were dodging through a crowd of men who had just come up some steps into Trafalgar Square.
This was a good move. The men were large, tough-looking fellows, and although they allowed the two barefoot boys through, they shouted abuse in strong Birmingham accents at the two mobsters as
they tried to push their way past them. Alfie, glancing over his shoulder, saw that he and Jack might escape. The fog was thick and, once away from the gaslights of Trafalgar Square, they could
lose themselves in the network of small lanes between there and the boys’ home in Bow Street. They only had to cross the road to St Martin’s church and then they might be safe.