The Montgomery Murder (14 page)

CHAPTER 22

When they got there, nobody but Sarah was to be seen, though Sammy’s armchair had been pulled over to screen a dark corner and an old blanket had been thrown over it.
Sarah had made a bed on the floor by the fire, and a large blackened kettle was simmering beside it. She had left the door to the cellar stairs open and a candle lantern on the bottom step. The cab
driver carried Sammy down and laid him gently on the old cushions by the fire.

‘Here you are, take this shilling back. The inspector has paid me,’ he said before he left to fetch the doctor, handing over the twelve pennies to Sarah.

She took them hesitantly and he smiled, a wide crease in his turnip-like face, and settled his broken hat more firmly on his head.

‘I don’t suppose there is any ma and da,’ he said, with a quick look around the bare cellar – the few boxes, the moth-eaten, threadbare cushions, the one broken chair and
the few pewter jugs, ‘just you and your brothers. Poor youngsters.’ He hesitated for a moment and then added another shilling. ‘Poor little fellow,’ he said with feeling and
with a last glance at Sammy. ‘Who would do a thing like that to him? There are some very evil people in this world of ours.’

‘And some very good ones,’ said Sarah, accepting the money, her small teeth gleaming in a smile. She reached up and kissed the cabman’s leathery cheek, and he grinned and
patted her shoulder.

Alfie passed a shilling to Jack after the cabman had left. ‘Keep that. You can buy sausages and beer after the doctor has been,’ he said. If Sammy is taken to hospital, I’m
going too, he thought. I’m never going to give the strangler a chance to get him again.

‘Get a dry shirt, Tom,’ he said aloud.

‘I’ll pour some water into this bucket,’ Mallesh came out from behind the screening blanket.

‘Here’s a towel,’ said Jack. ‘Here, Tom, take those rags and rub down Mutsy, and Alfie and me will get Sammy out of those wet clothes. Should you be getting back,
Sarah?’

‘He looks terrible,’ said Sarah, ignoring the question and bending over Sammy. ‘Go on, quickly; get his clothes off. Haven’t you got a better towel than this one?
It’s damp and dirty and full of holes. And it smells.’

‘Take my turban,’ said Mallesh, unwinding the folds of the six-foot piece of cloth to reveal jet-black hair, and holding it in front of the fire to warm it. ‘It’s
clean,’ he added to Sarah. ‘I wash it each night.’

‘Every night!’ exclaimed Tom, bringing over an old yellowed shirt which had once belonged to Alfie’s father.

‘Wish that doctor would come,’ muttered Alfie as he rubbed his brother’s cold body with the soft folds of Mallesh’s turban.

‘Funny he isn’t a bit better,’ agreed Jack in low tones as he pulled the dry shirt over his cousin’s head. He, too, looked at Sammy’s white face with concern.

‘The cab’s pulling up outside the pavement,’ warned Tom as he peered up through the small narrow window in the wall of the cellar.

In a flash, Mallesh disappeared into his hiding place and Sarah took the lantern over to the door. A minute later Alfie heard footsteps stumbling on the steep stairs to the cellar.

Doctor Goodsby was a small, fat man carrying a large leather bag in one hand. He looked in a bad temper and Sarah wished that the cabman had come back down, too. The doctor had probably sent him
on his way – too mean to pay for waiting time, she supposed.

‘What’s this, what’s this?’ asked the doctor fussily. He sniffed disdainfully and cast a contemptuous look around the untidy cellar.

‘My brother was garrotted and flung in the river,’ said Alfie stiffly.

The doctor bent over Sammy, carelessly pulling up one eyelid, and then he jumped back. Alfie watched him in silence. The doctor had a puzzled expression on his face.

‘This is where the wire was tightened,’ said Sarah, pointing to the throat.

‘I’m not blind, girl,’ he grunted. Once again, he pulled up Sammy’s eyelid, frowned and then immediately delved into his leather bag, pulling out a tiny looking glass and
placing it over Sammy’s mouth. Alfie fought the desire to vomit, clenching his hands and taking small, shallow breaths through his nose. It seemed years before the doctor lifted the
silver-backed glass and held it up. Alfie moved to stand beside him and forced himself to look.

The glass was damp. Sammy was still alive. Alfie dropped to his knees beside his brother, weak with relief.

‘I’ll have to bleed him,’ said the doctor decisively. ‘Here, you girl, hold this basin.’

From his bag he produced a white earthenware bowl with a half-circle cut out of it. Next came a pair of large scissors and a small, sharp knife. Quickly he cut one sleeve from the old shirt.
Then he seized Sammy’s arm. It fitted perfectly into the missing half-circle on the rim of the bowl. Sarah made a half-strangled sound as the doctor sliced into the boy’s white arm.
Immediately the blood dripped into the bowl. Every one watched silently until the bowl filled. The blood looked very red, thought Alfie, compared with Sammy’s white face.

‘Here’s some laudanum. Give him some if he wakes.’ The doctor seized his bag and marched quickly towards the door, saying briskly, ‘Nothing to pay. Inspector Denham will
see to that.’

‘Wait.’ Alfie went after him and caught the man by the sleeve. ‘Will he be all right?’

The doctor shook him off and wrenched open the door. ‘Maybe,’ he said indifferently as he clumped up the uneven stairs. ‘Don’t like the look of those eyes,
though.’

‘He didn’t know that Sammy is blind!’ Sarah gasped as Alfie closed the door.

‘And he’s a doctor,’ said Alfie with scorn. Tom gave a nervous giggle and then gulped.

‘He should not do that. Take blood from the boy. He needs his blood to make him strong again,’ said Mallesh indignantly, coming out from his hiding place. ‘We do not do this in India.’ He came over and sat down beside Sammy,
feeling his hands and rubbing them gently. He picked up the packet of laudanum and sniffed it. ‘Opium,’ he said and put it down again. ‘Do not him give this until we can warm
him.’

‘You’re right. He’s still as cold as a stone,’ said Alfie, taking Sammy’s other hand.

‘I’ll fill some jars with hot water,’ said Sarah, sorting through the pile of jars that Jack collected from houses in Bloomsbury. He got a halfpenny from the pickles factory
for every ten jars.

‘In India, the
hakim
, our doctor, would rub him like this,’ said Mallesh. He set his long slim hands on Sammy’s back and slowly began to massage him. ‘I wished
once to become a
hakim
. I had begun to learn, but then my father was hanged,’ he remarked after a few minutes.

‘Wrap the jars, Tom,’ directed Sarah. ‘Any old rags will do. Put them beside Sammy.’

Mallesh seemed tireless. His hands worked to a sort of rhythm, thought Alfie, almost like a man playing a drum, stroking, patting and tapping. And then he began kneading the flesh, like a baker
getting the dough ready for the oven. Sammy’s deathly white body seemed to be getting a glow. Sarah kept filling more bottles with hot water, Jack fed the fire, recklessly adding new coal as
soon as the flames died down, Alfie paced up and down and Tom sat hunched up in the corner, biting his nails.

And then quite suddenly Mutsy stretched, groaned and got to his feet. Alfie poured some water into a tin bowl, but the dog ignored it. Walking slowly and unsteadily he came across to Sammy and
started to lick his feet, almost seeming to copy Mallesh’s massaging movements.

And then the miracle happened. Sammy opened his eyes, stretched out his hand. Alfie gripped it and Sammy said in a weak voice, ‘God, Alfie, I’m hungry.’

CHAPTER 23

Sammy fell asleep after eating two sausages and drinking some laudanum. He lay on the cushions in front of the fire, covered with blankets and with a couple of hot bottles on
each side of him and one at his feet. His face was slightly flushed. From time to time, Alfie checked his hands and they felt warm.

‘You saved my brother’s life,’ he said to Mallesh. ‘I won’t forget that.’

‘I am not happy. I would like to get my herbs,’ said Mallesh. ‘When I left home, my mother gave me a box full of different herbs. It is with my things at the East India Docks.
That river, your great river, that is not good to drink.’

‘I think he will be all right. He did vomit up that water,’ said Sarah. She got to her feet. ‘I’ll have to go now. The housekeeper is getting suspicious about this aunt
that I keep visiting after going to the Ragged School. She asked me to bring my aunt to see her and I had to make up a story about her having a bad leg and not being able to walk. I think
they’d all have a fit if they knew I was visiting a gang of boys in a cellar.’

Alfie didn’t reply. There was too much to arrange. His mind seemed to be exploding with it. ‘I was thinking that you shouldn’t say anything at the Montgomerys’ about
Sammy being rescued,’ he said after a minute.

Sarah nodded. ‘I was thinking that myself. If the murderer is in the house, then let him keep thinking that he is safe.’

‘Which one of them do you think it was, Sarah?’ Alfie asked. ‘Not the missus, or her man friend – he hasn’t made an appearance for the last few months as far as you
know, so how would he know about Sammy, or about me asking questions? That brings it down to the three men – the butler, Mr Denis or the visitor, Mr Scott. The butler would have known that
Sammy was at the house and he saw me at the gatekeeper’s lodge. The fellow that tried to hit me over the head wore a top hat. But the butler was wearing one of those when I saw him and the
two toffs are bound to wear them, so that doesn’t narrow it down at all.’

‘The butler wouldn’t go on horseback,’ Sarah said. ‘Well, I’ve never seen him, anyway.’

Alfie thought about that. It probably wasn’t the butler, then, unless, of course, the coachman had asked him to exercise a horse. There didn’t seem any reason why the visitor, Mr
Scott, would have murdered Mr Montgomery. More likely to be the spoilt brat son. Alfie’s mind was filled with an exploding hatred of Denis Montgomery. There he was, probably had everything
handed on a silver spoon to him since he was half Sammy’s age and then, just because his dad had come back from India and tried to put a stop to his gambling, he had murdered him and almost
murdered poor old Sammy and faithful Mutsy, too!

Sarah took the lid off the pot of boiling water, peered into it and then added a few more pieces of coal to the fire. Jack cleaned out the frying pan with a rag and then sat quietly beside
Alfie. Tom looked from one to the other, but said nothing either. He still looked subdued.

And then into the silence came a hoarse croak from Sammy.

‘The one that smelled funny, he’s the one that done it. The fellow that strangled me smelled funny.’ His voice faded, and his eyes closed again. He seemed, thought Alfie,
looking at him fearfully, like one who was halfway between life and death. Perhaps he shouldn’t have given him that laudanum. Opium was bad for people. He had seen enough beggars die from
it.

‘I must go,’ Sarah repeated.

‘I’ll come over tomorrow morning,’ said Alfie. He picked up the lantern and went towards the door with her.

‘Will that be safe?’ asked Sarah.

‘Safe enough . . . I know what to do and to say.’ Alfie kept his voice sounding stout and confident, but even he could hear the false note of bravado. After one day there, Sammy had
nearly been killed. Did he really want to venture into that place? On the other hand, if he didn’t, he might never find out who the murderer was. Perhaps he and his gang would have to go into
hiding, would have to live like rats fleeing from one cellar to another.

‘I’ll walk with you.’ Mallesh was beside Sarah, sounding resolute. ‘No one will see me in the fog. I want to get the herbs for Sammy. I’m not happy about him. He
has a slight fever. And I’ll get something for the dog’s wound, also.’

And then they were both gone. Jack and Tom stretched out on the remaining cushions and Alfie sat beside his heavily sleeping brother. Through the window he could see the yellow haze of the gas
lamp outside.