Walking in Pimlico (12 page)

And I showed the air and the ladies and gents my fist, just as I’d seen Bill do. There was dead silence and then – what a commotion! But don’t think that ladies fainted and gentlemen had to be held back from clocking me. Or that there was outrage and a-calling for the police. Not on your life! Here was applause like Professor Hugh Moore had never heard before, lifting the roof and making the windows rattle. The military a-stamping and a-roaring like they was on a battlefield. Gents smacking their hands together and ‘Hurroo-ing!’ till you could hardly get your breath. Then I sat on the back of the chair and waited, just as I’d seen Billy Ross do. I looked grim and held my face in both my fists, like I was looking death in the face.

I am not a brave fellow. I have moments when the spirit of Waterloo taps me on the shoulder, but they are rare visitors, and I knew as soon as I got to the wings that I had done a foolish thing.
Mr Cashmore was beside himself, of course, and offered to raise my fee by two shillings and as much Cream of the Valley as my throat needed to repeat Billy’s song each night. It’s true that afterwards, ‘The Cobbler’s Awl’ seemed tame, and ‘The Ratcatcher’s Daughter’, though I’d heard old Sam Cowell’s pipes around it many a night, was as flat as a nun’s chest. The audience was restless and buzzing, and couldn’t settle, so I abandoned ‘The Spider and the Fly’ and gave them some riddles and a soft shoe dance, and I could do nothing wrong.

I had no chance to bask, though. Mr Cashmore, hearing the roars, greeted me again, this time like a long-lost friend, and shook my hand with a vigour that was painful, and desired to treat me after the entertainment, to which I agreed, though I knew he would be drinking alone. I held up with Mr Beeton in his box – how honoured he was to have Professor Moore’s company once again! – and then, paying my dues and picking up my bag, I took the river path to the end of the Parade and jumped upon the first cart I saw.

No, I am not a brave fellow, but I knew what I ought to do. The cart took me to the station, and the train took me back to London, and shanks’s pony took me to my old ratting mate Constable Tegg. I found him out in the Marquis of Granby, sat in the corner with himself for company. (It is a lonely life being a copper, and no mistake, and I think I would rather starve than be so shunned by the rest of humanity.) His physog lit up a bit when I hove into view, but soon sobered down when I told him about my errand. I had thought hard about what I should do, though I was certain that I should bring out Lucy’s letter and the picture. I let Tegg read it, and then I showed him the picture, and turned it over to let him see the writing on the back.

He considered it slowly, and took some pulls on his beer before he said, ‘You should’ve brung this before.’

I said I couldn’t. I was under obligation, but here it was now. It struck me that since Bessie had got hold of the picture – thinking it was a sixpence – and was holding it till her dying breath, and since the picture, not a sixpence at all, belonged to ‘Shovelton’, the name what was there, written on the back of it, here were more facts than even the bluebottles needed to point a finger at the devil. Tegg said he thought I was probably right, but he would have to hand it all over to Inspector Gould, who was still in charge of the case.

Which he did. And I spent the best part of two days drinking Inspector Gould’s tea and sitting in his chairs, and chewing over that strange evening.

Until he said, ‘Mr Sage, I think we can say, with certainty, that we have our Whitechapel Murderer.’

(He was a great one for the drama, was Gould, and I do believe he was represented on the London stage, perhaps at the New East London or the great Britannia itself. There was no doubt he had a great sense of himself, and would pace about and do stuff with his hands like a magician. Only not producing an egg, of course.)

Some of what happened next, as they say, I know only through the papers, in particular the
Illustrated Police News
, to which I am very partial on account of its educational pictures. Mr Shovelton was gone for at his lodgings, with a full turnout of bluebottles and a Black Maria to boot. He was recently arrived from the country (don’t I know it!), and they call upon him at his London place, a good house in Canterbury-square, but his beautiful sister is not on hand. This causes a sensation, for when he is charged the papers want to see the beautiful sister, and are only half interested in him. But she is disappeared back to the country or Brighton. In the courtroom, I am brought out to talk about it, for, try as they will, they cannot find Lucy and I do not blame her for lying low.

It is a strange thing how judges and juries, and the sight and smell of justice, makes me feel like I’m being crawled upon. Here I stand,
wearing my best shirt and collar, and boots what I’ve borrowed (too small), and gloves what I’ve borrowed (too large), and the worst hat ever to have come out of Gov’s back room, and I want nothing more than to run away and hide. For I am asked question after question, and the cove in the greasy wig and dusty gown is not looking at me at all, anywhere but. It is as if he does not want to meet my eyes in case I stare him down. I answer all his questions, though, and tell again what happened on that night at the Constellation when young Bessie was done to death. And when the greasy wig asks me to look at the prisoner and say whether it was him what I saw a-doing Bessie agin the wall, and making off after squashing her head, I have to stare hard at the gent. Shovelton. Certain, he was one of the party on the grape in the Constellation. But was he the gent in the yard? I couldn’t say for sure. It might be him, I say. Certain? No, it was dark. But certain enough? Not really. Was the height correct? Yes. The build? Yes, just about. Did he speak? Yes. They ask the gent to read something. A column from a newspaper about distemper in dogs. It seemed all right at the time, but now it’s comical.

Was it him, says the wig, now that I have heard his voice?

Could be, says I.

Was it him?

Possibly, says I.

Was it?

Yes, says I.

No, cries Shovelton.

And that is that. It might seem that I am making light of this business. But in truth, I want it over. Here is a gent who
probably
did kill Bessie, and, who knows, he might have done it to others. Poor working girls, trying to scrape a penny, are always fair game to gents who have never known a cold night in their lives. It was probably him. And I hurry away as fast as I might, thinking that it is a bad job badly done, but over with now.

I have told this quickly, though I could have said plenty, for the courtroom and police and sessions at the Station House with Tegg and Gould were lively enough, and gave me plenty to relate when I fancied an audience and a pot. But at the time, I wanted nothing more than to pack up and leave London and all of it behind. So, when my part in it was over with, I took myself off sharpish to Mr Tidyman’s back room at the Talbot and once again consulted the
Era
. Another nice little shop, quiet, was what I most desired, and I thought regretfully about what I had left behind at Springwell, for I had grown fond of my room at the Old Pitcher and even Mr Beeton and his high notions of my education. It was a pleasant place, to be sure, and I could have found myself quite at ease there.

But, as Mr Figgis used to say, we are not put on this earth to tread the primrose path, but to take the steep and thorny way. A jolly chap was my adopted father! So I ran my finger down the column of ‘Wanteds’ and found many called and few chosen, but a Mr Blitz of the Harmony Concert Rooms, Birmingham (‘refined entertainments, no acrobats, thank you’), seemed to fit the bill. And I did something I have never done before, in all my professional life, so eager was I to breathe different air.

I went on spec.

Miss Marweather – Whitechapel

W
hen I first put on a pair of gentleman’s breeches I was eleven years old. In the back yard of my father’s tavern, deep within the Old Nichol, where policemen (if they were ever seen) patrolled in twos and threes. Yes, in the back yard of my father’s tavern, I found, in a sack, a pair of gentleman’s breeches! They were destined for an ancient Hebrew, who dealt, of course, in ‘old clo”, but other goods as well. He was a close confederate of my father, though what their business was I knew better than to ask. The sacks, which appeared in the yard periodically, constituted part of
that business
, and the persons who accompanied them were in
that business
. I knew this instinctively, and the cuffs and blows I regularly received were a signal reminder. This sack, like the others, had been left just inside the gate but, unusually, it had fallen open and, tumbling out on to the cobbles were not only breeches, but an entire gentleman’s costume, all of the finest quality. Boots, a shirt, a coat. And the scent that arose from the sack and with which the clothes were saturated also spoke to me of ‘gentleman’, for every night in my father’s tavern that same scent would rise above the stink of sweat of working bodies like a fragrant mist. As I swept the floor or collected pots, I moved in the aroma of the gentleman!

And these
were
gentlemen, for all they were swells and the other ugly words my father and his confederates used to describe them. Dukes and earls, titled men, powerful men, somehow they lounged in the saloon bar, though for everyone else there was barely room to sit upright! And they swaggered through the crush of the dancing saloon, where the other occupants were forced to push and shove. Their voices cut through the din of the drunken Saturday night crowd, and though they might be in their cups and could be found spewing and sometimes brawling in the street, there was still a marvellous distinction about them.

My father was a Big Man in the Nichol. There were few men who would stand against him, for he held sway in the ring and the pit, and the Fancy flocked to our door. And the police. But there were gentlemen whom my father would not cross and to whom he deferred, even while he bit his lip and clenched his teeth. Lord This and the Earl of That. Men who barked or soothed their way, but who got their way because of that power which they wore like a second skin.

I watched them very closely whenever I could, which was easy enough. As a girl (never a pretty nor a striking girl), I might have been invisible for all they were aware of me. Collecting pots and wiping tables, carrying coals and sweeping the floors, I watched and learned. I saw how they behaved, how even turning upon a heel or holding a stick gave them that elegant authority that made my father look like a fumbling clod in spite of his size and reputation. Only once was I espied in my observations.

The table around which my father and his supporters, along with a handful of the Fancy, were congregated one evening was in our parlour, a title that dignified a mean room at the back of the house, reserved for private business. It was small and low-ceilinged, and blistering hot from the roaring fire, so the windows had been thrown open to the night air. I was in the yard and, looking through the window, was much struck by a new face at the table. I even
remembered his name. The Viscount Mountgarrett, Earl of Kilrush – tall, lean and more darkly handsome than any man I had ever seen. He arrived late, the table was already crowded, but room was found, a chair and a brimming pot placed before him. He smiled around that table, reserving personal greetings for a favoured few, and those men swelled and shuffled in their seats. His eye was bright, his lips full and red, and when he walked out into the yard with my father, I thought he was the most fascinating of men. He paced about as they talked, his boots striking the cobbles with a rasping clatter and, as he turned, I dipped behind the shadow of a water barrel, fearing to be seen. Their conversation lasted some minutes and when it seemed to be at an end and I thought they had both returned to the house, I emerged from my hiding place. Only Mountgarrett stood before me, with that easy elegance of bearing I so admired but, at this moment, feared.