第 13 页

Very soon I became aware of disturbing sounds swirling through the stale air.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered.

We strained our ears to pick up faint noises travelling through the thick walls. They sent a chill through me, barely audible cries of pain which seemed to be all round us like the whispers of ghosts. We stood still, listening intently for a few seconds. Just as I was about to try one of the doors, a figure appeared at the end of the corridor.

He startled upon seeing us and stopped in his tracks, such a frightening and pitiful sight looking barely human.

Jude reached for my hand as the figure staggered towards us. He was naked and skeletal. His eyes had sunk into his head and his cheek bones were prominent in his gaunt face. Blood and saliva foamed and dripped from his mouth. His skin was yellow and covered in dark, weeping soars. He shook from head to toe. So horrid a vision was he that even I could not bear to look and I was overcome with fear.

We both ran back down the corridor and leapt up the stairs back into the house. We slammed shut and bolted the cellar door behind us and stood panting in the comforting orange glow of the lights. We burst into the nearest room, and my shaking hand poured a generous measure of brandy into two glasses. I handed one to Jude then lit a cigarette.

“Do you realise who that was?” Jude asked.

I knocked back all the brandy in one go and wiped my shaking lips with the back of my hand.

“Yes, he’s the first one we brought in. A week ago it took a strong kick to bring him down, now look at him! What in God’s name has that evil bastard done to him?”

We sat for some time in silence, thinking of the wretched man staggering around below us obviously in the most terrible pain, probably about to die. We drank more brandy but still neither of us could block out the image of his yellow, sunken face, haunted eyes and the disgusting sores over his neck and body.

Our shock and confusion was broken when one of my team burst into the room. My shattered nerves jangled at the unexpected intrusion and I hurled my glass in panic at the intruder.

“Knock! You stupid, rude, idiot,” I yelled.

Jude touched my arm gently, encouraging temperance.

“Red, calm yourself,” he whispered. “What do you want Jimmy?”

Jimmy Thornton, a crooked peeler, was standing in the doorway. He was clearly unnerved by the flying glass.

“My apologies Moriarty, shall I come back in again, knock?”

“Oh just get on with it Jimmy,” I sighed.

“It’s Frankie, he’s got that big match tonight with the mad Russian and the Yard have found out. A team’s already on its way to break up the fight, I just heard. If they take Frankie in again, won’t be much I can do this time ma’am.”

Frankie was a boxer and loyal member of my team who was always ready to serve when called upon. In return, I looked after him well and could not risk him being arrested as he prepared to face his fierce Russian opponent, especially with so much money resting on the outcome.

My interest in boxing had started years previously when I was a street child. I enjoyed watching the often brutal, unregulated street brawls which occurred frequently throughout the East End. As I grew stronger, I learned how to fight and enjoy the sport. No weapons to load, no knife to pull, just my fists and my power, honed by years of physical work in the workhouse. I had come to know various well-regarded fighters through my prostitution, some of whom were happy to give me a few tips of the trade in return for my services.

Now, I owned a group of fighters who worked as part of my team and I paid for all their training and development. Though the income generated from involvement in illegal boxing was tiny, the boxers were often useful in other ways and young Frankie Jones was no exception.

He was very handy when a little muscle was required, always happy to turn a blind eye if asked to do so, and the Silversmith’s shop where he worked had many uses. Frankie was too valuable to lose.

“We’ll go at once. Thank you for the information Jimmy. You will be rewarded well, as always.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to send someone else to deal with this ma’am?”

I sighed heavily and looked at Jude’s ashen face.

“Its fine Jim, we both need something to keep us occupied tonight.”

We arrived ahead of the police, and strategically placed our foot soldiers in all the surrounding streets to stage an ambush, safe in the knowledge that our men would deal with the peelers before they even reached the venue.

Quite a crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle; a raucous, blood-thirsty mass of boisterous men jeering and shouting as two of the junior boxers squared up in a warm-up match.

I inspected my fighters and talked through tactics with Frankie, before taking my place at the front of the crowd. The image of that horrible decrepit figure in the cellar persistently pushed its way into my mind, so I drank heavily and puffed hungrily on cigars. I felt strangely uneasy, as if I was being watched.

Jude placed my bets and by the time Frankie’s fight was about to start, I was already holding a tidy sum. I was also rather drunk, bantering and arguing with those in the crowd close by me. A rough looking beggar-man pushed into me and I shoved my gun in his face.

“Manners pig; don’t you know who I am?”

I blew cigar smoke into his eyes and he blinked to clear them.

“No, but I intend to find out,” he replied in a deep and positive voice which was at odds with his shabby appearance. It was a familiar voice and made my heart stop for a second. He pulled off his hat and shook out his thick dark hair. I lowered my revolver in shock.

“Sherlock Holmes,” I exclaimed, then composed myself and raised my revolver again. “Well, I don’t give a damn who you are. No-one pushes me like that and fails to apologise.”

“The police are here.”

I let out an arrogant, drunken cackle.

“You’re wrong. I had soldiers lying in wait, an ambush. Surprise! All gone. You told them to come didn’t you, told them about the fight? Oh well, sorry to have foiled your plans Mr Holmes.”

I pulled back the hammer; “You need to leave now.”

I was being rather ridiculous. I was showing off, trying to hide my surprise, forget my problems and not show this man that he was the only person who could pierce the armour with which I had cloaked myself.

Holmes had spent his time since the visit from Mrs St Clare that morning asking questions amongst London’s begging fraternity. He disguised himself as a beggar to encourage those he spoke with to consider him harmless. Sitting on various street corners selling matches and asking for a few coppers was the perfect way to enter into conversation with others doing similar. He even earned himself a shilling or two which appealed greatly to his rather singular sense of humour.

Everyone he spoke with agreed that the man with the twisted lip had not been seen for at least a year but Holmes already knew that Neville St Clare would not be foolish enough to use the same disguise again.

He discovered that there had been a new face working the streets, an old man blind in one eye. He appeared about a month ago, so Holmes was told, but no-one had seen him for a while. Rather worryingly, he was told that various other regular street beggars had also not been seen in their usual haunts over the past week or two.

Holmes was directed to the place where the stranger would normally sit. Once left alone he withdrew his magnifying glass. He did not hope to find much but as there had been little rain he concluded that it may not be fruitless to try.

Indeed it was not, as his carefully trained eye spotted blood stains on the wall and a strange sticky substance trodden into the cobbles, quite conceivably face make-up of some kind. He also found a flesh-coloured plaster. In that instant he knew he had found his man.

Opposite was a silversmith’s shop. Holmes entered, still in his disguise, and asked passionately if anyone could help him find his friend who disappeared from the spot outside last Monday. At first, his pleas were ignored and the silversmith threatened him with the police if he did not leave his shop at once. Then Holmes pulled out from his pocket all the money he had made from an afternoon’s begging.

“Save your money old man, I can’t help you. I wasn’t in on Monday, it was my apprentice young Frankie Jones who was minding things for me.”

Holmes begged for an address for the young man but the silversmith would not oblige. Holmes rummaged in his pocket and brought out a few more coins.

“Very well, you’ll find him tonight on Bridge Street about nine o’clock engaging in a little sport, if you get my meaning.”

He took some of the money and doubted that a crippled old beggar would be any threat to an illegal boxing fight. Holmes thanked him most gratefully and shuffled out of the shop.

“Sherlock Holmes is here to see you John, not that you would recognise him,” giggled Mrs Mary Watson early that evening as she entered their little sitting room closely followed by a dirty, crippled, disfigured old beggar.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Watson leaping from his fireside chair. Despite seeing his friend in various disguises over the years, he never failed to be surprised by the utterly convincing nature of each one.

“Forgive my appearance and please accept my sincere apologies for startling yourself and the maid at the door, Mrs Watson,” said Holmes as he shook a little rain water from his tatty old overcoat.

“I presume you are working on a case Mr Holmes?” asked Mary, already suspecting that she now would not be seeing much of her husband that evening.

“Indeed I am Mrs Watson and I was rather hoping that the doctor may wish to accompany me tonight,” Holmes replied, his eyes bright and alert with the prospect of a night of adventures.

Watson was ready and enthusiastic as always, even when Holmes revealed that he too would have to don the attire of a beggar.

So it followed that two roughly-dressed Victorian gentlemen set off into the East End and became immersed in a rowdy crowd watching an illegal bare-knuckle encounter.

For Holmes though, the only thing which distracted his keen observant eye for the entire event was me, the red-headed woman with unique confidence and arrogance who behaved like no other woman he had seen before. Strangely it was as if during the moments he was watching me everything else just faded away and the times when I had punctuated his life were all that mattered.

When he pushed against me and I turned my rage on him, cigar in one hand and a revolver in the other, I shook him to his very core.

I held his stare intently and repeated my previous assertion.

“You need to leave. Now.”

He stood fast.

“The police are here,” he said, “I will offer you a choice. You can either come with me, have an opportunity to tell me why you have been snatching beggars from the street, or be taken into custody. I am a man of justice but I make my own judgements and will assist anyone who repents, seeks to amend what they have done. I will give you that opportunity if you leave with me now.”

“I thought it was only God who could judge and forgive? God, Jesus and Sherlock Holmes; well there’s a turn up for the books. I know Jesus is meant to be coming again at some point, but I doubt it will be in the form of a...what do you call yourself? Oh yes, consulting detective.” My breath must have stunk of alcohol as I spat out my words. “The police, as I said earlier, are not here. So I will not be going with you or with them.”

“I ask you one last time. Call it professional curiosity if you will, but I desire to hear your story and I know your removal of beggars has not been a philanthropic exercise. Come with me, now, quickly.”

“Absolutely not. I’m not that stupid little girl who threw herself at you years ago. I’m better than that, I’m powerful now. You are nothing to me.”

He inhaled deeply, searching my expression for any hint of capitulation and saw none.

“You are still a drunk. And stubborn. Very well, then you leave me no choice.”

He suddenly threw his beggar’s cap high into the air as a signal and everything changed.

A surge of men rushed forward from the crowd, all looking like normal East Enders, but clearly not just ordinary members of the crowd. I had been outwitted; the police had been there the whole time disguised as spectators, ready to pounce once given the signal. I had been too arrogant and too drunk to even consider such a possibility and was initially stunned.

The police began arresting the boxers and the crowd all around us became a chaotic stampede. Holmes pounced to snatch the revolver from my hand before the crowd swallowed him up, pulling him away from me.

An officer then took hold of me and I fought back as best as I could but the alcohol had impaired my abilities. Then, as the crowd pushed around me I fell to the floor, booted feet stomping on me, kicking me. I shouted for Jude, but my words were lost in the din.

I lay there with my face against the cobbles. This was pathetic I thought; I was a fighter, a strong, trained individual and would not tolerate being simply trampled to death.

I summoned the strength to scramble to my feet and throw a punch in the face of a peeler who was trying to capture me. As he staggered away I finally saw Jude. He was being held by two policemen with his arms forced behind his back and a gun pressed against his head.

Holmes was beside me now; the ever-loyal Doctor Watson at his side sporting a freshly blackened eye. I snatched a gun from the policeman I had just floored and shoved it against Watson’s forehead.

“You take my friend, I’ll take yours, understand? Make them release Jude, now! I won’t hesitate to shoot,” I snarled at Holmes.

I turned to look at the doctor’s stunned face.

“I don’t like you anyway, never understood why Holmes bothers with you. Besides, I hate doctors. You are all just butchers by another name.”

I pushed the gun harder against his forehead.

“Let him go, now!” I shouted, turning my angry defiant stare upon Holmes who looked visibly shaken by this very real threat to his only friend.

After a tense, silent few seconds, he gave the signal and Jude was released. I stepped back but kept my gun pointed directly at Watson’s head. Jude ran towards me and I clasped his hand.

We needed to escape this situation immediately and fortunately by now my carriage had drawn up behind us. I began to stagger backwards towards it but kept my gun on Watson. I stepped up onto the carriage steps. The driver encouraged the horses and we started to move.

“Goodbye Mr Holmes, don’t forget me!” I shouted, and hoped that indeed he never would.

As we sat in the carriage and rattled back at great speed through the dark streets, I should have been feeling quite jubilant about such a bold escape from capture. Instead, I couldn’t help but feel a little lost, adrift in an uncertain sea.