SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments Read online

  The first officer had just caught the wooden rungs of the ladder when he heard something which almost made him let go in his fright. From the boatload of corpses behind him there came a whimper and a sudden faint cry.

  He turned about, not knowing which of the bodies might still have life in it. It was a child's cry, of that he was sure. Hanging by one hand, and with his foot on the gunwhale of the gig, he looked carefully at each of the eight children in the boat. At least six of them were dead beyond all question. And then he saw a slight flickering facial movement which betrayed life in one of the other two. It was a girl of about seven years old who was the sole survivor.

  It was not entirely a feeling of pity which prompted the first officer as he picked his way through the dead, hardened limbs and lifted the child up. With this duty done, he thought, no more would be expected of him. Someone else could assume the disagreeable responsibility for the funeral of the victims in the growing heat of the ocean sun.

  During the remainder of the day, the crew of the San Francisco de Goa cared for the child with great tenderness. There was no doubt that she would not have woken from this last sleep unless the gig had been spotted at that time. But warmth and care gradually overcame the effects of cold and exhaustion. Though she looked dully about her, drink and food restored her parched tongue and some of her physical strength. She seemed a sturdy youngster, the daughter or casual foundling associated with any group of soldiers' or sailors' women. Her robust young body had endured much in the past few days but had survived it. By great good fortune she had either not seen or not recognized the deaths of so many of her companions. Her spirits revived considerably and by the time that she reached Lisbon there was little sign of the ordeal she had suffered.

  The British Consul thanked Captain Ramon for his Christian burial of the bodies of the victims and for his care of the one survivor. Ramon had observed a certain knowingness in the girl during the period of her recovery and he now suggested that perhaps it would be a charitable act if he were to adopt her, unofficially. The Consul was grateful but regretted that such informalities were not possible. It was necessary that the girl should be returned to England. She must go to her family, or if there were none, to the workhouse to learn a useful trade. It was a pity, but it must be so. Captain Ramon nodded and took his leave of the Consul. The last small tragedy attendant on the disaster of the Birkenhead seemed now to be complete.

  2

  THE HI RING-ROOM 1860

  Sergeant William Clarence Verity of the Private-Clothes detail, Whitehall police-office, was in his element again. It was a year since he had returned from secondment to the Intelligence Department in Calcutta during the final stages of the Mutiny and the disappearance of the great Kaisar-i-Hind diamond. Now, at the end of May 1860, he bore no worse marks of his ordeal than a faint brickish tan which still overlaid the pink roundness of his moon face. With his black hair plastered flat for neatness and his moustaches carefully waxed at the tips, he strode on his night-beat through the bright streets and murky courtyards of the West End. His shoulders were a little hunched, his hands clasped behind his back, and his movements suggested an overweight performing bear. The night-beat was an unpopular duty among the men of the Private-Clothes detail, but Verity relished the dark coolness after the nights of near-suffocation in Bengal and the torment of the prickly heat on his soft plump flesh.

  At two o'clock in the morning, the Haymarket was so thronged with men, women, and children that Verity had to shoulder his way vigorously through the pressing crowd to make any progress at all. In his Private-Clothes outfit of worn stove-pipe hat, threadbare frock-coat and matching black trousers he was as conspicuous as a race-course swell at an evangelical meat-tea. He passed slowly by the coffee-stall with its tall steaming urns, where the crowd was densest. Regent Street 'aristocracy' from clubs and night-houses, resplendent in silk hats, embroidered waistcoats and chains, eyed the girls of the town who paraded slowly up and down their allotted stretch of pavement, one hand coquettishly twirling a parasol, the other holding up the train of their skirts from the foul moisture which condensed on the paving in the cooler air of night.

  A pair of sparring 'snobs' in loud check coats gave way to allow Verity past, grinning at him. Raffish sporting gents watched him, put their heads together confidentially, and then shouted with laughter. Inspector Henry Croaker of Whitehall police-office could have done the magsmen and the doxies of the town no greater service than to allot their beat to this fat fool. Verity's shabby 'private-clothes' were so well known that, far from disguising him, they marked him out at a hundred yards to the greenest stickman in the game. It was true that one or two lags had fallen victim to the portly sergeant. Ned Roper and a doxy or two were sweating out their time in Australian convict settlements. But the opinion up and down the Haymarket was that Ned and his bullies had been soft as new cheese.

  With his mind fixed determinedly on the business in hand, Verity plodded onwards. In the side-streets there was no illumination except for an occasional gas jet flaming and flaring. But the main artery of pleasure, which ran from Pall Mall, up the Haymarket and the curve of Regent Street to Regent Circus and Langham Place, was brilliant with white gas-light. From before midnight until the first lightening of the dawn sky it was the territory of painted cheeks and brandy-sparkling eyes, the stench of bad tobacco which never cleared even in the open air, the sound of raucous horse-laughs and shrieked obscenities. Verity crossed to the splendid Nash quadrant of Regent Street. The colonnade had lately been pulled down so that there should be no shelter for street girls in front of the shops. They gathered there, all the same, offering themselves for sale under the harsh glare of gaslight and the windy roaring of its flame. Verity did not so much as glance at them, but they knew him.

  'D on't yer feel frisky, old mole?’ shrieked a girl of fourteen or fifteen, her pink cotton gown matched by a pork-pie hat and tall feather.

  'Cut it, Beth!' said a demure-looking girl in a Jane Clarke bonnet and black silk dress. 'That's Mr Verity, that is. That's the brave detective officer, that is!'

  There were hoots of derision from a dozen girls along the pillared shop-fronts.

  'Oh,' said the youngster, "im as went to 'indoostan in the Mutiny, and was took prisoner by the natives, and had his apparatus removed in a dungeon '

  Screams of merriment rolled and reverberated the length of the pavement. Verity strode on, not deigning to notice such insults. 'A man that's seen what I've seen happen to such young persons don't need to answer 'em,' he said to himself firmly. Even from where he now stood he could look at houses and remember the scenes within them. Nell Jacoby, once tall and queenly, lying in her own filth on the floor of a barred attic, her body covered with the marks of ill-treatment by her keeper. Miss Amanda, whose greed led her to marry a rich tyrant and connive at his murder. They respited her from the gallows, Verity thought, but only to put her literally into the hands of hardened criminals on a convict hulk, where she might be raped and abused so many hundreds of times that the form and features of womanhood would hardly be recognizable in a year or two more.

  Oh yes, thought Verity, he could put the wind up any Regent Street whore, but there were more important things to be done just now. Mr Croaker had been very insistent about it. Verity was to go and listen to two men talking. He might wait all night for them to meet and talk. He might wait in vain. But if the conversation took place, Mr Croaker was most anxious to have the substance of it reported to him. One of the men would be Charley Wag. The other might be any one of a dozen of his victims. The subject of the conversation would be blackmail or extortion. Blackmail seemed to be all the go in London that summer of 1860, though the success of the blackmailers was questionable. Many of those whom they approached, faced with public ignominy, had apparently chosen another solution to their difficulties. The series of suicides among men who were wealthy, well-born and of doubtful habits had reached the proportions of an epidemic. 'Only,' as Sergeant Samson remarked to Verity
, 'I never before 'eard that self-destruction was catching like the cholera.' But young Lord Clifton, the Earl of Reade, Lords Latham, Marlow and Chevenix, the Hon. Augustus Hall, and Sir Eraser Willoughby, had all seemed to contradict Sergeant Samson with the aid of penknives, shotguns and the noose.

  Inspector Croaker had painstakingly put together scraps of information from men of his own detail and from informants who were sometimes members of the 'criminal classes' and sometimes not. Mr Croaker had no doubt of the identity of the architect of the blackmail conspiracy. He was Charley Wag, alias Carlo Aldino, who had risen from a hawker of obscene snuff-boxes at country fairs to be the proprietor of a Regent Street flash-house. However, it was necessary to confirm suspicion by a little evidence. Referring to the conversation which must be overheard, Mr Croaker with his dark little eyes and the autumnal yellow of his sickly complexion had said, 'It will require a certain resource on the part of the investigating officer, sergeant. Should you find that the surveillance is beyond you, report back to the duty inspec tor. He will know whom to send.’

  Verity's pink cheeks swelled with wind, partly the result of indignation and partly of a ha stily consumed 'veal and hammer’ . Beyond him! A sergeant who had run to earth the finest cracksman of his age and foiled the success of the famous train robbery! A sergeant who had gone to India, rescued poor lost girls from the harems of the mutineers, saved himself and his companions from the fortress prison of the Nana Sahib, and retrieved the great Kaisar-i-Hind jewel! Beyond him to track down a common whoremonger like Charley Wag and listen to a few words of conversation! Who the devil did Mr Croaker think he was speaking to? And Verity blew his moustaches upwards in a burst of exasperation. The street girls, recovered now from their helpless laughter, watched him go. In that outfit, they knew he would never get anywhere near Charley Wag.

  Verity knew it too, and his plans were laid accordingly. Soon he had passed the blaze of light which shone dazzlingly on to the pavement at half-past two from such night-houses as the Blue Posts, the Burmese, and Barron's Oyster Rooms. The interiors were wide open in most cases, showing the spacious rooms with their costly fittings. Brilliant gas illuminations from chandeliers and wall-fittings were reflected by numerous ornate mirrors, giving the atmosphere of a fairy palace to each room.

  He turned into a narrower thoroughfare, where a dimmer light from the little houses showed round the edges of drawn green blinds. Chalked on the blinds themselves were such phrases as 'Lodgings for single men', 'Model lodging house', or, more precisely, 'Beds may be had within'. Between Rose Burton's and Jack Percival's night-houses was an establishment better lit than any of the others in the street: Ramiro's Oriental and Turkish Baths. It was no secret that Ramiro was Charley Wag and that the baths with their facilities for scented vapour, steam-cleansing, and 'shampooing', as it was delicately termed, were a profitable extension of the flash-house. Here, too, Charley Wag conducted his business during the hours of darkness. Strangers who had dealings with him no doubt felt at a disadvantage, naked and vulnerable among the warm, scented mists of steam. But there were few strangers. Charley Wag's visitors were generally his subordinates and, like a Roman emperor in the luxury of his bath, he lay at ease and gave his instructions. The words were spoken softly but carefully. Next day, a dishonest brothel-bully who had pocketed the takings was met with and crippled for life by the blow of an iron stave across one of his legs. An awkward girl was seized, bundled into a carriage, and taken somewhere very private. For several days afterwards she could not bear to be seen, let alone touched, but her awkwardness was cured. One of Charley Wag's debtors, an unsuccessful gamester, was beaten just sufficiently to encourage prompter payment. If he was a police officer or a man of influence, however, it was suggested to him that his debt and much more would be forgiven in exchange for certain favours towards Charley. There were half a dozen 'traps', as he called them, who owed their livelihoods to Charley Wag.

  From Sergeant Samson's information, Verity had a plan of the Oriental and Turkish Baths in his mind. Behind the velvet and plush of the front reception room was a long marble corridor. To either side of it, the baths led off. At the far end was a door, beyond which lay the more magnificent baths where Charley held court. There was a steam-bath and, according to Samson's information, a Finishing bath large enough for the Wag and his companions to swim in. His companions were, for the most part, female but they were not the doxies of the flash-house. Charley had never acquired a taste for English girls and he disliked using street-women. Instead, he was plentifully supplied with young girls from his native land - and Charley liked them very young - who acted as naked houris in his strange seraglio.

  Verity entered the reception room from the street, his hat in his hand.

  'Steam-bath, cold dip and towel, if you please, miss,' he said to the rouged and whitewashed creature at the table. She took his shilling, from which he saw to his dismay there was no change, handed him a linen towel, and motioned him towards an archway concealed by heavy curtains in rich ruby velvet. As he approached this, the curtains were drawn back by a woman on the far side, an elderly Italian duenna, thick-set and with hair dyed black, who said something to herself in her own language. Then she looked down the mottled white and pink marble corridor and shout ed, 'Simona! Stefania! " There was no response. The woman shrugged and sat down again on a little stool.

  The corridor was carpeted in a Turkey pattern, the doors on either side being of plain oak. At the far end, facing down the passageway, was a door whose solidity left no doubt that, as Samson insisted, it was the way to Charley Wag's private domain. Verity walked slowly and casually. The baths to either side of him were empty but it was necessary that he should be as close to Charley's presence as possible. It must be the last room opening off the passageway which adjoined the Wag's apartments. Wisps of steam hung in the pink and white marble rooms, the warm air heavy with the aroma of flowery perfume, the sourness of dead cigars and the stale scent of overheated bodies. From each room came the whisper of steam and the faint ripple of water on stone.

  At three in the morning the baths seemed deserted. Verity reached Charley Wag's door and then turned into the last of the little rooms adjoining it. He pushed the plain oak and found, first of all, a porch where his clothes might be left. The street-girls were quite right, he would never have got near Charley Wag in his familiar 'private-clothes', but what better disguise than to be entirely naked in a place where nudity was the universal fashion? Verity puffed a little with satisfaction as he undressed, hung up his clothes, bolted the door behind him, and stepped into the marble cubicle with the towel in one hand. But he was not alone.

  The girl who lay on her stomach on the couch was the fairer-skinned of the two, though her large dark eyes, her shock of black hair and the soft pallor of her naked body were unmistakably Italian. From the whispers of the two girls, Verity deduced that this was Stefania and that her companion, standing over her, was Simona. Simona, petite but well-rounded, her olive skin and tawny fair hair giving her the look of a Neapolitan street urchin, was the leader in the present game, Down the curve of Stefania's naked back were several blue artificial flowers, with several more tucked between her thighs so that the heads showed. Simona was obliged to take each one in her mouth and remove it, her lips brushing the sensitive flesh. Verity took the scene in at a glance and his eyes grew round. Simona bent her head over the back of Stefania's thighs while the other girl's fingers played over Simona's round bottom and legs.

  "ere!' said Verity sharply. His strongest feeling was one of annoyance that a carefully devised plan to eavesdrop on the Wag had been frustrated by the presence of the two girls. They were no doubt two of Charley's private collection. Simona gave him a sly glance and then bent to her task again, opening herself more fully to Stefania's advances. Verity took a step forward.

  'Hoo k it! ' he said.'Sharp!'

  They looked at him and sniggered. With the towel wrapped round his loins, he opened the door and stood in the corridor, w
aving indignantly at the duenna. The old woman waddled towards him and entered the cubicle. There was a stream of vituperation and then a series of loud wet slaps accompanied by cries of indignation. The performance was repeated. Followed by the woman, the two girls, rubbing vigorously at the hand-prints, hurried snivelling from the room. The woman pursued them down the passageway, muttering to herself. Fortunately, Verity thought, in her anxiety over the girls she guarded, she had not bothered to suggest that he might choose one of the dozen empty baths.

  The persistent trickle of water and steam made it impossible to hear anything through the wall which separated the bath from Charley Wag's rooms. Verity looked round quickly at the sunken marble trough and the couch where Stefania had stretched out to be 'shampooed' by Simona. The pipes ran along the wall behind the couch and there were two little wheels which must operate stop-cocks of some kind. Verity took the wheels in a large ham-coloured fist and turned them gently. The whisper of steam and the chuckle of water dwindled and died. There was almost perfect silence, except for the faint grumble of voices beyond the wall. Verity's heart beat faster with expectancy. It was all to be as Sergeant Samson had promised. High in the wall was the little grating, but not so high as to be out of reach with the aid of the couch and its serviceable marble top. Once the precise words of the speakers could be heard, the blackmail conspiracy might be unmasked. As he pulled himself up, Verity had a series of mental images in which the Wag confessed all under his stem questioning, and Inspector Croaker grasped his hand in a manly, congratulatory gesture. 'Think of me as your friend, for the future,' said the mythical Croaker. And finally there was the moment when Charley and his accomplices were sentenced and the judge called before him the worthy and methodical officer who had brought the villains to book.