The Hangman's Child Read online

  'Christ, Sammy!' said Rann, 'Look at you!' Samuel drew back, as if he had been struck a blow. He moved unsteadily.

  'Frightened,' he said with a downward shake of his head. 'Frightened I was, Jack, frightened I am.' 'Down here, I shouldn't be surprised.'

  'Up there.' The old man pointed at the ceiling. 'I go up at night. I beg, if I can. There's a few give. Then I get back, quick-sharp. Bring me what you can, there's a chum.'

  He sat down heavily on the makeshift bed, a study in defeat.

  Rann took a step closer. Sour fear mingled with drink in the air of the cavern.

  'You can't stay down here, Sam. Summer comes, this air'll be full of cholera. That'll kill you, if rats don't eat you first.'

  The points of Samuel's bony cheeks shone as he shook his head. 'You don't see it, 'andsome Rann! They know you and Pandy was up to something tasty. They meant to have it off you. They know I put up those houses for you, so they reckon I know too. Which I don't. They want to know who's the putter-up and what's the game. I can't tell 'em.'

  Rann brought himself to sit down on the wooden bed. But Samuel looked away.

  'You're out of it now, Sammy!'

  'Don't be a fool, Jack Rann.' Samuel looked briefly at him. 'They didn't mean to do Pandy so quick. They was asking him things and hurting him when he didn't answer. The ways they cut him! He answered in the end, you bet. Then you was to be asked next, then me. Didn't you wonder why you were called to the Golden Anchor that afternoon? They'd have had you all right. But first, the knife slipped on poor Pandy. Seeing as he was bleeding away to a corpse, they couldn't do you the same. Not with Fowler upstairs, ramping some doxy of Bragg's. Flash Charley may be their man but he couldn't straighten two murders in one afternoon. So you was fitted for knifing Pandy Quinn. Two birds at one go.'

  Jack Rann sighed.

  'You got no cause to be ashamed of being scared, Sammy.'

  Samuel had the look of a child about to cry at some injustice.

  'Pandy must have spoke my name, Jack! I don't blame the poor devil, but where's that leave me? You and Pandy knew what you was up to. You could say, if it got too bad. But they'd hurt me to make me tell 'em things I don't know! I never was a schoolbook 'ero, Jack. I'd answer 'em straight off. But I couldn't, if I didn't know!' He shuddered. 'Bully Bragg, Moonbeam, Catskin, and a knife. I couldn't be naked under that knife, Jack. I'd drown in the river first. I'd live down here. I'd die down here, if I have to, not watch meself being cut bit by bit. . . .'

  He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands. Rann thought he might begin to weep. But Samuel did not weep.

  'Jack's right, Sam,' said Tomnoddy from the shadows. 'You can't live 'ere for ever.'

  'You tell me where, then!'

  'With me,' Rann said, ' 'merica, 'stralia, anywhere.' Samuel looked up, the worn face showing humorous contempt. 'With you? You'll be stretched when they catch you - which they will, soon or late.' Rann smiled at him.

  'No, Sam. I mean to do what me and Pandy was going to do. I can't stay here, not in London, nor in England. So I mean to have enough to take me and you anywhere on earth. But I got to do it quick. And I can't do it without you.'

  Hope glimmered in Soapy Samuel's eyes.

  "ow much?'

  Rann breathed deeply.

  'It won't be more than twenty thousand golden sovereigns, split five ways. Enough to buy half Piccadilly.' 'How much!'

  'Likewise, not less than ten thousand. Enough to buy one side of half Piccadilly.'

  'There ain't so much

  'And just so there's no misunderstanding, Sammy, we whack the lot, equal shares for all. Like Pandy always said.'

  Samuel looked at him, the bony profile torn between disbelief and longing. He gave it up.

  'No, Jack Rann. Not me. I can gab, that's all. I can't climb roofs like Pandy. I can't tickle locks the way you do.'

  Rann put his hand on the bony shoulder.

  'You're more to me, Sammy. All you do is what you always do. A plum in the mouth. A smile in the eyes. A man o' God to charm the Devil hisself out of Hell - and then put him back again. And you don't need to take a penny from anyone.'

  Despite his misery, Samuel chuckled at the absurdity. Rann held him by the arm.

  'Sammy! I mean to have my way with all of them. Banks and vaults. Police and prisons. Bragg's magsmen and the whole bleedin' Swell Mob. I'll screw them finer than they was ever screwed. Once it's over, they'll hurt like hellfire. But none of 'em will know who did it to 'em or how it could be done.'

  Samuel wanted with all his soul to believe.

  'You can't do it, Jack. No one could.'

  Rann spoke carefully and finally. 'If I'm not up it, Sam, why ain't I still in the death cell? Getting into a vault is a sight easier than getting out of there.'

  'All right,' said Samuel grudgingly. 'Who's in this, then?'

  'There's Tomnoddy for looking after the kit, that's only fair. Otherwise four.'

  'Who? I got the right to know before I say.'

  Rann hesitated. Then he said, 'There's Tom, you and me. There's Miss Jolly, the penny-dancer. And Mag Fashion down Trent's Cornhill Mourning Tailors.'

  Samuel gave a shout of outraged humour.

  'Newgate done something to your brain, Jack Rann!'

  'Newgate made me swear never to be took again,' he said quietly. 'Nor I shan't be.'

  Samuel stood up. In his despair he became waggish.

  'So you and me, and a little wriggler from the penny gaff, and a shop mouse that lives for gin. That's it, is it?'

  'It's what's needful.'

  'You, me, a shop mouse and a penny-dancer? To bugger the banks, and the police, and the Swell Mob - any one of which could have you strung up on sight! And then come clean away with ten or twenty thousand pieces of gold?'

  ‘I don't have a choice,' Rann said meekly. 'No more do you.'

  'Choice! You want your bloody head read, Jack Rann!'

  In the same quiet voice, Rann said, 'Suppose you stash the gab a minute, Sammy, and just listen for a change?'

  TWO

  THE CHINESE SHADES

  10

  The windy light of a courtyard lamp cast a jagged shadow-play on his profile as Rann ducked through the archway of Preedy's Rents into the street. In dark jacket, trousers and cap, he felt as nondescript as under his covering of soot. Where the road opened out at Sparrow Corner, he found a cobbled crossing, crowded with dredgermen, ballast-heavers, and their women. A blind, dark-haired beggar sat against the wall, by a door lettered on frosted glass as The Wine Promenade. The last notes of The Minstrel Boy faded from the old man's bamboo flute.

  "ello, Old Mole,' Rann said softly, squatting down. 'You ain't 'eard voices that might be Maggie Fashion, or Miss Jolly, the shopgirl that's turned penny-dancer?'

  The beggar's eyes turned upwards, lids fluttering a little, showing nothing but the whites. He felt Rann's jacket with finger and thumb, as he spoke.

  'See my 'ands? Tailor's fingers. Till that gas-light in the slopshop killed the nerve of the optics. These fingers plays my flute now. And if someone was to smash 'em, I'd starve. Comprendee?’

  Rann let him hear two coins rattle. The old man sniffed.

  'Mag Turnball, with fair hair in a tail and a strapping bum, not heard of in weeks. Miss Jolly shows off down the new gaff. Monmouth Street. What they calls Chinese Shades. Gents goes to watch after dinner. Young fellows from the regiments too. Half past ten or eleven. If she ain't hooked an harristocrat first!'

  Old Mole's shoulders heaved in dry appreciation of his own humour. He pocketed the coins, and spat deftly across the pavement into the gutter.

  'Now, you got what you paid for, my friend. An' if what you want is tail, you'd be best off elsewhere than them young shicksters.'

  He knocked saliva from the mouthpiece, touched the flute to his lips and blew the first plaintive notes of Villikins and his Dinah.

  Rann crossed the Minories and made his way through the little streets north of T
he Strand. He guessed the way she would come but knew better than to startle her where the world might see. At the corner of Monmouth Street, a stationary cart bore a tall crudely lettered board promising, THE CHINESE SHADES! A large black hand, roughly drawn, pointed down an alley to Seven Dials.

  He found an unlit doorway between a slop tailors with its shutters down and the dusty windows of a stationer offering the adventures of Fanny Hill and the reformatory chastisements of Elaine Cox in photographs.

  A little before ten, he saw her pass under a street-lamp, coming from the moonlit spaces of Trafalgar Square. Rann recognized the plum-coloured merino gown, the pork-pie hat with a white feather. In one hand she gathered up the skirts a little, holding them clear of the moisture that gathered by night on the paving. He pictured, rather than saw, the warm gold of Miss Jolly's complexion, the slight seductive slant of almond eyes, dark hair combed back from the clear slope of her forehead. He knew the neat little body like a map, the delicate whorls of her ears, the slim grace of her neck, the straight slender back and the trim legs. Her very walk gave her away. She would never be a conventional ballet-girl. Her legs were a little too short for her height, causing quick diminutive steps as she walked, a tight swagger of her hips that was inelegant and yet suggestive.

  Across the darkness of the street, the alleyway by the gaff blazed with white fire. Gaslight streamed into a thin yellow fog of the summer night, glittering on the grimy windows opposite. Against this pale brilliance, Miss Jolly presented a composed, odalisque profile, features sharply defined, brows arched high over expressionless Turkoman eyes. He saw her slip into shadow and out again, then vanish through a doorway. There was a babble of voices, the cracked sound of an old piano playing Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green.

  A warehouse front had been taken out to make an entrance to the improvised auditorium. The crowd was pressing forward, pennies held out towards the money-taker in his box. Girls of fifteen or sixteen, in cotton-velvet dresses danced noisily with one another. There were dragoon officers and gentlemen more at home in the Carlton Club or the Naval and Military.

  Rann judged it best to go in at the back, where he could get out quickly. When the last of them had gone in, he offered his coin. Between plain walls, a wooden stage stood on trestles across the far end of the warehouse. Double gas-jets flared with a harsh brilliance to provide a form of limelight. The gas at the rear of the benches dwindled to tall undulating flames, leaving all but the stage in semi-darkness. There were roars from the costers at the rear.

  "ats off in front!'

  In a ripple, the stove-pipe hats of clerks and the silk hats of clubmen came off, among shouts of 'Dandy O'Hara!' 'Flash Chants!' and 'Pineapple Rock!' Rann knew O'Hara by sight, a man who drove a cart for a dust-contractor until the comic gaffs made him a hero. The costers shouted their approval as the Dandy came on in a green suit and battered hat, his face painted as bravely as a street-girl. Chords from a broken piano struggled through the tumult.

  Rann waited until the song's end. In the half-light, four men were already moving a frame and a stretched calico screen for the Chinese Shades. O'Hara gave the audience a final flip with the end of his comic cravat and bowed from the stage. The men slid the plywood frame to the centre of the platform, its calico screen shining fiercely with gaslight. The pianist slipped into a rhythm of halftones, conveying oriental promise, while the costers stamped and roared.

  The features of the brick interior were dim by reflected light, like Thames landmarks in a winter fog. Between the black flats was a crack wide enough to see the fleeting shape of Miss Jolly moving to the screen, agile coppery limbs glimpsed in shadow. Then, in sharp silhouette, she crouched at the corner of the calico, hair piled in a hive-shape, the long forehead, the sharpness of her nose, the demurely receding chin.

  Costers and subalterns sat in utter silence now. The Chinese Shades defied the law and seduced the audience. No magistrate could say the girl was naked and no onlooker could believe she was not. The calico showed in profile an enigmatic beauty of Pharonic funeral sculpture, a gloss of scented hair drawn back in its elegant coiffure from the line of the forehead and the nose. Miss Jolly rose, in a new silhouette of straight back and narrow waist, under-emphasizing the breasts, the thighs firm and trim.

  A skinny wag in front of Rann shouted, 'Pull up that there winder-blind!'

  There was a gust of laughter and then silence again.

  The slender body moved through its sharply outlined phases. The warm tan, the delicacy of neck and ears, the cat-like almond eyes, were powerfully suggested. In the elusive two dimensions of her performance, the onlookers swore they glimpsed a third, slim young shoulders curving to a velveteen lustre of coppery skin in the small of her back, the smooth paler ovals of Miss Jolly's bottom narrowing to firm thighs and trim calves.

  Rann stood up, stepped from the bench, and went quietly to the side of the auditorium. His back to the brick wall, he sidled to the stage. There was a door behind him, a green baize curtain. He turned the knob, and went through.

  Miss Jolly's shadow made a courtly bow, she arched back in an elegant sickle-pose, then knelt with forehead to the floor. The piano thumped a crescendo. Rann went through the doorway, heard the applause, and found the stage. Its gaslight was blinding on the calico but Miss Jolly was naked as the costers imagined. Only when she had reached her changing closet would the men appear to remove the screen.

  She turned again, her silhouette still sharp, and saw Jack Rann. A thin cry of fright was lost in uproar from the audience. She covered her mouth and dashed from the stage. A bellow of coster approval greeted his shadow as he crossed the screen in pursuit.

  But his penny-dancer was trapped. On this side, the passageway of the warehouse led only to an external door that had been barred against intruders. She turned, her back to the brickwork, resistance failing in the fear that slanted from her eyes. Before she could scream again, he caught her.

  'If I was a spirit, my love, I'd be winter-cold. But I come back to you. Jack Rann, alive and warm!'

  'Jack?' It was a lilting whisper. 'They said you was to be hung! The Hangman's Child, you're called!'

  ‘I don't feel cold as a spirit, do I, love? And do I look like a Hangman's Child?'

  'They let you go?'

  The irony made him chuckle, as he had not done since they arrested him. He laughed more loudly, at Warder Lupus, Orator Hawkins, Bully Bragg, Flash Fowler, judge, jury and hangman.

  'Oh, yes,' he said at last, 'they let me go, in a way of speaking. They must'a known I'd a job to finish for you, and Pandy, and his Maggie. When I was cold in Newgate, I kept thinking how warm I always was with you.'

  But there could be no such warmth that night. No chance of safety until Jack Rann held the keys to Pandy's fortune. So long as they hunted him, he was still the hangman's child.

  11

  Rann had first surveyed the chambers of Masters' Court with Pandy Quinn eight months before. The lawns and gravel paths of the Inner Temple had been busy with law students, nursemaids and children beneath September trees. Now he came to rob the man with whom he once planned to strike a bargain.

  'Barrister' Saward's practice had never been more than an occasional brief for the defence in assault or receiving stolen goods. Even that dwindled among rumours of suspect dealings in probate and bank-bills. But Saward had known the law for thirty years and there was no conviction against him. At sixty, he lived in his Inner Temple chambers, among a coterie of clerks, coachmen and whores.

  Pandy Quinn had known more than any policeman about The Barrister. It cost only a few sovereigns to coax the 'vixen' of an introducing house, a procuress of young girls for the old man's bed. From this, Pandy knew that document-forms for bank bills, which only a licensed attorney might buy from a law stationer without questions asked, were Saward's weapons. If a pile of these were now missed from his desk or deed-box, Jem the Penman must suffer quietly rather than draw the attention of the police to his loss.

&
nbsp; The beauty of such bills, as Pandy had said, was that they might

  be written as easily as cheques and traded as safely as bank-notes.

  As Rann entered Middle Temple Lane from Fleet Street, Miss Jolly on his arm, St Brides struck midnight. The golden-skinned figure of the Chinese Shades was covered by a high-waisted walking-gown in green silk with a matching bonnet.

  ‘I got to do what I must and get clear,' he had said firmly. ‘I ain't got weeks, let alone months.'

  They passed the barred windows of the bailiffs' office, where debtors were first confined after arrest. Between a patent office and a wine cellar, frequented by runners and managing clerks, stood a gateway to Masters' Green.

  There were lights at a few chambers' windows, but the paved alleys and courtyards were deserted. The quarters from the Temple Church rang clear and cold. At the far end of the path, Rann passed under a dilapidated arch into the cul-de-sac of Masters' Yard. There was no grass at the centre of this small paved quadrangle. Its buildings shut out sun and moon alike. The column of a broken pump stood on one side, a solitary iron post with a bubble gas-lamp on the other.

  The outer door to each staircase and its chambers was approached by steps between area railings, open day and night, the names of tenants painted in a column on the stone facing of the entrance. They passed a little barber's shop, a display of dirty-white legal wigs in a paned window. The topmost name on the next doorpost announced 'James Townshend Saward, Esquire, M.A., Barrister-at-Law'. Rann glanced up and saw that the outer room was in darkness.

  'Nothing to fear,' he said gently, tightening his hold on her arm. 'I'll do what's needful. He's got far more cause to be frightened of us.'

  'So you say!' But she made no attempt to pull back.