Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

Tom Wasp and the Dollyshop by Amy Myers

The appearance of this new Tom Wasp story is timely, for the first novel in the series saw print just a few months ago. See Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner (Five Star Press). Before she became a full-time writer, Ms. Myers worked as a director of a London publishing firm where she edited memoirs and fiction titles that included ghost stories and romances. Look for an Auguste Didier story by this author next month!

Ned would take it into his head that he must have a book.

Now this I approved of, knowing the value of such things, especially for a chimney sweeper’s lad. Even Queen Victoria has a book or two, I’m sure of that. What’s more, this book that he took a fancy to was the Good Book, which I have myself, although my Bible is not such a fine volume as this. When I asked Ned why he liked it, he looked anxious.

“It looks nice, Gov.”

It did. Leather-bound, held together with what looked like a gold clasp, and not even the sign of a nibbling mouse. It was not the sort of thing that you’d normally find in Mrs. Guggins’s dollyshop. We’d only gone there last evening because Ned’s trousers had worn through, and she sells the cheapest rags in Rag Fair. To call it by its proper name, that’s the Rosemary Lane area in London’s East End, but its stink has nothing sweet or fragrant about it. We came across a brown knickerbocker suit, which looked about the right size. Ned was doubtful about it, but I told him it would go with his old stockinette brewer’s cap he’s so fond of. The rules about young chimney sweeps are being tightened up in this year of 1864, so he needs to look smartish. It was a penny the lot, Mrs. Guggins told us, eyes gleaming at the prospect of a sale.

“Throw the book in,” I said grandly, “and we’ll take it.” She didn’t mind. It’s not often she can shift a book, even the Good One.

All the same, I felt there was something strange about this one, and sure as my name’s Tom Wasp, there was. When we got back to our room, and I’d found a lucifer match to light the candle, I opened it. There, taking precedence over Genesis, was the Duke of Wessex’s crest. I knew it well owing to the fact that I have the pleasure of cleaning His Grace’s chimneys in Piccadilly, where that nasty-looking lion on his coat of arms watches you every step you tread, as if he’d gobble you up for a speck of soot. I knew the duke isn’t one for giving away anything (even the tuppence I was rightfully due for the extra chimneys he makes me clean) so I would have known this book was stolen even if I hadn’t heard the patterer on the Ratcliffe Highway shouting out the news of a big robbery in Wessex House a few days ago.

What puzzled me was that the book was just lying there, the crest visible to anyone who opened it. Usually stolen goods are christened first, meaning that all identifying marks are removed. Mrs. Guggins’s dollyshop might look at first like an honest pawnbroker’s, but there are no three balls hanging outside to indicate that. It does its best to hide its face, for it has no licence. Dollyshops cater for the very poorest of folks, often defrauding those who pawn their vital possessions in the hope of finding the dosh to buy them back in due course. Dollyshops all too often have another role, too. They deal in stolen goods, but usually Mrs. Guggins’s showed no signs of that, stinking hole though it is.

Mostly the Fair consists of honest street sellers, trading in all manner of things but chiefly secondhand clothes, some on barrows, some without. The Fair spreads into the side streets off Rosemary Lane, too, where those who aren’t so bothered about the honest bit tend to trade. Mrs. Guggins is one of them; her dollyshop is hidden in Blue Anchor Yard, where she trades from the ground floor of her house.

Mr. Guggins was only in evidence as a familiar figure weaving his way back to the dollyshop after a good session at the Paddy Goose or some other hostelry in London’s dockland. He was an evil-looking man, hunched and bent, with a way of studying the ground until you passed by. Then his head would shoot up, glaring malevolently, as though he’d like to meet you by night down by the docks with a knife in his hand and no questions asked.

“Tomorrow we take that book back, Ned,” I said firmly. “No use having a Good Book if it’s got by evil means. You’d be foolish to keep it.”

Ned looked torn. He knows from his Sunday school that Our Lord has his eye on those that steal, but on the other hand he always hopes it’s temporarily shut.

Next morning we set off for the Fair on our way to our first job. It was early yet and only the oyster and hot chestnut sellers were plying their trade in Rag Fair. Another few hours and you wouldn’t be able to move for old petticoats, shawls, and broken-down boots. Mind you, chimney sweeps such as I, Tom Wasp, can always move onwards owing to our smell. The folks we pass are only too anxious for us to be on our way, and the Red Sea parts like it did for Moses.

Even Moses would have been taken aback at what we found today, though. Two solid policemen were guarding the door into Mrs. Guggins’s dollyshop, which was strange since they usually give this place a wide berth. Our eyes were fixed not on them, however, but on Mrs. Guggins. It would be hard not to, because of her howl. It filled the street, it chilled our bones with its stridency. We could see her standing in the doorway. Her sturdy body rocked and the greasy curls under the dirty white bonnet she always wore shook as she wailed. Time and time again came the cry:

“Guggins ‘as gawn.”

Mrs. Guggins could never have been a pretty woman, nor a dainty one, but I respect grief, so I wondered what was amiss. Then out of the shop came another policeman, one I recognised. It was Sergeant Peters, who owes me a favour or two, as I’ve obliged him in the past when he needed help with villains.

“Where’s Guggins gone?” I asked him with interest.

“Hell, most like,” answered Peters soberly. “There he is. Dead for an hour or two.”

He pointed to the dim interior of the shop, made all the darker by the mass of clothing stacked from floor to ceiling. No more Paddy Goose for Mr. Guggins. There lay his dead body, hunched on the floor. I took off my stove hat in respect, as we went in, though the look the sergeant gave me suggested there was no need.

He’d been knifed, had Mr. Guggins. I could see the congealed blood on his clothes, and particularly round the wound in his chest. I sent Ned outside, not because he’s squeamish over dead bodies, but because I needed a quiet word without flapping ears.

“Knife left in the wound, was it?” I asked the sergeant.

“No.”

“Body like that when it was found, was it?”

“So she says.” Sergeant Peters indicated Mrs. Guggins, now weeping noisily onto a constable’s shoulder. I might seem unsympathetic when I mention Mrs. Guggins, but she shows no milk of human kindness to the poor folk who can’t afford to redeem their possessions. Not a penny less, not a penny late, is her motto. All the same, Our Lord reminded me, Mr. Guggins was her husband, and two villains can love as truly as two angels.

“That’s a puzzle,” I remarked, lowering my voice in case Mrs. Guggins heard. “When the knife was pulled out, there would have been blood everywhere, yet there’s precious little to be seen on the floor here.” I’d seen a matelot stabbed before my eyes down by the docks and knew what I was talking about.

We both stared at the filthy floor and I noticed an interesting fact, just as the van arrived to take the body to the police mortuary and we had to break off. After it left, I could hear Mrs. Guggins’s mournful voice outside, relating her sad tale yet again.

“Not killed in this spot then?” I said casually to the sergeant, looking pointedly at the blobs of dried blood at intervals on the floor.

I knew he wasn’t, but it gave the sergeant a chance to shine.

“It’s my belief, Mr. Wasp,” he said loudly, “that he was killed elsewhere and his body dragged here. But where from?”

We followed the blobs of dried blood just discernible in the general grime, but then we had to stop. We and the blobs had ended at a stack of clothes piled almost to ceiling height and stacked against a wall.

“I wonder,” said I, “what’s behind that wall?” I made it sound innocent, but I knew for sure then why no one had ever seen much of Mr. Guggins, save at public houses. Sergeant Peters took my meaning at once.

“Here,” he roared to Mrs. Guggins, whose hand flew to her breast as if she was Cleopatra. “What’s behind this wall?”

Mrs. Guggins seemed fully restored to health as she threw herself towards us, having seen the sergeant rummaging in the pile of clothes. He pulled a covering curtain back triumphantly to reveal a trolley under the heap, so that the whole pile could be wheeled aside. I put myself between her and Sergeant Peters, who had now heaved the trolley aside to reveal a door.

“Get out,” she howled. “It ain’t respectful. That’s Guggins’s room and Guggins ‘as gawn.”

Even as she spoke, however, the door was thrust open in our faces from the far side and we had to leap back. Mr. Guggins’s room had a guard, it seemed, for we were face to face with Big George, who seemed equally horrified to see us. Everyone round here knows about Big George. The biggest villain and biggest man in London (over six foot five inches high and several solid feet wide). One look at a lock from him and it springs open.

“What are you doing here, George?” asked the sergeant, squaring up to him, despite the fist produced in his face. He is, of course, most familiar with the gentleman, as I am myself, though I keep my distance.

“Only after what’s mine by right,” he snarled.

Big George, having removed the fist once he realised it was the law he was addressing, then tried to make a run for it through the rear door. With the help of Mrs. Guggins he was first floored, then struggled up again to have the cuffs put on him. I hobbled over to have a look at this door — I’ve hobbled since childhood owing to my trade. It opened into a tiny yard with the usual stinking privy and pile of coal, but interestingly there was a gate. The dollyshop is on the corner where Blue Anchor Yard leads through to Glasshouse Street, thus providing a most useful second entrance for the Gugginses.

“I want what’s mine by right,” Big George growled sadly from his lofty heights, as I went back inside.

“It’s only wrong I see here,” Sergeant Peters replied wittily.

What I then saw made me speechless. So this was where Guggins had worked. He’d been a fence, receiving stolen goods, and that was the real trade of the dollyshop, although Mrs. Guggins sold a few bits and bobs outside to look respectable. Here Mr. Guggins, in-between trips to the Paddy Goose (where he could meet customers and do business without suspicion), had reigned over a palace. Fancy silks, posh china, silver, snuffboxes, jewellery everywhere we looked. Her Majesty herself would be proud to entertain here. The only thing she would not have liked was the dried blood on the desk and floor.

“What made you suspect this, Mr. Wasp?” asked the sergeant, who is young enough to be respectful to me.

“A book,” I told him, “with the Duke of Wessex’s crest, had not been christened, so it struck me there must be other swag and the book got dropped by mistake.” I began to look at some of the articles in the late Mr. Guggins’s possession, but to my surprise could see none with the crest of the Duke of Wessex. Christening fine ware takes time, and in this case, I supposed, it was so hot that Guggins would have been anxious to be rid of it.

“What have you done with it, George?” I asked, having pointed out the problem to the sergeant. I was feeling brave with all these police around, and hoping that George wouldn’t recognise me by the time he was out of jug (one sooty face being much like another).

Big George’s face went an interesting shade of red.

“Wessex House,” the sergeant added, as if he didn’t know. “A burglary there a week ago. You got a good haul, didn’t you?”

“Nothing to do with me,” Big George said complacently, secure in the knowledge that there was nothing in this room that could be traced back to him.

“Then what are you doing in Guggins’s room?” asked the sergeant.

The complexities of puzzling out this trap were too much for Big George. “Business,” was all he could growl.

“When did you get here?”

“What’s the time now?” We looked at a rather fine clock that might one day be restored to its rightful owner. It was a quarter to eight.

“Just got here. Came in the back like he always said. Don’t know nothing.”

“Turn your pockets out, George,” instructed Sergeant Peters.

This was a difficult task with his hands cuffed so I had to assist, much to his fury. Out came three elegant snuffboxes.

“Mine,” he growled. “I’ve a fancy for snuff.”

“Tell that to the judge,” said the sergeant smartly.

Big George paled. “Look, it ain’t fair. I come here at five for me money, like old Guggins told me. I’d sold him some — well, some old clothes, and he said he’d have it ready by then, but he only gave me five quid. No honesty around nowadays. Mean old skinflint. Said it was fake. A man can’t make an honest living nowadays. I’ve got a wife and children to keep.”

I wondered how secondhand clothes could be fake, but decided to keep silent.

“Mr. Guggins wouldn’t cheat no one,” said his wife faintly.

“Done what by five?” Sergeant Peters enquired.

“Guggins had customers coming.” Big George was getting sullen now, obviously resenting being cuffed. “When I gets there, I said that five quid weren’t enough, and he says the deal’s not finished yet, so come back in an hour or so for the rest. So back I comes at sixish, but no one around, so I comes back yet again — and look what I gets from you. Cuffed.” He displayed his hands on high, in appeal to a Higher Justice.

“And who might these customers have been, Mrs. Guggins?”

“How should I know?” Most indignant she looked. “I don’t know nothing about what went on in here. You coulda knocked me down with a feather when you opened this door.” (Unlikely, I felt.) “I was asleep all night,” she continued. “Had a nice glass of hot milk and slept like a baby.”

Her colouring suggested several glasses of neat gin were her usual tipple.

“Guggins, poor love,” she blew her nose delicately on her sleeve, “he worked all night sometimes, so I never saw him, not till I saw his body when I opened up this morning. Fancy all this stuff being back here—” She did an impressive job of looking amazed at the splendour around her — “Well I never, he must have been saving it for my birthday present.”

“Who’d he sell to, Mrs. Guggins?” Sergeant Peters went on relentlessly.

I was getting most interested in the late Mr. Guggins’s trade, and even Ned had crept back in through the open door. I don’t blame him. By now I could hear stalls being set up outside. The oyster sellers would be going on their way a-whistling, and the clothes dealers were taking their places. You could live your whole life in Rosemary Lane without going anywhere else. Goods and food — you can find everything you could ever want here. You could pay your way for it by honest toil on the stalls, or by dishonest dipping in the pockets of the strangers who come here in the hope of picking up a bargain.

Strangers, now that was a thought.

“Mrs. Guggins,” said I, “these customers Mr. Guggins was expecting. They can’t be from round here. They couldn’t sell the duke’s stuff in the Fair, they’d need to sell it to gentry, and not the gentlemen of Piccadilly either, for they’d know the duke’s crest by sight. So who were they? Must have been special to come in the night and not deal in the Paddy Goose. No risk to you in telling us.”

“Only in not telling us,” Sergeant Peters added, getting the idea nicely.

Even so, Mrs. Guggins decided to bewail her loss again, in order to avoid answering this question of mine. “Guggins was a good—” she began, but the sergeant has a way of getting his message through. He rattles the cuffs, which is a most powerful persuader in these parts. Mrs. Guggins breathed heavily. “They come here by night,” she told us. “I don’t see them.”

“Seems to me you don’t see anything unless you choose to,” observed Sergeant Peters, with another rattle. “See these?”

“John Clode,” she says quickly. “John Clode and Flirty Fan.”

“And who might they be?”

That surprised me. I thought everyone knew Flirty Fan at least, for all she lives across the water Rotherhithe way. She has a business in the better parts of Blackheath and Lewisham. She’s far too choosy to flirt with a chimney sweep, but she’s a sight for sore eyes when she flounces by. Makes a day of it, she does, when she comes through the tunnel over this way, and by nights she does her illegal business, so I’m told. She’s as thin as a stewed eel and just about as slippery. She does herself up grand, with bonnets covered in plumes and feathers, jangling her bracelets and necklaces, flaunting her silks and satins and wriggling along, all bustles and mincing little bootees. She puts on every bit of gaudiness she can find to attract custom — which is both in goods and in men. So eager she is, I’ve seen her work her way round Billingsgate fish market to find a man. She’s a shrewd barterer, though, and if Guggins tried to cheat her last night, she could have turned nasty.

Mrs. Guggins was much briefer in her description of Flirty Fan to Sergeant Peters. “A whoring bitch,” she snarled.

“And Mr. John Clode?” asks the sergeant.

A simper now. “He’s a Frenchie. Most polite, though. Naturally, I don’t know what business he could have had with Mr. Guggins.”

“I do,” growled Big George.

“But so polite,” Mrs. Guggins persisted desperately. “ ‘Oh, Mrs. Guggins,’ says he, ‘would that I could sail on the evening tide to the belle France with the belle Mrs. Guggins.’”

“Would that be,” Sergeant Peters asked quietly, “Mr. Jean-Claude Lepin, the well-known receiver of stolen goods in Paris?”

“Could be,” said the belle Mrs. Guggins guardedly.

“Seen by the river police entering the country in a small craft up the Thames last evening?”

“Might be.”

“And no doubt trying to leave again at this very moment with a boatload of stolen goods?”

“Can I come, Gov?” pleaded Ned.

A day had gone by, and I was most surprised when a police van called for me early the next morning. I could tell it was the police by the way everyone had scattered in our court, which is well shielded from the road by a narrow entrance between the lodging houses down which this policeman must have made his way very cautiously. Usually there were folks around at the pump, but now the yard was empty. Who was scared of who? I wondered. The policeman looked at me warily as I answered the thump on my door.

“You chimney sweep Wasp?”

It must have been obvious, but I agreed that I was.

“Orders to take you to the sergeant.”

I had no objection, as my interest in the means by which Mr. Guggins had gone was growing, and if Ned wished to come too, why not?

“Is he under sixteen?” asked the policeman suspiciously.

I sighed. Ned is about thirteen or fourteen, not sure which, since he never knew his age, but the new law says if he’s under sixteen he has to wait outside the house while I do the hard work cleaning the chimneys inside. As if any young lad wouldn’t choose waiting outside given the chance. Sometimes the good men who reform the law put one thing right only to cause another injustice. I have a hard time lugging my machine up all those stairs without help, and Ned longs to help, but we daren’t risk it.

“Yes, I am,” Ned pipes up. “But it was my Good Book, so I’m a witness.”

“That’s true, Ned. You come along then,” I told him, and the constable said no more. After all, we weren’t off to sweep a chimney. Not a real one, anyway.

Apparently we weren’t going to the police station, as I’d expected, but to Blue Anchor Yard again. No doubt Sergeant Peters had his reasons. We were escorted into Guggins’s room once more, where the sergeant was sitting in Guggins’s chair looking very important. I was amused to see Flirty Fan perched on the desk doing her best to entice him with a glimpse of her filthy red petticoat. She didn’t stand a chance, and she must have known it because she then looked hopefully at the constable who’d brought us here. He promptly backed away.

Big George was at the party too, and so would half of Rag Fair have been, judging by the curious faces we’d seen as we came in. The front door had been closed and locked behind us, though. This made the smell of old clothes so strong I could see Peters blenching. Mrs. Guggins was sitting in an armchair together with a small weasely gentleman who occasionally patted her hand as she glared at Fan. The weasely gentleman must be John Clode, or rather Monsieur Jean-Claude Lepin. He had sallow skin and a moustache, and was so skinny he could have gone up chimney flues in his youth, though I doubt if this canny gentleman had ever had to do so. He lives by his wits, not his weight, I thought.

“So here we all are,” Sergeant Peters began genially.

I was puzzled at first as to why I was included, but then I remembered he’d once said to me: “We police have to look at what’s before us, Mr. Wasp. You can see what’s hidden in the chimneys of life.”

Very poetic, I thought that was. Chimneys are full of dark secrets and sudden turns. You come to expect them after a while, and can deal with them, so I wondered if that was what he wanted from me now.

Ned sat down on a pile of old stays and petticoats in the open doorway to the shop, as happy as a sandboy and as quiet as a mouse. He was still clutching that book, though, and I decided I should keep my eye on it if His Grace was ever to see it again.

“Mr. Guggins was probably murdered between about five and six o’clock yesterday morning,” Sergeant Peters informed us. “Miss Fan, Mr. Lepin, and you, George, you all three of you saw him during the night.” George still had his cuffs on, I noticed, whereas the others hadn’t, so his chances didn’t look good.

“Poor Guggins,” shrieked his widow, but she was ignored.

The Frenchie piped up very quickly. “I come with Miss Fanny at four of the clock. I here for half an hour while we trade very hard. I win, Miss Fanny lose. Then I go. Leave her here.” A triumphant look at Flirty Fan. French chivalry doesn’t seem to go very deep in such circumstances.

“Yeah, you went without the jewellery though, all the good stuff. You thought you’d got it, didn’t you?” Flirty Fan jeered. “Mr. Guggins knew I got taste, though. I’d no reason to kill him. I reckon you found out he hadn’t given it to you with the rest of the stuff and came back for it, found it was gone, and gave him what for.”

Big George suddenly woke up, nodding his huge head furiously. “I got back here about sixish, and bumped into this squid out in the backyard. He’d just killed Guggins, that’s what he done. That’s why he didn’t answer my knock.” He looked very pleased with himself for thinking this out.

“My dear Guggins,” Mrs. Guggins moaned, having another shot at the limelight, not wishing to be left out.

“Lies!” cried the Frenchie. “I have no reason to kill dear Mr. Guggins. I come back to tell him how pleased I am with what he give me.”

“Make the most of it,” barked Sergeant Peters. “It’s going back to His Grace.”

“In good faith I buy it,” Mr. Lepin told us indignantly.

“And now you’ll be losing it. English law here, you know.”

“Mr. Guggins tell me these are goods that people bring in to pawn and not buy back.”

“I don’t see the Duke of Wessex popping down to Rag Fair to pawn his best belongings,” the sergeant rightly said. “I reckon Miss Fan’s right. You realised you’d not got all the jewellery you paid for, so came rushing back for the rest of it, and there was a fight.”

“Me? Mon dieu, non. Fight? I faint at blood.”

“But not if stolen goods are at stake, eh?” the sergeant said.

“Non. She killed him, after I left Guggins. She upset at his preferring my offer.”

Flirty Fan turned ugly then and informed the Frenchie that he was a flash duffer. She was inclined to go further, but Sergeant Peters stopped this. “So you took this stolen jewellery, Miss Fanny?”

“Me? Of course not?” She rolled her eyes and fluttered her eyelashes at him, now that she was in the limelight. “I came solely to see my dear Mr. Guggins, not to buy stolen property. But if any jewellery has by chance fallen into my bag by mistake, you shall have it back immediately.”

“Thank you, Miss Fanny. We’ve already got it. We searched your shop and found it.”

Flirty Fan forgot to remember she was supposed to be alluring. “Filthy pigs,” she yelled. “Guggins only wanted my body; he was lost in lust for me. ‘Fan,’ he said, ‘you’re a luscious piece of flesh, my dear. Come here and I’ll show you something that will suit you just splendidly.’ ”

“Liar!” roared Mrs. Guggins, now fully in the picture again. “You forced yourself on him, you tart.”

I could believe that very well, but the sergeant put an end to it, being intent on getting back to business. “Row over the price, did you, Fanny? Then you killed him?”

“No,” she screamed. “And it’s fake, if you must know, not Wessex’s stuff. Guggins told me it was Wessex’s, which he had christened, but it weren’t. It was rubbish.”

“So you killed him there and then.”

“No, I bloody didn’t. I didn’t find out till I was nearly at the river, then I turns round and comes back for my money. Came in through the back entrance about half-past five and he was alive and kicking then. That’s when he thought he’d take my body, like the wicked lecher he was. I told him he couldn’t have it, and to hand over my money. Which he did, and I went.”

“Like hell he did,” Mrs. Guggins observed, probably correctly. “He never gave money back. My poor Guggins. Dead, poor Guggins gawn.”

And then it was Big George’s turn to take centre stage. “Guggins diddled you over the money, did he, George?” said the sergeant. So you came back at sixish, he wouldn’t give you any more money, so you killed him?”

“ ’Course I didn’t kill him,” he yelled. “He didn’t answer no door. You saw me yourself later. Why should I come back if I’d already killed him? Don’t make sense.”

“Looking for the money, maybe,” the sergeant suggested.

In the end, the sergeant gave up and arrested all three of them for receiving stolen property. It was hard to tell where there was the most racket, from Rag Fair with its cries of “Fried fish, lovely fried fish,” or the three of them bawling their heads off about how innocent they were. So the sergeant turned to me and said: “Perhaps, Mr. Wasp, you might do some thinking in that way of yours. It seems to me that you might climb a chimney that I can’t.”

Nowadays, my cleaning machine does it all for me, but I said I’d certainly put in a bit of thought. I bought a pie for supper to share with Ned. He liked it, and it sharpens my brain nicely.

I sat that evening staring at my own chimney after Ned had shut his eyes for the night, and thought about it as I’d promised. It was puzzling as to who was lying. As I saw it, Flirty Fan and the Frenchie arrived at four o’clock. The Frenchie leaves with what he thinks is the entire haul, so let’s say half-past four. Flirty Fan negotiates her own haul of jewellery and is gone by five o’clock when Big George turns up to collect his share of the dosh as Burglar in Chief. He’s told to come back later, but in the interval Flirty Fan comes back to pick a fight with Guggins or to flutter her eyelashes at him. She leaves and awhile later, about six, back comes the Frenchie, very cross at being swindled. He can’t make Guggins answer the door and nor can Big George when he comes.

So which of those sootbags killed him and dragged the body through to the other room? Which one was lying? Could have been the Frenchie coming back and killing him just before six, could have been Flirty Fan half an hour earlier, or it could have been George. If I were a betting man, I thought, I’d say it was the Frenchie. It’s my belief that they haven’t forgiven us yet for beating old Boney at Waterloo. Yet somehow I couldn’t see him having the spunk. Flirty Fan now, or Big George, either of them would sink a knife in your guts without a quiver, if they thought they could get away with it.

I began to doze, though I tried to keep awake, otherwise by morning I’d still be stuck up Sergeant Peters’s chimney.

“Guv,” came a sleepy voice sometime later, jerking me awake, “what are you doing?”

“Just thinking, Ned.”

I went over to him where he lay on the floor and tucked our tuggy cloth around him for warmth. As I did so, I saw that blessed book hidden in the folds. He’d brought it back, instead of handing it over to the law.

“What’s that, Ned?” I said sternly.

“It’s my book, Gov.” A silence, then: “You won’t go to hell, will you, Gov?”

I was taken aback. Me? Why should Ned think that? “I hope not, Ned,” I said cautiously, not being able to think of anything I’d done to deserve that recently.

It all came out in a rush then. “But you said I’d be foolish if I kept it, but I did, and when I looked at my book it said that if you call someone a fool you’re in danger of hellfire.”

“That don’t apply to chimney sweeps,” I comforted him, as I went back to my fireside.

I must have dozed off again, because I thought I saw Big George coming for me, but he stopped and said he didn’t do it. Flirty Fan was trying to win my favours, and Mr. Weasel Lepin was trying to steal from my pockets when he thought I wasn’t looking. Mr. Guggins himself seemed to be directing the traffic, telling me what to do, though not who did it. Then he disappeared into hellfire and the flames roared up. By then I knew the answer, however, and I must have slept peacefully because I woke up with the birds and Ned’s Good Book as my pillow.

I went to the police station early that morning and asked for Sergeant Peters, who came eagerly in to see me. “Who is it then, Mr. Wasp? Big George?”

“No,” I said. “Not him.”

“Flirty Fan. I knew it,” said he.

“Not her.”

“So it’s the Frenchie?”

“Not him either.”

“Who then?”

“Mrs. Guggins,” I replied. “She came down in the night and heard Guggins’s lecherous talk to Flirty Fan and fancied they were having a go in there. Then she heard Flirty Fan go out and so, being a touch over the top with gin, swept in to have a go at Mr. Guggins brandishing the knife.”

“How do you reckon that, Mr. Wasp?” asked the sergeant admiringly (or so I like to think).

“She had to make sure someone found that body, but not in Guggins’s room, full of that lovely stolen loot. So that meant pulling the body through that door into her part of the dollyshop. Flirty Fan, Big George, and the Frenchie all came in through the rear door and couldn’t have pushed that door open to get the body through because of the stuff behind it. Only she could have opened it from her side. Hell, Sergeant Peters, hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

© 2008 by Amy Myers