Ten Second Staircase

∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧

33

Criminal Language

“Where’s Dorothy Huxley?” Bryant demanded of no-one in particular, sauntering into the dingy southeast Greenwich Library that smelled of fish glue, lavender polish, fungus, and cats, with just a hint of warm tramp.

He glanced at the depleted shelves and stood some books upright, checking their covers – The Papal Outrages of Boniface VIII; Lost Zoroastrian Architecture, Vol. VI: Iran; A Treatise on Catastrophe Theory Concerning Saturn and the Number Eight; The Cult of Belphegor; and Biggles and Algy: Homoerotic Subtext in Childhood Literature. No wonder nobody ever browsed here, he thought. Hard-core readers only.

Jebediah Huxley’s literary bequest appeared even more run-down than it had been on Bryant’s previous visits. Lurking in the grim shade of the rain-sodden bypass, awaiting the wrecking ball of cashkeen councillors, it remained a defiant bastion of the abstruse, the erudite, and the esoteric. The crack-spined volumes were flaking with neglect; Dorothy and her gloomy unpaid assistant Frank were unable to save more than a few books a week with their meagre resources. That they continued to do so at all was a miracle. As he peered into the shadowed shelves, Frank’s face materialised between two volumes of the Incunabulum like an unpopular Dickensian ghost.

“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” said Bryant, theatrically palpitating his waistcoat. “You haven’t got the sort of face you should be creeping about with. Kindly don’t do it.”

“I was expecting you earlier, Mr Bryant,” Frank gloomed. “You missed her.”

“Well, when will Dorothy be back?”

“A good question. It depends on how soon we can arrange for the medium to visit.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Bryant had little patience with the prematurely aged assistant librarian.

“He can’t come round for a few days because he was cat-sitting for a sick aunt, but her Persian swallowed a hair ball and coughed itself to death, so he had to find an identical replacement, and the trouble is that the new one has one green eye and one yellow, so he’s waiting to hear back from the vet about whether they can put a contact lens in.”

“I’m sorry, Frank; you seem to be speaking some alien language designed for people who care about your problems. Back to me. Where is Dorothy?”

Frank glumly pointed a long forefinger to the floor. “She’s dead.”

“Dead? I was picking her brains on Etruscan pottery a fortnight ago; how can she be dead?”

“Stroke. We buried her on Tuesday. I tried calling your mobile, but there was no answer.”

“There wouldn’t have been. I traded one, and dropped the other in a hole I was digging. This is awful news. Poor old Dorothy, what a terrible shame. I suppose she had a good run, though. Give me the name of her nearest relative and I’ll send some pears.”

“She had no relatives left alive, Mr Bryant. I was the closest to her. Er, pears?”

“Golden Delicious. She loved them, and they can plant the pips.” A horrible thought struck the detective. “What’s going to happen to the Huxley collection now?”

“It’s in safe hands,” Frank assured him. “She passed the building over to me on the condition that its purpose as a library remained unaltered.”

“Could she do that? I mean, you’re not her next of kin.”

“Actually, I am.” Frank stroked the side of his long nose thoughtfully. “She legally adopted me four years ago.”

“Dorothy never told me that.”

“That’s because you only ever came to see her when you wanted information.”

Bryant wasn’t used to someone answering back, and was momentarily stumped for a reply.

“She did it so that Greenwich Council wouldn’t be able to touch the building. They’ve been sniffing around, sensing a real estate killing to be made, but we’ve foiled them.”

“Good for her. She was always a crafty old bird.”

“I always wanted to ask you – did you go out with her once?” asked Frank. “I heard she was a bit of a goer in her time.”

“That’s none of your business, even if you are her son.” Bryant bridled. “Really, this prurience is most distasteful. I’m sure she would have wanted us to continue as normal, so I’m here to avail myself of your utilities.”

“You mean you’re looking for a book.”

“Precisely so.” He looked around, smacking his lips, uncertain. “Dorothy always knew where everything was…”

“And so do I, Mr Bryant. It’s hard to share a room with someone for twenty years without learning everything they know. What are you after?”

“A canting dictionary. You know, an English code of thieves and cutthroats. I understand that highwaymen and outlaws used their own language to leave messages for each other, in much the same way that burglars still mark houses today. I wondered if they had ever committed their code to print.”

“Such a book would, by its very nature, have been illegally published, but I’ll see what I can find in our Private Reference section.”

Thunder rolled lazily across the roof of the library, rustling the damp pages of forgotten periodicals and sharpening the air with static. “I’ll need to get a light,” Frank explained. “The electrics don’t work back here.”

Bryant extracted a long metal usherette’s torch from the voluminous folds of his overcoat. “Don’t worry, I have my partner’s Valiant.”

They made their way between stacks of books, like divers negotiating coral reefs, until they reached a row of rusting cabinets. True to his word, Frank knew exactly where to look. He lifted down a heavy leather volume with mouse-chewed corners and laid it on the table. After consulting the index beneath Bryant’s beam, he tapped the page meaningfully. “Do you know about the Thieves’ Key?”

“Yes, done that; what else is there?” asked Bryant with characteristic rudeness.

“Well, there’s the Thieves’ Exercise. It goes hand in hand with the key.”

“What is it?”

“Hm.” Frank read in silence for a few minutes. “Appears to be a series of lessons passed on from lawbreakers to their pupils, full of slang. Listen to this: Dinging the Cull upon the Poll – that is, bashing someone over the head if he offers resistance. Mill the Gig with a Betty – to open a door with a crowbar; Fagger and Storm – to break into a house and tie up its residents. Gamon, Bowman, Angling Stick, Squeezing Chates, Pike on the Bene, Main Buntings, Nubbing Chit – there are hundreds of phrases here.”

“Can I take this away with me?”

“No, but I can make you some photocopies.”

“That will have to do.” Bryant flipped the pages. “It says that attackers chewed licorice to make them more long-winded during foot escapes. Sensible advice. There are cases here that go back to Charles the Second.”

“This might be of use,” said Frank, wiping a thin green layer of mildew from the cover of a small tome. “The Grammatical Dictionary of Thieves and Murderers.”

“Show me.” Bryant flicked his fingers at the librarian. On the front of the book was an embossed drawing of a highwayman. In his right hand he held playing cards: a four of clubs, known as ‘the devil’s bedposts’, and two pair, aces and eights, the so-called dead man’s hand.

He read the frontispiece. “‘Being a Collection of Words, Terms, Proverbs, and Phrases Used in the Modern Language of the Thieves, Cutthroats, etc., Useful for All Sorts of People (Especially Travellers) to Secure Their Money and Preserve Their Lives.’ Oh, this is interesting. Backt, meaning ‘dead,’ deriving from the backing up of a coffin onto six men’s shoulders. Cloud, ‘tobacco,’ as in ‘to raise a Cloud.’ Sneaking Budge, one that robs alone. Jolly good stuff; not much use to me though.” He slammed the book shut.

“Why did they need their own language?” asked Frank.

“Because the criminals of London were transported for petty larceny and buying stolen goods, and hanged for everything from shoplifting to murder. They needed to be able to function below the eye level of the law.”

“Well, you can take your pick here. It’s a complete linguistic guide. Substantives but not many nouns, plenty of adverbs, and something referred to as the Copulative. Do you honestly think all this stuff is going to help you with the case?”

“He’s leaving me clues,” said Bryant. “I need to be able to understand them. There’s not a society of highwaymen, is there?”

“How do you mean?” asked Frank.

“Oh, you know the sort of thing, people who dress up and research their favourite characters. I presume the library is listed as a resource for all sorts of clubs and associations.”

“Yes, it is,” Frank agreed. “I can probably get you a few addresses, but it’ll mean making some phone calls.”

“I haven’t got much of a budget,” Bryant warned. “Do it for Dorothy.”

Back outside the library, though, Bryant began to wonder. He was cold and tired, he’d forgotten to take his tablets, and his legs were playing up. He was also halfway across the city poking about in arcane library books when he should have been getting his report ready for Faraday’s inspection.

If the time he’d invested in this esoteric trawl through the forgotten world of London’s thieves failed to pay off, there would be no way out. How did knowing that the Leicester Square Vampire had modelled himself on Robin Hood help to close the case?

May had insisted on reattaching himself to the Vampire investigation. Bryant knew that his own erratic methods could drag them both down, as well as stranding some of the country’s best minds without hope of employment.

You have to give up this behaviour once and for all, Arthur, he thought as he walked to the corner in the rain and tried to remember where he parked the car.

As he passed the murky trash-filled alleyway behind the library, the Highwayman was close enough to reach out and touch his scarfwrapped neck. Instead, the leather-clad wraith shifted back into the darkness until only the dull gleam of his eyes remained.