The Detective Wore Silk Drawers

CHAPTER 3

“It’s been the same everywhere, Sarge. You mention fist fighting, and they start. I’ve heard it all six times over this afternoon, from Gentleman Jackson to Jem Mace. Ropes and stakes, first bloods and knockdowns, fibbings and cross-buttocks until it fair turned my stomach. They all talk about the golden days with tears in their eyes until the ale runs out. But ask ’em where you might see a fist fight nowadays and they look at you as if you was asking to meet Prince Albert, rest his soul.”

“You tried them all, then?”

“Except the Referee man. He was sacked six months ago because there wasn’t enough scrapping of the gloved variety to keep him busy. They’re all worried about their jobs, if you ask me.”

“Common complaint,” Cribb observed, thinking of Scotland Yard. “Did you ask what happened to the promoters and backers? They can’t all have vanished.”

“Seems they turned to other sports, Sarge. The turf, or pedestrianism. There ain’t the money in glove fighting.”

They paced the Victoria Embankment, watching the river traffic. It was too warm to be indoors. Thackeray needed air, anyway, after his spell on duty in the bars of Fleet Street. Ahead of them two small boys chased metal hoops. The glittering Thames seemed totally innocent of anything so unpoetic as a headless corpse.

“Jago,” said Cribb.

“What’s that, Sarge?”

“Henry Jago. He’s the young cove to see. Should have thought of it before.”

“Another newspaperman?” inquired Thackeray.

“Someone much more useful. A constable. Young fellow attached to the Yard. Come on, Thackeray. If we’re in luck, he may be off duty.”

Cribb set off at a brisk pace towards Northumberland Avenue. Thackeray, reacting less quickly, followed a few paces behind and toppled a straying hoop in his efforts to close with the Sergeant.

“Fungus face!” bawled the owner.

At Palace Place, Great Scotland Yard, Cribb marched up to the building known in the Department as “single men’s quarters.” P. C. Jago had a room on the second floor, and they noisily mounted an uncarpeted staircase.

“This Jago,” queried Thackeray, rather short of breath.

“Yes?”

“Has he made a study of prize fighting?”

“Better than that,” said Cribb. “He’s a first-class boxer.”

They stood by a door on the second-floor landing. It was dark indoors after the July sunshine. Thackeray peered closely at a small white rectangle mounted in brass on the door.

“Blimey, Sarge. A visiting card! ‘Henry Jago. Constable, Metropolitan Police.’ Can you credit that? First time I’ve seen such a thing in nearly thirty years in the force! Why, I don’t suppose even Inspector Jowett’s got one. ‘Constable, Metropolitan Police’!”

Cribb sniffed. “Keep your voice down. Don’t want to give him offence. Jago’s from a high-class family. Private tutor and public school. Should have gone to University. Certainly had the money for it. There was some sort of family quarrel, though.

Young Jago walked out in protest and joined the force.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Thackeray, who had never encountered such a well-connected constable.

“Hope he’s in.” Cribb knocked.

Nothing.

A second knock.

Sounds from inside.

A pause.

The door opened a few inches and Constable Jago’s eyes appeared through the gap.

“What the-Sergeant Cribb! Come in, gentlemen.”

The door swung inwards and revealed a figure in a striped cotton nightshirt.

“You must excuse me. Working at nights, you understand. Do find yourselves a chair. You’ll think me most uncivil, but I cannot offer you a drink. I try to avoid all intoxicants, and I can’t endure the torment of keeping them for guests. Perhaps an orange?”

The visitors declined and waited while Jago drew back the curtains and straightened the bed he had just left. Sturdily built and in his early twenties, he moved about with remarkable agility for one who had been slumbering two minutes before.

He left the room to wash. Thackeray got up to examine the mantelshelf. “Blondin poised on his wire above Niagara,” a well-thumbed postcard in a picture frame, held the position of honour between two pewter boxing trophies. An antique chiming clock had been moved aside and crowned with soiled collars.

Thackeray crossed the room to a bookcase stacked with piles of sporting newspapers weighted down by odd dumbbells and the two standard volumes on criminal law. What caught his eye, resting on top, was a half-filled decanter.

“I thought he said he didn’t keep liquor.”

“What is it?” asked Cribb.

Thackeray removed the glass stopper and took a deep, speculative sniff. He instantly regretted doing so.

“Elliman’s,” announced Cribb. “Can smell it from here. Embrocation. Splendid for toning the muscles. Not recommended by the glass.”

Thackeray produced a large handkerchief and cleared his nostrils. He joined Cribb on the sofa just as Jago re-entered, now presentable in shirt and regulation trousers.

“We haven’t cut into your sleep too much, I hope?”inquired Cribb in a whim of compassion.

“Not at all, Sergeant. I’m due to report at five.”

“Good. You keep up the sporting interest, I see.”

“Yes, in my spells off duty.” Jago’s accent was impeccable.

“Handsome portrait, that.” Cribb was looking at a large framed engraving of Captain Matthew Webb that hung above the bed.

“A great man, Sergeant.”

“Yes, indeed. Headed in the right direction, too.”

Both constables were baffled by Cribb’s remark.

“Dover to Calais. France, you see. The modern man goes to France for fresh ideas, or so I’m told. Remember that when you next meet Inspector Jowett. How’s the boxing, Jago?”

“Oh, I try to keep up with it, Sergeant, but they keep me busy here.”

“Let’s see. You won a medal at the police tournament last winter, and damned near collected a Queensberry Cup as well, didn’t you?”

“Some did say I was unlucky to lose the middleweight title, Sergeant.”

“So I heard. Where d’you train?”

A look of concern came into Jago’s eyes.

“Here mostly, Sergeant. I’ve got the dumbbells, you see, and a chest expander-”

“Sparring they call it, don’t they?” broke in Cribb. “Practising with other boxers. Where d’you do it?”

“I. .” He clenched his hands in front of him and regarded them uneasily. Police Regulation 3 seemed written across them. Members of the force are ordered at all times to lead an orderly private life and keep respectable company.

“This isn’t trouble,” Cribb reassured him. “I need your help. If you know any of the fist-fighting fraternity, you may help me find a killer. Where do you go to train?”

Jago replaced his hands in his pockets.

“There’s a public house near Covent Garden, Sergeant. The Anchor. It has a large room attached to it. The landlord had it fitted out as a gym. Most of the boxing men in London know it.”

“Fist fighters?”

Jago gulped. “Good heavens, no! It’s strictly a glove-fighting establishment-not exactly the Athenaeum, you understand, but there are certain limitations on the membership. Some of the attendants may be ex-pugilists, from what I’ve heard, but I don’t actually associate with them.”

“Really?” Breeding will out, thought Cribb wryly. “Ever heard talk of prize fighting going on these days?”

“Yes. There are those who hint at it. A whisper goes round that there’s sport to be had in some quiet corner of Kent or Essex, and a party’s got up to make an excursion. It’s not partridge or pheasant those characters go to find, Sergeant. But I think it prudent to close my ears to such talk.”

“You’ve heard nothing of the fights themselves. No names?”

“No, but if I showed interest-”

“Do they know you’re in the force?”

Jago gave thought to the question. His thinking processes were markedly less agile than Cribb’s.

“I don’t arrive in my uniform, and I most certainly avoid conversation about my duties. It’s possible that someone has heard of my matches in the police tournament, but I rather doubt that. They don’t treat me with the suspicion that one customarily encounters.”

“Good. When are you next going to the Anchor?”

“Tomorrow at lunchtime was the next training session I planned. There are usually several sparring partners available around noon. I limber for thirty minutes or so, and then have half a dozen rounds with whoever is there. A most interesting assortment of men find their way there. Military officers, undergraduates, members of the Stock Exchange-”

“You know their professions,” Cribb rapped out. “What’s to prevent them from knowing yours?”

“I keep it to myself, Sergeant. If they ask, I say I’m engaged in clerical work at Whitehall. Which I am, more’s the pity.”

Cribb was satisfied. He had harboured reservations about Jago’s ability to carry out detective work.

“Very well. If you want action, I can arrange it. From tomorrow onwards you’ll be working for me, and your duties will start at the Anchor. I need information about prize fighting and you’re the man to seek it out-names, places, times. Handle this carefully. Listen, rather than interrogate, but don’t be reluctant to show interest. Are you game?”

Henry Jago was game, and Sergeant Cribb left at once to arrange his transfer to M Division.

¦ To a field on the Moat Farm, a mile north of Rainham on the Southend Road, came three strangers. They carried a length of rope looped around the shoulders of the tallest, a bundle of stakes and a mallet. After agitated discussion and pointing of hands, they approached a patch of ground more even than the rest. Watched by a trio of interested sheep, they paced the shape of a square in earnest concentration. Four of the stakes were distributed at the corners and one was driven securely into the earth. The rope was attached to it, and payed out to a length of about eight yards, previously marked on the rope with white paint. The position for the second stake was measured and marked, but it was not fixed in the ground. Nor were the other two, although their points were used to make shallow holes in the turf. When this surveying exercise was complete, the men carried stakes, ropes and mallet to the hedge bordering the field and secreted them in the longer grass there. Their business completed, they returned towards Rainham.

¦ Two full days passed. Thackeray was sent to ask questions of the clientele in a list of public houses famous for their boxing promotions, from the Swan at Upper Clapton to the Marquis of Granby at Lambeth. All he learned was the Queensberry Rules and the potency of wines in wood. Jago sparred at the Anchor gymnasium until his ribs ached, and talked into the small hours with the trainers there. He learned the roll of champions from Figg to Mace. Sergeant Cribb attended an inquest on the headless pugilist and learned that he died from causes unknown. “The medical witnesses have not established indisputably that this unfortunate man died as the result of his beheading,” the coroner had said. “True, the post-mortem revealed no other cause of death, but until and unless the head of this corpse can be located, the post-mortem is not conclusive.”

The news of a prize fight arranged for Friday evening at a venue in Essex finally came not from one of Jago’s trainers, but from the stationmaster at Fenchurch Street.

“He frequents the gym at lunchtimes to practise lifting weights,” Jago explained to Cribb. “I believe he’s endeavouring to reduce his waistline. I scarcely know the fellow, but he overheard me asking somebody whether pugilism could ever be revived-an indirect method of inquiry, you see, Sergeant-and he quite openly told me that he knew of a fight this coming Friday night. He says that he can tell by the advance purchase of railway tickets. I inquired how he knew that it was not a gloved contest, and he told me that the day one of the fancy endures a train journey to, pardon the expression, see a bloody waltz with muffs on hasn’t come yet, and in his opinion never would.”

So Cribb and his two assistants waited stolidly in rich Essex mud surrounding the freshly erected ring at the Moat Farm. The conditions were not ideal for outdoor sport.

Rain had spotted the windows when the train reached Barking. At Rainham when they disembarked there was a deluge. It lessened in intensity as the three hundred pilgrims paddled along a lane running with water. Twenty minutes later when they reached the ring, there was a soft but insistent drizzle.

“Regulation boots! They let the water in like ruddy sluice gates,” Thackeray complained to Jago.

“Should have come prepared, like me,” Cribb intervened. “Never visit the country without galoshes and a waterproof. Antipluvium, this one. Excellent value. Hello! There’s action at last.”

Thackeray was distracted from his sodden feet by a commotion at one of the corners. A cap was tossed into the ring. A large figure ducked between the ropes. A hulk, far larger than Cribb’s headless corpse, retrieved the cap. Cheers from a few supporters. The response: a generous deposit of spittle where the cap had lain.

“Meanix!” announced several who knew. “The Stepney Ox!”

To murmurs of awe Mr. Meanix toured the ring, scowling at the patrons, and finally returned to his corner and produced a scarlet square of silk from his pocket. This he looped around one of the stakes. A supporter wrapped an overcoat around his shoulders. He shrugged it off and it dropped to the mud at his feet. It was humbly retrieved from under the lower rope. Meanix waited, statuesque, skin gleaming with moisture, trying to seem oblivious to the din around him.

“Ever seen him at the Anchor?” Cribb asked Jago.

“Good gracious, no, Sergeant. He’s not the class of man we encourage.”

There was no indication anywhere of an opponent for the Ox. Bookies snaking among the crowd were already taking bets freely, regardless that no one seemed sure who would be the second pugilist. There were copious suggestions, ranging from names well known in the amateur ring to former champions whose age would give them scant chance against Meanix.

“How does a man like that keep in trim?” Thackeray inquired. “If the Anchor wouldn’t admit him, where could he take his breathings?”

“There’s places that would,” said Cribb. “Lambeth School of Arms is one. Filthy, evil-smelling hole. I was there last Wednesday. Great barn of a place with a ring set up inside. Crowds packed in like herrings. And smelling like ’em. Every inch of room taken. Even up in the rafters I could see young street Arabs. Must have got in through the roof somehow. That’s Meanix’s setting.”

“What was the fighting like?”

“Barely within the law. Gloves plainly had the horsehair taken out. Timekeeping was variable according to the state of the fighting. Queensberry’s Rules, they announced at the outset, and then had a four-minute round followed by two under two minutes when there were knockdowns.”

“Couldn’t that kind of place be where our man was beaten to death?”

“Unlikely,” said Cribb. “State of his hands wasn’t consistent with glove fighting of any sort. Besides, the fighters there have too strong a following. Regular clientele. You couldn’t drop one of them off Waterloo Bridge without someone raising a barney. Now this little set-to here is a far likelier invitation to violence. Crowd out from London, more set on placing a pretty bet than following a pug’s fortunes. Meanix may be known to a few, but who’d miss him if he dropped dead here in front of us? None of this mob is going to report the fact. You don’t risk prosecution to report the passing of a knuckle fighter who means no more to you than a guinea at five to one.”

The pleasure of anticipation was perceptibly waning among the spectators. With the initial stakes placed, the betting could not hold much interest until Meanix’s opponent appeared. They took to looking about them, examining their neighbours, half expecting anyone of better-than-average build to disrobe and duck under the ropes. Cribb nudged young Jago, winked and tilted his head fractionally towards the vacant corner. Thackeray noticed this, and saw the flash of momentary uncertainty in the Constable’s eyes. The Sergeant had found a new subject for his dubious wit.

In the ring even Meanix was betraying unease. He crossed his arms to massage his biceps, searching the faces of the crowd who stood near.

“Here they come!” The general mutterings stopped. Three riders approached at a canter across the field, raising a small mist of water vapour from the saturated turf. The interest shifted from Meanix to the newcomers. Volunteers ran forward to hold the horses as they were reined, steaming, some distance from the ring. The riders dismounted, a dandified figure in ulster, black boots and top hat, and two younger men, massively built, one a Negro. He began to strip.

“Seven to four against the Ebony!” shouted a bookie, and the betting resumed in earnest.

“He’ll be the local champion,” Cribb explained. “The challenger is Meanix. He had to toss his cap into the ring first.”

“The betting goes with Meanix, even so,” remarked Thackeray. “He carries too much top hamper for the Ebony to fell him.”

“We’ll see.”

A minute or so later the Ebony joined the Ox in the ring, bare-chested, and in striking white boxing drawers fastened at mid-calf level. His swarthy muscularity drew whistles of genuine admiration from the ringside. If Meanix was an ox, here was a panther.

Now to a riot of abuse and booing, Meanix’s two attendants ducked under the rope and reported to the referee, a pale man in muffler and cap who had appeared from nowhere. He seemed well enough known, and proved to be a Rainham innkeeper. The weighings, he announced, to those who could hear, had shown a stone and a quarter in favour of Meanix at fourteen stone seven. Were the colours in position?

The larger of the Ebony’s attendants hustled forward with a square of black silk, which he tied above Meanix’s scarlet kerchief on one of the centre stakes. A toss was made for corners. Meanix selected the one his attendants had already claimed.

“Will seconds and bottleholders now withdraw?”

Even the referee left the ring.

“Time.”

They walked to the centre and crossed hands, glowering menace at each other.

“Go to it, Ox,” bawled a bystander.

The fight began.

The shifting mass of umbrellas and hats surrounding the small square of green jerked to stillness. It crystallized into hundreds of faces, regularly spaced, each distinct in character.

Every moustache, beard, cigar came into focus. Every eye was fastened on the pugilists. They, firm in the classical stance, faced each other, probing the space between them with hard-clenched fists. For a time the impact of rain on umbrella silk was almost the only sound. Then, with the preliminary measuring up complete, the patrons began to demand action.

Meanix ventured a left arm, the Ebony swayed out of range, and shouts of encouragement descended on them from all sides. Two or three flicking movements from Meanix’s leading arm failed to connect with the bobbing Negro, who showed no aggression. Responding to the impatient cries of his following, Meanix advanced several inches with a simultaneous heel-toe movement of both feet, rather as a fencer progresses. Then he brought his right fist above his shoulder and swung it violently towards his opponent’s face. It was an obvious punch, and easily parried, but he followed it with a stabbing left thrust that found its mark on the Ebony’s belly. Then Meanix closed, butting his head hard into his man’s chest and wrapping his arms around the torso. With a swift lunge forward of his right leg and a simultaneous jerk, he swung the Negro against the bridge made by his thigh and toppled him. To a warm ovation the first round was over.

“First knockdown to the Ox,” said Thackeray with significance. The fight would not last long in his opinion.

“He’s a redoubtable fellow,” agreed Jago.

Cribb was watching the Ebony, who stood in his corner while his attendant wiped mud from his arms.

Half a minute was allowed between rounds. At a signal from the referee the pair squared up again, and soon began to exchange strenuous punches, the Negro giving as good as he received. Red patches began to colour Meanix’s chest, where it had received the Ebony’s attention. A sudden crash of heads jolted both men and for a few seconds, as if by mutual consent, they wrestled against the ropes and then crashed together to the grass.

The following two rounds were brief and uneventful, both ending with Meanix back-heeling his rival. The bookies in the crowd tried to revive interest in the odds at each break between rounds, but they were doing poor business.

“Everyone waits for first blood,” Cribb explained. “Watch the rush to bet when the claret flows.”

It happened in the fifth round. Meanix caught the Ebony squarely on the nose.

“Scarlet as a geranium. What d’you think of that?” declared one of their neighbours. “As sweet a punch as I’ve seen!

Plant one on ’is peepers, Meanix.”

Without quite managing that, the Ox succeeded in felling his wounded rival with a swinging blow to the ear. The Ebony’s seconds hauled him to the corner. There he sat on one attendant’s arched thigh, while the other stanched the flow from his nose.

“That’s the kind of blow that tells,” said Cribb. “A good fist fighter will touch up the listeners as often as he’s able. It’s an art that died when glove fighting came in. If you’ve ever felt a man’s raw ’uns about your ears, you’ll know what I mean.”

For the next six rounds the Ox repeatedly battered his rival to his knees, several times falling heavily across him to add to the effect. The betting, which had never favoured the Ebony, was now heavily against him. Meanix had not once resorted to his second’s knee between rounds.

“No sort of mill at all, this,” declared Thackeray with a superior air. “They shouldn’t have brought a novice out to face the Londoner. He hasn’t fairly grassed Meanix once.”

“There’s time enough,” Cribb pointed out. “The black’s scarce marked as yet. Meanix has the edge on the pully-hauly work, but it won’t count for much in a fight to the finish. There’s steam in the Ebony.”

Almost in response to this tribute the Negro rose to the referee’s next call and began to counterassault, plainly surprising Meanix. A well-directed left caught the Ox in the throat as he lumbered forward incautiously. A second jab with the same fist split his lip.

“On the ivories!” shouted one of the crowd.

Meanix put the back of his right hand to the bleeding mouth. It was an instinctive movement to check for blood. Unfortunately for him, it left his body unguarded. A lightning blow caught him in the stomach, and he dropped like a stone.

“Beautiful! On the mark!” called the admirer. Now it was the turn of Meanix’s seconds to drag him clear and revive him with sal volatile.

“The mark?” queried Thackeray.

“Point of the stomach. Known as Broughton’s mark,” Cribb explained. “One of the classic punches.”

Meanix had scarcely recovered when the end of the thirty seconds was called. The seconds heaved him upright and pushed him heftily towards his punisher.

“Now we’ll see if there’s any science to the Ebony,” Cribb said, in some excitement. “Any hawbuck fighter can fell a man. It takes class to keep him upright while you dose him.”

Class it was that the Ebony displayed, for the round lasted six minutes, and Meanix was hit with every variety of punch. Some in the crowd delightedly classified each blow in the patois of pugilism: “On the ivories!” “Whisker!” “Liver hit!” “On the mark!” “Peepers!” Others, more materialistic, sought out the bookmakers to cover their losses. The Ebony continued efficiently with his work, concentrating punches on the swollen areas of flesh around Meanix’s eyes and mouth. There was no need now for crude hammer blows; he hit with the cutting edge of the fist, the sharply angled central joints of the clenched fingers, lancing the swellings with a surgeon’s precision in short, swift stabs. When specks of blood showed at five or six points, he stood back to survey the work. Then, as Meanix blundered against the ropes, the Ebony attacked again with harder blows, broadening the incisions to free-flowing gashes, until lines of crimson patterned Meanix’s face and chest. Once Meanix threatened to overbalance, and the Negro hugged him maternally until he was sufficiently stable to take the next volley of blows. They were aimed at the mouth and jowls, which must have been particularly sore, for Meanix actually made a pathetic parrying movement before backing to the nearest corner. There he waited, leaning hard on the corner stake, his open hands raised to protect the wounds on his face. Instead the attack came in a series of cruel blows to the ribs. He bowed in agony, quite open now to an uppercut that would have settled the match. But the Ebony had other plans. He gripped his opponent under the chin and led him like the ox he was claimed to resemble to the centre of the ring. Then with astonishing agility he turned his back on Meanix and upended him over his thigh in a perfect cross-buttock.

Meanix lasted one round more. His attendants miraculously got him to the vertical position in the half-minute, but he was semiconscious when he lurched out. One eye was closed and the other half blinded with mud and gore. His bloated lips slobbered blood and saliva. In the corner he had spat out two teeth into the slop bucket. One blow finished the fight. A long, low jab in the diaphragm. He doubled forward and plummeted to the mud.

The sponge was tossed in beside him.