The Detective Wore Silk Drawers

CHAPTER 5

Brilliant in red and green, it leaped and dived in the gusty air, a magnificent checkered kite, as large as its owners. In mid afternoon a breath of wind had disturbed the trees, causing leaves to gleam momentarily silver in the sunlight. By teatime you could call it a breeze and-splendid for kite flying-it varied in force from one moment to the next. Now, in early evening, the kite, after being quiescent in a playroom for months, swooped and shivered above Richmond Green, while two small boys and Henry Jago struggled to control its flight.

Waiting there to intercept Lydia on her way to post her father’s letters, he had found the kite impossible to resist. Clearly its elevation could be much improved with the help of strength and science. Soon the owners stood stiffly at a distance, occasionally paying out more cord. Jago, with his hands on the lifeline, tugged and raced to achieve even greater height.

Lydia must have been watching for several minutes before he realized she was there.

His hand slipped down the cord in an automatic movement. The kite swooped downwards. Its protesting owners rushed to take control again.

“I thought you policemen discouraged kites,” she scolded as he came sheepishly to her.

“Kites? Oh, yes. Very dangerous near roads, when they cause the horses to rear. Kites and hoops-the modern child will play with these dangerous toys. I’d have them banned myself.”

She smiled.

What a relief!

“Lydia, how can I apologize for your appalling disappointment yesterday evening? You did receive my letter in the afternoon? It was absolutely unavoidable. Short of disobeying orders and losing my job, I couldn’t possibly have come.”

“Yes, it was a disappointment, Henry.”

Said so tolerantly! She either had an unshakable affection for him, or she was unusually well-brought-up. Jago had known young ladies from good families who would have ended the acquaintanceship for less. Discarded him like last season’s bonnet. And not without a torrent of abuse.

“I hope you were able to warn Stella in reasonable time. She was coming as chaperone, wasn’t she?”

Lydia nodded. “Papa drove round to tell her we could not go.”

The Colonel. If it was possible, his opinion of Jago would have sunk still lower. Bad enough that a young fellow decently educated should be so ill-advised as to join the blasted police force. But when he had the sheer impertinence to break a promise made to a lady-a serving officer’s daughter-the bounder deserved cashiering at the very least.

“She was disappointed, too, I expect.” Jago said this without excessive sympathy. Stella, Lydia’s closest friend, invariably came as chaperone. She never said very much to him, but her eyes spoke. “You won’t make much impression, Henry Jago. There are things I could tell her about you, and I probably will.”

“Yes,” answered Lydia. “She was certainly looking forward to The Corsican Brothers. The Lyceum is her favourite theatre. Can you tell me what it was you had to do?”

Deuced awkward situation. She was being so charming about everything. He was bound to say something.

“I’m not officially permitted to say, but it was important work.” Stella, he was sure, would give her verdict on his activities. “Detective work! He is no detective, Lydia, believe me. Why doesn’t he wear his uniform when he takes you out, as any young subaltern does? He is ashamed, that’s why. And not just ashamed of being merely a constable. I once passed him in Northumberland Avenue and saw his uniform. The seat of his trousers, my dear! It gleams like a mirror! He sits on a chair all day and pushes a pen. You’ve seen the ink stains on his fingers, haven’t you?”

“I hope it wasn’t a policeman’s smoking concert, anyway,” said Lydia, smiling.

“Not at all!” he said almost too vehemently, for a memory of his performance in the Fox had flashed through his mind. “Quite the reverse. Strictly an evening on duty.” He looked about him and moved closer to her. “I can at least say this, but in heaven’s name, do not tell anyone-not even Stella-or I shall lose my job. Last night I was travelling in company with a group of men who may lead us to a most savage murderer. I was alone in a railway carriage with them.”

“Alone? But how dreadful, Henry! How did you prevent them from attacking you?”

“Ah. Disguise. In a manner of speaking. You see, I was dressed as I am now, like any ordinary member of the public.”

“How clever. What happened?”

He opened his palms in a gesture of helplessness. “I really cannot say. But this morning I was congratulated for the information I passed on.”

“Weren’t you in terrible danger?”

He basked in her concern.

“Possibly. That is part of my job.”

“Then they shouldn’t send you on such missions. I know you are an expert in boxing with gloves, but what chance would you have against a gang of desperate ruffians? They could have recognized you and thrown you out of the moving train, or worse!”

Jago enjoyed himself thinking of the unspeakable injuries he had escaped. “But here I am, Lydia, without a mark on me.” The moment he had said it, he realized how smug it sounded. “Tell me how you are. What have you done today?”

They walked slowly across the Green, Lydia holding her father’s letters ceremoniously, like an ambassador’s credentials. They were her reason for walking in that direction and chancing to meet Henry Jago. It was only right that one should spare the servants a duty on occasions.

“Henry, do you think your prospects of advancement in the police are good?”

She looked up at him earnestly, blushing slightly at her own temerity, peachy cheeks touched by copper curls.

Jago cleared his throat nervously. “I certainly hope so. There are many possibilities, but one has to prove oneself capable, as one does in any employment.”

“Papa was asking.”

“Really?” Was the Colonel actually taking him seriously?

“I didn’t know quite what to say. I don’t think he understands much about the police. He asked me whether you had good noncommissioned officers serving under you, as that could make a lot of difference to your platoon.”

“Oh.”

“I think he might be prepared to meet you again if you would like to leave your card. He realizes that he was rather abrupt last time. But when we first met at the West Surrey, he gained the impression that you were a regimental man.”

“Yes, I remember.” Only his admiration for Lydia had prevented Jago from undeceiving the Colonel at once.

“If he knew you better, he might allow you to call on us regularly. He is rather suspicious about my going out to post his letters, I fear. This one isn’t the nearest posting box to our house.”

Jago smiled appreciatively.

“Papa read your letter most carefully yesterday. He asked me a number of questions about you. Then he finished by saying that I should widen my circle of acquaintances. He has been introduced to the curate at St. Martin’s, a young gentleman recently from theological college, and we have been invited to call on him next Saturday.”

Jago blanched. “I see.”

“Henry, I think you would find much in common with Papa, if you would call on us. You have told me yourself that the force is organized like a military regiment. And then there is your sport.”

Jago tried to appear enthusiastic. “Oh, yes. He is interested in cricket, isn’t he? I know a bit about Grace-W. G., you know, not the kind his curate friend specializes in.”

It was feeble humour, but both needed the chance to smile.

“He does enjoy cricket talk,” Lydia said. “I think that is why he is interested in the curate. He scored a century for Cambridge.”

A pause.

“I could talk about boxing,” said Jago. “Have you told him about my police championship victory?”

“No. Not yet.”

“My sergeant has just arranged for me to have intensive training in self-defence. Two hours a day. I shall be the most able-bodied bobby in London, Lydia!”

“Self-defence? Is that boxing?”

“Yes, but much more besides. I’m starting with a professor at Shoreditch School of Arms on Monday morning. I shall be instructed in the art of wrestling, as the Japanese practise it, and fist fighting-”

“But what is it for, Henry?”

Altogether more buoyant now, Jago lifted his fists and mimed the classic stance of the pugilist.

“Self-defence. And fighting off jealous curates. I think I shall try again with your papa, Lydia.”

She took his arm and they walked on to the posting box.

In the records room at Great Scotland Yard, Constable Thackeray stretched his legs and turned his feet to examine the insteps of his best pair of regulation boots. The damp line extended like a chalk mark all the way round. He doubted whether they would ever fully recover from their soaking the previous week in the Essex mud.

“ ‘Beckett,’ ” read Sergeant Cribb aloud, “ ‘Matthew James. Born 1853. Five feet ten. Twelve stone two. Dark complexion. No permanent address. Last lodging in Bermondsey. Ex-seaman. Crown tattooed on right forearm. Serpent on left.’ Jago missed that. Let’s see what the record is. ‘June 1873. Six months for housebreaking. March ’76. Drunk and disorderly. One month. April ’78. Loitering with intent to commit a felony. Fined?1.’ None of them violent crimes, you see, but he appeared to be the leader. Where’s the last file?”

Thackeray handed it over.

“ ‘Foster, David. Born 1860. Five foot six. Ten stone.’ Beautiful copperplate, this. Only one entry. Drunk and disorderly again. I can believe that too, after Friday evening in that Rainham taproom.” He tossed the file back to Thackeray. “That’s the four with records, then. Three tough coves and one young ’un. Capital work of Jago’s to pick ’em out.”

“I think he knows these records like the coins in his pocket, Sarge. That could well be his own handwriting you admired. Is there anything on Meanix himself?”

“Not here,” Cribb answered. “So many charges were brought a few years back for prize fighting that the records were never centralized. You’ll find a better account of him in Fistiana than anywhere else. No, it’s the bunch who followed him that interests me.”

“Was anything said, Sarge?”

“Plenty. Young Jago’s less dumb than he looks. Gave me enough to hook in most of his fellow travellers on suspicion if I needed to.”

“You won’t, then?”

“Wouldn’t help at present. I need something more decisive and I think I know where to find it. Someone’s got to lead me to the killer. I’m leaving every possibility open at present. Things will happen in the next week. Almost sure to.”

“Why, Sarge?”

“The gang. If Meanix had done his job, they stood to make a mint.”

Thackeray was dubious. “I don’t see how that was possible, Sarge. The odds were heavily in his favour from the start.”

Cribb sometimes despaired of his assistant.

“Side bets, Constable; side bets. First knockdown, first blood, length of contest. Meanix was hired to engineer that fight to order, round by round. And he would have done, with different opposition. They expected a muscle-bound ploughman in the village-idiot class. The Ebony was quite a different kettle.”

“So they lost heavily,” concluded Thackeray.

“Not so heavily. There was time to hedge their bets when they saw the Ebony’s form. But they gained nothing. And with Meanix a spent force they’ve got to hire a new punching machine. From what Jago heard, they’d like to take over the Ebony.”

“What will happen to Meanix?”

The edges of Cribb’s mouth creased into a smile.

“Thackeray, I know what you’re thinking. The Ox to the slaughterhouse, eh? You could be right, too. I think they’ll put him to grass, though.”

“Could our headless fighter be another one who disappointed them?” ventured Thackeray.

“I think not.” Cribb flexed an arm, stood up, and walked to the window, to look across Great Scotland Yard. “Dispatching a pug in London ain’t that easy, even if you top him first. Questions get asked. People miss him in the pubs and training gyms. It’s a week now since I fished him out of the river.”

Thackeray stroked his beard sagely. “We’ve enough listeners in the pubs to have picked something up by now.”

“Exactly. London turns up nothing, so where do we look?”

“Essex or Kent, I suppose, Sarge. But don’t the same things apply? If he was a provincial man, the chances of someone local missing him would be far greater than in London, I’d say.”

“Certainly,” said Cribb. “What if he were imported, though, and kept in a place like Radstock Hall? D’you suppose the Ebony is a Rainham man? Who do you think would ask questions if he disappeared tomorrow and wasn’t seen again? I heard that woman talk of other fighters, men who were pushed too soon into the top class. Suppose one of them was badly beaten, killed even, by Meanix, or one of the London pugs.”

Thackeray saw the implication.

“Nobody would ask questions, because nobody knows how many fighters are kept at Radstock Hall, or where they come from.”

Cribb scarcely heard the remark. He was in a strangely restive mood. He turned from the window.

“Sunshine,” he informed Thackeray. “Rare enough in London. Let’s get out in it.”

The Constable needed no second bidding. Scotland Yard’s stained oak and dark leather depressed him, too. He almost envied young Jago’s two hours that morning with his professor in the art of self-defence. Cribb seemed drawn to the river as though it would yield the secret of the headless pugs if he visited it enough. Reaching the Embankment, he set out purposefully towards Waterloo Bridge, at a pace too athletic for Thackeray’s comfort on a summer morning. Strolling nannies heard the brisk approach of boots and moved their perambulators aside. Children in sailor suits looked up from games of ducks and drakes at the water’s edge.

“Fine respect we have for human life,” Cribb said with scorn. “What is it-ten years since the Embankment opened? What happens if a nipper chases a hoop over the edge? Look down here. See the lion’s mouth bosses in the granite? They were linked with chains in the designs. Here we are in 1880 with not a chain in place. If you fell in at any point between Westminster Bridge and Blackfriars you couldn’t find a chain, nor a rope nor a boom for a handhold in the length of the Embankment. No wonder they make a business out of collecting bodies in King’s Reach.”

Thankful for a pause, Thackeray made it clear from his stance that he planned a few moments’ study of the river traffic. A Thames Company paddle steamer sounded a scape-pipe warning to a coal barge on the South Bank side.

“Devil’s own vessels, paddle boats,” commented Cribb, warming to his theme. “As cock-eyed a system of navigation as you’ll find. Captain passes on his orders from the bridge through deaf-and-dumb finger talk to a rating, and he tries to make the engineer understand. More often than not results in chaos. Next time you visit the boat race, take a close look at the flotilla that follows it up. For my money those steamboat skippers provide better sport than the oarsmen out front. I’ve seen a solid wall of eight steamers jammed sponson to sponson and crammed with old Blues go full bat at a buttress of Hammersmith Bridge. You couldn’t drag me aboard. I’d sooner sweat it out in one of the eights.”

Thackeray cast an analytical eye down Cribb’s gaunt frame.

“You ain’t the rowing build, Sarge. Nor am I, come to that, though I might have been twenty or thirty years back. Now Constable Jago would look well in a boat. He must have done some rowing at school, I dare say, being a public school man. I still can’t understand what made him join the force, he being such a one for manly exercises. Oxford or Cambridge was the proper place for a young fellow of his breeding.”

Cribb made a snorting sound deep in his nostrils.

“He’ll get his share of exercise soon enough.”

Thackeray enjoyed the joke.

“You think the professor will make him sweat a bit, Sarge?”

“I hope so. He needs to be fit to take up knuckle fighting.”

Silence, while Thackeray wrestled with the significance of what Cribb had said. The Sergeant’s callous streak was not new to him; indeed, he had suffered personally from it many times. But victimization of a hardened veteran was one thing; sentencing young Jago to certain butchery was brutal beyond belief. He rounded on Cribb.

“You can’t make him do that! He’s got no experience.

He’ll be torn to ribbons.”

Cribb said nothing, seeming more interested in a passing skiff than Thackeray’s indignation.

“We can’t use Jago, Sarge. You saw what happened to Meanix, and he was a seasoned knuckle fighter. Young Jago doesn’t fight their way. Queensberry Rules don’t permit wrestling and spiking and kidney punching. It’s like matching a farm bird with a fighting cock.”

“He’s game,” said Cribb airily. “And I’ve fixed lessons for him to learn some of the tricks.”

“He’ll need more than a few tricks,” Thackeray commented bitterly. “I don’t think you should ask a man to do such a thing. He’d feel obliged to say yes, having been moved to your division to help you. But he’s no knuckle fighter-”

“Police champion,” interjected Cribb.

“Yes, but at glove fighting, and that’s as different as milk is from brandy. What good can it do to have a promising young bobby beaten to pulp in a prize ring?”

“I guessed you might take it amiss, Thackeray. The plain fact is that I need to get an informant inside Radstock Hall. Listening at windows has its uses, but it ain’t the most thoroughgoing method of inquiry, now is it? I’ve seen and heard enough this twenty-four hours to make me think we could be uncovering a very ugly set of crimes-as vicious as anything I’ve come across. Now there’s things to be learned at Radstock Hall, I’m sure, but they’ll take time and smart detective work. I need someone there who’s in their confidence. I want to know all about those fighters who failed, and I want the place examined-not obviously, but methodically over several days. I’m not asking Jago to dig for severed heads. I just want to know what’s happening there, and what’s been happening since the Vibarts moved in. Jago’s no mean performer with his fists. He ought to give a fair impersonation of a promising pug. He may not need to fight in earnest at all. But if the situation arises, I know when to intervene.”

Thackeray was far from convinced.

“I don’t like this at all, Sarge. He’s strong and able, is young Jago, but he’s not one quarter as sharp as you are. It’s not easy passing yourself off as something you ain’t, even if you take on a false name-”

“He won’t,” said Cribb.

“No false name, Sarge? But they could identify him as one of the force, and then there’s nothing to prevent them killing him, if they’re the bunch we think they are.”

The Sergeant shook his head emphatically. “I want this simple. We’ll leave play-acting out of it. If a false name confused anyone, it’d be Jago himself. They’ve no way of checking if he’s a Scotland Yard man-he’s strictly on clerical duties, as you know, so his name’s not quite a household word. Don’t worry. We’ll let slip enough genuine information about Jago to satisfy ’em. They won’t be expecting members of the force to masquerade as fist fighters, anyway. That’s not the way we’re supposed to work.”

“He’ll need to keep his wits about him,” said Thackeray dubiously.

“He’s no use in Criminal Investigation if he can’t,” commented Cribb.

Thackeray cast about for another means of penetrating the Sergeant’s indifference.

“How will he get into Radstock Hall, then?”

“Shouldn’t be any trouble,” said Cribb. “He’s known in his gym at the Anchor. Once the word gets round that he’s game to fight with the raw ’uns, there should be offers enough. Anyone can see he’s primely built for pugilism and there aren’t that many fist fighters about. The Essex bunch are professionals; they wouldn’t build a gym like the one you saw if they weren’t investing heavily in the game. When Jago’s on the market, they’ll be interested, believe me.”

When Cribb put it that way, Thackeray found it all too plausible.

“But they’ll want him to live in Radstock Hall, like the Ebony.”

“Without a doubt.”

Thackeray played his final card.

“What about his young lady, then?”

“His what?” So Cribb had actually overlooked something.

“The young lady at Richmond. A high-spirited young woman from Jago’s account of her. But he’s very sweet on her. A redhead, I think he said, and deuced attractive. How do you muzzle one of the fair sex?”

Cribb walked in silence, plainly ruffled.

“I’m damned if I know,” he admitted at last.