The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

26

Nomenclature

If the notorious gangster-twin Kray brothers had taken to bare-knuckle sparring with each other in East End boxing clubs until they were melded into a single flat-nosed, cauliflower-eared entity, they would have looked like Oliver Golifer, the ridiculously monickered owner of the Newman Street Picture Library.

Golifer’s terrifying demeanour was greatly at odds with his delicate, somewhat theatrical personality. He was a contradictory hulk, heavy of tread but light on his feet, with an erudite intelligence that hid behind the appearance of a particularly gruesome monkey. He knew an awful lot about London, largely gleaned from the immense collection of rare prints and monochrome photographs he had amassed in his three-floor shop.

“I thought I might be getting a visit from you,” said Golifer, opening the door to usher in London’s oldest detective. “The case is all over the papers, and I couldn’t imagine anyone at the Met being able to get a fix on it. What are you looking for?”

“Public houses, Oliver,” answered Bryant, digging into his raincoat to produce a bulky bag containing, among other things, his pub list. “I want photographs of all these boozers, old ones, new ones, I don’t care, as many as you’ve got.”

“What you said on the dog and bone about the locations attracting him, I didn’t follow that.”

“My worry is that even if we caught him right now, we might never find out how or why he’s been attacking women. Perhaps you can help me shed some light.”

“I can try.” Golifer wrinkled the meaty stump that passed for his nose. “What else have you got in that bag?”

“Sweets. They won’t let me smoke at the unit. Today I’ve got Menthol and Eucalyptus, Liquorice Pontefract Cakes, Old English Cloves, Winter Warmers or Army and Navy Tablets.”

“I don’t want any; I just wondered what the smell was. Come with me, let’s go down to the basement.”

Golifer led the way to the wrought-iron spiral staircase at the rear of the store, past dusty corkboards filled with pinned pictures of peculiarly English memories that made Bryant smile as he passed them.

The Reverend Marcus Morris appearing before a crowd of excited lads in 1950 for the launch of his British boys’ paper The Eagle, intended as a healthy alternative to the ‘lurid’ American comics that GIs had introduced to the nation’s youth.

A thoughtful mother watching while the police combed bleak ridges of Saddleworth Moor for the young victim of deranged lovers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in 1965.

A bandaged Jack Mills, beaten, traumatised and due for an early death because he had been victimised in the Great Train Robbery in 1963.

The shattered wreckage of the BEA Elizabethan plane on the frozen runway of Munich airport, where the ‘Busby Babes’, England’s greatest soccer team, had died in 1958.

A faded copy of the Daily Express hailing Neville Chamberlain’s 1939 peace agreement with Hitler, with the headline,“ This paper declares that Britain will not be involved in a European war this year, or next year either.”

The walls became more crowded: a montage of barricades and protestors; police and politicians; moments of loss, elation and cruelty; the shocked faces of men and women caught by the vicissitudes of fate. Golifer’s library reflected its owner’s fascination with his country and the way it reacted to world events.

“Show me those names.” The archivist held out a meaty fist. “It would help if I knew what you expected to find.”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t need your help, would I? Something to do with pub histories and how they got their names. I can’t help thinking the murderer might somehow have left us some pointers.”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“Because he wants to be caught.”

“That makes no bleeding sense at all but I suppose you know what you’re doing,” said Golifer. “All right, here, first one up, the Seven Stars, back of the law courts. A nice little boozer; I’ve been there a few times myself.”

“It’s where the second victim, Naomi Curtis, died. Does it say how the pub got its name?”

Golifer turned the photograph over and read the typed caption that ran across the back. “ ‘Penderel’s Oak is the name of the oak tree which Charles the Second hid inside after the Battle of Worcester, which is why so many public houses are named the ‘Royal Oak’.”

“No, Oliver, that’s the wrong caption.”

“Bugger, they’ve been transposed. I had an assistant here for a while but had to fire him. Hang on.” They searched for the photograph of the Penderel’s Oak pub, and checked its description. “Right, here’s the Seven Stars.‘Built 1602, this public house was originally named The League of Seven Stars, the sign representing the seven provinces of Holland.’ Is that any help?”

“I don’t know.” Bryant screwed up one eye in thought. “The number seven, a Dutch connection, could be anything. Go back to the first pub, The Old Dr Butler’s Head in Mason’s Avenue.”

Golifer riffled through the folds of photographs, but came up empty-handed. “No pictures, but I know about that one. It’s named after some nutter, Dr Butler, who claimed he was a neurologist, but his treatment consisted of chucking his patients down a trapdoor into the Thames from London Bridge to scare the merde out of them. Apparently James the First thought it was a worthwhile pastime because he appointed him Court Physician, but then James was obsessed with the idea that witchcraft would destroy the fabric of England. He wrote a barking-mad treatise on demonology that resulted in hundreds of Scottish people being put to death and buried under the streets of Edinburgh. Old Butler developed a brand of ale with so-called medicinal properties, and set up a string of taverns to sell it in, and that – The Old Dr Butler’s Head – is the last surviving pub. Try me on another.”

“You’re a mine of fantastically useless information, Ollie. How about this, the Old Bell tavern, Fleet Street, scene of the fourth victim’s death. Anything on that?”

After a few minutes of diligent searching, the archivist pulled out a dog-eared Victorian photograph. He flipped it before Bryant.

“The frontage is right, but that’s the wrong name.” He tapped the picture. A sign hanging above the entrance depicted seven golden bells.

“Maybe it used to be called the Seven Bells. Doesn’t mean anything.” Bryant consulted his list. “All right, how about The Victoria Cross, Bloomsbury, which Carol Wynley died outside?”

They dragged out several mouldy cardboard boxes from beneath the counters and emptied their contents across the planked floor. “You’re a pain in the arse, Arthur,” Golifer complained. “Do I get anything out of this disruption and chaos?”

“The sense of inner calm that arises from knowing you’ve helped London’s finest in the course of their duty,” said Bryant promptly. “This place is a fire risk. Have you got insurance?”

“Don’t you threaten me, mate. Here we go, look at that.” He slipped a creased sepia photograph from its protective sleeve and held it up for Bryant to examine. Two straw-hatted publicans stood proudly in front of the pub window. Above them part of the signage could be read: Ales – Stouts – Porter – – Established 1845 – The Vict –.

“That’s the sign I saw. What exactly is porter?” Bryant wondered.

“The name of the drink changed. It used to be called Three Threads, because it was made up of stale old ale mixed with good young beer to freshen it, plus a third stronger beer called Twopenny. The threads refer to the taps on the casks. The resulting mixture was dirt cheap, so it became the chosen tipple of the Covent Garden porters, and the name ‘porter’ stuck.”

“How could I have seen a pub called The Victoria Cross eighty years after it was demolished?”

“You couldn’t, old chum.” Oliver chucked down the picture. “There wasn’t such a place.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Victoria Cross wasn’t awarded until 1857. When this pub was built, the medal didn’t yet exist. The name must have been changed after that date. Old pubs sometimes dumped their original names if they got bad reputations.” Golifer pulled out a photographers’ magnifier and examined the lettering above the window. “Judging by the width of this frontage I reckon the first name was shorter, probably The Victoria.”

“But I specifically remember the date, 1845. I remember the painted sign depicting the medal.”

“There’s a simple explanation,” said Golifer. “They changed the sign but not the etched detailing on the glass.”

“No. All of the other building details match the pub I saw,” Bryant insisted. “It’s some kind of deliberate anachronism, put there to trick me.”

“Do you realise how bloody paranoid that sounds?” Golifer handed him the photograph. “Go on, take it, at least I’ll be able to bill you.”

“I agree, it’s utter madness,” Bryant said miserably, “but how am I supposed to rationalise what I saw? Try one more for me, the Exmouth Arms, Exmouth Street. It’s where three of the victims were photographed together.”

Golifer sighed and began searching the alphabetised racks again. This time he found a more recent photograph, colour, taken in the 1970^s, featuring hipsters with tiresome haircuts forcing a pose outside the pub, surrounded by black plastic rubbish sacks left in one of the many refuse collectors’ disputes of the time.

“Okay, a case in point, the sign carved into the wall of the saloon says 1915, see?” Golifer held the picture so close that Bryant had to back away to examine it clearly. “But the back of the photo has 1816 as the pub’s foundation date. Says here it was originally named the Viscount Exmouth, presumably after the first Viscount Exmouth, as his dates were something like 1757 to 1833. He was a British naval officer, actually a vice-admiral, who turned up in the Horatio Hornblower stories. He was the hero of the bombardment of Algiers in 1816 that ended Christian slavery. And according to this, he was also the father of one Pownoll Bastard Exmouth. Bloody extraordinary choice of name for his son, I must say. So, as the pub was there before the rest of the street, it must have lent its name to Exmouth Market. Anything of use so far?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Exmouth’s family motto: Deo Non Fortuna – Through God Not By Chance. Nice family crest, silver argent, red chevron, three silver mascles. Natty painting of the admiral on the pub’s sign.”

“What was the viscount’s actual name?”

“Edward Pellew.”

Bryant’s eyes widened. “Holy jumping Moses, I think my memory suddenly improved.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I remember that name. Let me think. I need a cup of char, strong, Indian, lots of it.”

Golifer had been hoping to get some work done, but now resigned himself to acting as a butler to his old friend. “It was back in 1994,” Bryant told him once they were seated in Golifer’s cramped kitchen behind the store. “We had a case of suspected kidnap come in. A teenaged girl had been missing for over forty-eight hours, and it seemed clear to us that her boyfriend was somehow involved in the disappearance. At first he refused to speak to anyone, but John and I tricked him into admitting that he had been with her on the night of her disappearance. During the subsequent interview, we discovered that he had rendered her unconscious and imprisoned her in the basement of his mother’s pub. Luckily, we found her and were able to effect her release. The odd thing was that he really seemed to care for the girl, and simply couldn’t help himself. It was a very unusual case.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was judged to be in possession of his faculties at the time of the kidnap, but a subsequent court of appeal found him mentally incompetent to stand trial. He was committed to the secure wing of an NHS mental hospital called Twelve Elms Cross, somewhere in East Kent. I distinctly remember the case because John went down to see him soon after his admission, when he was undergoing therapy. He was very interested in the boy. I think we both thought there was a benefit in understanding what drove him to act the way he did.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with Viscount Exmouth,” said Golifer, mystified.

Bryant raised a knowing eyebrow. “The lad’s name. It was Anthony Pellew.”