Chapter 5: December 23
It wasn’t yet light when Ian and Amy arrived by bus at the train station, the horses snorting clouds of steam into air. Looking a bit sad, and feeling lonely already, the inspector bought his wife tickets to take her to Cornwall. The ticket seller assured them that, while they didn’t have special carriage for women at the time, there was the front of one second-class carriage reserved for women. Ian and Amy had a warm hug, a chaste kiss, and he watched as she waved from the coach window. The air in the station was still, so the smoke took a while to leave after the train was gone. McFergus walked to the telegraph office, and sent a message to Amy’s cousin, telling when to expect her.
He walked out of the station, into the street and stood there for a moment, feeling a bit lost. A cold December wind came with the first light of dawn, shaking a few drops of water from overhanging awnings. A solitary tree reached for the sky like a black vein. A dozen cold men with brooms pushed the remnants of the previous day’s grunge into piles, then shovelled it into carts. The sun broke out suddenly, through the slate-grey clouds, poking odd streaks of light into the mist in the street. One shaft of light touched some grain that had fallen onto the granite pavement, and a flock of sparrows descended onto their breakfast, dodging the carts of costermongers setting up.
Uncertain what to do, and not yet willing to return to an empty home, he bought a bread that a vendor picked out of hot oil then dipped into powdered sugar. Then, thirsty, he bought a cup of warm milk from a man with a cow. The cup could have been cleaner, but he was at least assured that nothing had been added to the milk. Earlier in the year the British parliament had passed a law against adulterating some foods, but it would be a while before even the products mentioned started to improve.
He spent an hour walking the streets by the train station. The Christmas displays in the store windows fascinated and annoyed him; Christmas in his childhood had been strictly non-commercial, and even when he’d arrived in London a dozen years ago all that the stores had done for the season was to increase their supply of ribbons and items that a customer might ask for as a treat for a family member. In the week before Christmas, families made up presents themselves, and went to Church. That, and a large meal, generally with a goose, made up the celebration.
All of Christmas, when he’d been a boy, had been a one-day event; two if you went to the church sermon the night before. People hand-made a few things and many songs were sung in the parson’s house. But now it seemed that the stores had discovered there was money to be made in selling presents, and materials from which to make presents, days in advance. McFergus had seen the first store window pushing Christmas this year almost two weeks in advance, and had been dismayed. Where will this end? he asked himself.
McFergus scowled a bit; there would be no goose for him this year it seemed. After Christmas, come what may with the Scrooge thing, he’d be on a train to join his wife in Cornwall. That reminded him again that he should look for a present for Amy and a few gifts for her cousin’s family.
Among the vendors in the street were a couple of street musicians, singing traditional songs and trying to get people to buy a sheet or two of music. He listened for a moment, and decided that when he bought his gifts, in the next day or two, he’d get them from one of the many street vendors. One window even had a Christmas tree, decorated with toys and ribbons. He’d heard that this German tradition had spread to Britain, but this was the first one he’d actually seen. It looked pretty, but it seemed to him that it was just one more thing to separate the rich people, who could afford such a luxury, and the poor, who could not.
Then he sighed. Might as well get it over with. He turned and walked towards the poorer sections of London; the rookeries, toward a man who might know more about this “underworld.” Deep in the warren of narrow streets and unnamed alleys he would find Fagin.
There were a numbers of areas left from medieval times, areas that had escaped infernos such as the Great Fire of London. Called “rookeries” from their resemblance to homes the black crows nested in, they were essentially areas abandoned to their own devices.
McFergus was a bit worried that he might be injured in the rookery – physical violence was common in London – but not fearful for his life. There were no more than twenty homicides a year in the whole city; as many people died in crinoline fires as died by violence (the very wide dresses that were in fashion went poorly with a society where candles provided most of the light and fireplaces provided most of the heat).
As McFergus went away from the downtown the quality of the streetscape deteriorated rapidly. The street itself hadn’t been paved in many years and he wondered if people were stealing the cobblestones for some purpose he couldn’t fathom. Nor had the street been cleaned since the last good storm; it was slippery with waste and mud, and the tire tracks were often filled with puddles of water. There were no shops; most of the buildings were brick and several storeys high, but they were now rooming houses. For a few pence a night, a person might get a decent room, but those people who couldn’t afford even that shared rooms with a dozen or two other people and more bugs than anyone could imagine, curled up in rags on the floor, sometimes thirty to a room, sometimes a thousand around a dark and tiny civic square. The people slept on mats, because mats kept things from falling through the holes in the floor. There was often nothing to keep the rain from coming through holes in the roof.
Irish citizens, fleeing the potato famine, people who’d been displaced by the building of the railways, and people drifting in from the villages and towns, people either fleeing something or hoping for something; they usually ended up in these dark streets and cul de sacs, poverty their only crime. With them lived the unsupported people, those who were too old to work, or too sick, or had been injured on the job. The insane and the desperate. People who gibbered or simply sat in silence, looking out any window that wasn’t covered with paper.
Some of the people were out-of-work mothers with children. They could also survive by showing up at the workhouses, but then the children would be taken away to orphanages.
The streets were narrow, with overhanging upper floors that let in little sunlight on the mud streets. The centre of the street was the common sewer, and the hand pumps brought water directly from the Thames. People of all ages, with ragged hair and ragged clothes, usually without shoes in any season, argued with each other and begged with any strangers that came in. McFergus knew that development in London was pushing these people into smaller and smaller areas, but when the last rookery was gone, he had no idea what would become of them. These are the people, he thought, that Karl Marx should be speak to.
There was an underworld to London, and some criminals lived in the rookeries, where they felt safe. More prosperous criminals, of course, could avoid police just by taking trains to other cities, and some even had houses in better sections of town.
Fagin’s place was in a narrow building with wood covering the windows on the first floor. He was well known to the police, but too smart to be caught. Officially a boarding house, the place housed Fagin and some young men who stole for a living. Since most of the slum areas were full of people who stole just to stay alive, the police were in no hurry to make a foray into an area of desperate people. If they were waiting for a fire to do slum clearing for them, the police had a long wait; small fires were extinguished as soon as they started by people for whom sleep was difficult and housing was critical.
As he passed one of the side streets, a young man made eye contact with McFergus. Moments later, the youth was following him, matching the inspector’s pacing. The two slowed as they skirted a large hole, filled with sewage, in the middle of the street. A couple of old prostitutes, more rags than glamour, called to him, but McFergus ignored them. The sound of bellowing from behind a wall indicated a backyard slaughterhouse. Then the streetscape improved just a bit, with enough cobblestones left to assure footing. There was, McFergus felt, enough difference between the
London of the Holywells and the London of these people to call the two groups a different people. The poor had a world that the rich knew almost nothing about. The lifespan in the slums was dramatically shorter than that in the middle-class and upper-class sections; reason enough to take a mate at age twelve. Even the language of these people could well need a translator just to be understood. He paused beside a beer shop, took a step in, then back out, and grabbed his follower. “And who are you?” he asked.
The boy he grabbed was as dirty a youngster as one would want to see, short, snub-nosed and bow-legged, with sharp, little, ugly eyes. His hat, which barely fit hit his head, would have fallen off, had he not twitched his head to restore it. His man’s coat reached to his heels, the cuffs and sleeves turned back. Yet, McFergus noted, he had the presence of a grown man and the attitude of one afraid of very little. “I call myself ‘Artful Dodger,” the youth said, and might have twisted himself away had McFergus not tripped him. The name, McFergus knew, meant nothing; it was Cockney rhyming slang for a lodger, and which of the people in this part of London wasn’t a lodger?
“A shilling if you’ll take me to Fagin,” McFergus said, taking his watch back.
“Fine. But I don’t know if he wants to see you.” The young man brushed some mud off his fancy coat.
“We’ll see about that when we get there.”
Ignoring the beggars and prostitutes, watching for pickpockets and stepping over people sitting or lying in the street, McFergus followed Artful Dodger into an area near Field Lane where police generally went in pairs, at a minimum. They stopped in front of a narrow building, maybe four storeys high, and somewhat cleaner than most. There was no sign on the door.
Artful Dodger collected his shilling. “I’ll see if he’ll talk to you.” The young man glanced behind McFergus, then turned and entered the house.
McFergus turned to see a small group of boys behind him. “An appointment with Mr. Fagin,” he lied.
“Copper, are you?” one said. McFergus said nothing. There was a silence for a minute, then Artful Dodger opened the front door and held it open. McFergus climbed the steps and went into the building. As he entered the house, the Artful Dodger whistled.
A voice called down dark stairs, “Ain’t he a copper?” A candle appeared beside the voice on the stairs. A good idea, thought McFergus, considering how dark the stairway seemed, even in daylight.
Artful Dodger called back, “Fagin says to let him in anyway.”
“Righto.” The candle was drawn back, and the face disappeared.
Artful Dodger indicated that McFergus would go ahead of him. McFergus hesitated, trying to see the condition of the stairs. There was no handrail, so he stepped forward keeping one hand on each wall and favouring his good leg. He made his way slowly up the stairs, as much by feel as by vision. Several of the steps rocked a bit, but none actually gave way, although at one point the voice behind him advised him to skip over the next step. This accomplished, the last few steps were easier, McFergus’s eyes having adjusted to the gloom.
He came into a room lit by light from one dirty window, the fire in a small fireplace and a candle stuck in a ginger-beer bottle. The walls of the room itself were black with dirt, smoke, and age. What smelled like a vegetable stew bubbled in a copper pot over the small fire. An old man with matted red hair stood by the table, eyes fixed on McFergus. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” the old man said. He had, to McFergus’s eyes, a face villainous enough to justify his reputation as a prominent receiver of stolen goods. He was dressed in rough clothes with a fine jacket over them.
McFergus kept his eyes on Fagin, pretending not to see the beds of rough sacks in the corners of the room, and studiously ignored the three boys at the table; they were all about the same age as the Artful Dodger, and sat quietly at the table, smoking long clay pipes and drinking beer. The Artful Dodger himself came in and sat beside, them lighting his own pipe.
“Former police inspector McFergus, now retired, at your service.”
“Former, now. Former, it is, is it?” Fagin pushed his hair from his eyes. “Not a police inspector pretending to be a former police inspector? They’ll do that, they will. I’ve been told they will. I have been told.” He tilted his head and put his hands behind his back.”
“I am the genuine thing, I assure you.” McFergus did not smile.
“I am an innocent man,” Fagin said. “I buy and I sell and I make a living for myself and for my scouts” – he indicated the boys – and we survive in this, not the best end of town, we do.” He shook his head. “Do you know anything about the secondhand trade, inspector. Former inspector?”
“Almost nothing.”
“Then why are you here? Here where a retired person is so common?” Fagin waved an arm around, before wiping his nose with it. “Retired from life, retired from hope of ever getting a job again, retired from comfort and decency?” It was Fagin who almost smiled.
McFergus sighed. “I am here to pretend to certain people, including my wife, that I can make myself useful by pretending to investigate crimes long forgotten and of interest to few.”
“Crimes of property?”
“Other detectives involve themselves in matters like that. I’m chasing a death that might or might not be a murder.”
“And why me? Why here?” Fagin edged over and sat in a chair by the table.
“Might I sit down?” McFergus asked. “I have an injured leg that does not like standing.” He did not move towards the table.
Fagin pushed out a chair. “Of course. Pardon my lack of civility.”
McFergus sat down with a sigh. “I have been told that you are an unusually intelligent man.”
“Cunning, do you mean?”
“No. ‘Intelligent,’ is what I was told.”
“And if so, what of it?” Fagin didn’t move more than an eyebrow.
“You live in the toughest part of town. You know your way around it. You may know someone in what the newspapers call “the criminal underworld.”
“I may?” Fagin said, looking at the boys at the table. Fagin shook his head and this was followed by the boys shaking their heads. McFergus had a hard time keeping from smiling; it looked like a scene in a penny gaff theatre. He wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d broken out in song. “I am,” Fagin said, “just a dealer in used items. A buyer and seller. I buy from people who need the money and I sell to those that need the item. I help both people that way.” He paused. “I am not a thief, Mr. McFergus; I am an honest man in a bad part of town.” He paused again, for effect, and waved his arms around. “Does this look like the abode of a man who is a kingpin of crime?”
It was as good a hiding place as any, McFergus thought, if you could stand the smell. “I’m investigating the death of Mr. Jacob Marley of Scrooge and Marley. Seven years ago.”
The boys looked puzzled. McFergus wasn’t surprised; most of them weren’t much older than that. Fagin merely squinted, and waved his hand at the boys. “Which of these do you suspect, my dear ex-inspector?”
“Neither any of them nor you, I can assure you.”
“But I’m supposed to be acquainted with the underworld, am I? An honest buyer and seller!”
“You are a smart and observant man,” McFergus said, “and you live in an area where some of the London underworld also live.” He straightened out his bad leg.
There was a very long silence. Fagin stirred the stew and threw another coal on the fire. “I heard of the death of Mr. Marley,” he said. “I know nothing, but I heard rumours, I did” He looked at McFergus. “There are many many rumours in this wonderful area. They are as common as the flies.”
McFergus watched the boys. They were interested. “Any rumours that might help me would be appreciated.”
“There were approaches made to some in the Rookery,” Fagin said, “but they came to nothing. Nothing! You might want to search the underworld, but not the one here. Go look where people wear new silk hats an
d run their own underworld.” He started to shake the stirring spoon at McFergus. “Be gone; that’s as much as you’ll get from me. And for what? What will I get from you?”
“I thank you for your help,” McFergus said, getting up. “And I offer you a bit of observation. When those boys learned I was once a policeman they looked towards the bricks in the lower left corner of your fireplace for some reason.” The boys looked away and tried to look confused.
Fagin merely opened his eyes wide. “Ah,” he said. “Ah!”
McFergus turned to the Artful Dodger. “Another shilling if you’ll lead me out of this area.”
A sly smile. “Two, to get out. Safely.”
They settled on one shilling sixpence. The Artful Dodger was polite enough to show him the steps that wobbled, for which McFergus was grateful. The outside was a bit brighter, although the atmosphere of gloom and the smell hadn’t changed. McFergus learned it was better not to look into any windows.
London, McFergus knew, was approaching three million in population, counting a lot of small towns that had been included into the metro area, and the Rookery, the bottom of the bottom, held only about six percent of those people. True, there were many poor people elsewhere, but nothing like the Rookery. It took only a glance around to make him decide that maybe he’d read that Communist pamphlet again.
For a moment, he considered finding the place where he’d lived when he first got to London. He’d been younger then, and optimistic, hoping for a life better than he was living in Scotland. Instead, he’d found himself in the Rookery, getting up from the floor of a dark room wall to wall with men and women and walking downtown in hopes of finding work. He’d arrived in London during a major economic downturn. Fifteen percent of the city went onto relief assistance, and many more were kept alive by the churches or relatives.
His mother had given him the name of an uncle living in London, but young Ian McFergus had been angrier and more independent. That attitude had lasted a week in the Rookery, before he had been tapping on his uncle’s door. Unexpectedly, a sudden increase in crime in the city had worked in McFergus’s favour; the first city police force formed its first detective division, moving many constables there. McFergus’s work catching poachers in Scotland was enough to get him a job as a replacement for one of those promoted to the detective division.
Britain had become the world’s leader in industrial output, and the owners of those industries were, McFergus knew, pushing against the established aristocracy for influence. Lost at the bottom were those in the streets and behind the walls of the buildings that lined the narrow streets. We could use a bit more sharing of the wealth, he thought, as he dodged the pickpockets and beggars, the old and the handicapped, the wounded soldiers and the consumptives ones coughing out their last. There were even some foreigners around, which brought the police into the area more often than the criminals. The world had gone through a number of revolutions since the Americans had exited the empire, and that usually meant the upper classes ended up being slaughtered by the lower classes. So the British aristocracy – and the newly rich industrialists as well – nervously watched for foreign provocateurs.
He’d passed the worst of the streetscape, where the locals used ridges of fireplace ash to avoid losing their boots in the fermenting human waste, when the Artful Dodger stopped abruptly. McFergus stopped watching where his feet were stepping and looked past his guide. Standing where solid ground started again was Bill Sikes. He was, McFergus could tell, drunk, as usual, and in no better mood than usual. Even his dog, Bulls Eye, was keeping a respectful distance from his master’s boots.
Artful Dodger had probably been looking back to make sure McFergus wasn’t getting lost or bogged down when Sikes had come around the corner; the young man was too smart to get near Sikes otherwise. Sikes’s fist took Artful Dodger into the middle of the street, but the youth quickly got up and retrieved his hat. He was bleeding from one ear, McFergus noted. “Good day, Mr. Sikes,” the inspector said, trying to figure a way out. Reasoning with Sikes was, he knew, was silly. Nor was anybody likely to help get McFergus out of this one; Sikes was noted for a long memory and a constant desire for revenge, even if the revenge was real only in his own mind.
“Well, what in the blazes do I see here? Good day, Mr. McFergus,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
McFergus looked around. “Good day, Mr. Sikes.”
Sikes was getting redder. “Why you sneakin’ in here, hoping I wouldn’t find you? Who took you in here?” he asked. “That little thief?” He pointed to Artful Dodger, just brushing some filth off his red velvet coat. A thought struck him. “You been talking to Fagin? He peached? He sayin’ things about me? That damned old man been blabbing lies about me? Should a done something about him long time ago?” Sikes looked to be sobering up rapidly.
It was at that point that a group of about ten sailors came around the corner, singing, off-key, a sea chanty and more or less dragging one of their members along. “Sailors! My friends!” McFergus shouted. “Sailors saved England at Trafalgar. I’ll buy free ale for all of you!” The singing stopped and McFergus repeated his offer. He pointed up the street, past Sikes, and sidled among them. “There’s a beer house next block.”
There were, indeed beer houses a block closer to downtown. There were beer houses practically everywhere. The government, in an effort to cut down on the consumption of gin among the working classes, had allowed anybody with a dwelling, for a nominal fee, to convert part of their house into a beer parlour. The sheer quantity of these places along London’s streets kept both price and quality low. McFergus led the sailors into the first one that looked like it would hold the group, and ordered a round of beer for everyone. Midway through his own mug of beer, he looked into the street. It was busy, but there was no sign of Sikes, and the tolling of a church bell told him where downtown was. Standing, he thanked the sailors for their heroic efforts on Britain’s behalf, and stepped out into the street where he saw the Artful Dodger waiting for the rest of his payment. Behind him, some quick sailor had already downed the last of McFergus’s beer. Keeping among the largest groups, he found himself out of the Rookery in a few minutes.
It took him another hour to get home, walking slowly and watching for people who might be watching him. As he moved away from the centre of town the number of people around him dropped off rapidly, until he had only a few donkey carts around him. Most were sellers of vegetables but he passed a couple selling items suitable for Christmas items. He paused beside one, and selected a carved wooden miniature of the parliament buildings.
Then he was home. He looked around. A couple of children were pretending to sweep the street ahead of someone who didn’t want that, and further along the street Desmond, the bookmonger, was going door to door trying, probably, to sell Christmas cards or printed Christmas stories.
McFergus was tired. He had to admit that. He ached all over, but his bad leg ached most of all. He was cold; there was a stiff wind flowing down the street like some arctic current, and snowflakes fell from a leaden sky. He climbed the seven steps to the landing, unlocked his front door, then carefully closed the door behind him. He set two packages on the table. One was a set of three silk ribbons to give Amy for Christmas, whenever they met again. The other was a bottle of single-malt Glen Miller scotch whisky.
It was dark inside the house, and cold; there had been no fire in the fireplace since the night before. He raked off the remains of the last fire, picking out the larger cinders for re-use, and cleaned the fire bars of small cinders. Then he put a few pieces of paper, scrunched up into a ball, with some small pieces of scrap wood. He started the fire with a match. When the wood was hot, he put a some pieces of coal onto it.
When he was assured that the fire would keep going well, he put some potatoes and parsnips on to cook, together with a few chunks of salt pork. He went upstairs again, poured himself an ounce of the whisky into a chipped cup, thought about it, tripled the amount, drank a bit from the
bottle, and carried the cup back downstairs.
There was only a small window in the lower level, so he lit a couple of candles, poured some water from the water bucket into the washing tub. Then he took off his shoes and trousers, and with strong soap and straw he began the process of cleaning the stuff that had attached itself to them, sipping from the cup every now and again.
By the time he was even half satisfied with the results the room was warmer, the food was more or less cooked, and he was feeling a little better, though infinitely alone. He ate the stew (the potatoes were a bit solid in their middles) with bread, finished the whisky in his cup, and closed his eyes. What an idiot I am, he thought.
Tally. Things accomplished. Someone claims, without proof, that Marley was murdered. Someone claims, without proof, that Scrooge is going to be killed on or about Christmas eve. Motive for either act; none known. If this was a game, then it’s like one of Dwan’s street games. Get the audience worked up, make them see what they want to see, and keep moving the shells around.
Support. None, if you look honestly. Your wife’s left town. Some dangerous people are now annoyed with you. The police force was more annoyed with you. Sampson? Who cared what he thought? And Betty, the mudlark? Probably under the mud further down the Thames, about to be found by some other mudlark and turned in for the corpse-finder’s fee.
With McFergus’s mood falling, it was beginning to look darker, grimier, and colder inside his soul than on the streets outside. He examined the label on the bottle. There was a picture of a fieldstone cottage and the words, “A Very Scottish Scot’s Scotch” underneath. He had some more and felt a little less bad. Then he opened the bottle, poured himself some more, and tried to decide if he should join one of the crews looking for the lost Franklin expedition in the Canadian arctic when spring came. Or maybe join the latest expedition looking for the source of the Nile. He put some more coal on the fire, then sat on the chair. Us Scots, he reflected, can get very gloomy, but only when we’re thinking. For a moment, he thought about opening the copy of Marx’s Capital that he’d bought for Amy, but decided his ability to focus was not what it could be.
He went upstairs for another wee bit of whisky. From outside the window came the sound of someone singing a Christmas carol in the street. Humbug, he thought, trying to ignore them. He’d just started down the stairs when someone knocked on the door. He tried to ignore it, then stepped over and peered through the tiny glass pane set into the door. For a moment, he assumed the young woman he was looking at was one of the singers, but then he recognized her. His brain circled itself a couple of times before coming up with the name. Virginia Boyle, the former Marley cleaning woman and current resident of Millbridge Abbey. He fumbled with the lock and opened the door.
“Hello, Mr. McFergus,” she said. “Remember me?” Behind her, the street had settled into darkness with a single gas lamp lighting one building and making a few snowflakes sparkle as they passed. In the summer there would be a woman and her two daughters, using the street light to make clothes, but now there was only the cobbled lane, lightly covered with snow, and a few footprints. One set led to his door.
He blinked his eyes a couple of times and tried to figure out what to say. “Ah, yes,” he came up with, then, “Miss Boyle, of the Abbey.” Then, “Altham Grange.”
“May I come in?” she asked, pulling a shawl more tightly about her. McFergus could see she had a plain but warm coat and good shoes.
“Yes. Yes. Of course. Pardon me.” In confusion, he stepped back, holding the door wide. “Come in.”
Virginia Boyle stepped into the house of Ian McFergus. He set his cup on a step, to help her put her coat and shawl on a peg. He watched as she put her shoes onto the shoe bench. He reached down and gave her a pair of Amy’s knitted wool slippers. She looked at the slippers, then looked at McFergus, and said, “Is your wife at home?”
“My wife? No, she’s in Cornwall visiting her cousin for Christmas?”
“Ah.” There was a pause, as both seemed to contemplate the total Victorian impropriety of the situation. “I’m cold,” she said.
“Yes, of course, Miss Boyle. Come into the kitchen; there’s a fire.” The two of them made their way to the kitchen. McFergus offered her a chair by the fire, then went back to get his mug.
“I wouldn’t mind what you Scots call a ‘wee dram’ of that, if you don’t mind,” Miss Boyle said.
“Of course. Of course.” He lit a candle and started upstairs. On the way, he tripped on his cup in the darkness, spilling the whisky but not breaking the cup. He got a new cup for himself, and one of the better ones for Miss Boyle, and poured whisky into both, although somewhat more in his own. He put out the candle and stuffed it in a pocket, since he didn’t have three hands, and headed downstairs, cup in each hand.
There were two chairs and a small table in the kitchen, since McFergus and his wife often had tea there, rather than upstairs in the drawing room with the stuffed chairs and big table. That was, of course, the inevitable result of not having a servant. McFergus himself never felt the need of a servant, but he’d often told Amy they could afford one. Amy, however, had always declined, for reasons her husband had never figured out. That, and increasing age and bodily aches, had meant that the couple more and more often had tea there, beside the cooking fireplace.
Now McFergus was in Amy’s chair and Virginia Boyle, looking younger than she had any right to be, was sitting in McFergus’s identical chair. “Can I put on some tea?” the former inspector asked, before a casual inspection of the fireplace showed him that Virginia was already heating some water in the kettle there.
Miss Boyle waved a hand at the fireplace. “I hope you don’t mind. I thought we might both enjoy a cuppa. And,” she smiled sweetly, shaking brown hair, “I’ve been a servant for a very long time.”
“Thank you,” McFergus said. “That’s a good idea. The tea, I mean.”
“Thank you,” she said, “for the drink.” She sniffed, then took a sip from the cup. “Good Scotch whisky, I presume?”
“It seems fine. At least it tastes like the real thing, although if it is, it’s one of the few unadulterated items, other than milk fresh from the cow, you can get in London.” For a moment he wondered about his choice of words. “I don’t suppose you got much at the Grange, although of finer quality.”
“A gentleman’s house is a land of a million thefts.” The kettle was boiling, and Virginia got up to make a pot of tea. “The noble steals labour from the poor, and the poor steal as much time and labour as they can get away with from the noble.”
“And game,” McFergus said, his head still foggy. “I spent much of my youth as a gamekeeper on a Scottish estate.”
“Working for the rich, were you? A servant, like me?”
“Aye,” McFergus said, going back in time. “Although near the end, the Laird suspected that my mastiff and I were particularly inept at catching the truly hungry in those woods and hills.” He lapsed into silence as a cup of weak tea was placed in front of him. He sighed, pushed the cup of whisky away, and sipped the hot tea. “The rich,” he said, “think the poor are going to rise from the dregs of London and overthrow them. They’re forever checking out foreigners in case such ideas are coming into the country with the pineapples and sugar.”
“It might not be a bad idea,” Virginia said, “but I’m not sure the English are up to that. Much as there is resentment, there seems to be little of the organization needed. And little talk of it among the servants and factory workers, at least the ones I’ve known.” She smiled. “ No rebellions in the works among the servants, I guess.”
McFergus took another sip of the tea, being careful not to burn his lip this time. “London looks pretty safe from rebellion, too. The police push the costermongers around, and they push back, but they’re capitalists when you get right down to it, so there’s no danger of them joining the communists.”
“Communists?” Virginia looked perplexed.
??
?The latest movement, I’m told. Let the workers own the factories and share the profits. Everybody shares; nobody owns anything. Something like that.”
“I can see why the costers wouldn’t like that. Or the upper classes. Or especially the factory owners.”
“Even the Scots,” McFergus said. “The clearances have driven poor Scots out of the country or into even more poverty. All so the lairds can raise more sheep.” He sighed. “All a poor Scot wants is some land. No wonder they’re off to Canada.” He looked up at Virginia. “And you, Miss Boyle? You leave your position at the Abbey and come back to London, which some have called the ruin of all their dreams.”
“I was happier in London.” Virginia looked into space and smiled. “The hours were shorter than at the Abbey. I started factory work at seven in the morning; half the time Abbey work starts at four in the morning and ends at midnight.” She looked at McFergus. “I was sending money to my dad, and I knew being a servant would be steadier work.”
“Steadier than anything you can get in the city, I imagine.”
Miss Boyle laughed. “Steady it is. I get up well before dawn, open the shutters and make a fire in the kitchen. I empty the ashes from the fireplaces, then sweep the halls and the rooms. when that’s done, I get a fire going in the dining room for breakfast, and carry the breakfasts to the family. While they’re eating I get to clean the boots, make the beds, and empty the chamber pots outside. By that time the family is finished with breakfast, so I take the dishes to the kitchen wash them, and help the cook start preparation for the other meals of the day. And take breakfast of bread and drippings when I can, but am allowed to pause only briefly, for there are steps to clean on my knees and, of course, I put new blacklead onto the foot scraper. It’s very important to them to have a foot scraper that’s black and clean. Most days except laundry days, I then flood the kitchen and pantry floors with boiling water, then – again on my knees – I scrub those floors and, if I’m lucky, I can hurry into town for something from one of the grocers or a letter to mail before cleaning the privy, washing the dog, and helping with supper.”
“And you left all that?”
“Most days I get to bed well after dark, very tired. Most weeks I lose some pay as fines for infractions such as being late with a chore.”
“Yet you left. I find that hard to believe!” McFergus laughed.
“As I told you, my dad died last week.”
“Yes,” McFergus bent his head. “I was sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks.” Virginia poured more hot water onto her tea. “Mrs. Green, she took a dislike to me. Do you know what that means?” McFergus shrugged, and Virginia went on. “I had no hope of advancement. I’d be forever sleeping in a corner of the kitchen.”
“What had you done?” McFergus shook his head and held up a palm. “Sorry, Miss Boyle. Too many years as a detective and a bit too much whisky. It’s not my business.”
“I caught the eye of a young man.”
“That’s not allowed?”
“Not if he’s the squire’s son.” Virginia smiled. “Even if he’s a contrary younger son without much hope of inheriting anything.”
“Ah, yes. I remember you mentioned that. Is that why you came to London?”
Virginia nodded. “He’s to meet me tomorrow, and we’re off to Canada in a week or so.” There was a pause while she watched his reaction. “Yes, he may have mislead me; young men do that. But I think he’ll be here tomorrow. I grew up as the only child on a farm in the Cotswolds, and, as you can see, I’m sturdier than most servants.” A sip of tea. “My sturdiness appealed to him.”
“He’ll get money from his father?”
“Yes,” she laughed. “Another remittance man wandering among the savages. It won’t be much, but it’s a chance I’m going to take. Can I spend the night here?”
“Ah…. yes.”
She saw McFergus’s confusion, and took a sip of whisky from her own cup. “And your wife’s left you?”
McFergus sighed. “Let me start from the beginning.” He cut several pieces of bread from the quartern of bread and put them onto a plate on the table, together with a butter box and a jar of jam. Then he found a bread knife, and gave it to Virginia. When she was eating, he buttered himself a piece. That done, he told the entire tale (or most of it), from Amy’s suggestion that he look up the Marley case right up till Virginia herself knocked on her door. Being Scottish, and having had wee dram of whisky, he made the whole story so darkly amusing that Virginia laughed through most of it, several times almost to the point of choking on the bread. When he was done, he waited for her to catch her breath.
“That,” she said, “was the funniest thing I’ve heard since the squire’s son fell into the pig slop.” A pause. “Anyway, I’m glad to hear your wife hasn’t left you for good. Can I sleep here, by the fire?” She saw his look. “You have no idea how many times I’ve slept on the kitchen floor in the last few years. With a blanket I can be perfectly comfortable. And it’s only for one night. I’m meeting the squire’s son tomorrow.” She laughed. “Or at least I surely hope to.”
McFergus thought she was beautiful when she laughed, but that might just have been the Scot in him. “You can sleep in the bed…” he began, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“I do hope you catch the person who killed Mr. Marley. He wasn’t that bad a person, sometimes, for all his money.”
“Did he pay you well?” McFergus rose, not totally steadily, onto his feet, his leg still hurting.
“Not enough to live on in London, but sometimes I got extra money for cleaning the other building.”
“You mean the Scrooge and Marley office?”
Virginia shook her head. “No. A place called the Teacher Building. A dozen blocks over.”
McFergus sat down again. “Will you show me that place tomorrow morning?”
Virginia squinted her eyes. “You didn’t know about that one, did you?”
“I did not.”
“Tomorrow morning, then.”
McFergus said, “I’ll put the chamber pot on the middle floor. We can both use it in the night, if we need to.”
In the bedroom on the top floor, he fell asleep at once, but woke a couple of hours later, as usually happened when he’d had too much whisky. I wonder, he thought, if that building had anything to do with the man who Virginia had, back in Altham Grange, described as “dressed like a banker. Then the thought, one day left, kept him awake for another hour.
***