Chapter 6: December 24
He got up in the morning a bit later than usual. He was cold – the bedroom fire had long since gone out - and stiff, but trying to decide which hurt more, his head, his leg, or his pride. That a young woman should assume that it would be safe to spend the night with him, especially after whisky. It was true; there were few safer places in London, but he was a Scot, after all. A Scot’s a Scot, for a’ that. He sighed.
“Good morning, Mr. McFergus,” Virginia said, cheerily. He discovered she’d made coffee, put on some salt cod to cook in pork fat in a frying pan, and emptied the chamber pot.
Dear Lord, he thought. And Amy’s always refused to get a servant. “Good morning, Miss Boyle,” he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the black coffee pot, “this is wonderful.”
“The coffee should help your head,” Virginia said, putting a plate of bread and the butter dish in front of him. “Can I serve you some fish?”
“Thank you,” he said, although he suspected the salt in the cod would do unpleasant things to his headache.
They ate together in silence, until Virginia said, “Let me know when you want to go see the Teacher Building.”
“Is it far?”
“Eleven and one-half blocks,” she said.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“How about right now?” she asked, with an enthusiasm and cheer that was hard for McFergus to take. Personally, he suspected that if someone looked up the phrase “dour Scot” in the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, they’d see a face much like his was at the moment.
“I’ll get my coat,” he said.
“It snowed in the night,” she added.
Twenty minutes later, after he’d made a stop at the toilets behind the house, they were on the street. “Doesn’t it look lovely, all covered in white?” she asked.
He nodded. “Good to look at, anyway,” by which he meant it was slippery. The few horses pulling wagons down his side street were walking a bit more slowly than usual, and two laughing children were throwing snowballs at each other, while their governesses watched in unsmiling amusement. McFergus doubted that children in the villages would have had governesses. There was little chance that a child would be kidnapped in London, but he might come back home cold and naked; clothes were valuable enough to be worth stealing.
Virginia turned out to be quite right; it was exactly eleven and one-half blocks between McFergus’s front doorway and a four-storey building with the words, “Teacher Building” on it. McFergus had found walking in four inches of snow tiring, but his guide had walked patiently beside him, and he suspected that, had he started to slip, she’d have reached over to save him. Just how old do I seem to her? he wondered.
The building was, itself, unremarkable and indistinguishable from many others in the area, except, perhaps, a bit older and a bit more sturdily built. There was no indication that it had ever been more than a residence for a dozen or so business. From the lack of traffic at the door, McFergus decided that the companies renting it were using it as a warehouse. Old, thought McFergus, and a bit weak in the knees, like me. There were a few cracks in the foundations. He suspected that someone named “Teacher” had financed it originally, and had given it his name.
“This is it?” he asked, redundantly.
“This is it,” Virginia replied. “Mr. Marley would have me clean it occasionally, when one of his usual cleaners was unavailable or when a storage had to be done because someone moved out.” She looked it over. “It hasn’t changed at all. Mr. Marley would pay my bus fare but I usually just walked here as fast as I could, and saved the fare money.”
“And there’s just living apartments here?”
“Storage rooms, that’s all. Nobody wanted to live here or have offices here.” The sun came out but didn’t do much for a building dark with decades of London soot. “People complained of the stink,” she noted. “They were right.”
McFergus sniffed. “Seems pretty normal to me.” There were still sewage gutters along the sides of the street, but the clean snow showed that not much was flowing along them. “Probably better now,” he said, “with the underground sewer line in.”
She shook her head. “They had sewer lines then, too. I heard some of the residents talking about it. Apparently they were getting backups a lot of the time. People kept moving out and other people just moved in until word got around and the rooms were just used for storage.”
McFergus scratched his head. The steady influx of people into London meant that accommodation was always a tricky thing, so it was odd to find an empty building. “I thank you very much for this,” he said, his feet cold in the snow already turning grey with fallen soot and droppings from the horses pulling wagons. “Can I buy you a hot drink somewhere?”
Virginia shook her head. “I’m meeting my friend in a couple of hours at the train station.” She smiled, turned, and joined the trudging lines of people moving along the sidewalks towards their jobs. After a moment, she turned waved at him.
Good luck in America, McFergus thought.
When he got home, Sampson was waiting on his step, leaning against the railing. McFergus didn’t try to figure out how the youth had found his address. “Come in,” he said, unlocking the door. “I’ll put some coal onto the fire.” Sampson said nothing but “thank you” until the tea and bread was served. Neither of them mentioned that McFergus seemed to be working on the Marley case again, the case he’d told Sampson he was done with.
It took McFergus about half an hour to get comfortable talking to Sampson about the case. Somehow it seemed different telling it all to him in McFergus’s own house, but eventually he got into it. He’d covered his interview with Superintendent Bannim, his talks with the Cratchits and the Holywells, , Amy’s departure for Cornwall, and then the visit with Fagin without comment from Sampson. When the inspector paused at that point, his listener looked puzzled.
“What about the young woman who slept here in the kitchen last night?” Sampson asked.
McFergus didn’t bother asking how the youth had deduced that, but continued with Virginia’s visit and their trip to the Teacher Building. There was a long pause, then Sampson said, “It makes a lot more sense, now.”
“It does?”
“Didn’t Mr. Fagin tell you to look where people wear new silk hats and run their own underworld?”
“He did,” McFergus acknowledged.
“Didn’t Miss. Boyle describe a man dressed like a banker, who argued with Mr. Marley?”
“True.”
“And didn’t you learn that the Teacher Building had odour problems of the sort caused by sewage difficulties?”
McFergus was beginning to see where he was going. “You think the ‘underworld’ Fagin mentioned might have been a pun. That bankers, money, and the sewer system were somehow involved with Mr. Marley and his Teacher Building?”
Sampson looked up as if his host had finally got to the obvious. “A fairly elementary linkage, it seems to me. Possibly a linkage in error, but one that deserves further investigation.”
McFergus lit a pipe and thought about it. “It is a lead, I’d say.”
“And,” Sampson continued, “it’s almost certain that Mr. Scrooge inherited that building from Mr. Marley. Maybe there’s a connection to his ownership and the threat on his life. Which,” he added “gives us, ah, the whole rest of the day, or maybe less, if that original threat is to be believed.”
“Us?”
Sampson shrugged. “School’s out till the new year.” He looked around. “I can sleep here, if you don’t mind. But unlike Miss Boyle, I’m not much for cooking and cleaning,” he added.
“Of course you can stay here, if sleeping on the floor doesn’t bother you.” McFergus wondered why Sampson didn’t go home. He wondered if Sampson would spend the first few days figuring out what the rest of his family (assuming there was more to the family) had been doing, secrets and all, while he was at school. His perso
nal popularity must have been very low both at school and at home.
“You think we’ll get struck down by some sort of ‘man’ disease if we don’t clean properly?”
“Other than the cleaning a man does just before his wife comes home? A good-but-not-great job of it to show that he’s had no other women in the house. Unlike you,” he added.
McFergus wondered if Samson would be allowed to live to maturity. “Anyway, we can sleep with the windows closed; that should keep some of the many diseases in London out of the place.”
“Ah,” Sampson said. “You’re a follower of the theory that bad air is the source of most disease.”
“As are most physicians and scientists,” McFergus said. “Although the germ theory has made some advances, the weight of professional opinion is that disease is a product of bad air.”
“The weight of scientific evidence counts more than the beliefs of a million people,” Sampson said. “Have you read the treatise about Dr. John Snow, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera?”
“I have heard about it.” McFergus lapsed into silence.
“Then you know about the Broad Street pump incident, or at least you might have, five years later, after publication of the book. Five hundred and seventy-eight people died in one outbreak of cholera. Dr. Snow drew a map of the places where people had died,” Sampson said, leaning back in his chair. “Every one of those five hundred and seventy-eight people got their water from that well, or had passed that way and may have taken a drink.” He was almost glaring, then took a deep breath and relaxed. “No one who did not drink from that well died. When he had the pump handle removed, the outbreak faded away.”
“I’ve heard that, but you do know that most authorities still believe cholera is from bad air. In fact,” McFergus noted, very quietly, “the government replaced the handle.” McFergus looked around the room. When he looked at Sampson again, Sampson was looking at him.
“I’m sorry,” the youth said quietly. “I didn’t know. Your son, I think.”
McFergus nodded. “He often took that street, and probably drank from the pump.”
“Have you noticed,” Sampson said, “that all people who work in the kitchen scald milk containers and table tops with boiling water?” When McFergus nodded, Sampson went on. “What can that be, other than killing germs before they multiply?
“Possibly. But I have a cousin in Glasgow….”
Sampson shook his head. “Everybody knows someone with anecdotal evidence that proves something. You must have run into that many times as a copper. But scientific evidence is real evidence. There was one woman who died in that cholera epidemic who was nowhere near that well; did you hear of that?”
McFergus shook his head. It seemed to him that if Sampson had been a man, or had worked for Fagin, he’d have had a pipe and would have been huffing out great clouds of smoke.
“She’d moved away from the neighbourhood some time before.” Sampson’s eyes flashed and he tapped a finger on the table. “She liked the taste of water from the Broad Street well, and regularly had a friend bring some. She died.”
“Okay….”
“And,” Sampson went on, “Snow looked at the water and saw some sort of bacteria in it; a type that no one had identified. Do you know what this means?”
“That the water from the well….” McFergus nodded.
“More than that!” It means that the germ theory may be right, regardless of what other people say. And do you know what that means?”
“Continue.”
“If there are living things, germs, that can float through the water, drift through the air, and stick to the clothes and hands of people, then it is people who help spread sickness. And it is people who can help stop it!”
“More tea and bread?” McFergus asked. He didn’t wait for an answer.
“It would explain things like childbed fever.”
McFergus stopped what he was doing.
“Women,” Sampson said, “are vulnerable at childbirth, if there are invisible creatures that want to get into a person’s body and multiply. And yet women go to hospitals to give birth. To whole buildings full of sick people. Can you imagine? We flush off the tables of our houses and the wooden milk buckets with boiling water, yet what doctor even washes his hands with CLEAN water, coming from the man dying of typhus to the woman giving birth?”
McFergus laid out more bread and jam, and poured tea for both of them. Amy’s mother had died of childbed fever in a hospital. She’d grown up the only child of a widower who’d raised her as much like a man as like a woman. McFergus had been attracted to her toughness and independence the day he’d met her. “And yet,” he said, “some people don’t get sick. Not everyone who drank at the Broad Street well got sick.”
Sampson waved his hand. “Some people survive things. Perhaps they’re tougher or there’s something in them that fights off bacteria.” He thought a bit. “If their children have that toughness, then they’re lucky and it will be their families that increase, as time goes by.”
“You’re talking like Darwin.”
“Who?” Sampson looked puzzled.
“Charles Darwin? Survival of the fittest? You don’t know him? Mr. Darwin believes that natural population growth always exceeds the food available to sustain it. Most individuals die, and those that survive are more fit, and somehow pass this on to their progeny. The fittest survive.”
Sampson thought some more. “Given enough time, groups with different survival needs could form into new species. Interesting.” A shrug. “But it doesn’t seem like knowledge that would be of use to me, so I can’t see why I would bother learning it.”
“Were we going anywhere with this discussion, interesting as it is?” McFergus tasted his tea; it was weaker than Amy liked it. “Or have we been trying to avoid the main issue?”
“We have been trying to avoid the main issue. Sewage. Sewers. The Teacher Building was known, you say, for its bad smells. And it belonged to Marley, and now belongs to Scrooge. These are facts; there may be a connection.”
“Someone who has a lifetime lease in the building wants out because of the smells, but neither of Mr. Marley nor Mr. Scrooge will permit it?”
“Unlikely. There’s always a way of getting out of a lease.” Sampson put a good layer of jam on his bread. “We must look for a connection between the sewers and the building.”
“I’ve got an idea,” McFergus said. “I’ll just find a tosher to lead me through the sewers of London to see what’s under the Teacher Building.”
Sampson pondered that. “It might be the best thing to do.”
“I was joking.”
Sampson looked up through the window. “A high-ranking policeman, one who’s never been here before and is wearing street clothing, is looking at your house. I think you can expect a visit. It might be best that I hide myself in the bedroom.” He took his bread and vanished upstairs just as someone knocked on the door. McFergus put Sampson’s teacup into the sink, then went upstairs to the door.
“Hello, Inspector McFergus,” Superintendent Bannim said.
“Yes,” said McFergus
“May I come in?”
McFergus stood back. “Yes, of course. May I offer you a cup of tea?”
“Thank you. That would be good.”
McFergus led his former boss to the dining table on the main floor, took his cloak, then went downstairs to the fireplace. There was enough hot water in the kettle, so he added more bread, a small pot of butter, and a jar of jam to the tray and brought them upstairs where Bannim had remained standing by the table. On McFergus’s invitation, the superintendent sat and was served tea in a good cup. “Thank you,” Bannim said when McFergus poured the tea. He subsequently refused an offer of bread and jam.
“You must be wondering why I’m here,” Superintendent Stanley Brimagem Bannim said.
“I am.” McFergus cut a piece of bread, then put some butter onto it.
“You know that the Marley ca
se was closed as an accident.”
“As was mentioned in your office the day before yesterday.”
“The Marley incident was before my time.” Bannim seemed a bit ill at ease. He looked up at McFergus. “Word of your current investigation went around the department very quickly.”
“As I would expect.” McFergus, who wasn’t hungry, had more bread, this time with jam. “But I wouldn’t expect the police administration to care as much as they seem to.”
“Nor would I,” Bannim said. “It was my expectation that you’d continue with your investigation just to reinforce your current independence, but let it wind down slowly as no new evidence came in.”
“You expected no new evidence?” McFergus said calmly.
“It seemed reasonable. The other policemen won’t talk to you because of your difficulties with myself, the criminals won’t talk to you because you were a policeman, and you can’t force any information by threats or promises because you’re not a policeman now.”
“That,” said McFergus, “sums up the situation fairly well.” He had no intention of letting Bannim in on anything he’d learned.
“Nonetheless, you were one of our finest inspectors, and might learn something.” He held up a palm to McFergus. “That was irrelevant to me until I received this anonymous note.” Bannim reached into a vest pocket and withdrew a small sheet of paper. He handed it to McFergus, then took a piece of bread and added butter to it.
McFergus poured more tea for the superintendent, then unfolded the paper. There was the word, “Marley” on it, and a date.
“It is dated,” Bannim pointed out, “almost two months before Mr. Marley died.”
McFergus looked the paper over. “Who sent you this?”
“It had been slipped under the door of my office before I arrived for work this morning.”
“Ah.” McFergus took a moment to collect his thoughts. “And the date?”
“I looked at the log book myself. It seems that on that date Mr. Marley received a threat of physical violence.”
“Under what circumstances?” This was getting more interesting.
“It was all very…roundabout and vague. But according to the records Mr. Marley believed it might be connected to a piece of property he owned.”
“The Teacher Building.”
One of Superintendent Bannim’s eyebrows went very high. “You know of it?”
McFergus nodded. “I learned that Mr. Marley had acquired the property, but that’s all.”
Bannim looked at the teapot, but refused more tea. “Mr. Scrooge informed me – I talked to him this morning – that it was not the habit of Scrooge and Marley Inc. to acquire real estate, but that Mr. Marley himself, through the bankruptcy of a creditor, had done so, and that, against the advice of Mr. Scrooge, Mr. Marley had retained ownership. Against the vehement advice or Mr. Scrooge, I gathered.”
“And Mr. Scrooge has it now, probably.”
“Indeed he does.” He hesitated. “The company that was building the sewers seven years ago went bankrupt. It is believed by some that the Teacher Building was somehow in the way and contributed to the company’s demise.”
“And he, too, hasn’t sold it in the seven years since Mr. Marley died.”
“So it seems. The registry office lists no other owners.”
“What,” McFergus asked, “was the result of the physical threat?”
Bannim shrugged. “I don’t know, but Mr. Marley seems to have convinced the thug to leave without anything accomplished, at least by the thug himself.”
“And this was in the log book?”
“Signed,” Bannim said, “by Constable Oftan himself.”
“Ah. I wonder how long it will be before Constable Oftan gets a promotion. He’s been a constable a long time.”
“He’ll be a constable the rest of his life, I imagine.” Bannim looked out the window at the falling snow. “But he won’t care. I imagine he gets enough payoffs from the costers and the criminals to keep him happy.”
“But his name shows up again at the death of Mr. Marley,” McFergus said.
“Indeed.” The superintendent looked a bit uncomfortable. “I shouldn’t even ask this, but you were sure, at the time, that Mr. Marley died accidentally.”
“I always felt uncomfortable with that conclusion.”
“And yet you said nothing till a few days ago.” Bannim reached for more bread.
“There was no other logical deduction. The door to the building in which he lived was locked, and bolted twice from the inside. The other units in the building were offices, empty during the night. If someone, for example, hid in one until after closing, there would be no way to get out.”
“And no one else had a key?”
“The cleaning staff came in during the day when the building was open and after it had been unbolted each morning by Mr. Marley. The people who rented the offices in the building seemed to be genuinely sorry at his death, and none, so far as we could tell, had a quarrel with him.” McFergus shook his head. “Barring any other physical evidence, it looked as if Mr. Marley opened the door to his room in the middle of the night, took a candle, and walked into the central hall, and tumbled down the stairs, breaking his neck.”
“Perhaps he heard a noise.”
“No sane man in his circumstance, hearing a noise, would do other than add another brace to the inside of his doors.” McFergus had no intention of telling Bannim about the youth whom he’d released; the one who’d warned; he could see no good that could come from an admission like that. He was still debating about telling about Virginia Boyle’s tale of the argument between Marley and the “man dressed like a banker,” when the conversation went past that.
Bannim nodded. “True.”
“I had no idea that anyone had visited Mr. Marley and threatened him,” McFergus said. “Unless that were moved to the attention of an inspector, I’d never have found out about it.”
Bannim nodded. “True. You seem to have done some research in the last day or two.” McFergus let it sit until the superintendent went on. “I wanted to tell you that I have no objection to your continuing this line of investigation, if you want, as long as….” He paused.
“As long as I don’t embarrass the police department,” McFergus said.
Bannim tapped his forefinger on the table. “As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t embarrass the police you can investigate Queen Vicky herself, for all I care.” When McFergus said nothing more, the inspector stood up. “I thought of deputizing you.”
“But not a deputy superintendent, just a deputy like in Kansas with a star on my chest and a couple of six shooters?”
Bannim laughed. “You’ve got the idea. But I decided against it.”
“Just as well, I think. Aside from looking stupid, I wouldn’t be able to tell people I wasn’t with the police any more. Assuming anybody believes me, anyway.”
“Keep up the good work, Inspector McFergus.” Bannim put on his coat and stepped out into the lightly falling snow. A costermonger pushing a wagon full of roasted chestnuts looked at them and went on into the stream of people moving by the house.
McFergus was still contemplating the events when Sampson came down the stairs from the bedroom. “He got the best of that one, didn’t he?” Sampson asked.
“In that sense that I’m doing work for the police department on what maybe a criminal case, and he doesn’t have to pay me?” McFergus smiled.
“And, with no written record, he can deny anything. And, not being on the force means you can legally consort with informants and other criminals, which a policeman cannot.”
“Well, then, I guess my investigation is his Christmas present.”
“A Christmas present from Christmas past,” said Sampson. “Mr. Marley died on Christmas day.”
“As might Mr. Scrooge,” McFergus noted.
“Which would be no Christmas present for you, or for Superintendent Bannim.”
“Or for you.”
>
Sampson nodded. “It would annoy me to leave a question unresolved.”
“There isn’t much of a answer in formation.”
Sampson scratched his head. “We have what may be our only set of tracks. Should we not follow it?”
“Those tracks being…?”
“As I said; sewage. Sewers. The Teacher Building was known, you say, for its bad smells. And it belonged to Marley, and now belongs to Scrooge. These are facts; there may be a connection.” He looked at the former inspector. “Do you not agree?”
McFergus got out his pipe and some tobacco. When he had lit the pipe, he went to a drawer, searched around a bit, and found another pipe, a “bent” one, which he handed to Sampson. “A Christmas gift from several years ago. I never liked it.” Sampson filled the pipe and lit it. For a few minutes there was silence and smoke.
“All we can do is gather information,” Sampson said. “Get some more details. Is this not the way it’s done? Where would we get them?”
“We can ask around, but that will take time. We can search the registry downtown but that will take time, since neither of us has any influence.” McFergus paused a long time.
“We have several hours,” Sampson laughed.
“We could check the sewers under the Teacher Building.”
“That’s possible?” Sampson asked. “Do you know how?”
“Courtesy of Superintendent Bannim, I’ve been down in the sewers four times. People were always drowning themselves there. Or a sailor would be robbed and his body thrown into the Fleet River. That's the source of one of the main sewer lines, and the body'd be found downstream by some tosher. There was a small reward for finding bodies, so the tosher would call the police, and if Superintendent Bannim and I weren't speaking, I'd find myself underground."
"Sailors." Sampson seemed to be contemplating a sailor spending his last moments drowning in waters far, far from the seas.
"Oh, and the costermongers. As I told you, there are maybe four thousand in London. You've seen the barrows and wagons they have. Their whole stock in this world is tied up in that inventory on wheels. And where do you think they put all those wagons at night?"
"You know," Sampson said, "I'd never thought of that. There's not many places to secure a wagon full of goods."
McFergus puffed a cloud of smoke. "They leave the barrows and wagons in courtyards and side streets, covered by a tarp against the rain."
"Given the proclivity for theft in this city, there would have to be a good guard posted or a very serious set of consequences for infractions."
"As far as the police can tell, there is no guard posted."
"Yet when a person is desperate enough…."
"There is a belief that, with an absolute certainty, someone stealing from a costermonger's cart at night will be found in the mud of the Thames when the tide goes out. Or….”
Sampson grimaced. "Or floating face down in the London sewage system."
"When the body is ‘found,’ an apple core stuffed in its mouth, someone in the metropolitan police force is led, by a tosher, to the location. The closest street grate is opened, and the body is lifted out."
"And nobody knows who did the murder?"
"Even you would have a problem with that. The costermongers are a very tight group, and they regard a crime that can be accomplished successfully as a positive thing. Besides, they hate the police, who are always moving them on or taking bribes to let them alone."
Sampson waved his hand around. "You couldn't have taken many bribes. You don’t even have one servant."
"I was happy to be promoted to inspector, even if the people of London regard police in civilian clothes as nothing short of short of a secret police for the rich and powerful." He puffed. “Being a policeman was not my heart’s ambition.”
"You always wanted to be an engineer."
“Yes. I always wanted to be an engineer. This Victorian England will always be known as the great age of engineering. We've done more than the Romans, by far.” McFergus stood and stretched and got the subject back on track. "One of my forays was in the area of the Teacher Building, if I remember correctly.”
Sampson looked at McFergus. "Are you thinking….?"
“I’ve still got the clothes I wore when I last went into the sewers.” McFergus went upstairs, and came down shortly with a canvas bag. From it he took a pair of worn boots, a tattered shirt, a patched pair of trousers, and a waterproof cloak and fisherman’s hat. He pointed at the cloak and hat. “Water comes in from the street drains and various other slop comes in from the private toilets.”
“The clothes are too big for me,” Sampson said.
“The sewers are quite slippery, and I don’t walk well,” McFergus noted.
“If someone went into the sewers, he’d need a guide.”
“That wasn’t a big problem for the police,” McFergus said. “We’d hire a tosher.”
“There are still toshers? I thought that the practice was illegal. Didn’t they put grates over all the openings a few years ago.”
McFergus snorted. “This is London. Poor people are desperate and cunning. Toshing is better than mudlarking - it’s warmer down there in winter.”
“Is there anything to be found down there?” Sampson looked skeptical.
“Among those that sort through other people’s waste, toshers are among the richest people.” McFergus shrugged. “You wouldn’t think it, but they live better than most of London’s poor, and work hard to make sure more people don’t try to get in on the loot.”
Sampson looked at McFergus to make sure he wasn’t joking. “Don’t they die of disease? Whether bad air or bacteria causes disease, they should suffer ills just being down there.”
“Maybe both theories are wrong.” McFergus loaded his pipe again. “Toshers have the reputation for being healthier than most. Which isn’t saying a lot, of course, given the short lifespan of the gentry of the rookeries. But, as I say, they seem to live longer and make more money than you’d imagine.” He took a long puff on the pipe, and watched as Sampson relit his own pipe. “The sewers are quite slippery, and I don’t walk well,” he repeated.
“What’s it like down there?”
“Dark, smelly, and dangerous,” McFergus said. “And slippery.”
There was a pause as both men puffed smoke. “How dangerous?” Sampson asked.
“Dangerous enough that they made it illegal to go into the sewers without permission. Dangerous enough to install those the grates to keep people out. There’s a good reward just for informing on someone who goes into the sewers without permission.”
“So do people still do it?”
“Of course. Money overrules law for both the rich and the poor and hunger trumps safety at all times. There are at least ten thousand miles of sewers down there – they’ve never been mapped – and maybe a thousand miles of those that a person can walk, crouch, or crawl into.”
Sampson shook his head. “But what’s to be found in human waste?”
McFergus spread his arms. “This is a city in which many people can’t afford to have their garbage hauled away and in which many people just don’t want to pay.”
“So garbage goes into the sewers.” Sampson nodded in understanding.
“Anything small enough to throw into a sewer opening. Household stuff goes down there, as well as dead animals; anything from pet cats to offal from the slaughter houses and washings from the pig sties. Ashes, and teaspoons, dirt from the streets and coins from people’s pockets.” He tapped his finger onto the table. “There are chemical factories dumping material right into the sewers. A man can wander into a pocket of sewer full of gas, foul and ready to explode.”
“A danger I hadn’t considered”
“There are far more dangerous things down there,” McFergus assured him.
“Continue,” Sampson said.
“Well, getting lost could be a problem, since there are no maps and not many reference points.”
&
nbsp; “Don’t you go with a guide?”
“Always have, and it would be mad to do otherwise.”
“So that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Of course not,” McFergus said, though something rang a distant bell in the furthest corner of his mind. “The police pay a tosher who can at least lead them to whatever body is down there, and show them the way to the nearest exit.” He puffed a bit, thinking. “When I was down there, I was warned that there are holes you can step into that are over your head. Since you’re wading in opaque water with only a candle light, you have to know where these are.”
“Sampson shook his head. “Don’t the toshers fall into these, maybe if one is newly formed or they’re exploring an area new to them?”
“So they claim. But they normally travel in groups of three or four, led by an older man. And they always carry a long-handled hoe. The hoe lets them check out places, but – so they tell me – if a person falls into a deep spot, he can reach out with his hoe, hook it onto something, and pull himself out. Another danger, as you can imagine, is having rotten walls fall onto you. On my first excursion I was shown a wall where the bricks were so soft I could pull them out with my fingers, and they crumbled as I did it.”
Sampson sighed a long sigh. “I’m not sure it would suit many as a profession.”
“You haven’t been in the rookeries. The toshers can be rough on anyone trying to get into their profession, and many do, for the money.” He tapped his pipe into an ash tray. “But the most dangerous thing for a tosher is drowning. Not even the rats are more dangerous. though I’ve heard that they’ll take down a lone tosher, which is another of the reasons they stay in group.”
“How does the drowning happen?” Sampson clenched his hands together, which amused McFergus, so he carried on.
“You have to realize…” and here McFergus drew a diagram onto his notepad, “that when the tide’s up, water flows back into the sewers. Given a spring tide and a strong east wind, that can push water well back into the sewers. That’s especially true since they removed the old London bridge, and the tides run faster back up the Thames and further into the sewers now.”
“Tides,” the youth said, “are predictable.”
“Yes they are. Yes they are. And since most of the major sewage lines follow old creeks, toshers stay out when there’s a heavy rain around the headwaters of the lost creeks.” McFergus contemplated his empty pipe. “But there’s one thing they can’t predict.” He drew a sketch of a creek. “The sewage authority sometimes places a dam over the water going into a sewer, and lets a little lake build up behind it.”
“Sensible,” Sampson said. “Then they remove the dam and let the water rush down, to flush out the tunnels. The force of the water would do a bit of cleaning.”
“A group of toshers could get flooded to the roof of the tunnel before they could get out.”
“And the authorities don’t warn anybody?”
“Well,” said the former inspector, “nobody is supposed to be in there. But if a flushing of the system were about to start, the sewer men raise, then drop, some of the nearest sewer grates in the street to sound a warning. Any toshers in the street do the same to their nearby grates, in to alert their compatriots below. It wasn’t as serious in older days,” McFergus said, “but there are 300,000 cesspits in London being converted to flush systems, and that’s adding a lot of water to the sewers. More than they can handle, so the sewers often fill up and now sewage comes boiling out into the street. The city is rebuilding the whole system, but that takes time.”
“So,” said Sampson, “I think we can rule out that method of looking for data.”
McFergus said nothing, then went on. “Shall I tell you about the black swine that are said to roam the upper sewer system?” He tilted his head at Sampson and asked, “Or about Queen Rat, who sometimes fancies a tosher and turns for an hour or so into a beautiful woman?”
“No,” said Sampson. “If you can't deliver them on a plank to me to, they don't exist. Truth cannot be misled. If the belief in these beings influenced a man's actions, that might be important, but fantasies are for clergymen who see fairies in their garden and rabbits with stopwatches and a vest. Life is an endless maze without useful facts.” He lit a third pipeful of tobacco. “I am younger and more nimble than you.”
“I have sewer clothes and I've been down there four times. If some sewer-hunter can show me an entrance close to the building, I might not have to walk very far.”
“The game is worth the candle,” Sampson said.
In the end, they flipped a coin, although Sampson voiced opposition to the unscientific and illogical method.
An hour later, McFergus was in the basement of a house less than two city blocks from the Teacher Building. He checked his watch; another hour until he would meet Sampson again.
The air was dank, and smelled of human waste and the vegetables stored in cubbyholes in the crumbling cellar walls. The smell had stopped bothering McFergus. He'd stopped at a Presbyterian church for a quick prayer, but the smell of decomposing bodies put him off a bit. Thirty years before such administration as the city possessed had decided to change the rule requiring that the dead be buried only on church property, and seven large private cemeteries had been established in the surrounding country. But there were still a few people interred in the land surrounding each church, people too religious or too poor to get buried in anything but a churchyard. Sometimes previous tenants of the soil were removed, but often the new body was simply piled on top of the soil and a thin layer of dirt was added to cover it. That slim covering and London rains, along with grave robbers, left a scattering of bones among the markers and a bad smell in the church.. So his prayers hadn't eased his mind any and now he stood in the dark basement with two hired toshers feeling the need of more spiritual help than was likely ahead.
An old fellow named Skinny Bob and a young man called himself One-Eye Peter carefully moved aside a shelf unit containing preserves. There was a door behind it, which they opened. There was only darkness beyond the door. With a single match, Skinny Bob lit candle lanterns and attached the lanterns to the greasy surface of the coats he and his tosher companion wore. He handed a third lantern to McFergus.
Both men were dressed more or less the same. The coats, although dirty, were velveteen, with huge pockets attached. They wore old trousers, a heavy canvas apron, and shoes that were barely holding together. This outfit marked them as toshers, or sewer-hunters; the police knew that, and the police knew that such men were still finding their way into the system, despite the danger, the fines and the rewards for turning a tosher in. There were at least a couple of hundred toshers sill working the sewers; the money to be made and the reputation that toshing had as a healthy lifestyle was too much temptation to forego. Care, and bribery, got the men past the police. Care, and luck, kept them alive.
A tosher used his lantern to find his way through the darkness and to find saleable items. When the tosher walked forward, the lantern on the right side of his chest shone ahead of him; when he bent down, it shone where he was looking. At McFergus's insistence, he was provided with both a lantern, which he carried in one hand, and a hoe, to use as a cane.
Not for a moment did the former inspector believe that these two were using their own names. He'd identified himself as a former policeman, and was paying them well enough, but they knew they were safer making up names (although in the same style as other toshers) and they blindfolded McFergus for the last half-block of his travel before the door to the sewer.
For a moment, all three stood in the slowly moving water, waiting till their eyes adjusted and their noses got used to the stench. Slowly, the walls of the sewer came into view, old brick, dripping with fingers of gray-green material. McFergus learned to look down, tilting his hat to cut the bright daylight glare that came through the grates above every hundred feet or so. He now understood one of the advantages of working at night, as most toshers did. A few snowflakes
also came through the grates, looking as out of place as McFergus felt.
Shining his light around, he moved his legs slightly. The bottom was slippery, but not as bad as he had feared. Away in a corner, bright eyes reflected the lantern beam; a dozen rats, feeding on the entrails of some large animal, probably offal from a slaughter house. This impressed the inspector; he didn't think that anything from the slaughterhouses was ever thrown away, rather than being spiced and stuffed into a meat pie and sold, regardless of its condition. A dead cat bumped against his leg, shaking some flies loose, and moved on. The waste from horses seemed to improve the smell of human waste, if not the texture.
"Ready?" Skinny Bob asked.
"I am ready." They moved slowly upstream. McFergus almost slipped a few times in the first few minutes, but got his sewer legs after that. He was immensely grateful that the rounded brick roof of the sewer was higher than his head. That, unfortunately, changed when Skinny Bob led them into a side sewer that was three feet, nine inches high, the normal height for sewers that didn't follow old streams. In such a smaller space McFergus was unable to use the hoe as a walking-stick, and had to drag it behind him while using his other hand to hang onto the clothes of the man ahead of him.
They came again to a larger sewer, followed it for a few minutes, then went into to a smaller one again. By the time he got to the next high one, McFergus was thoroughly lost. For all he knew they could be back at the original sewer that they'd entered from the basement. As he contemplated that fact, he remembered what Sampson had asked him before they separated.
"These toshers, they help the police?"
"Yes," McFergus had said. "A bit for goodwill and a bit for the reward money."
"What will they do when they find out you're not a cop?"
"Actually, I don't know,” McFergus had told him.
“They won’t feel the same responsibility for your safety, will they?” Sampson had raised his eyebrows.
And now McFergus was somewhere under the streets of London, dependant on two toshers whose only real reason for getting him safely back was the fact that he’d paid them only half the agreed fee at the beginning. There wasn’t much to keep them from robbing him of the money in his pocket as well as the watch he had tied to his arm, taking back their hoe and lantern and leaving him to find his own way out in the dark. He looked up at the heavy iron grates set into the street above. There were people moving by, and dirty snow being kicked down, but there was a lot of street noise, and he wondered if anyone would hear him if he shouted. He checked his watch; it was ten minutes before he had planned to be in near the Teacher Building, and Sampson was supposed to be there at the same time, and every half hour after.
Skinny Bob and One-Eye Peter came to a stop in front of McFergus, giving him time to catch up. The sewer was wide here, but the bricks were old, with many fallen out. McFergus shone his lantern around him. “Are we there?”
“We’re here,” Skinny Bob corrected him. He pointed ahead of him at a wall.
McFergus moved forward, and felt the wall; it was concrete and stone block, unusual in Victorian foundations. One block of stone had what looked like a figure in relief on it. Perhaps it had been an angel once, but it was old enough to have been so worn down that it was hard to be certain. “This is the Teacher Building ?”
“It is.”
McFergus turned his lantern in a circle, then moved over to the other side of the sewer. That part was built of bricks, but looked like it had been patched many times. And it was slumping; dangerously so, to the ex-inspector’s eyes. As he moved forward, he saw the problem as an engineer would. The flow of sewage made a sharp turn at this point, around the foundations of the Teacher Building, then straightened out afterwards. “This is an engineering nightmare,” he said, tapping his hoe against the solid foundation of the Teacher Building. “I can see that when the building was erected the soil here was sandy and unstable, so someone put in solid foundations to hold the building firmly. But,” McFergus pointed with the hoe, “the result is that eddies are forced against the far wall, and the pressure of that liquid will always undercut the bricks there.”
The toshers said nothing. One-Eye Peter casually scooped his hoe in the liquid that flowed, ankle deep around him, as if he were there to look for valuables, not to discuss engineering.
“They can’t keep patching that wall so the only reasonable thing to do is remove the Teacher Building and its foundations, to let the sewers flow properly. I imagine things get hung up on this corner all the time.”
Skinny Bob nodded. “There are often jams here, so we check after a clearing. But that wall is getting ready to fall again, so I wouldn’t stand too close to it.”
With his hoe, McFergus tapped on the patched brick wall across from the Teacher Building foundation. Two bricks fell out, then another dozen. All three men stepped well back. “Sorry,” McFergus whispered. Skinny Bob started to say something more, but the collapse of the wall accelerated, until much of the brick was lying on the floor of the sewer, forcing the effluent into small rapids.
McFergus shone his lantern into the opening that was left, then stepped onto the pile of bricks to see better. There was a large room. His light made out arches and pillars. It was, he thought, the remains of a chapel from a long-earlier part of London’s history. No doubt some of the stones, with their carvings, had been conscripted for use in the Teacher Building foundation. Another brick fell nearby, but he couldn’t help looking in. He was just assuring himself that there would be nothing of value left in there when he saw that a stone plinth had been struck by a falling brick, and had split open. He reached in towards the gleam of metal, and came up with a handful of coins, gold by weight.
“Look at this!” he whispered, turning around. There was no sign of either of the toshers. Confused, Ex-Inspector Ian McFergus stood on the pile of bricks from the fallen wall, and called. There was no answer but echoes.
Dropping the coins into a pocket, he ran back downstream a bit, but there was not a sign of the other men. He couldn’t figure why they would leave, since he’d paid only half the agreed-upon sum, the rest to be handed over when he got out of the sewer system. Were they superstitious about the old chapel? Had they planned all along to leave him there?
He shouted again. There was a faint noise to the water, and a steady rumble of carts and horse hooves from the street above, but no return call. Rats ran by his feet. he considered following them, but realized they could get out smaller holes than he could.
Then he heard it, faintly. A triple boom, boom, boom from somewhere far away. A half minute later, the sound was repeated, a bit louder. It was, McFergus knew suddenly, the sound of men raising heavy steel sewer grates in the street, then letting them fall back into place, to sound a warning that the sewer lines were being flushed.
Once again he ran downstream, but stopped where the first two small side drains entered. He knew he’d come from one of them, hunched over and following the toshers, but he was unable to remember which one. He shouted down both of them, and got no answer.
For a moment, he thought of crawling into one of them. The flushing water would be coming down the main sewer line, and if he got back far enough, maybe it would get past before some of it ran up the side drain far enough to drown him. But he knew in his heart that that was a faint hope. And there probably were rats up there, also running to get away from the coming flood. The rats would infest, and probably defend, any spot that stayed above the coming waters. Turning, he ran upstream, towards the Teacher Building. Halfway there his weak knee gave out when he stepped onto the corpse of a small, rotting animal. The lamp went underwater and the candle went out. He wished he’d brought matches.
The banging of sewer grates got closer until the one upstream of him, just past the Teacher Building rang. A minute later the one a block downstream was raised and lowered. He yelled as loud as he could, but he knew how the volume of traffic, the steel rims of wagon and carriage tires, and the clopping of
horses’ hooves would drown the sound of his voice coming from the sewer grates. He realized that he should have positioned himself beneath a grate before it was raised and lowered, but that, he knew, was hindsight and useless to him.
His knee was throbbing badly and wanted to give out, but he stumbled forward. The grate nearest to the Teacher Building was where the newer brickwork met the older sewer frame. He was trying to remember whether someone had installed steel bars into the walls of the newer part of the sewer. Standing just below the grate, he felt the wall. Yes! The rungs of a steel ladder, installed to let men up and down from the grate in the street above.
The first rung was the hardest, as it was furthest from the floor of the sewer. Hearing a distant roar, in a note so low it was barely audible, spurred him on. Going three steps up the ladder put his face close to the grate. McFergus pushed on the grate; nothing moved. He reached down, grabbed the hoe, and shoved the handle through one of the square openings in the grate and into the street above. As he looked up, his fisherman’s hat slipped off and disappeared into the darkness.
Almost immediately the handle was knocked aside; then it was grabbed and pulled up. The iron end of the hoe cut a line through McFergus’s cheek before jamming against the iron grate. “Help me!” McFergus called.
There was some scuffling and shouting above him, and some dirty snow fell onto him. Then a high-pitched voice; “This is Samson.” A couple of pairs of fingers reached through the grating and tried to lift it. McFergus tried to help by pushing with one hand. The grate barely moved. McFergus wasn’t surprised: if grates weren’t heavy and solidly anchored to the street, they’d certainly disappear in the night, even if the costers would turn in anybody trying to sell one.
“I’m going to get an iron bar,” Samson called down, above the street noise.
“Hurry,” McFergus said. “They’ve opened the gates to flush the system.” He had no illusions about the consequences of waiting; it was not uncommon for flushing waters to reach up to street level and fountain out of the grates. And heaven knew where Samson would get an iron bar.
But he didn’t have to wait; as the rumble grew loud, another set of fingers reached through the grate, and it hinged up and away onto the street. Even then, it was close; the rising waters were tugging at McFergus’s legs and a large but soft object hit them as he was hauled up and onto the street. He looked down into the darkness past his feet; it was filling with muddy water. Then he looked up. Several people were standing there, including Sampson. But the one who had dragged him up, the one who evidently had the strength to open the grate without needing an iron bar, was standing there, breathing heavily. It was Bill Sikes.
McFergus sat there, in the dirty snow, soaking wet and covered with waste. Blood from the cut in his cheek was running down his face and snowflakes fell steadily upon him. Horses and wagons, cabs and carriages detoured around him, kicking up grey slush that spattered him. He saw someone grab a live but very wet cat from the same sewer hole, and a couple of rats swam to the edge and crawled out.
McFergus looked up. Sikes looked at him, then turned to Sampson and said, “Tell him what I said.” Then he and his dog walked away, vanishing almost at once behind the traffic. The former inspector was cold and getting colder. He watched Sampson reach into his pocket and pull out a bottle of scotch.
“I estimated that there was a reasonable chance that you might need this, now or later.” But as McFergus reached for the bottle, Sampson removed the stopper, pushed McFergus’s head aside and poured the alcohol into the cut in his face. He wiped the cut with a handkerchief, then poured more onto it.
“Mother of God,” McFergus said, “are you going to waste all of it?” Sampson just smiled and handed McFergus the bottle. There was some left in it; enough to give McFergus hope, though he coughed a bit up through his nose.
“I suggest,” Sampson said,” that we get you home before you freeze to death. I doubt that any public house wants you in your current smelly condition.” They retrieved the hoe, watched to make sure the grate was closed by passers-by, and hobbled down the street, snow still falling on them.
A half hour later, Sampson had a warm coal fire going in the kitchen of McFergus’s house. McFergus, naked under several layers of blankets with his feet towards the fire, had been washed off and was drinking tea.
“Feeling any better, now that your teeth have stopped chattering?” Sampson asked. Sampson himself was drinking tea and smoking the pipe McFergus had loaned him.
McFergus looked at the young man; the bent pipe rather suited his features. All Sampson needs is a deerstalker hat, McFergus thought, to be the image of a highlands hunter. That, and twenty more years. But he didn’t say so to Sampson. “I feel much better. Would you be so kind as to fetch me the bottle of whisky hidden behind the butter keg?”
Sampson came up with the bottle of Glen Miller scotch, about half full. “Aha!” he said. “Just what we need.”
“I would,” the ex-policeman said, a bit gruffly, “prefer to drink it, rather than have it poured down my face this time.”
“Some of it, anyway.” Sampson found the rag bin, found a small piece of white cloth, and poured some whisky onto the cloth. He handed McFergus the rest of the bottle, then wiped the cut along McFergus’s cheek with the whisky-soaked cloth.
McFergus said something in Gaelic, then, “What, in the name of Baby Jesus, is that for?”
“If,” Sampson said, “the germ theory of disease is valid, then it would be logical to sterilize a cut made from a tosher’s hoe before the germs can settle down in your face, would it not?”
“You think whisky will do that?”
“I’ve been told that it will,” Sampson said, “and if any alcohol will kill things, the cheap scotch you buy should be ideal, considering the number of people in the British Isles it’s already removed from the planet.” He inspected his work; the cut had stopped bleeding. “Did you know that Nelson’s body was brought back to England preserved in a cask of brandy?”
“I did,” McFergus said. “I never approved of the act; us Scots have love of neither British officers nor using good liquor for anything but getting drunk enough to forget the servitude of Scotland to England.” He tried reaching for his cheek, but Sampson pushed his hand away. A sudden thought struck McFergus. “Did you set the clothes outside the front door?”
“I did.”
“Can you check to see if they’re still there? I have some souvenirs of my expedition in one of the pockets.”
Sampson was back in a few minutes with the clothes. “I had to argue with a rag-and-bone man,” he said. “He was just about to take them away.” The clothes didn’t smell much better for having been outside. McFergus pointed at them. “Since your hands are now dirty, you might as well look through the pockets for some coins I found under there.” He gave Sampson an abbreviated version of the subsurface expedition and of the room that looked like a temple.
Gingerly, Sampson began looking through the soaking clothes. “Maybe a Roman temple? I know London goes back that far.”
“Doubt it. Gothic arches; probably medieval.” McFergus watched as Sampson eventually came out with thirteen small metal disks. When he was sure there was no more, Sampson carried the clothes back outside. When he returned, the youth washed the coins, washed his arms up to the elbows, then took the water bucket outside to get rid of the contents in the street. When he got back, McFergus was holding a coin up to a candle light. “It’s not like anything else I’ve seen,” he said, handing the coin to Sampson.
Sampson weighed it in his hand. “It’s gold.” Taking a small magnifying glass from one of his pockets, he examined it under the same candle light. “It looks like a picture of two knights riding the same horse,” he said
“You carry a magnifying glass around?” McFergus said, amazement in his voice.
“As every detective should,” Sampson said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “There’s a Latin inscription around the picture; SIGILLUM MI
LITUM XPISTI.” He turned to McFergus. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not to me.” McFergus got up and limped up the stairs, where he exchanged the blankets for a union suit of ankle-to-wrist underwear and some better clothes. He went down to the warm kitchen, where Sampson was waiting for him. “Find out anything more?” he asked the youth.
“There’s a picture of a church on the other side, but that’s about all I can tell.” He shrugged.” Interesting, but for now we’ll assume it’s not relevant to our investigation.”
“How does one divide thirteen coins fairly?” McFergus sat down and poured himself some tea, which, he discovered, was too strong and too cool. He added a bit of whisky.
Sampson put his hands out. “These are in no way mine, but…. A souvenir would be nice. This is one of my first big cases.”
“Take one.” McFergus wondered just how many big cases Sampson had worked on at his age, but refrained from smiling.
Sampson smiled and took a coin. “Now you can tell me what you did down there, in detail.” The kettle was boiling, so he made another pot of tea. “If you don’t mind.”
“After I told you to meet me in front of the Teacher Building in two hours, I found a couple of toshers and paid them to take me there, along the sewers.” He shook his head. “At least they never got the last half of the payment, which would barely cover the lantern and hoe they lost.” Then he told Sampson the rest of the story.
“I couldn’t hear the sound of grates slamming, not with the street noise,” Sampson said. “The first thing I knew of your arrival was the handle of the hoe sticking up from a grate down the street.” He grimaced. “I had to fight off a couple of young girls just to get it loose. Then I tried to lift the grate myself, but there wasn’t much hope of that.”
“And Bill Sikes just appeared?”
“Oh, no.” Sampson shook his head and lit his pipe again. McFergus was glad he had enough tobacco. Sampson went on after getting the smoke going. “We’d been having a little conversation before you came by under our feet.” To McFergus’s puzzled look, he added, “It seems that your investigation into the death of Mr. Marley is the talk of the local underworld, and Mr. Sikes wanted to clarify a point.”
“Which was?”
“That he had nothing to do with Mr. Marley’s death. He’d been paid to threaten Mr. Marley a couple of months before, but that was all.”
“Ah. The thug that the police records mentioned,” McFergus said.
Sampson nodded. “Almost certainly. But he told me that that was as far as it went. According to him, Mr. Marley said if Sikes killed him, the property in question would go to Mr. Scrooge, and Mr. Sikes’s bosses would be very disappointed. And if Mr. Sikes injured him, Mr. Marley would most assuredly arrange for a series of unfortunate events to occur in Mr. Sikes’s life. Mr. Marley assured him that he had very much influence in the parish.”
“Mr. Marley was a tough customer.”
“Indeed.” Sampson looked like he was trying to decide whether to have more tea or continue smoking at a frenetic pace. He opted for the tea. “Mr. Sikes said that the very next day a courier boy delivered one of Mr. Marley’s business cards to his front door.” Sampson looked at the old policeman. “Do you believe him?”
“He saved my life,” McFergus said, shivering a bit. “I’d believe him if he said he was Mary, mother of God, in disguise. Besides, he’s a thug, and Mr. Marley’s body had no unusual marks on it, other than what falling downstairs would have provided. Mr. Sikes is not subtle, I understand.”
“So the foundation of the Teacher Building is the key to the puzzle?”
McFergus raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t mentioned the foundations.”
Sampson shrugged. “The building has no importance above ground. You were under the building. One can assume that the foundation was the important part of the puzzle. How was it?”
“Solid. Some engineer found that the soil under the building was soft and unstable; it needed an unusual foundation just to keep the building up. But no engineer in his right mind should have left that foundation blocking the path of the sewer. The diversion was blocking the natural path of the water and shoving the flow against the far wall. That street is going to fall into the sewer, soon.” He lit his own pipe. “Probably one of the reasons the last sewer corporation went out of business. I can’t imagine either Mr. Marley or Mr. Scrooge would refute the law of supply and demand and sell the Teacher Building for less than a very goodly sum.”
“You’re right on that supposition,: Sampson said. “I had a word with Mr. Scrooge.”
Again, McFergus was surprised. “You did?”
“It would have been foolish to waste the two hours you gave me.” Sampson smiled broadly. “I rented a courier’s cap from a boy and marched right in past the clerk.” He scratched his head. “Now I’ve probably got head lice again.”
“Do you think he’d recognize you again?”
Sampson shook his head. “I doubt it. He didn’t look beyond the hat. I don’t think he’s a people person. Money and station are all he knows.”
McFergus leaned forward. “But what did you tell him?”
“I wished him a merry Christmas. He snorted at me. Then I told him I’d been sent to ask if he, in the spirit of the season, and in the interest of the common good, would consider relenting on the – and here I looked at the back of my hand, as if there were a note on it – sale of the Teacher Building.”
“He did not do so, I presume.” McFergus tapped the ash from his pipe.
“He allowed – as your former superintendent noted – as he’d advised Mr. Marley against the loan that got him the building. Then he gave me a lecture about supply and demand and said he might just increase his asking price. Finally, he sneered and said that if there were so much as a hairline crack in the building from my bosses working under it, he’d see them in court. He also mentioned that he had good friends on the parish council. I don’t know what he meant by that.”
“London,” McFergus said, “is divided into church parishes. That’s changing – the police force was the first institution that was city-wide, and no doubt the sewer and other underground lines will be next – but for now, if you control a parish council, you have control of a small section of the city. For now the Teacher Building is likely free from fear of expropriation.” He reached out to shake Sampson’s hand. “Very well done.”
“Thank you.”
“But we haven’t solved the case.” McFergus scratched his head. “We know why a defunct company wanted the Teacher Building. And we know Mr. Scrooge won’t sell for a reasonable price. But why kill Mr. Marley when he owned the place?”
Sampson thought about it. “He fell down the stairs.”
“Behind a locked door.”
“Nobody in London would open their front door at night. Not in their night clothes. A Scot might; a Canadian certainly would, but an Englishman wouldn’t.”
“You’re right. The normal response is to look out the window, down at the door, and tell whoever it is to go away.” McFergus looked at the ceiling.
“What if he knew the caller?”
“If it was business, the call would be to go away and make an appointment. If it was a personal call, he’d have dressed for the visit.”
“No matter how personal the visit was?”
“Even so. We have our standards.” McFergus raised his eyebrows. “So he’d have had to be crazy.”
“You’re thinking he was poisoned in some way? It’s possible.”
“But that leads nowhere,” McFergus said. “An old crime, with an unknown assailant. Seven years ago. Long ago.”
“Would be different if it were today. Would be different if someone were about to kill Mr. Scrooge.”
“The note.”
“Yes.” Sampson nodded sharply. The one with ‘Scrooge is next: Christmas eve’ printed on it.”
“The one Desmond handed to me.”
“Tomorrow is Chris
tmas. It’s Christmas eve tonight,” Sampson pointed out.
“The game may be afoot.” McFergus got up. He ached in places he hadn’t remembered he had.
“What do you suggest?”
McFergus thought. “I suggest we start with Mr. Scrooge’s residence. If he isn’t there, then we work back towards his office. Find him and follow him.”
It was getting dark, and the fog was getting thicker. It wasn’t a pea-souper, but it was thick enough to muffle sounds. Sampson kept close to the policeman. Snowflakes appeared through from the dark sky, appeared briefly around the gas streetlights then disappeared into the fog. McFergus seemed to be going by memory.
The residence of Ebenezer Scrooge was dark. There was no indication of even so much as a candle light in the upstairs windows, but even if the man had been home, McFergus suspected he’d be using a very small candle. McFergus pounded on the door. “Police! Open up!” None of the upstairs windows opened. McFergus turned to Sampson. “Mr. Scrooge hasn’t got home yet.”
“He’s still at work?”
“Or having dinner at someplace between.”
Just less than halfway to the business location for Scrooge and Marley, they passed a barrow parked under a lamp, the glow of a bad-smelling cigar coming out of the fog. “Mr. Dwan,” said McFergus, identifying the man.
“Sir,” said Dwan, as if he didn’t know the policeman. He walked to the front and began pulling his barrow away into the street.
“You know that man? He looks like a street conjurer.” Sampson said quietly. He shuffled his feet and pulled his cloak tighter.”
“You were asking about driving a man crazy,” McFergus said. “That man, if I can believe him, could mix up a potion to do exactly that.” He watched the fog and darkness close around the barrow.
“A bit much of a coincidence,” Sampson noted. “You didn’t mention him before.”
McFergus walked on less than half a block. He stopped in front of The Lion and Crown, a public house. There was music coming through the door.
Sampson almost bumped into McFergus. “I’ll take a look inside,” he offered, opening the door and going in. McFergus had watched the street no more than a minute when the youth came back out. “Scrooge is in there,” having a meal. He doesn’t look happy that someone’s singing while he’s reading the financial papers.”
McFergus went inside, followed by Sampson. The pub was mostly full. In the corner Mollie was singing Christmas carols, with a three-piece drum, tuba, and flute band beside her. McFergus noticed that the lyrics included some new lines about overthrowing the fat capitalists.
He recognized a frowning Ebenezer Scrooge finishing up a small meal, probably a suet pudding. Scrooge was simultaneously folding up a newspaper and beginning to stand up. Probably, McFergus thought, he wanted to escape the music, but was too tight to leave the pub without finishing the meal he’d paid for. In a few seconds he left the building, squeezing past McFergus and Sampson.
In the far corner Devon was trying to sell papers and chapter books to the people in the pub. He looked up, turning pale when he saw McFergus. He dropped a few papers, picked most of them up, gave a panicked look at Molly, then moved towards the door. As he passed McFergus, he whispered, angrily, “Too late! You’re too damned late.”
McFergus followed him outside. Scrooge was moving away towards his home; Devon was walking quickly, almost running, in the other direction. “What do we do now?” Sampson whispered.
“Follow Mr. Scrooge;” McFergus said. “I’ll find you at his house,” and took after Desmond as fast as his leg would let him, which was, admittedly, not very fast. Given the slippery streets, the dense fog, and a little bit of snow, McFergus got no more than a couple of blocks before admitting to himself that if Devon had kept running, he’d never catch up. And if Devon had hidden himself in any dark corner, he, McFergus, would never see him. But the slight snow had accumulated, and for the first time in decades, the former Scottish gamekeeper was able to follow a set of clear footprints on the ground. He hoped they belonged to Devon.
His luck held. The footprints turned a corner and stopped at a beer house. McFergus stepped in and stood by the door, his cap in his hand. At a table, Devon stood up in panic. Perhaps he didn’t know if there was another way out, or perhaps he figured the ex-inspector had tracked him first to the pub Scrooge frequented, then unfailingly to this place like some sort of hell hound. He sighed and sat down. It had been a house much like McFergus’s own, but the main floor now contained a half-dozen tables and a counter with a casks of beer and ale on it.
“Sir,” McFergus said, realizing that he had no idea what Devon’s surname was, “might I have a word with you?” Not waiting for an answer, he sat down at the little table, opposite the bookmonger. An old man missing a few fingers on both hands brought Devon a foamy dark ale, then looked at McFergus. McFergus ordered a duplicate. Then he put his most official look on his face. “Sir,” he started again, “we have reason to believe you are an accomplice in the death of Mr. Jacob Marley.”
Devon reddened. “I was not part of that event,” he said. “I was not. If I had been, why would I have given you the warning about Mr. Scrooge?” He shuffled his feet, turning the toes to face the door, and pushed his hair back. He leaned back and rubbed his nose. “I ask you that, sir, I do.” He lowered his voice a bit when the beer came.
McFergus looked around. There was only one other person in the room, and neither he nor the server seemed interested in the conversation. “Then why did you warn me? Why warn me if you were going to administer the drug to Mr. Scrooge?”
“To have you stop that, of course! Why else?” Devon trembled a bit and gave a pleading look to the man facing him. “I wanted it stopped before I did it!” He looked around and lowered his voice, as the other men in the room had turned to look at him. “And what good did it do?” he said, working up a bit of anger. “You were late. Too late.” He finished off most of the small glass of beer, and McFergus raised a hand to signal the server.
McFergus took a long slow drink of ale. “Did you really have to do it? Administer the drug to Mr. Scrooge’s food or ale? Could you not have refused?
Devon closed his eyes and scrunched his face mightily. “Twenty years ago I was young, Mr. McFergus; I was young, and as foolish a young man as you’d be likely to find in Liverpool.” His eyes opened wide. “I did something foolish, Mr. McFergus. As foolish a thing as a young man could do. Should it be… found out….” He stopped. “It was a hanging crime, then. Not now, maybe, but I’d still spend the best part of my life in one of those rotting ship hulks that they anchor in the river, chained to a wall.”
“And Mr. Dwan has this over you.” McFergus guessed, as he ordered another ale for Devon.
“Yes.” Devon acknowledged, while McFergus thanked the stars for another lucky guess. “Dwan. I should have figured you’d know that.”
“The drug. Was it a poison? That we don’t know.”
Devon took another big draw on his ale glass. “The… person…. The person who put the drug into Mr. Marley’s meal was told it was harmless. A few hallucinations. A calling up of long-forgotten memories. A change of personality, nothing more was supposed to happen. They said Mr. Marley would not be harmed.”
“Unless his personality was changed for the worse.”
Devon shook his head. “Some people, it would have to be for the better. They told me Mr. Scrooge would do the same thing. That the formula had been improved.” He finished his ale and McFergus signalled for a round for both of them. Devon leaned over the table and whispered. “In the jungles of Brazil the natives use it to purge their criminals. It’s a ritual there.” He shook his head. “That’s what I was told. I would not have killed anyone!” He hit the table with a fist. “There was nothing taken. Marley had an accident. There was no crime! No one can prove otherwise.”
After the ales had arrived, McFergus said, “Yes, Mr. Marley fell down the stairs. That could happen to Mr. Scrooge, too.
Perhaps the construction company is resorting to poison this time, knowing that whoever gets that building would be a better person to negotiate with.”
The blank look on Devon’s face told McFergus that the bookmonger knew nothing beyond the orders from Dwan. “I know nothing of that,” Devon said, “but I thought money must be involved somewhere.” He sighed and wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead. “Perhaps, then, what they told me is true.”
“We shall hope that it is, sir.” McFergus stood up. “And you can hope so as well. Good night.”
“And a merry Christmas to you,” Devon choked out.
McFergus paid for all the ale and started towards the door. Then he turned. “It’s not Christmas until tomorrow. And what was Constable Oftan’s role in this?”
“He was to patrol all night, in case the old man ran into the street.”
McFergus walked into the foggy night, his leg aching again and the scar on his cheek stinging again for some reason. That Devon was guilty of a crime in the death of Mr. Marley he had no doubt. That it would never be proven was also of no doubt. It took him almost half an hour to get to Scrooge’s house.
There was no visible light in Scrooge’s window, but with his curtains drawn and the certainty of only a small candle, that was expected. The steps were covered with dirty snow – snow in London was always dirty unless it came in quantities and speed enough to overwhelm the soot from chimneys – and there was only one set of snow-filled footprints there. McFergus estimated that Scrooge had entered his house going directly from the pub. There were no other footprints on the steps. He looked around. The fog and falling snow isolated the area, but he could smell cigar smoke and in a moment, thanks to a gas lamp, he spotted the figure on a step across the street. The figure got up, shook snow off his cloak, and walked over, dodging a donkey wagon rumbling down the street.
Sampson shook snow off his hat. He didn’t say anything.
“Cold?” McFergus leaned on his cane. He could see a man coming down the street; it might have been Constable Oftan.
“You must be sore,” Sampson said, “having chased Mr. Devon all the way to Birmingham.” He stomped his feet on the pavement.
“There’s a public house right around the corner. It’s warm.”
“I might just make it back to your house,” Sampson offered. “Then I wouldn’t have to go out again. Especially if you spotted some suspect and were forced to follow him to Paris or Vienna while I waited in the snow.” His teeth chattered a bit.
“I think we can make it. Where did you get that cigar?”
“The conjurer came by. Mr. Dwan, you called him.” Sampson inspected the cigar. “It’s warm, but there may not be much real tobacco in it.”
“I suspect Mr. Dwan of being the person who supplied the drug that Mr. Scrooge took tonight.”
“You did say that.” Sampson pulled the cigar from his mouth, and looked around for a sewer grate.
“Best put it out first,” McFergus advised him. “There may be explosive gas in the sewer.”
On the way back they passed a family, a mother and two children, sitting on a step making hats. A street lamp gave them enough light to continue working after dark, something they obviously couldn’t do where they lived. McFergus stopped and bought two hats, adding a souvenir coin to the money he gave them. He thought the purchased resembled the hats Amy wore, but wasn’t sure.
By the time they got a fire going in the kitchen, McFergus noted that Sampson was shaking quite as badly as McFergus had earlier in the day, but at least he smelled better. McFergus served a small portion of scotch to both of them, then hot tea to the youth as soon as it was available. Then he gave Sampson as detailed a rendition of Desmond’s testimony as he could.
There was a long silence afterwards. Both men lit pipes. “You hadn’t told me about Mr. Dwan before,” Sampson said.
“I saw no connection between Mr. Marley’s death and Mr. Dwan.”
Sampson sighed a long, long sigh, and said, “I determined several days ago that Mr. Marley was acting in a manner unusual to him when he died. The ingestion of some mind-altering drug for financial gain was the reasonable conclusion.” He looked up at McFergus. “That was elementary logic, but I had no suspects.” He sighed. “Perhaps I could have saved you an enlightening walk under London.”
McFergus wasn’t sure Sampson was correct, and said nothing for a moment. “And if the drug is harmless, other than altering a personality, then we have no need to spend the night watching Mr. Scrooge’s door.”
“I think we should stay warm until morning. The tribes of the middle Amazon have several drugs used to cure psychosis, but the patient is always watched closely for a day or two, lest he wander into the river looking for lost relatives.” He had another cup of tea. “Mr. Scrooge could fall down his stairs, attempt to fly out his window, or go running naked down the street. Or he could sleep it off.”
“You seem to know much about these things.”
“Chances are,” Sampson continued, “Mr. Dwan had his original substances in small quantities, and has probably added local toadstool ingredients. The outcome is not predictable in that case.”
“Is it not odd,” McFergus asked, “that the miscreants should try the same thing twice?”
“Not at all,” Sampson said. “It’s been seven years, and a different company is involved. It’s not likely any of the people from the original company would admit what they had tried on Mr. Marley. I imagine Mr. Dwan and associates decided to convince the current company, as they did the last one, that they might change the mind of the owner of the building that’s impeding their sewer and threatening them, too, into bankruptcy. It just took seven years before a new company ran into an old problem and were offered the same solution by Mr. Dwan, whom they’d never met.”
There was a long pause. “By rights we should take turns outside his door all night. Just in case he goes outside,” McFergus said. There was a pause while he served both of them a wee dram of Glen Miller.
“It is cold out there, the odds of that happening are small, and I’m a deductioneer, not a rescuer. And there are evil men wandering the streets at this time.”
“You rescued me,” McFergus pointed out.
“I and Mr. Sikes, whom I should not like to meet on a dark street in a fog. And you? Are you ready to spend a long December night on a doorstep?”
“I was lucky not to die in the sewers this morning. I think Mr. Scrooge is going to have to take his chances.” The ex-inspector wished the youth a good night and hobbled upstairs to his cold, lonely bed.
“Sleep well,” came the voice from the kitchen.
***