Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

I have to say I sometimes enjoy writing about Nell myself, but that’s probably because I enjoy re-creating myself in a totally false image. I think the image assumed its final perfect form for the pervy schoolmaster we met early in our travels -though I’d done the sweet ingenue quite often while serving in the Shop. Oh! that schoolmaster! What a twerp! All one ever got out of him was solicitude, tears and references to his favourite pupil who died back in the old village. You’d think people would have got suspicious of a schoolteacher who built his emotional life around a bright pupil who was dead. Particularly a bright boy pupil. But not everyone has my sophistication in these matters.

My re-creation of myself in the syrupy-sweet image of “Little Nell” began when the gaming houses and casinos of London started to get wise to grandad’s and my little scam. That scam involving my taking three or four years off my age and being always taken to gambling dens by Kit Nubble – a dim spark if ever I saw one. Grandfather always went on his own, so no one ever associated us, and I could wander round the tables where he was playing and then sign him the details of what was in their hands. When they did get wise to us every establishment in London was circularized with our details, which was mighty unfair, and meant we had to take to the road and find out-of-town establishments where we could ply our trade without detection. We kept moving, because if one person keeps winning the big boys soon get suspicious. Sometimes we tried a bit of begging, but that was mainly for laughs. My grandfather has a great sense of humour.

Mind you, I don’t like the road, not as I like London, where I always feel at home. You see some really odd types on the road. Take Mrs (a courtesy title, I wouldn’t mind betting) Jarley, her of the waxworks – musty mummies trailed around the country in a procession of carts and caravans, and presenting a very cut-price version of Mme Tussaud’s classy show in Baker Street. Mrs Jarley really took a shine to me, and it didn’t take me long to guess that she was of the Sapphic persuasion.

“Such a sweet child,” she would say, patting me on the thighs, the arms, and any joint that took her fancy. “She reminds me of the dear young queen.”

The dear young queen strikes me as having a mental age of about twelve, and looks like the chinless wonders who inflict their feebleness on the Household Cavalry and any regiment with colourful gear to camp around in. I did not take kindly to the comparison.

“Her Majesty seems very neglectful of her duties as head of the Church of England,” I said. “Sad that one so young shuns the proper Sunday observance.”

“I had no idea,” said Mrs Jarley, stopping her patting.

“Ah – London knows,” I said. “And London keeps it to itself.”

There’s nothing like a bit of Metropolitan insider knowledge to make provincials feel inferior. And if you haven’t got any insider knowledge, make it up.

I enjoyed my time with the waxworks display. I enjoyed presenting myself as a child barely into double figures. I enjoyed luring people into the tatty display by highly inflated claims of what it contained. I enjoyed most of all slipping off in the night to various rustic gambling hells to ply our trade and hone our skills. The Jarley routine of moving from one place to another made this last pleasure easier to procure. One or two visits to the local low place and we were on the road to another source of income. Grandfather was over the moon, and kept his winnings about his person. He never knew exactly how much he had won, so when I was putting him to bed drunk in the early hours I could abstract a bit for my own use.

Needless to say I put a rather different gloss on these activities in the manuscript I was preparing to hawk to Mrs Norton or that vulgar, jumped-up newspaper reporter Mr Dickens.

This pleasant life changed when we met up again with Codlin and Short. We had made their acquaintance a few months earlier, somewhere near Birmingham. You won’t be surprised to hear they were an odd couple. I had no problem with them because I was used to the phenomenon from our London circles: the pair of men, usually middle-aged, who squabbled and competed and bad-mouthed each other to outsiders but who really were as close-knit as a nut and a bolt. And Codlin was definitely the nut. He was always insisting that he was my real friend, not Short, and I never quite realized what his motives in doing this were – whether he had plans for some scam or other that required a young, virginal, stupendously innocent creature. Or was he hoping to get tips on my grandfather’s unrivalled techniques in card-play, the tables, horse-racing and cock-fighting?

We were on the way to Stratford-on-Avon, and Mrs Jarley was stroking my hair and telling me what a wonderful Shakespearean actress I would make in a few years – instancing Cordelia, Miranda and Celia, and I guessed these were innocent, slightly wet creatures, without an ounce of spunk.

“You have an aura,” she was saying, “a heavenly atmosphere that envelopes you, so that you would be an ideal embodiment-”

My mind strayed from this fulsome garbage and I saw, further along up the main street of the small town we were passing through, two peak-capped figures gazing into a shop window. Peelers. Members of that elite body of men recruited by Sir Robert Peel when he was Home Secretary, to reduce crime in the cities by their unique combination of brains and brawn. I don’t think! Just look at how much, or little, they get paid and guess how likely it is that the job will attract the elite.

I was just thinking the set of the two backs bending forward to survey the wares exhibited in the window reminded me of people I knew when they turned round as they heard the approach of hoofs and wheels.

Codlin and Short!

As we passed them by I raised my hand, and was rewarded by a double wave, very enthusiastic, in return. They began walking vigorously along beside us, only slowly getting left behind.

Fortunately we stopped at a public house on the edge of the town. Well, not fortunately – inevitably. We stop in nearly every town, so that Mrs Jarley can lubricate her coster-woman’s voice and her travelling hands. When she had steamed off to get her gin and water, grandfather brought me my shrub, with double rum to taste, and he went to mingle with the local mugs while I waited for the precious pair to catch us up.

“Well, you have landed on your feet!” came a voice from the caravan doorway. Actually I was still recumbent on Mrs Jarley’s well-padded couch, but I knew what he meant.

“We’d heard about the two new members of the company, and we guessed it had to be you and grandad. Mrs Jarley taken a fancy to you, has she?” asked Short.

“Actually I am extremely useful to the Museum management,” I said demurely. “I’ve brought hundreds through the door.”

“Didn’t answer my question, did she, Codlin?” said Short, grinning.

“Don’t be so personal, Short. A girl’s got a right to her secrets, hasn’t she, my darling?”

“And does Grandad get hundreds through the door too?” asked Short. “Or does he suggest a quick game of vingt-et-un, and line his pockets that way? His sort of swindle is not so different from Jarley’s kind, when you come down to it.”

Codlin nodded.

“Morally speaking I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Short.”

“I’m not used to hearing you moralize,” I said. “I suppose it’s the new job, is it?”

“Oh, the new job! No, my darling, Sir Robert’s successor doesn’t pay us to moralize. He pays us to catch criminals. Or failing that to keep track of them.” Short paused. “It’s a real police state he’s created, but we’re the last people who can talk about that. We get messages and send messages, and that means some little placeman in Westminster can put pins in his wall-map of England and show where all the big criminals and most of the small ones as well are at any moment.”