Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

“Turn your pockets out, George,” instructed Sergeant Peters.

This was a difficult task with his hands cuffed so I had to assist, much to his fury. Out came three elegant snuffboxes.

“Mine,” he growled. “I’ve a fancy for snuff.”

“Tell that to the judge,” said the sergeant smartly.

Big George paled. “Look, it ain’t fair. I come here at five for me money, like old Guggins told me. I’d sold him some — well, some old clothes, and he said he’d have it ready by then, but he only gave me five quid. No honesty around nowadays. Mean old skinflint. Said it was fake. A man can’t make an honest living nowadays. I’ve got a wife and children to keep.”

I wondered how secondhand clothes could be fake, but decided to keep silent.

“Mr. Guggins wouldn’t cheat no one,” said his wife faintly.

“Done what by five?” Sergeant Peters enquired.

“Guggins had customers coming.” Big George was getting sullen now, obviously resenting being cuffed. “When I gets there, I said that five quid weren’t enough, and he says the deal’s not finished yet, so come back in an hour or so for the rest. So back I comes at sixish, but no one around, so I comes back yet again — and look what I gets from you. Cuffed.” He displayed his hands on high, in appeal to a Higher Justice.

“And who might these customers have been, Mrs. Guggins?”

“How should I know?” Most indignant she looked. “I don’t know nothing about what went on in here. You coulda knocked me down with a feather when you opened this door.” (Unlikely, I felt.) “I was asleep all night,” she continued. “Had a nice glass of hot milk and slept like a baby.”

Her colouring suggested several glasses of neat gin were her usual tipple.

“Guggins, poor love,” she blew her nose delicately on her sleeve, “he worked all night sometimes, so I never saw him, not till I saw his body when I opened up this morning. Fancy all this stuff being back here—” She did an impressive job of looking amazed at the splendour around her — “Well I never, he must have been saving it for my birthday present.”

“Who’d he sell to, Mrs. Guggins?” Sergeant Peters went on relentlessly.

I was getting most interested in the late Mr. Guggins’s trade, and even Ned had crept back in through the open door. I don’t blame him. By now I could hear stalls being set up outside. The oyster sellers would be going on their way a-whistling, and the clothes dealers were taking their places. You could live your whole life in Rosemary Lane without going anywhere else. Goods and food — you can find everything you could ever want here. You could pay your way for it by honest toil on the stalls, or by dishonest dipping in the pockets of the strangers who come here in the hope of picking up a bargain.

Strangers, now that was a thought.

“Mrs. Guggins,” said I, “these customers Mr. Guggins was expecting. They can’t be from round here. They couldn’t sell the duke’s stuff in the Fair, they’d need to sell it to gentry, and not the gentlemen of Piccadilly either, for they’d know the duke’s crest by sight. So who were they? Must have been special to come in the night and not deal in the Paddy Goose. No risk to you in telling us.”

“Only in not telling us,” Sergeant Peters added, getting the idea nicely.

Even so, Mrs. Guggins decided to bewail her loss again, in order to avoid answering this question of mine. “Guggins was a good—” she began, but the sergeant has a way of getting his message through. He rattles the cuffs, which is a most powerful persuader in these parts. Mrs. Guggins breathed heavily. “They come here by night,” she told us. “I don’t see them.”

“Seems to me you don’t see anything unless you choose to,” observed Sergeant Peters, with another rattle. “See these?”

“John Clode,” she says quickly. “John Clode and Flirty Fan.”

“And who might they be?”

That surprised me. I thought everyone knew Flirty Fan at least, for all she lives across the water Rotherhithe way. She has a business in the better parts of Blackheath and Lewisham. She’s far too choosy to flirt with a chimney sweep, but she’s a sight for sore eyes when she flounces by. Makes a day of it, she does, when she comes through the tunnel over this way, and by nights she does her illegal business, so I’m told. She’s as thin as a stewed eel and just about as slippery. She does herself up grand, with bonnets covered in plumes and feathers, jangling her bracelets and necklaces, flaunting her silks and satins and wriggling along, all bustles and mincing little bootees. She puts on every bit of gaudiness she can find to attract custom — which is both in goods and in men. So eager she is, I’ve seen her work her way round Billingsgate fish market to find a man. She’s a shrewd barterer, though, and if Guggins tried to cheat her last night, she could have turned nasty.

Mrs. Guggins was much briefer in her description of Flirty Fan to Sergeant Peters. “A whoring bitch,” she snarled.

“And Mr. John Clode?” asks the sergeant.

A simper now. “He’s a Frenchie. Most polite, though. Naturally, I don’t know what business he could have had with Mr. Guggins.”

“I do,” growled Big George.

“But so polite,” Mrs. Guggins persisted desperately. “ ‘Oh, Mrs. Guggins,’ says he, ‘would that I could sail on the evening tide to the belle France with the belle Mrs. Guggins.’”

“Would that be,” Sergeant Peters asked quietly, “Mr. Jean-Claude Lepin, the well-known receiver of stolen goods in Paris?”

“Could be,” said the belle Mrs. Guggins guardedly.

“Seen by the river police entering the country in a small craft up the Thames last evening?”

“Might be.”

“And no doubt trying to leave again at this very moment with a boatload of stolen goods?”

“Can I come, Gov?” pleaded Ned.

A day had gone by, and I was most surprised when a police van called for me early the next morning. I could tell it was the police by the way everyone had scattered in our court, which is well shielded from the road by a narrow entrance between the lodging houses down which this policeman must have made his way very cautiously. Usually there were folks around at the pump, but now the yard was empty. Who was scared of who? I wondered. The policeman looked at me warily as I answered the thump on my door.

“You chimney sweep Wasp?”

It must have been obvious, but I agreed that I was.

“Orders to take you to the sergeant.”

I had no objection, as my interest in the means by which Mr. Guggins had gone was growing, and if Ned wished to come too, why not?

“Is he under sixteen?” asked the policeman suspiciously.

I sighed. Ned is about thirteen or fourteen, not sure which, since he never knew his age, but the new law says if he’s under sixteen he has to wait outside the house while I do the hard work cleaning the chimneys inside. As if any young lad wouldn’t choose waiting outside given the chance. Sometimes the good men who reform the law put one thing right only to cause another injustice. I have a hard time lugging my machine up all those stairs without help, and Ned longs to help, but we daren’t risk it.

“Yes, I am,” Ned pipes up. “But it was my Good Book, so I’m a witness.”

“That’s true, Ned. You come along then,” I told him, and the constable said no more. After all, we weren’t off to sweep a chimney. Not a real one, anyway.

Apparently we weren’t going to the police station, as I’d expected, but to Blue Anchor Yard again. No doubt Sergeant Peters had his reasons. We were escorted into Guggins’s room once more, where the sergeant was sitting in Guggins’s chair looking very important. I was amused to see Flirty Fan perched on the desk doing her best to entice him with a glimpse of her filthy red petticoat. She didn’t stand a chance, and she must have known it because she then looked hopefully at the constable who’d brought us here. He promptly backed away.