Alex Grecian - The Yard

He checked the clock above the mantel and saw that he had nearly an hour before his guest was expected. There was a tin of tea beneath the clock and Blackleg opened it. He sniffed the contents and recoiled at the tang of copper in his nostrils. Renewed tea.

“Ah, well,” he said. “Beggars can’t be choosers, can they?”

With time to kill, he went in search of a kettle.

Inspector Blacker woke up as the hansom cab ground to a stop. It took him a long moment to realize where he was. His eyes felt gummy. He pulled the curtain aside and saw a low stone wall with a weeping willow drooping over it. The thin light through the window shone on Hammersmith, across from Blacker on the other bench. He was curled up with his neck bent at an awkward angle against the side of the carriage, snoring softly. Blacker grinned and rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to massage the grit away.

He pulled the curtain shut again and opened the hansom door, leaving Hammersmith there to catch up on much-needed sleep. The coachman looked down at Blacker and tipped his hat.

“This the place, guv’nor?”

“I suppose it is.”

Blacker fished in his pocket for a coin, but the coachman held up a hand.

“No need, sir. Happy to do what I can for the police.”

“You’re a gentleman.”

“You’ll be wantin’ me to wait till you’re done here, then?”

“No need. Inspector Day, my colleague, I mean, will be along shortly with a police wagon. If you don’t mind waiting until my friend wakes up, then you can be on your way.”

The coachman squinted at him. “Sir?”

“He hasn’t slept much lately.”

“All right, sir.”

“Thank you again.”

Blacker smiled and patted the side of the cab as he stepped into the street. He hurried across to the Shaw family’s brownstone just as the first drops of rain started to fall.

The coachman turned up his collar against the rain and watched as the detective crossed the road and knocked on the door of a brownstone, one of several identical homes joined in a row with a decorative wrought-iron rail out front.

After a short wait the door was opened by an attractive woman. She and the detective spoke and the woman moved aside to allow him in. The door shut behind him.

The detective had babbled something about a sleeping friend, but it appeared the household was awake. The coachman didn’t see a reason to wait. He had promised Mr Cinderhouse that he’d return to take him to the shop if it began to rain, and now the light drizzle was turning into a sudden shower. The downpour was washing the fog away, but visibility wasn’t improving, and the coachman decided to hurry. Mr Cinderhouse wasn’t one to be kept waiting. The coachman wouldn’t admit it even to himself, but the tailor’s temper scared him. He snapped the reins. The horse snorted and lurched forward, and the hansom pulled away from the Shaw home.

The coachman thought about warm fires and dry socks, and it never occurred to him that he might have a second passenger asleep inside the cab. Nor did he look back to see two women emerge from behind the drooping willow and scurry across the street in the pounding rain.

Wasn’t him.”

“Was too him. Saw him clear as day.”

“It’s not clear as day, though, is it? Can’t see yer nose in front a yer face in this rain.”

“Still, I know it was him.”

“Him wears a uniform like the other bobbies. This’un had a suit.”

“It was a uniform.”

Liza led the way down the steps to the sunken garden below ground level. She reached out her hand to steady Esme.

“Slippery here,” she said. “Watcher step.”

At the bottom of the steps, Esme knelt in damp cedar mulch and peered into the brownstone through a tiny window. The room inside was dark. She reached out and pushed on the glass and the window swung up and open.

“Lucky us they don’t lock it.”

“Looks broken.”

“Why ain’t it fixed, then? Ought to afford it, a doctor like he was.”

“Well, it’s just her alone now. Somebody done kilt her husband, so who’s to fix the broken window?”

Esme smiled. She took her friend by the wrists and lowered her over the sill, then hiked up her skirt and swung a leg into the house. She dropped down beside Liza and put a finger to her lips. They both listened, staring at the gloom. Nobody came. Nobody had heard.

They helped each other to their feet and brushed the wet wood chips from their clothes and wrung water from their skirts, letting it pool on the floor.

“They’re up there,” Liza said. “Hear ’em?”

“Hush,” Esme said.

But she could hear footsteps on the floor above. She smiled, and when she spoke her voice was barely audible.

“I suppose we’ll find out if it’s Hammersmith up there or not.”

“Either way,” Liza said.

She withdrew a straight razor from somewhere in the folds of her skirt. The women held hands and closed their eyes in silent prayer. When they were ready, they approached the staircase on the far wall and started up, still holding hands in the dark.

Inspector Day stood outside the forbidding brass gates and looked up at the workhouse on the hill. Many of the city’s workhouses were welcoming places where destitute members of the populace could get a simple meal and a berth for the night. In return they were required to work three hours grinding corn or performing some other menial, and largely meaningless, task.

But Hobgate was for those who were determined to be vagrants, unable or unwilling to work and possibly violent. In Lambeth, South London, it was just a step away from the asylum for the poor and mentally crippled, and it resembled a prison more than it did a shelter.

A guard unlocked the gate and swung it open for Day. He held a black umbrella and moved it over Day’s head while they talked. Fat raindrops smacked against the waxed canvas above them, and Day had to raise his voice to be heard.

“I’m with the Yard,” Day said.

“Pardon?”

“The Yard. I’m a detective with the Yard.”

“Aye, what can we do for you today, sir?”

“I’m looking for someone brought in yesterday.”

“Man or woman?”

“Man.”

“Then he’d be in the men’s ward. We don’t separate ’em out as to how they come, so he’d be mixed in with those what come in on their own.”

“Are there many of those?”

The guard chuckled. “Well, not too many, no. Could be this is the same fellow the doctor’s looking for as well?”

“Doctor?”

“Aye, sir. You’ve barely missed him. Come looking for someone not five minutes before you did.”

“I doubt that we’re here for the same reason. The man I’m looking for likes to perform. He dances. Have you seen him?”

“Can’t say as I have, but I’m out here on the entrance. Might ask inside. Just follow the path up the hill and you’ll find someone at the main building. Men’s ward’s on the first floor. Women and children are upstairs.”

“Thank you.”

“Might think to keep your stick handy. Sometimes they get out of line.”

“You hit them?”

The guard looked away. “Only if they need it, sir.”

Day didn’t know how to respond. He was appalled by the thought that the homeless in Hobgate might be abused, but he had no experience with the workhouse and no idea how dangerous the people here might be. Perhaps it was the guards who feared abuse.

He nodded at the guard and set off up the hill. The path twisted and the workhouse disappeared in the fog. The rain was coming down harder now, and Day silently cursed himself for forgetting his own umbrella. The path was lined with small yew trees, all stripped of leaves and bark. Day wondered whether the trees had fallen victim to disease or to the Hobgate inmates. Ahead, the main building hove into view again, a dark stone block against the grey sky. There were no windows in its walls, only a huge oak door wrapped in iron bands.