Mick Finlay - Arrowood

‘I’ve been waiting all morning for news, Barnett,’ he declared, looking as uncomfortable as a hog in a bonnet. ‘I had breakfast many hours ago.’

‘I didn’t reach home until gone two.’

‘She had me up early as she wished to clean the bed somehow,’ he continued with resignation. ‘Very early. But what did you discover?’

I explained what I’d found out, and immediately he had me send the lad from the coffeehouse to find Neddy. Neddy was a boy who the guvnor had taken a shine to a few years back when his family had moved into a room down the street. His father was long dead, his mother a quite disastrous washerwoman. Her earnings weren’t enough for the family, barely enough to pay their rent, so Neddy sold muffins on the street to support her and the two youngers at home. He was nine or ten years or eleven perhaps.

The lad arrived shortly after, carrying his muffin basket under his arm. He was sorely in need of a haircut, and had a rip in the shoulder of his white jerkin.

‘Have you any left, boy?’ asked the guvnor.

‘Just two, sir,’ replied Neddy, opening the blanket. ‘Last two I got.’

I quite marvelled at the magnificent thick black dirt that framed his little fingerbits, and beneath his brown cap could see distinctly the slow crawl of livestock. Oh, for the carefree life of the child!

The guvnor grunted and took the muffins.

‘You’ve eaten, Barnett?’ he declared as he bit into the first. With his mouth full of dough, he gave Neddy his instructions. He was to wait outside the Beef that night until the waiting girl Martha came out, and then to follow her home and bring back the address. He made the boy promise to be extra careful and not to speak to anyone.

‘I’ll get it, sir,’ said the boy earnestly.

The guvnor popped the last bit of muffin in his mouth and smiled.

‘Of course you will, lad. But look at your dirty face.’ He turned to me and winked. ‘Don’t you prefer a boy with a dirty face, Barnett?’

‘I ain’t got a dirty face,’ protested the boy.

‘Your face is caked in dirt. Here, take a peek in the looking glass.’

Neddy scowled at the glass hanging on the wall.

‘It ain’t.’

The guvnor and I broke out laughing; he took the boy to his chest and hugged him tight.

‘You get off now, lad,’ he said, releasing him.

‘Are you going to pay him for those muffins?’ I asked.

‘Of course I’m going to pay him!’ snapped the guvnor, his forehead taking a flush. He pulled a coin from his waistcoat and threw it in Neddy’s basket. ‘Don’t I always pay him?’

The boy and I looked at each other and smiled.

When Neddy was gone, and the guvnor had brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat to the floor, I said, ‘She’s made a good job of this room, sir.’

‘Mm,’ he murmured, looking morosely around him. ‘I must say, I’m not hopeful of a happy solution to this case. I fear what might have happened to the French lad if he’s found trouble with Cream.’

‘I fear what might happen to us if they find we’ve been asking questions.’

‘We must be careful, Barnett. They mustn’t find out.’

‘Can we give her the money back?’ I asked.

‘I’ve given my word. Now, I need a nap. Return tomorrow, early. We’ll have work to do.’

By the time I arrived the next morning, Neddy had returned with the address. The boarding-house that Martha lived in was just off Bermondsey Street, and we were there in twenty minutes. It wasn’t pretty: the white paint on the door was flaked and grubby, the windows were misted all the way up the building, and a terrible black smoke poured out the chimney. At the sound of shouting inside, the guvnor winced. He was a gentleman who did not like aggression of any flavour.

The woman who opened the door seemed none too happy to be disturbed.

‘Second floor,’ she rasped, turning away from us and marching back to her kitchen, ‘room at the back.’

Martha was every bit as beautiful as the old man had made out. She came to the door wrapped in two old coats, the sleep still in her eyes.

‘Do I know you?’ she asked. The guvnor drew in his breath: she had a resemblance to Isabel, his wife, except younger and taller. The long bronze curls were the same, the green eyes, the upturned nose. Only her slow Irish drawl was unlike Isabel’s fenland lilt.

‘Madam,’ replied the guvnor, a quiver in his voice, ‘apologies for disturbing you. We need to talk to you for a moment.’

I looked over her shoulder into the room. There was a bed in the corner and a small table with a looking glass on it. Two dresses hung from a rack. On a chest of drawers was a neat pile of newspapers.

‘What is it you want?’ she asked.

‘We’re looking for Thierry, miss,’ replied the guvnor.

‘Who?’

‘Your friend from the Barrel of Beef.’

‘I don’t know no Thierry.’

‘Yes, you do,’ he said in his friendliest voice. ‘We know he’s a friend of yours, Martha.’

She crossed her arms. ‘What do you want him for?’

‘His sister employed us to find him,’ replied the guvnor. ‘She thinks he might be in trouble.’

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ she said, and made to shut the door. I managed to get my boot in the way just in time. Her eyes dropped to my foot, then, seeing we weren’t to be budged, she sighed.

‘We only need to know where he is,’ I said. ‘We aim to help him, is all.’

‘I don’t know where he is, sir. He don’t work there no more.’

‘When did you see him last?’

A door slammed above and heavy footsteps began to come down the dusty stairs. Martha quickly pulled her head back into the room and shut the door. It was a tall man with a prominent, bony jaw, and by the time I recognized him it was too late to turn my head away. I’d seen him hanging around the Barrel of Beef when we were working on the Betsy case four years before. I never knew what his job was – he was just there, all the time, lurking and watching.

He glared at us as he passed, then stamped on down the stairs. When finally we heard the front door open and shut, Martha appeared again.

‘I can’t talk here,’ she whispered. ‘Everyone works in the Beef. Meet me later, on my way to work.’

Her green eyes glanced up at the stairs and she paused, listening. A man began to sing in the room along the corridor.

‘Outside St George the Martyr,’ she continued, ‘at six.’

With a final worried look upstairs, she shut the door.

I’d reached the first landing when I realized the guvnor wasn’t behind me. He was still staring at the closed door, deep in thought. I called his name – he started and followed me down the stairs.

When we’d gained the street, I broke the silence.

‘She’s a little like—’

‘Yes, Barnett,’ he interrupted, ‘yes, she is.’

He didn’t speak again the whole walk home.

They had only been married a short time when I first knew Mr Arrowood. Mrs Barnett always wondered how such a fine-looking woman had married a potato like him, but from what I saw they seemed to get on just fine. He made a reasonable living as a newspaperman working for Lloyd’s Weekly , and their household was a happy one. Isabel was kind and attentive, and there were always interesting visitors around their home. I met him at the courts, where I was earning a living as a junior clerk. I would sometimes help him gain certain information for stories he was writing, and he often invited me to his lodgings to have a bite of mutton or bowl of soup. But then the paper was sold to a new proprietor, who installed a cousin in the guvnor’s position and ejected him onto his uppers.

Mr Arrowood had by then some renown for digging up the sort of truths as others would like to have remained buried, and it wasn’t long before an acquaintance of his offered him a sum of money to solve a small personal problem involving his wife and another man. This young man recommended him to a friend who also had a small personal problem, and that was how the investigational work began. A year or so later I found myself also out of work on account of losing my temper at a particular magistrate who had a habit of jailing youngsters who needed a helping hand a good deal more than they needed a spell in adult prison. I was out on my ear without so much as a handshake or a pocket watch, and when the guvnor heard what had happened he searched me out. After an interview with Mrs Barnett, he offered me work as his assistant on the case he was working on. That was the Betsy bigamy case, my baptism of fire, where a child lost his leg and an innocent man lost his life. The guvnor blamed himself for both – and rightly so. He shut himself in his rooms for the best part of two months, only coming back out when his money was used up. We took a job, but it was clear to anyone he’d taken to drink. Since then, cases were irregular and money was always short. The Betsy case hung over us like a curse, but what we’d seen bound me to him as sure as if we were brothers.