The Five Bells and Bladebone Read online

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  Contents

  PART I: Two sticks and an apple, Say the bells of Whitechapel.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  PART II: You owe me ten shillings, Say the bells of St. Helen’s.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  PART III: When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  PART IV: When I grow rich, Say the bells of Shoreditch.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  To my editor, Ray Roberts,

  who keeps Jury out of the gutter;

  and to Kit Potter Ward,

  who saved him from the slush

  Oranges and lemons,

  Say the bells of St. Clement’s.

  Brickbats and tiles,

  Say the bells of St. Giles’.

  Halfpence and farthings,

  Say the bells of St. Martin’s.

  Two sticks and an apple,

  Say the bells of Whitechapel.

  You owe me ten shillings,

  Say the bells of St. Helen’s.

  When will you pay me?

  Say the bells of Old Bailey.

  When I grow rich,

  Say the bells of Shoreditch.

  Pray, when will that be?

  Say the bells of old Stepney.

  I’m sure I don’t know,

  Say the sweet bells of Bow.

  —Old nursery game

  Acknowledgments

  Contrary to Lady Ardry’s conviction that she is wholly responsible for any invaluable information contained in this book, I would like especially to thank Alan Webb for the Limehouse–Wapping walks; Harry Webb for the Thames information; and Diane and Bill Grimes for the secrétaire à abattant.

  PART I

  Two sticks and an apple, Say the bells of Whitechapel.

  One

  WHAT ELSE COULD you think of but getting your throat slit?

  Whitechapel, Shadwell, the Ratcliffe Highway: images of the bloody East End flashed like knives in and out of Sadie Diver’s mind each time she heard the sound of footsteps behind her on the dark walk from Limehouse. She was still thinking of it as her heels clicked wetly on the fog-draped pavements of Wapping. Never caught him either, did they? So much for police.

  The sickly yellow sign of the fish and eel shop ahead glowed through the drapery of fog. LIVE EEL’S. COOKED EEL’S. JELLIED EEL’S. In the last two months Sadie Diver had learned more writing and reading than she had in all her twenty-eight years. She knew the mark shouldn’t have been between the L and the S. Probably the only one walking about Wapping that does, she thought.

  It was a twenty-minute walk from the flat in Limehouse to the Town of Ramsgate, and she was irritated that he’d decided on what he called a “dress rehearsal.” My God, but hadn’t they been over it and over it? And she didn’t dare tell him that Tommy was coming in tomorrow night. He’d have killed her.

  When she was abreast of the eel shop, they simply walked up to her: there were three of them, but they managed to look like a wall of punks, coming out of the shadows of the alley by the shop, one spitting into the gutter, one smiling crazily, one stony-faced.

  There were the usual ’ello, luv’s, the usual salacious remarks, as they stood planted firmly in her path. Anything behind her made her nervous; anything in front of her she could handle. Sadie was used to it. She had got so used to it, in fact, that she simply slipped her hand in her shoulder bag and brought out the flick-knife. Seeing it there so unexpectedly, dimpled by the watery light of the sign, they disbursed quickly, calling back over their shoulders and then disappearing down the alleyway behind that curtain of fog.

  She stopped to check her watch beneath a streetlamp that seemed to smoke in its nimbus of light. Stuffing her hands in the old raincoat, something she’d not be caught dead in ordinarily, she felt the handle of the knife as she kept walking. He’d wanted her to wear what she’d worn before at their meetings and what she’d be wearing on that last day. At least, she liked to think of it as the last day of her old life. In these clothes and no makeup, she was surprised the bunch back there were interested.

  It had been a long time since she’d seen such a layering of fog. And here it was the first of May. Spring. Cold as a convent wall; cold as a nun’s . . . She pulled her collar close around her chin and smiled, thinking of the Little Sisters of Charity. She considered herself a good Catholic, but she’d not had it in mind to be a better one. Her a nun. What a laugh.

  She turned off to her left and then to her right, taking the narrow street that ran by the river. Why had he wanted to meet at Wapping Old Stairs, and why now, after the pub was closed? A wall of warehouses loomed through the darkness, shrouded in mist coming off the Thames. A person felt like brushing it away, like cobwebs. Still, it clung. As she passed Wapping headquarters, she smiled. The police station was all lit up, about the only sign of life after eleven.

  When she reached the pub called the Town of Ramsgate, once again she heard footsteps behind her. They couldn’t have been the same ones; she’d lost them back there at the eel shop. Nevertheless, she was almost glad to step off the road into the shadows of Wapping Old Stairs. There were two sets of stairs, the very old ones moss-covered; below was a small slipway and an old boat, tarpaulin-covered.

  A dull tread of feet went by above her; she craned her neck upward and saw nothing but the hazy light cast by a lamp hanging from a wagon. She went down a step or two and stopped suddenly when she heard wood scraping against stone, the creak of oars against metal. Her eyes widened at the sight of the figure in the little boat. The long coat against the black background of the Thames made it impossible to see clearly. It was a rowboat or wherry that someone must be working on; she couldn’t make it out and wasn’t about to stand there on the steps waiting to find out.

  Sadie started walking backward up the steps, slipped on the wet stone, caught her heel, and nearly lost her balance. There was really no way to gain purchase. When she slipped her hands could grab only at the slick, cold mossy steps so beveled with age they had all but lost the outline of steps.

  The person who had emerged from the boat was standing on the step below, facing her now.

  Sadie couldn’t believe her eyes.

  An arm came out from the long black coat, holding what looked like a blade far m
ore devilish than the one Sadie herself carried. If she tried to fly up the stairs, it would land in her back.

  So she threw herself down, the figure reeling above her, and went sliding down the stair and halfway into the Thames. The long knife sliced through the thick, rancid air, missing her by so little, Sadie heard the swish as it streaked downward.

  Snatching her own knife from her pocket, she clambered into the boat. She was good with boats, like Tommy. Out there was the black hulk of what was probably a sailing barge that would be making for the Essex brickfields. Still farther was a patchwork of lighters. In her shaking fright to get at the oars, and with that figure coming down after her, she dropped the flick-knife into the bilge water that had collected in the boat.

  But she found it, and as her fingers curved round it, she looked up to see the white hands dragging at the boat’s side.

  • • •

  Tommy Diver stood on the dock looking off toward the lighthouses of Gravesend and Galleon’s Reach. Over the estuary a ragged stream of orange and red made the mist smoke like the aftermath of cannon-fire. Docks, wharves, and warehouses stretched for miles up the Thames to London Bridge and the Isle of Dogs. Not so long ago, as many as eight hundred ships might be on their way to London’s dockland; now, nothing went much farther than Tilbury.

  He could imagine what it had been like during the trading days of India and the East: varnished bowsprits and the rust-colored sails like bruises against a viscous sky. When he’d said to his friend Sid that all that river traffic must be like Venice, Sid had just laughed. Don’t be so romantic, lad. Sid had been to Venice and everywhere else Tommy had only heard of. Venice is all gilt and blue, like a jeweled dragon. But that ship there (and he’d pointed to one lying at anchor) ain’t nothing but an old dog sleeping in a Gravesend doorway.

  Tommy felt a surge of guilt over lying to Aunt Glad and Uncle John, but they’d never have let him go up to London, not even for the two days. He thought he deserved at least this chance to see Sadie, no matter what they thought of her. Sid would cover for him. He hunched even further into the black leather jacket he’d got at the Oxfam shop with some of the money his sister had sent. It was too big for him, but it was real leather, not that stiff cheap stuff that cracked when you moved. When he ran his hand over it, it felt like down.

  Wapping wasn’t more than thirty miles away, as the bird flew and the London river ran. He knew the course of the Thames like the palm of his hand — Tilbury, Greenhithe, Rotterhithe, Bermondsey, Deptford. Even for these two days, he knew he would miss it, working the tug with Sid.

  She’d said that someday he could maybe come to Limehouse and live with her, when she got a bigger place. But she’d been saying that for a long time now — school, after you finish school. Tommy tried to shrug off the painful feeling he’d got when he felt she didn’t really want him to come even now. Still, she’d sent the money. He’d never seen seventy-five quid all at once in his life.

  From Galleon’s Reach came the desolate warning of a bell-buoy. A tug sounded a note of gloom in its passage toward a black ship’s hulk some distance out in the estuary. He had not left, yet he felt heartsick; felt the gloom of the passing tug, wondered how many mugs of strong tea he’d carried from the engine room to the deck.

  He loved the river, but he loved Sadie, too, and one of his saddest days was when she’d left Gravesend for London. His memory of her shifted so much, was so dreamlike, he sometimes thought he’d made it all up. But he was sure he recalled clearly many incidents in their childhood days. Well, his childhood. She was twelve years older, but he thought he had memories of her letting him tag along, buying him sweets at the newsagent’s, chalking naughts and crosses on the pavement for him, playing in the Wendy-house.

  Two more tugs spurted across the water, turning blood-brown in the last of the sunset, a stretch on which the bald sun seemed to float and then settle. Way out he could see the tiny black figures of the tug’s crew scrambling onto the lighters to separate them, tie them to the boat, and drag them back to the wharf.

  When the sun went down there was an air of desolation, of estrangement in the deserted buildings, the boarded windows of the warehouses. He watched as the tug chugged back toward the wharf, the string of lighters in tow.

  How strange that tomorrow he should be climbing aboard a train to go to a place that lay only a few miles upriver, that would be infinitely simpler to reach by way of that river, where all he needed to do was step from a boat or climb down from a tug to Wapping Old Stairs or Pelican Stairs where he would like to think some sort of fortune awaited him.

  But not, he was sure, like the one that awaited Marco Polo.

  • • •

  Its dish was empty; no one called.

  The white cat padded round the drained pools and down the pebbled path through the formal gardens. It sat quite still for a moment and then twined through a border of viburnum. Again, it stopped beneath bushy roses, whose white petals sifted down as the white cat darted toward a flash of gray on the pebble walk. It was tracking a field mouse. The field mouse blended into the gray and brown of the pebble and stone just as the white cat blended into a border of pearl-drops, as if neither were substantial, shadow chasing shadow.

  The white cat sat now in the enclosed garden by a stone figure, a young woman holding a broken bowl filled by rain. Finches and wrens sometimes lit there. The cat sat looking down the length of the rose-covered pergola, listening in the early light. It was as if it could pick, from the trills and warbles of birdsong, the tiny threshing of mouse through yew hedge and ground cover. Light filtered through the vines and lay in pearly stripes across the cat’s fur.

  Scarves of mist across the grass were dissolving in the sun, dew dripping from the vines and rose petals that covered the pergola. The white cat watched the progress of a drop gathering on the edge of a petal, a dot of blue in a crystal suspension, falling and dispersing before he could swipe it with his paw. The cat yawned, blinked, dozed where it sat.

  A sound, a smell, it opened its eyes and perked its ears. It gazed upward as a robin left its perch in a laurel and flew off. The cat walked out of the secluded garden and toward the bank of a stream farther on. Here it crouched and watched a wren having a dust bath. Before it could pounce, the wren was away, skimming across the water. Looking into the stream, as if the bird might have fallen there, the cat saw shadows deep inside darting, hanging suspended, darting forward again. The cat struck at the water, trying to fix the moving shadow with its paw.

  It yawned again, washed at the paw, stopped when it saw something skittering across the footbridge, and followed. On the other side of the bridge, it looked around. Nothing moved. The sun was nearly over the horizon now, spreading a sudden crust of gold across the lake and a shimmering light on the windows of the summerhouse.

  The cat liked the summerhouse; it was cool and shadowy. There were pleasant lumpy chairs, wool throws tossed over the one nearest the hearth, and here the white cat loved to lie. It would sleep there for a day, two days, making its movable feast of whatever small things lurked in the dark corners. It ignored whistles and cries from the outside; eventually, it would leave and cross the wide lawn and long gardens and inspect its dish on the patio.

  For a while it sat as still as garden statuary itself, blinking and watching the floor by the french windows. It spied a bit of shadow in the corner, separating from the darkness and skittering along the baseboard.

  The white cat quivered, crouched, and went slithering across the rug to squeeze itself into the narrow space between a large secrétaire and the floor.

  In a minute it squeezed out again and sat washing the blood from its paw. Then it walked through the open french window, down a short path, and onto a small dock. Here it sat looking over the lake, yawning.

  Two

  IN THE JACK AND HAMMER, Dick Scroggs could barely be called from his toils long enough to set the pint of beer and ploughman’s before his single customer.

  “There’s
been more activity around here in the last month than I’ve seen in a lifetime,” said Melrose Plant. “You’re expecting a lot of tourist trade, are you?”

  “Got to keep up with the times, m’lord,” said Scroggs, around the nails in his mouth and over the pounding of the hammer in his hand.

  Melrose imagined he was not so much keeping up with the times as with the Blue Parrot, a freshly named and painted pub off the Dorking Dean-Northampton Road. A derivative name, surely — one might say, nicked from Sydney Greenstreet, though it was unlikely that the clientele of a Moroccan saloon, imaginary at that, would go caravanning down the dirt road to the new Blue Parrot.

  As he watched his pickled onion roll round his plate and tried to drink Dick’s Thunderbolt, Melrose asked, “Where’d you get that snob screen?” He was looking down the bar at a row of beautifully etched, beveled-glass partitions.

  “Trueblood, sir. He watches out for things for me.” Dick, whose usual position in the Jack and Hammer was arms akimbo over his newspaper, wiped his heavy arm across his forehead. “Thought it might add a bit of interest. No one else hereabouts has one,” he added, his tone heavy with significance.

  “That’s certainly true.” Melrose adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles and settled in for a session with the Times crossword. It was propped against his copy of Rimbaud, which in turn was positioned atop Polly Praed’s latest thriller, The Nine Barristers. The crossword was a little like a lettuce leaf he used to clear the palate between poetry and Polly. He was livening things up by inventing other words to fit the spaces.

  All of Dick’s activity was mildly irritating. Melrose was used at this time of day to nothing but the ticking of the clock and the snoring of Mrs. Withersby. Now Scroggs had left off hammering to hurry past him with a paint bucket, on his way to touch up the turquoise trim of the Jack and Hammer’s façade. Scroggs had even taken to trying to brew some manner of beer, without (Melrose was sure, tasting the Thunderbolt) much idea of the difficulty of the process.