Case of the Dixie Ghosts Read online

  Old Setty Wilkins seemed rarely to leave his engraving shop, but it was as if, like some wizard concealed in a cave, he could send his disembodied spirit forth to wander in every region of the great city, even its murkiest and most dangerous nooks and corners, discovering all manner of goings-on. When Setty gave Dacers a tip, it usually proved worth following, and Dacers felt his usual confidence in the old man’s tip concerning the Blue Duck.

  It meant searching the margin of the River Thames where a huge sewer laying project and the creation of a vast riverside improvement was under way. Old buildings had been torn down and many more were in process of demolition. There was a confusion of temporary sheds, builders’ machinery, and piles of construction material around the base of Hungerfod Bridge, recently reconstructed to replace one designed by the ingenious Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

  He wandered through this dark and entangled scenery and eventually found the Blue Duck in a dogleg of a lane leading down to the river. He heard it before he saw it. A fiddle was scraping and there was a harsh roaring of a music hall song: Champagne Charlie. The building was another huddled relic of a much earlier age, as were so many in London’s riverside region. Feeble yellow lamplight did its best to struggle out of dirty windows.

  He moved out of the way as two tattered figures, one with an arm around the other’s shoulder, lurched out of the door warbling in unsure unison:

  “Champagne Charlie is me name,

  Champagne drinkin’ is me game

  I’m the idol of the barmaids

  Champagne Charlie is me name.”

  Entering the den, Dacers glanced up to read the name of the licensee on the lintel: “Josiah Tooley, Licensed to Retail Beer, Porter, Spirits’ and Tobacco,” and he pushed open a creaking door, allowing a tide of raucous din to gush out. Inside, partially enveloped in a pall of tobacco smoke, was a jostle of roughly-clad men, some labourers, some seamen, many obviously foreign; river boatmen mixed in with garishly-gowned, painted women, plainly “dollymops” operated by the madams of riverside houses of joy. Fiddle and bellowing lungs continued the song.

  He pushed his way through the crowd to the bar lined with loungers. Behind it sweated two barmen under the direction of a bald, obese man with a red face, clearly Mr. Tooley.

  It was from the landlord that Dacers ordered a glass of grog while aware of mistrusting glances from those lining the bar, and from Tooley himself. A stranger, even one matching much of the clientele in dress, did not go unnoticed at the Blue Duck, it seemed.

  Tooley pushed the mixture of rum and water across the counter and, over the din of the customers’ roaring, a new song, addressed Dacers with point-blank inquisitiveness: “Not your usual port of call, this gaff, is it?” His voice was heavy with suspicion, which was also reflected in his small eyes.

  “No,” said Dacers. “Just looked in thinkin’ I might spot a cove I’m acquainted with. Seems he might come in here now and again.” There was an authentic touch to his mock Cockney.

  “Not a disguised peeler, are you?” asked Tooley, point-blank again.

  Dacers gave a dismissive laugh mingled with a touch of scorn. “Not any kind of peeler and never likely to be, but I’m lookin’ for a big bloke, American. with a fair moustache. Matter of business,” he tapped the side of his nose. The gesture, indicating business of a most private and personal nature, was readily understood by Josiah Tooley.

  “I see,” said he. “I just don’t want the scandal of an arrest in here. It could give the place a bad name an’ that ’ud be a real disgrace.”

  Dacers slyly took in the tough, drunken, and shifty-looking patrons and the over-painted dollymops. “I s’pose you’re right,” he replied without batting an eye.

  Tooley said: “Can’t say I knows this bloke you mention, but there’s lots come in here at different times, and I can’t remember ’em all. It’s a very popular house, y’see. An’ very respectable, like I just told you.”

  “I sees that,” confirmed Dacers, stone-faced.

  Behind Dacers’ back, just visible beyond a phalanx of standing drinkers, hooting a boozy chorus, the door opened and two men entered. One was tall, heavily-built, and with a fair moustache. His companion was shorter, stocky, and with a pugnacious face under a billycock hat of the style favoured by the horse-racing community. Josiah Tooley, looking past Dacers, noticed them and suddenly said: “Well, I hopes you find your man, but I think you’ve been misinformed. He don’t sound like anyone who comes in here, ’Scuse me, I have to do things.”

  He walked along the area at the back of the bar, moving remarkably quickly for one so corpulent, slipped out into the crowd of drinkers. He made directly for the pair who had just entered and were beginning to negotiate a passage through the throng of imbibers.

  Dacers was still facing the bar and Tooley made urgent gestures to the two men, indicating that they should turn and head back to the door. In a tone just audible over the din of the singers, he warned: “Get out! Bloke at the bar’s snoopin’. Asked about you. Get out, quick.”

  The pair turned, quickly strode to the door and exited with Tooley following. Out in the cold air, the man with the fair moustache asked in a slow drawl representative of the Southern American states: “Is he from over the pond?”

  “No, an Englishman, dressed up in a fustian suit and black cap. Says he ain’t a crusher but I ain’t so sure. If he is one, he ain’t going to say so, is he? He’s got the style of a regular working cove but them detectives is smart at acting. You told me t,o warn you if anyone came asking about you, Mr. Fairfax.”

  “Thanks, Josh. He’s fishy, all right. We ain’t expecting anyone to look in on us. We’ll make his acquaintance in due course. We’ll maybe give him a little persuading to mind his own business.”

  “Don’t be too hasty, Cal,” cautioned the pugnacious man in the billycock in a drawl similar to his companion’s. “Maybe we should just blow out of here quietly. We could be laying up a heap of trouble for ourselves if he’s from the police.”

  “That’s right. Watch what you’re about,” hissed Tooley in a sudden panic. “If he is a peeler and you croak him or injure him, I’ll have every crusher in London charging in on me!” He retreated back to the door and gave a last anxious warning before entering: “Remember, if you gives him a towelling, don’t do it anywhere near my gaff!”

  Tooley slipped back into the rowdy depths of his drinking den where Septimus Dacers was still facing the bar, absorbing the sight of the assorted humanity crammed into the smoky confines of the Blue Duck.

  There was a scattering of races and colours; men from the open sea and others whose variety of boats rode the Thames; a few soldiers in scarlet tunics and gin-sodden men in tatters from the lower depths of the city, mostly slumped over the tables. Dollymops in borrowed plumes belonging to their bawdy house mistresses sat on the knees of leering drunks or canoodled with them in corners. All not otherwise engaged roared a hoarse chorus of another popular song the sweating fiddler was grinding out, The Ratcatcher’s Daughter:

  “Her pa caught rats

  And she sold sprats

  All round and about that quarter;

  And all the gentlefolk thereabout

  Loved the pretty little Ratcatcher’s daughter.”

  Every Tom, Dick and Harry’s in the place except the one I’m looking for, thought Dacers, unaware that the man he sought and his companion had already entered the premises and been shooed away by Tooley. He reflected on how stupid he was to put faith in Setty Wilkins as in some sort of oracle. How on earth could Setty, living in Seven Dials as a near recluse, know anything of what went on down here near Hungerford Bridge? He concluded that probably Josiah Tooley told him the truth when he said the man Dacers sought was unknown in the Blue Duck, and it would be fruitless to stay there any longer.

  He finished the fiery tasting grog, turned and pushed his way through the standing mass of drinkers, and headed for the door.

  As he came out of the tavern there was a brief bl
ossoming of lamplight from the door, which illuminated him. Two bulky black figures, crouching just out of the ambit of the light, stirred and there was a whispered sentence: “That’s him—fustian suit and black cap!”

  Before Dacers realised that a couple of men were lurking close to the door, there was a sudden scuffle of boots and a pair of heavy bodies came lunging out of the shadows, barging into him and almost knocking him off his feet, sending his breath gusting out of him. The aggression of the man who called himself Fairfax had won out over the caution of the one in the billycock.

  Dizzy with the notion that a veritable avalanche of human bodies had fallen on him, Dacers nevertheless perceived by the dim light that the larger of the two had a moustache, probably fair in colour. Fairfax! he thought as his senses reeled.

  Two pairs of hands grabbed his clothing, and he was shoved backwards on his heels, with a force that caused the healing knife wound in his side to jab a sharp pain through his ribs. Within the Blue Duck, the drinkers began to bawl another music hall favourite, the rollicking Villikins and His Dinah, as an incongruous accompaniment to the violence being enacted outside.

  Gasping and grimacing, Dacers was slammed against the wall of the pub and held there. One of his attackers gave off a strong odour of whisky mingled with tobacco, and, from the one whose dark silhouette was topped by the shape of a billycock hat, there was the distinct aroma of horses. While he tried desperately to regain his breath, his mind began to clear, and he remembered the coachman who drove away from the American Embassy. He had almost forgotten about him. So Roberta Van Trask and her father were indeed menaced by three adversaries: the man who called himself Fairfax, the mysterious one who might be a hunchback, and the fellow who was the bundled-up coachman the day Fairfax intruded on Theodore Van Trask.

  Dacers managed to lift a knee and jab it into the midst of the dark, combined bulk of his assailants who were forcing him against the damp bricks of the wall.

  He ground it into a groin, was rewarded with an anguished, snarling obscenity, and was then pushed against the wall even more forcefully.

  Something round and hard was clapped against his temple. Fairfax’s Derringer! he thought.

  “You goddam nosy Limey!” growled a voice almost in his ear. “What are you snoopin’ around for? Our business is none of your concern. I’ve a mighty notion to blow your interferin’ brains out.” There was something slightly crazed about the voice, as if the man was on the edge of hysteria. Then the weapon was pressed harder against Dacers’ temple. “By God, I will. I’ll blow a hole in your head and toss your corpse into the river,”

  “Go easy, Cal,” cautioned the second man. “Don’t go off your head again. If you shoot and he’s a copper, all hell will be let loose. All our plans could be jimmied.”

  “What the hell do we care? Tomorrow, we’ll be in Cardsworth, seein’ this Vaillant lord or knight or whatever damn fool Limey title he has. You know what they say about the Thames, Sometimes bodies are never found and, anyway, we’ll be well clear of London in a couple of weeks.”

  “Hush up! You’re blabbin’ too much,” said his companion firmly. “You know damned well Fortune warned you against that time and again.”

  When Fairfax spoke of firing, Dacers had almost automatically stopped struggling, frozen under the ominous threat of the firearm clapped against his temple. He began again to wriggle and shove against the combined weight of his assailants, taking advantage of what appeared to be divided opinion between the two, which was staying Fairfax’s trigger finger. He noticed that the marked edge of hysteria in Fairfax’s voice had intensified and he memorised the names he had mentioned: somewhere called Cardsworth, someone with a title named Vaillant, and someone called Fortune.

  “Quit squirming, goddam you!” exploded Fairfax. “Quit squirming while I put a bullet into your brain.”

  “No, Cal!” objected the other. “I keep telling you: shoot him and, if he’s a copper, it’ll raise holy hell and Fortune will pull the guts out of you if our operation is ruined!”

  Even in the midst of the physical struggle and with the swirling turmoil of his senses, Dacers felt there was something different about this man. Seeming to be as much a ruffian as his companion, he nevertheless gave the impression of having to constantly impart some common sense into Fairfax, as if he was frightened of his companion going too far in his strongarm actions.

  The pressure of the pistol was lifted from Dacers’ head and Fairfax said: “All right, we’ve been hanging around here for too long, and the place is too damned public. I’m knocking him cold and slinging him in the river. He can take his chances there.”

  There was a sharp cry of objection from the other man, which was cut short for Dacers as something crashed down on the crown of his head. As his consciousness reeled then sank into a black gulf, he tried to ensure he remembered the names he had heard: Cardsworth and Vaillant and there was a third one—Fortune.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DISCOVERIES IN THE COUNTRY

  Dacers came to lying on soft, muddy ground. His nostrils were filled with a stench all Londoners knew only too well: the sickening reek of the mighty River Thames. His head ached abominably, the knife wound in his side throbbed, and, for a few confused moments, he thought he had been cast into the river and was lying on its bed. He rose to his knees, tried to accustom his eyes to the blackness of the night, and realised that he was on the edge of the Thames.

  For untold generations, the river was little more than an open sewer, into which spilled the city’s raw sewage. It spread both what Londoners knew as “the great stink” and recurring epidemics of deadly cholera. For almost a decade, however, vast improvements were in hand, steered by the brilliant engineer Joseph Bazalgette, whose ingenious system of sewers would give the city a cleaner bill of health. Additionally, the many great tracts of filthy mud at the margins of the river were cleared and built over with the wide and handsome embankments that would become a feature of the city.

  Some mud flats, such as those in the vicinity of Chandler’s Stairs and the Blue Duck, were still unimproved. Septimus Dacers realised he had been dumped on one of these.

  He fumbled around, trying to locate his cap, but was unsuccessful. He felt his tousled hair gingerly and discovered a large bump and presumed Fairfax had hit him with his Derringer. He had been lying face down, and the front of his clothing was wet and covered with malodourous river mud. He had no idea of the time. The night was black, without a moon and starless. In the distance, he could hear the subdued noise of the city, which never truly slept.

  Stumbling, trying to find his feet and anxious to be clear of the noxious miasma of the river, he swerved to his left, realising that, from the sounds, the city lay that way. He crossed tracts of mud and puddles, eventually found a low wall, struggled to climb it, and discovered he was in a dark laneway. He sat on the wall, recovering his breath and trying to straighten his thoughts into a logical sequence, then he heard a swift clip-clop of hoofs.

  Out of the darkness came a light donkey cart as favoured by the costermongers, London’s street traders in fruit and vegetables. The meagre light was sufficient to show Dacers that the stick-thin man at the reins was every inch a coster in a hard-wearing jacket embellished with rows of pearl buttons, a cap with a large peak, and, about his neck, the Cockney coster’s pride, a “kingsman”—a colourful silk kerchief. Dacers’ uncertain eyesight discerned a lean face and a pair of eyes lit by humour under the peaked cap. The coster halted the donkey.

  “What-ho, culley?” he greeted cheerfully. “Night on the beer? Got into a muddle an’ fell into a puddle? Done it meself many a time, specially arter a Punch an’ Judy of a row with me old gal. You’re properly three sheets in the wind. Where are you tryin’ to steer for?”

  “Bloomsbury,” mumbled Dacers.

  “Bloomsbury—easily done!” chuckled the coster. “Can’t have you wanderin’ the town cuttin’ that figure. Peelers ’ud collar you for drunk and incapable. Cart’s empty,
jump in. I’m bound for the market to catch the early mornin’ rush. Can drop you within easy reach of Bloomsbury, right as ninepence. Glad to help a fellow sufferer out, old culley. Me old gal plays Old Harry with me if I have an extra bottle or two.”

  Hardly able to believe his good fortune, Dacers climbed into the empty cart with some difficulty, and gratefully laid himself down on rough boards which gave off a mingled aroma of potatoes and cabbages. The driver set the donkey off at a smart trot and Dacers closed his eyes, and recollections of events in the last few hours swirled through his head.

  He felt he had behaved like a halfwit, as all his earlier apprehension about his mission returned. Going off to warn anyone who was such a desperado as to carry a firearm that he had best behave himself or the police would be alerted seemed from the start like scolding a misbehaving child; but he had taken that course—or, rather, had plunged into it without adequate thought. Thanks to his almost juvenile good intentions, he had, in the common language of the streets, made a “guy” of himself.

  Facing Roberta Van Trask and hearing her story, he felt he would do anything for such a girl. So his “anything” for his lady in distress consisted of blundering into the clutches of a pair of ruffians, coming close to having his brains blown out, receiving a beating and a severe crack on the head, and being dumped in the stinking Thames mud. To the trotting of the donkey and the creaking of the cart, he wondered if he was truly smitten by the American girl, and if all his vicissitudes were the price of love?

  Then a more prosaic line of thought took over. Not knowing how, behind his back Josiah Tooley had warned the two Americans of his presence and shooed them out of the Blue Duck. He wondered how the pair came to be lying in wait for him at the door. Then he recalled that he visited the Blue Duck following Setty Wilkins’ tip. When he came to think of it, Setty was the only person other than Roberta Van Trask who knew he was seeking men who had something to do with the recent civil war in America.