The Streets Read online

  An omnibus had shuddered to a halt, and Paget stepped onto the splashboard. As the vehicle dawdled before pulling away, he gave me a shrewd look. ‘If we do draw a blank from the census, you ought to look through the work you did in Somers Town for Henry. Think of how many people you interviewed for The Labouring Classes – might you not have met one of them?’

  I was about to reply when the ’bus jolted away, with Paget leaning on the rail. He doffed his hat to me, and I raised my arm in farewell. As I continued east on foot, I thought back to the weeks and months of going door-to-door with Jo. The number of people I had interviewed must have run to well over a thousand. Paget was right, I could have met Annie O’Brien, or George Harding, or Harriet Shepherd, or Edith Arkell, but they may have been amongst those who declined to give me their names. How then would I know? There were simply too many dispersed around Somers Town’s labyrinthine streets and courts for a comprehensive survey to be made – one might as well set about trying to monitor an anthill.

  And then a new obstacle reared up before me. The notebooks I had used in Somers Town to collate all those names and addresses were no longer in my possession. I had kept them under lock and key in my desk at Marchmont’s office. I had not envisaged ever needing them again. I was wrong.

  14

  Not to harm

  THE NEXT DAY’S Chronicle carried a report of the house siege in Somers Town. I could tell it was written by Paget from its veiled disparagement of police tactics and its open attack upon the slumlords who ‘allow their properties to fall into ruin and bring untold misery upon the lives of their tenants’. It was as I read this that I recalled something Paget had told me yesterday about the compulsory clearances: notices had been posted by the vestry, he said, from here to Barclay Street. It was Mrs Nicholls, resident of Barclay Street, whose anxious features now rose to mind. Having seen notices to quit plastered along the walls, she would fly into a panic about where her family were supposed to live. Part of me wished I had never shown any interest in her chaotic existence. How could I possibly right the wrongs fostered by a lifetime of terrible housing and negligent charity, not to mention the endemic ills of drink, illiteracy and fecklessness?

  These thoughts were my mournful company as I sat in the offices of the Evening News, where I had taken a temporary job. Money was rather tight, and there was nothing else I was qualified to do – ‘the definition of a journalist’, as Marchmont once told me. Though disgrace still hung about his name, my time in the guvnor’s employ had set me in good stead as a reliable news gatherer; indeed, I felt I had earned a shabby sort of kudos for having worked on The Labouring Classes of London. It was possibly instrumental in my persuading the editor to follow up the story of the riot. I would go back into Somers Town to report on those streets earmarked for destruction. I had realised the probability that Mrs Nicholls and her like would be compelled to seek shelter in the workhouse, at least whilst the Bindon Fields scheme was pending. A feeling of unease steered me towards Barclay Street – and there I found what I had most feared. A handful of neighbours were standing outside the house where Mrs Nicholls and her two children had a room. The front door stood open. There was an air about these bystanders I had come to know, and a gathering dread followed me through that door and up the cheerless stairs.

  A policeman stood outside the Nicholls’ room. ‘Dead, mother of two,’ he replied to my enquiry. ‘Found ’er early this mornin’. Scragged herself, they sez. You from the vestry?’

  ‘No. Just a friend,’ I said, almost swallowing the last word. Some friend I had been. ‘May I . . .?’

  The bobby shook his head. ‘Pathologist’s in there – not to be disturbed.’ As he talked on in his clipped half-sentences, a hopelessness seemed to numb my tongue. Mrs Nicholls had hanged herself. I hardly needed to ask why. It was the same reason any woman of her class might – because she was poor, and ignorant, and doomed.

  ‘What of the children?’ I asked.

  ‘With one of the neighbours. She sez their mother got in a right state ’bout what’s been comin’ – the demolishments an’ that. She’d took in a lot of sewin’ from neighbours – tryin’ to earn some h’extra, I understand, and pawned one of these bundles of clothes for a couple o’ bob. Well, the parish stopped her relief money, so she’s short on the rent and now can’t get that bundle outta hock neither. Neighbour sez she found her this mornin’ – hanged ’gainst the wall with a bit o’ string.’

  ‘What?’ I said, baulking at this grotesque detail.

  ‘Well, I ’spect she knew it’d be no good hangin’ ’erself from the ceilin’ – beams are so rotten it’d come down with ya!’

  At that moment the door opened, and a neat, rosy-faced fellow wearing a dark suit and an air of abstraction emerged, followed by a senior policeman. The bobby I’d been talking to introduced him as the pathologist. ‘This gent was a friend of the deceased.’

  He canted his head slightly in condolence. ‘You were familiar with her situation?’

  I shook my head, and admitted that I hadn’t seen her in weeks.

  ‘Then you probably didn’t know that she’d been starving to death. If it hadn’t been the noose, malnutrition would have done for her.’

  I hardly knew what to say. ‘I didn’t know that. That is – she was always short of money, but I never for a moment . . .’ I stopped, and sensed the man looking at me. He was not my accuser; he had no need to be. My faltering words carried their own note of self-blame. I could have helped Mrs Nicholls, but I had been too thoughtless, and now I was too late. Where the poor are concerned one is always too late. ‘I wonder – if I may pay for the funeral arrangements?’

  The pathologist’s mouth tweaked wryly beneath his moustache. ‘No need. I gather the only money that Mrs – Nicholls? – had left in the world was expressly set aside for her burial. It seems the woman was not entirely improvident.’ He shrugged, and tipping his hat said, ‘Good day to you, gentlemen.’ I stood there, immobile, watching his back retreat down the stairs.

  I followed shortly after, still absorbing the double shock of Mrs Nicholls’ self-destruction and of her uncharacteristic forethought. I had heard, but never quite believed, that the poor would starve themselves rather than sacrifice a penny of the funds saved for their funeral. An unmarked grave was a cause for dread. Perhaps it was that having known such extremes of want in this life they were unwilling to jeopardise their passage to the next, with its promise of plenty. ‘The only money she had left in the world,’ the pathologist had said. My God, the pity of it! If you contemplated the significance of money for too long you could go mad. I fell to wondering at the sum – the shameful pittance – that might have saved Mrs Nicholls from her last act of despair. How much per week would it have required for her and her children to maintain a modest, respectable life, with food on the table and coals for the fire? How much for a home where comfort wasn’t outlawed, where vermin hadn’t invaded, where the ceiling didn’t leak and the drains didn’t block? Arithmetic calculations pestered my brain for a few useless minutes as I walked on, oblivious to all. In the end I shrank from making an exact estimation, but of one thing I felt absolutely certain: I could have afforded it.

  The next day a note came from Paget. He had consulted the London census of 1881 and found no reference to any of the names on the list. It was probable, then, that the Johnson Street leaseholders had not been of any fixed abode. Of the five on the list the only one who could be proven to have existed was Thomas Bowland-Darke – and he was now in his grave. Scour your notebooks – the names might be there, wrote Paget. Unfortunately those notebooks remained in a desk at the office of my erstwhile employers. Ordinarily I would have applied to Rennert for permission to consult them, but following my summary dismissal I no longer trusted him. Rennert’s loyalty was to Marchmont, and I reckoned my safest course was to circumvent both of them.

  I have described before the rackety offices in Salisbury Square, where the traffic of Marchmont’s staff mingled round t
he clock with an irregular train of street people – cabmen, hawkers, bootblacks and the like – who had been invited to tell their stories personally. Add to this a third class of chancers and light-fingered rogues who took advantage of the paper’s lax security to help themselves, and you have one of the most porous workplaces imaginable. Needing to make an inconspicuous entry into the building, I realised my best hope would be to arrive at the end of the working day when no one would be very particular about the comings and goings of the paper’s informants. I ascended the stairs, unnoticed, and sidled into the long office where I used to work. It was clear straight away that something was wrong. At most hours a gregarious atmosphere usually held sway, as editors took down copy or gossiped with one another. This evening I found hardly a soul about.

  The untypical quiet at least allowed me to hunt without fear of interruption. I first rifled through what was once my own desk, pulling drawers that opened their mouths in an impudent show of vacancy. There was nobody in Rennert’s office – unusual in itself – so I took advantage and had a thorough snoop around; but here too I found no trace of my notebooks. I returned to the main room, baffled. Where was everyone? I glanced over at the guvnor’s office, his door closed, and wondered whether I should dare . . . I knocked, and receiving no reply turned the doorknob to look within. Where once there had been loaded shelves and careless stacks of books was now a wilderness of dusty fingerprints. The only items that remained on the guvnor’s desk were an old lamp and a blotter. I walked around it, subjecting the drawers to the same investigation as my own, to identical effect. Someone had cleared the room in an unseemly haste: I could see groove marks on the parquet where the desk legs had been been dragged. The walls wore fresh-coloured rectangles where paintings and photographs had been snatched off their hooks.

  ‘Wildeblood. What are you doing here?’ I turned to find Timms standing in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, I happened to be passing and – thought I’d drop by. Where is everyone?’

  ‘You haven’t heard? It’s all to smash. The paper’s been surviving on borrowed money, and the creditors have had enough. Bankrupt.’ He pushed back his sawdust-coloured hair from his forehead and sighed.

  ‘And the guvnor?’

  ‘Done a bunk. I gather quite a lot of the debt was his own. And a nice mess he’s left us in, I must say.’ We silently considered the emptied office for a moment.

  ‘I wonder – there are certain notebooks of mine I’m looking for. Would you know what’s become of them?’

  Timms pursed his mouth unhappily. ‘Hardly. The place has been picked clean. I saw Rennert disappearing with a crate of books –’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Few hours ago. Probably just the accounts. Of course, he must have known trouble was on the way . . .’

  ‘Yes, I dare say,’ I mumbled, absently, moving past him and out through the door. ‘I do beg your pardon, Timms, I must away.’ He looked surprised by the suddenness of my departure, as though I might have just stolen something – though of course there was nothing to steal. I took the stairs two at a time, and once outside I sprinted onto Fleet Street. I hadn’t the money for a cab, so I jumped on an omnibus heading west. As the ’bus jolted along I took out the Chronicle, and found a report of Mrs Nicholls’ suicide. It included the fact that she had hanged herself with string from a nail on the wall. I imagined the little ripple of shock that detail would make as it broke upon the reader’s consciousness, before it was forgotten about and, like the woman herself, never mentioned again. There was something else in the report I hadn’t known: having studied her face, worn down like an old coin, I had judged Mrs Nicholls to be about forty years old. In fact, she was twenty-six.

  At Oxford Circus a horse had collapsed on the street, blocking the traffic both ways, so I took the remainder of the journey on foot. Lamplighters had just begun their rounds by the time I reached Montagu Square. It was but a matter of months since I had first presented myself, shivering, at Marchmont’s door: ‘the neophyte’, he had called me then. I wondered what epithet he might choose for me this evening, once I had denounced him. As I approached the house two vehicles stood in wait, one of them a cab, the other a trap still being loaded with suitcases and travelling trunks. A lady was consulting anxiously with one of the removal men; only the young girl loitering on the step had noticed me. I recalled her face from last time, peering down from the top of the staircase, and I tipped my hat as I passed her. The front door was open, and, ignored amidst the comings and goings of the help, I walked in. The whole house was in a flurry of evacuation. The dining room I looked into had been denuded of its ornaments and paintings; dust sheets covered the furniture, and on a long mahogany table dining chairs had been stacked upside down, their curved legs raised like imploring supplicants into the air. A man on a stepladder was taking down the brocade curtains.

  I continued into Rennert’s office, where he had interviewed me in February, and saw that the double-leafed doors to Marchmont’s inner sanctum were slightly ajar. With a soft tread I stepped up to the gap and watched as Rennert busily sorted through books, glancing at each spine to determine whether it should be packed or discarded. Marchmont, his back to the room, was staring fixedly at the map on his wall, the one he had shown me so proudly that evening. There was something forlorn in the stillness of his posture. I accidentally announced myself with an ill-placed step; the protesting groan of the floorboard caused both men to turn their heads, and Rennert pulled back the panelled door.

  ‘Mr Wildeblood, what on earth –’ There was no welcome in his voice. He looked grey and drawn, and old.

  ‘The front door was open,’ I explained, directing my gaze at Marchmont, who seemed perfectly unsurprised by this intrusion. He gave a quick snorting sigh before he spoke.

  ‘An untimely entrance. As you see, we are rather preoccupied . . .’ His tone was unruffled, in contrast to the disarray of his surroundings. It seemed not in his nature to panic. I took a deep breath to steady myself.

  ‘I have come to collect a set of notebooks containing information I gathered during my employment in Somers Town. I believe there is evidence in there that Walter Moyles intends to use as blackmail against you.’

  Marchmont absorbed this, though his expression betrayed amusement rather than consternation. He picked out a cigar from his case, clipped its end and lit it, emitting a pungent cloud of smoke. ‘I fear you are on a fool’s errand, sir. I am acquainted with Mr Moyles – a scoundrel, as you suggest – but he is in no position to blackmail me.’

  ‘He said you reneged on a financial arrangement he had with you, regarding Condor Holdings . . . your “cutting up rough” about an appointment –’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Marchmont with a chuckle, ‘you have done some doughty digging, haven’t you? Rennert, I wonder if you’ve any notion of what Mr Wildeblood is accusing me of.’

  Rennert, who showed little relish for our conversation, looked gravely at me. ‘None at all. We are pressed for time, sir, so kindly state your business here.’

  ‘Very well. I believe Mr Marchmont is engaged in an illegal property speculation with Condor Holdings and the Social Protection League. You are privy to the resettlement scheme in Bindon Fields, and therefore must know of the fraudulent sale of leases that has enabled it. I happened to stumble on this conspiracy, Moyles got wind of it, and shortly afterwards you sacked me from the paper, lest any further revelations came to light.’

  Marchmont glanced at Rennert, though his expression did not in the least hint at complicity in what I had just described. He took another long pull on his cigar, and said mildly, ‘Mr Wildeblood, it no longer matters, but I will try nevertheless to extract some fragments of sense from your deposition. My arrangement with Moyles and the League was not shady in the way you suggest. In return for a fee I agreed to deliver one or two lectures on Somers Town, should there have been a need to present the Bindon Fields scheme before Parliament. That scheme still awaits approval. As to the fraudulent leases, you
may well be right, but I must plead ignorance of them. I had quite other reasons for withdrawing my services.’

  Something calm and matter-of-fact in his voice was beginning to sow doubts in my head. ‘What reasons were they?’

  He paused, and Rennert gave an impatient little cough. ‘Sir, I really must –’

  ‘We have time enough,’ Marchmont cut in, and turned again to the Poverty Map, with its blaze of coded colours. ‘Eight years! Eight years I have been at work on this map. All those thousands of houses, of streets and tenements, all of those teeming lives investigated and encoded here. Nothing like it ever seen before! I had imagined this would be my legacy –’ he splayed his hand in a magician’s flourish – ‘and that every future survey of the London poor would take account of it.’ He stopped, and gave a philosophical sigh.

  ‘But you ran out of money,’ I supplied.

  ‘Indeed I did – mea culpa. Money has flowed through my hands like water. I ought to have cupped them more tightly. We all of us have our weaknesses . . . mine has been the casino and the card table. I thought I could keep the paper going – it had nearly closed before – but my lucky streak deserted me. I’m afraid you were a casualty of that. I was no longer able to pay my own staff.’

  ‘And Bindon Fields? Why did you withdraw your support?’

  He looked measuringly at me through his cigar smoke. ‘I suppose you will find out soon enough . . . Primum non nocere, Mr Wildeblood. Do you have Latin?’

  I shrugged my ignorance.

  ‘“The first principle is not to harm.” I recall your shock on that first day we visited Somers Town, when I warned you not to involve yourself in the plight of the poor. You thought me heartless, but charitable giving, as I warned you then, demeans both the donor and the recipient.’