Printer's Devil (9780316167826) Page 13

  “A lion and three roses,” I said to Cramplock. “Does he like lions, then, this Lord Malmsey?”

  “He doesn’t have to like lions,” Cramplock replied, “it’s a sign of courage.” He went to a cupboard and took out lots of little carving tools. “And the flowers are poppies, I think, not roses.”

  A little bell rang.

  “Customers, customers,” said Cramplock, laying down the pencil he’d just picked up. “Mustn’t discourage them, I suppose, but really I sometimes think I’d get on a great deal faster without them.”

  “You’d be a great deal poorer, too,” I said, as he finished tapping a fat heap of stiff cards on their edges against the workbench to make them into a neat square pile. I couldn’t help being slightly suspicious of Cramplock this morning. Nick’s words of caution kept ringing in my ears. He did know more than he was saying, that much was certain; otherwise, what had that mysterious note been about? Cramplock put the cards down and went towards the door; but, as he saw who was waiting in the shop, his face changed.

  “Mr. Glibstaff,” he said, slowly.

  I felt a sudden sick misgiving. Glibstaff was a well-known local character: a small, smug, thoroughly unpleasant man who worked for the City Magistrates, and who saw it as his job to uphold justice and public order — which in practice meant he usually pokes his nose into everyone’s affairs to tell them what they should and shouldn’t be doing. I’d never met anyone with a good word to say about him: as far as I could tell he was completely untrustworthy, and used to threaten people with what he pompously referred to as “the Mysterious Might of the Law,” as though he were some kind of divine agent. People who didn’t do as he told them — or, more usually, didn’t pay him whatever money he fancied charging in return for leaving them alone — tended to find themselves summoned before the Magistrates and accused of some dreamt-up offense, for which they usually ended up paying out even more money in fines. Whatever course of action they chose, a visit from Mr. Glibstaff was usually expensive — and people greeted him in much the same way as they might greet someone who’d come to tell them their house had been condemned, or that all their investments had collapsed.

  But my immediate thought was that someone had tipped Glibstaff off about my recent adventures. I hovered by the door, trying to eavesdrop on the conversation. I could see Glibstaff standing, rigid and officious, saying something to Cramplock, who had his back toward me. We have reason to believe, he’d be saying, one of your employees is a thief. I’d like to ask him some questions regarding a camel!

  I chewed at my nails. The two men seemed to be deep in conversation. Could it have been Cramplock himself who had called Glibstaff in? Was the game up once and for all? The more I thought about it, the more panic-stricken I became. There would surely be some officers waiting at the back door too, and if I tried to run, I’d run straight into a trap. They were smoking me out like a badger! For an insane moment, I eyed the curved blade of the paper guillotine and began calculating whether my neck would fit underneath it.

  Then I heard the shop door rattle shut. There was silence. He’d gone!

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Cramplock came back in. “Another job,” he said, reading something.

  “A what?” I asked, as if I’d gone deaf with fear.

  He looked up. “A murder notice,” he said. “We’ve got fifty to do by tomorrow. What’s the matter, Mog? You look rather — strange.”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Cramplock,” I said, breathing more easily, “when I saw it was Glibstaff I, er — that is, I—”

  He gave a short chuckle. “Well, for once his visit was for legitimate business reasons,” he said, handing me the sheet of paper Glibstaff had given him.

  A REWARD

  is Offered to PERSONS supplying

  Information required by THE CROWN,

  concerning a most BRUTAL late

  MURDER

  in the City of LONDON, being that of

  one Wm Jiggs, Esq. Ships Chandler, of

  Foulds Walk by Eastcheap on the Night of

  20th May

  Everything else melted away as I read this. For all I know, I might have been standing there for twenty-four hours.

  “Mog? You look — even stranger than before,” Cramplock finally said.

  “Oh,” I said, waking up, “er — it’s nothing, Mr. Cramplock.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Well, come on then, there’s work to be done.”

  Nick’s face, when I told him, turned whiter than any of the paper we had in the shop. It was as though a little tap opened under his chin and all the blood surged away.

  “When?” he hissed.

  “Last night,” I said. “They found him in an abandoned hackney coach — no horse, no driver, just the cab and a dead Jiggs. Near the river, just under the north end of the bridge, it was.”

  “How did he die?”

  “It doesn’t say.” I reached inside my shirt for the poster I’d taken.

  We were sitting in the Doll’s Head again; after I finished work I’d gone there with Lash and found Nick already sitting in the corner. As soon as he saw me, he’d known something was up. Now he sat reading the big poster, his eyes leaping up and down the page as though, like me, he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

  “I s’pose,” he said, slowly, “Coben could’ve done it. Maybe Jiggs was threatening to blow his cover, or something.” But it was clear he was thinking the same as I’d immediately thought. The single most likely murderer was the man who’d recently had an anonymous note, and who’d gone storming off in a rage the night before, believing Coben and Jiggs had taken his most precious possession.

  The bosun. And it was all our fault.

  “It was our note,” I said in a frantic whisper, “if we hadn’t written that rubbish with an eye drawn on it, thinking we were being so clever …”

  “You can’t blame it on that,” Nick said, “he’d’ve suspected it was them anyway. They were the people that wanted it most, ‘cos they were the people he took it off in the first place.”

  There was silence. Our minds were rattling with the possibilities.

  “Coben will think I told someone,” I said. “Who else could’ve split? They were already after me for escaping from the chest.”

  “But he thinks you’re me,” said Nick. “He’ll just think I’ve been doing Pa’s dirty work as usual, and that I told him where they were hiding.”

  “Okay, so he’ll want to kill us both,” I hissed, agitated. “What are we going to do, Nick?”

  “Look, don’t panic,” he said, doing a passable imitation of someone not panicking.

  “Have you seen your Pa today?” I asked.

  “No. I heard him go out early this morning.”

  “Did you hear him come in last night?”

  “Yep. He was with Ma Muggerage. They were drunk. They fell asleep straight away, far as I could tell.”

  “Mrs. Muggerage must know, then,” I said. “D’you think they both did it? Together?” I pictured the awful pair advancing on the skinny and terrified Jiggs, backing him up against a wall in a dark alley near the river … the bosun’s arm flexed, with Mrs. Muggerage’s cleaver in his hand …

  A man at a table nearby reached into his bag and pulled out a newspaper. I nudged Nick. We both watched him as he read, and tried to see what stories were on the front page. At one point he saw us straining to read the headlines.

  “What do you two want?” he asked haughtily. “It ain’t polite, to read somebody else’s paper.”

  “Sorry,” said Nick. “Look, Mog,” he continued in a loud voice, “that first one’s a D, and then there’s a A … I’m not sure what the next one is.” His eyes met those of the man again. “Been learnin’ to read, I have,” he told the man, with a proud face on.

  “Sounds like you’re doing very well,” said the man, unsmilingly, and went back to his reading.

  “What did you tell him that for?” I whispered.


  “Make him think we can’t really read,” Nick said out of the corner of his mouth. “He might get suspicious otherwise. Do you know who he is?”

  “No,” I whispered, “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “There you are then,” Nick said, “he might be anybody! If he thinks we can’t read, he might not be so — careful.”

  Eventually the man folded up his newspaper again, stuck it in his pocket, and rose to leave. He sidled past our table on his way out. “Good evening,” he said.

  “Oh — evenin’,” Nick said, grinning stupidly.

  “Evenin’,” I added. When I was sure he’d gone, I got up and went to the bar to ask Tassie if she knew who the man was.

  “Can’t say I know, Maaster Mog,” she said, her brow furrowed. “But I seen him once or twice before. Has business in Leadenhall Street, I’ve heard ‘em say.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked, intrigued.

  “Well, ‘s funny you should ask about him, ‘cos so did another customer a few days back. Just like you, Maaster Mog, started asking questions about ‘im the minute he’d gone. A regular conversation started in ‘ere, and I heard one man tell how he’d climbed into a cab outside and how he’d distinctly heard him give the instruction ‘Leadenhall Street’ to the driver. ‘S only a guess, though, Maaster Mog.”

  Tassie was miraculous; nosy, but miraculous.

  “That might be important,” I said to Nick quietly as I sat down, “did you hear what she said? Other people have been asking after him.”

  “Leadenhall Street’s a long way off,” said Nick. “It’s near Spintwice’s. And he’s too smart-looking to live round here. So what’s he been doing in here in the first place?”

  It was anybody’s guess, and I realized that Nick had been completely right to make sure we didn’t give too much away. I was anxiously trying to work out how much of our conversation he might have heard before we’d realized he was there.

  “Well, anyway,” Nick said, “we can read that newspaper in peace now.”

  “No,” I said, puzzled, “he took it with him. I saw him put it in his pocket before he went out.”

  Nick placed a neatly folded newspaper on the table.

  “Shocking, the number of thieves round here,” he said.

  The item we were interested in took quite a lot of finding. It had a couple of column inches on page two.

  CABMEN QUESTIONED

  Corpse Found in Abandoned Hackney Carriage

  Carriage drivers in the City of London were questioned today over the discovery last night of a man’s body in a hackney carriage near Swan Stairs. The deceased has been identified from certain belongings about his person as Mr. William Jiggs of Foulds Walk by Eastcheap. Mr. Jiggs was an unmarried chandler. The authorities are pleading for testimony from witnesses who may have seen or spoken with Mr. Jiggs on the night of May 20th. A gentleman with a bandaged head, described by eyewitnesses as having been with the deceased early in the evening, is urgently sought. Mr. Jiggs is known to have been at the Three Friends Inn, Whitechapel, which he left on foot. The cause of his death is still uncertain as no marks of obvious violence have been found on the body.

  “No marks of obvious violence?” I said, surprised. “They didn’t cut him up with a meat cleaver then.”

  “Yeh, that’s the surprising bit,” Nick agreed. “You don’t think he was poisoned, do you? I wouldn’t have reckoned that was much in my Pa’s line.”

  I read the column again, fascinated, trying to imagine the events which had led to Jiggs being left for dead in the carriage. “I suppose they followed him home from the Three Friends,” I said.

  “He wasn’t going home,” Nick said, “not if he was found down by the river. I’ll tell you what I think. I think the murderers were disturbed. I’ll bet they did him in somewhere else, and were taking his body to the river to dump it. But for some reason they had to scarper and Jiggs was left in the cab.”

  “How could they take a dead man in a cab without the driver getting suspicious?”

  Nick laughed shortly. “You think most drivers wouldn’t just do what they were told, if someone like my Pa turned up in the middle of the night with a dead body over his shoulder and stuck a knife in their face?” he said.

  “I wonder where Coben was,” I said. “I bet he’s lying low, knowing that stuff about a man with a bandage is all around town.”

  “He’ll have taken it off,” said Nick. “And I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s halfway to France.”

  There was a sudden clatter at the taproom door which made us both jump; and two of the regular customers, men I knew from another of the shops in the square, came bowling in good-naturedly. We greeted them as they strode over to talk to Tassie; and they stopped in their tracks.

  “What have we here?” one of them asked. “Two peas in a pod! Well one of you is Mog Winter, but as sure as I’m standing here I can’t tell which.” And they laughed and pointed and generally drew attention to us for the whole of the next five minutes.

  “I think we’d better stop going around together,” I said to Nick in a low voice. “Too many people have seen us already. It’s not safe to come here anymore. Tomorrow evening, if you can, meet me at the fountain.” This was close to Nick’s house, and sufficiently busy to make it a likely place for two lads to be seen without arousing suspicion. I got up to leave. “And keep your eye on the jeweller’s shop,” I said, “if anyone’s watching it, watch them!”

  “I’ve done this before,” said Nick, “I’m all right. What are you going to do?”

  “Keep my head down, I think.” I hitched up my pants and tugged at Lash’s lead to make him stand up. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Mog,” he said.

  I stopped in the doorway. He was sitting looking very small, with the enormous newspaper spread out in his lap.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  As I left the Doll’s Head I looked very carefully in every direction before deciding which way to go. Turning into the little narrow lane which was the quickest route home, I became aware, out of the corner of my eye, of something moving, a little way behind me. Constantly, during the last few days, I’d been convinced that eyes were watching me from every available window and from behind every corner. It crossed my mind, not for the first time, that someone might even have been watching me from the windows of the Doll’s Head itself. I’d toyed with the idea of asking Tassie exactly who she was letting rooms to at the moment — but I was wary of arousing even her suspicion. The fewer people who knew what we were mixed up in, the better.

  When I turned my head, I could have sworn I saw someone disappearing behind a wall. I was definitely being followed. In that case, I thought, I’ll confuse them. Grasping Lash’s lead and drawing him close to my heels, I made up my mind to follow the most convoluted route home I could possibly devise; and I headed first down a path between red brick walls, leading in completely the wrong direction. On one side, the most ramshackle buildings in the whole parish leaked their effluent not only into the nearby Fleet ditch, but over the cobbles in the lane. In these ruins, with the white spire of St. James’s Church rising behind them, were hordes of people for whom London hadn’t found a use. This was where they nested, in a dense huddle, sleeping ten or twenty to a room — children alongside grown-ups, healthy people alongside ill people — in disgusting houses which had been here for centuries and which had fallen into such disrepair that they should really have been knocked down years ago. Every now and again, one of them would fall down: with no more warning than a sudden crescendo of creaking, it would just collapse, sending a cascade of dust and bricks and wooden beams out into the lane and leaving a hole between two houses like a gap in a mouth where a tooth had fallen out. Anyone unfortunate enough to be inside at the time would probably be killed among the collapsing rubble. Those who’d ventured out would return to find themselves with no where to live; and the process would start again, of finding another unsafe and squalid building into which to mo
ve themselves and their blinking, consumptive family. If their minds were agile enough, they might plot clever and violent crimes; and if their bodies had enough energy they might give a squalid existence to newly wailing little children beside whom the pinkest and baldest of rat-kittens stood a better chance of survival. There was no shortage of stories of people who’d gone down these lanes in the dark and never been seen again; and, in spite of my anxiety to get away from whoever it was who was following me, my heart was in my mouth at every street corner and I stopped each time, plucking up the courage to venture round the corner for fear of what I might find.

  But what really frightened me was that I knew I was really no different from the people who lived here, and that if I’d been spilled out from my mother’s body onto dirty straw or old newspapers in one of these damp and stinking houses, I’d now be just the same. A cloth-wrapped bone-creature who made other children scared; a thin, jaundiced thing with sunken eyes and no understanding of anything but survival; a scarecrow.

  It would be getting dark very soon, and by now I was pretty sure I’d shaken off my pursuer. I’d turned north and west and south and west again and doubled back on myself so many times I’d lost track of where I was. When we rounded the next corner we were suddenly in a familiar, much wider street into which the evening sunshine poured reassuringly, and I could see the unmistakable open space of Clerkenwell Green at the far end. Lash knew where he was now. We weren’t far from the back of Cramplock’s, and he struck out purposefully for home, practically dragging me behind him.

  As we neared the square, I could hear something from one of the houses nearby. At first I thought it was a person singing, but after a couple of seconds’ listening I changed my mind. It was certainly music, of some kind, on an instrument which might have been a flute, or a bagpipe, but somehow didn’t quite sound like either.