woman,’ he said at last, ‘is a liar.’
We were just finishing the pie and potatoes I’d fetched for our dinner when the door from the shop burst open. There on the hearth, carrying a carpetbag in one hand and a tuba case in the other, was a woman of middle age. She wore grey and black; her bearing spoke of a well-travelled soul. The guvnor was immediately struck dumb. I jumped to my feet and bowed, quickly wiping the grease from my fingers onto the back of my trousers.
She nodded briefly at me, then turned back to him. For a long time they looked at each other, him with a look of surprised shame, she with a righteous superiority. Finally, he managed to swallow the potato he held in his mouth.
‘Ettie,’ he said. ‘What . . . ? You’re . . .’
‘I can see I’ve arrived just in time,’ she replied, her noble eyes travelling slowly over the pill jars and ale flagons, the ash spilling from the fire, the newspapers and books piled on every surface. ‘Isabel hasn’t come back then?’
His big lips pursed and he shook his head.
She turned to me.
‘And you are?’
‘Barnett, ma’am. Mr Arrowood’s employee.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Barnett.’
She returned my smile with a frown.
The guvnor eased himself from his chair, brushing the flakes of pastry from his woollen vest.
‘I thought you were in Afghanistan, Ettie.’
‘It appears there’s much good work to be done amongst the poor of this town. I’ve joined a mission in Bermondsey.’
‘What, here?’ exclaimed the guvnor.
‘I’m going to stay with you. Now, pray tell me where I shall sleep.’
‘Sleep?’ The guvnor glanced at me with fear on his face. ‘Sleep? You have a nurse’s quarters of some kind, surely?’
‘From now on I’m in the employ of the good Lord, Brother. It’s no bad thing, by the look of this place. These mountains of papers are a hazard, for a start.’ Her eyes fell on the little staircase at the back of the room. ‘Ah. I’ll just see the space now. No need to accompany me.’
She put her tuba on the floor and marched up the stairs.
I made tea for the guvnor, while he sat staring out the murky window as if he was about to lose his life. I broke a piece of toffee from my pocket and offered it to him; he put it greedily in his mouth.
‘Earlier, why did you say Miss Cousture is a liar?’ I asked.
‘You must watch more closely, Barnett,’ he said as his teeth worked on the toffee. ‘There was a point in my speech when she flushed and refused my eye. Only one. It was the moment I told her I could see into a person’s soul. That I smelled out the truth. You didn’t notice?’
‘Did you do it deliberate?’
He shook his head.
‘It’s a good trick, I think,’ he said. ‘I might use it again.’
‘I’m not sure it is. Lying’s a way of life where I come from.’
‘It is everywhere, Barnett.’
‘I mean they won’t flush if you accuse them.’
‘But I didn’t accuse her. That’s the trick. I was talking about myself.’
He was making hard work of that toffee, and a little juice escaped the side of his mouth. He wiped it away.
‘What was she lying about, then?’
He held up his finger, grimacing as he tried to work the toffee off his molar.
‘That I do not know,’ he replied when he’d freed it. ‘Now, I must remain this afternoon and find out what the deuce my sister intends to do here. I’m sorry, Barnett. You’ll have to visit the Barrel of Beef yourself.’
I was none too pleased with this.
‘Maybe we should wait until you’re able to come,’ I suggested.
‘Don’t go inside. Wait across the street until a worker comes out. A washerman or a serving girl. Someone who could do with a penny. See what you can find out, but do nothing that’ll put you at risk. Above all, don’t let Cream’s men see you.’
I nodded.
‘I’m quite serious, Barnett. I doubt you’d get a second chance this time.’
‘I don’t intend to go anywhere near his men,’ I said unhappily. ‘I’d as soon not be going there at all.’
‘Just be careful,’ he said. ‘Come back here when you have something.’
As I made to go he glanced up at the ceiling, where the scrape of furniture being moved could be heard.
The Barrel of Beef was a four-storey building on the corner of Waterloo Road. In the evenings it was patronized mostly by young men arriving in hansom cabs from across the river, looking for some life after the theatres and political meetings had shut down for the night. Downstairs at the front was a pub, one of the biggest in Southwark, with two floors of supper rooms above that. The rooms were often booked out by dining societies, and on a summer’s night, when the windows were open and the music had begun, it could be like walking past a roaring sea. On the fourth floor were gaming tables, and these were the most exclusive. This was the respectable face of the Barrel of Beef. Around the back, down a stinking lane of beggars and streetwalkers, was the Skirt of Beef, a taproom so dark and so fugged with smoke you’d start to weep the minute you stepped in.
It was a cold July so far, more like early spring, and I cursed the chill wind as I set myself up on the other side of the street, slumped in a doorway like a tramp aside the warm cart of a potato man, my cap pulled low over my face, my body covered in an old sack. I knew too well what Cream’s men would do if they discovered me watching the place again. There I waited until the young men got back into their cabs and the street went quiet. Soon a group of serving girls in drab grey clothes came out and marched down eastwards towards Marshalsea. Four waiters were next, a couple of chefs behind. And then, at last, just the kind of old fellow I was looking for. He wore a long ragged coat and boots too big for him, and he hurried and stumbled down the street as if in urgent need of a crapper. I followed him through the dark streets, barely bothering to keep hidden: he’d have no reason to suspect anyone would be interested in him. A light rain began to fall. Soon he arrived at the White Eagle, a gin palace on Friar Street, the only drinking place still open at that late hour.
I waited outside until he had a drink in his hand. Then I strode in and stood at the counter next to him.
‘For you?’ asked the fat bartender.
‘Porter.’
I had quite a righteous thirst and downed half the pint in a single swallow. The old fellow supped his gin and sighed. His fingers were puckered and pink.
‘Troubles?’ I asked.
‘Can’t drink that stuff no more,’ he growled, nodding at my pint. ‘Makes me piss something rotten. Wish I could, though. I used to love a drop of beer. Believe me I did.’
Sitting on a high stool behind a glass screen was a man I recognized from the street outside the Beef He wore a black suit, rubbed thin at the elbows and ragged at the boot, and there was not a hair on his head. His match-selling business suffered on account of his habit of exploding into a series of jerks and tics that made people passing him jump back in fright. Now he was muttering to himself, staring into a half-pint of gin, one hand grasping the other’s wrist as if arresting its movements.
‘St Vitus’s Dance,’ whispered the