sir,’ I said. ‘Isn’t the Duke a Knight of the Garter?’
He snorted. ‘Holmes used to be more discreet.’
‘You don’t know it was Holmes told the press.’
‘You’re right. It was no doubt Watson, trying to sell a few more books.’
There were no cabs at Catford Bridge station so we walked down past a row of almshouses towards the green. It was a frosty day, the sky low and dark over the buildings. Though it wasn’t bright, it was some relief to be out of the murky air of the city. I felt my steps grow lighter, my head clear.
Catford was an old farming village being eaten by London. There was building work going on everywhere: a tramway to Greenwich was being laid; bricklayers were putting up the walls of a bank next to the pump; foundations were being dug out for a grand new pub. Off the main street, past the small houses near the station, big villas for merchants and city workers were rising. Poorer areas were hidden here and there, in the shadows of the tram depot and the forge, where the families of farm workers lived in rickety sheds and damp basements, crammed into wretched houses with boarded windows and broken gutters.
The Plough and Harrow was just the sort of place you found outside town – a stone floor that could have done with a broom for the mud, walls panelled in dark wood, a half door that served as a counter. A glum grandma sat with a blank-faced younger fellow on the benches at one side of the fire, while three old blokes with veined cheeks and pipes in their mouths played dominoes on the other. An ancient dog with matted hair chewed a stick by their feet.
‘Any cabs around here, madam?’ the guvnor asked the landlady after we’d got a couple of pints.
‘The lad may take you in the cart if it’s local,’ she answered. She wore a cowboy hat like you see in the Buffalo Bill shows.
‘The Ockwell farm,’ said the guvnor. ‘D’you know the family, madam?’
‘Godwin’s in here often enough. Why you asking?’
‘We’ve some business with them, that’s all,’ answered the guvnor, taking a swig of his porter. He smiled at the lady. ‘I do like that hat.’
‘Why thank you, pardner.’ Her face softened; she ran her finger along the edge of the brim. ‘American fellow gave it me.’
‘Decent people, the Ockwells,’ growled one of the old men by the fire. ‘Family been here two hundred year at least, maybe more.’
‘They be straight with you long as you be straight with them,’ said another. He lifted his foot and shoved the old dog away from their table. ‘Ain’t nobody’s fools, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
The door opened and two builders, both with wild, grizzled beards, walked in. One was a big, bald fellow wearing a muddy moleskin suit with two jackets, a peaked cap topped with a knob of wool. The other was just as tall but thin, a red cloth wound around his neck, his corduroy jacket covered in rips and poorly made repairs. A shock of hair sprouted from his cap and ran into the tangle of his beard.
‘Morning, Skulky, morning, Edgar,’ said the landlady, setting out two tankards for them. Without a word, they began to drink.
‘The brothers are up Ockwell farm at the minute, fixing their well,’ she said to us. ‘Ain’t you, lads?’
‘That’s their concern, is it?’ asked the thin bloke.
‘These gentlemen was just asking about the farm, Skulky,’ she said. ‘Got some business with them.’
‘From London, are they?’ he asked.
‘South London,’ I said. ‘You know the family, do you?’
‘Perhaps you could tell him this ain’t London, Bell,’ said the bald one, scratching his beard. ‘Perhaps you could tell them folk respect each other’s privacy down here.’
The builders finished their pints and left.
Five minutes later, a boy of nine or ten came in and led us out to an ancient cart. He drove us down along the green, turning off the main road onto a narrow dirt lane where the houses gave way to fields. We lurched and rocked down a hill then began to climb again. At the top we joined another lane more pitted and uneven than the last. On either side were fields of frozen mud and frosted grass. Little huts were scattered here and there, and pigs stood around everywhere like fools. A cold wind raced across the land.
‘Up there, sir,’ said the boy.
Ahead we could see the farm buildings. Two barns, a stables, some tumbledown animal sheds with rusty corrugated iron, and on the other side of them a big house. Everything looked like it needed fixing: slates were missing from the roofs, doors sat crooked, weeds grew from the guttering. A couple of old ploughs lay broken and mouldering outside the gate. Nothing about that farm looked right. And just as I took it all in, the dogs began to bark.
They guarded the main gate, straining at their ropes in a wild fury. One was a white bull terrier, all muscle and teeth, the other the biggest bull mastiff I ever saw. Its short coat was tan, its snout black. Instead of trying to get past them, the boy drove the cart around the back of a barn and in a side entrance right next to the house. When the dogs saw us appear again, they hurtled back across the yard but were brought up just short of the wagon by their ropes. It didn’t improve their temper none.
‘Mr Godwin fights them,’ said the boy. ‘Best in Surrey, they reckon.’
Just then, a couple of filthy men came through the main gate and crossed to one of the huts on the other side of the yard. Both wore coarse old clothes, smocks bulked out with what looked like sacks padded underneath them. One stared at us, his muddy face thin and severe. The other, a Mongol, waved with a great, wide smile. I waved back. He wore just the crown of a bowler hat upon his head, the rim missing. The mastiff sniffed the air, turned away from us, and tore off towards the workers. The Mongolian let out a cry, a look of horror on his face, while the thin bloke grabbed his sleeve, pulling him into the shed before the dog reached them.
We climbed down from the cart, the guvnor keeping his eye on the bull terrier, who snarled and strained at its rope just ten foot from us. The yard, which would have been nothing but thick mud on a warmer day, was frozen solid, rutted and pitted and hard to walk on. A pile of dung the size of a brougham lay up against one of the stock sheds. The farmhouse itself had seven windows upstairs, six below, with a green-tiled dairy at the far end. Everything was gone to seed: the walls of the house were spattered with mud up to the eaves; the chimneys were cracked and in need of repointing; the thatch was rotted, bare in places, ragged.
The guvnor knocked hard on the door. Nobody answered, but after we’d knocked a few more times one of the sheds wrenched open and a man stepped out. He wore a patched canvas apron that went down to his boots. Mixed with the mud that covered it were bloody smears of purple and crimson, stuck with bits of yellow fat. Behind him in the shed, a row of white pigs hung upside down from a beam, twitching and bewildered, the odd, defeated grunt falling from their lips.
The man’s face was wet with sweat. His blond hair was thinning and combed tight over his forehead, across which was a red line where his cap would have sat. His eyebrows and eyelashes were also blond, giving him a half-born look. He walked toward us, stopping to pet the dogs on his way. They went quiet at his touch.
‘Morning,’ he said when he reached us. He looked at us in a strange, innocent way.
‘We’ve come on official business to see Birdie Ockwell, sir,’ said the guvnor, his eyes fixed on the butcher’s apron. ‘Are you her husband?’
The man stepped in the house and shut the door.
The guvnor was about to knock again when I stopped him.
‘Wait a bit, sir.’
He pressed