Michael Gallagher's Blog - Posts Tagged "michael-gallagher"

My first novel, The Bridge of Dead Things, turns one year old on April 6th. It's been a very busy year. Through my books, my website and my blog, I've published a staggering 180,000 words online. I've had some fantastic reviews here at Goodreads, and also at Amazon, Smashwords, and LibraryThing—some from as far afield as Sardinia and Nepal—many of which left me quite choked up and more than a little misty eyed. I've also had a few stinkers too, but thankfully I can (quite literally) count those on one hand.

To mark the occasion I've rebranded the series. There are new book descriptions courtesy of Monica F—catya77—a member of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Programme where she bid for and won an advance copy of The Scarab Heart. Monica, who is also a Goodreads librarian, always included a really catchy little summary in her reviews—which I totally fell in love with—and luckily for me she said "yes" when I begged her to let me use them!

I also have a new set of book covers which I adore. You'll see the entire range (even for titles yet to be written) below. Many of my readers expressed concerns about the original covers, and I think these new ones match the books perfectly. But what do you think? Do you you agree, or do you prefer the "marmite" (some love it/some hate it) originals? You can leave me a message or, better still, why not join in the debate that I set up at the bottom of The Bridge of Dead Things book page? I would love to hear your thoughts.

If you already purchased the books, simply download them again (either from your Kindle's library or from Smashwords, if you bought them there) and choose the latest version to get the new covers. As far as I'm aware, there's no extra charge for this. You bought the books, not the cover!

If you've yet to buy them, why not check out the My Shout page on my website, michaelgallagherwrites.com, which is also celebrating its first birthday, where throughout April you will find a truly extraordinary and never-to-be-repeated offer.

Michael Gallagher


The Bridge of Dead Things:



The Scarab Heart:



The Cat Who Fishes:



The Prodigal Daughter:



The Empress of Time:



Photographs by Captain Console, Neithsabes, Marc Ryckaert, Daniel Csörföly, Eugène Atget, El Fabricio de la Mancha, John Thomson, Harris & Ewing, Inc, and whatsthatpicture
Cover designs by Negative Negative

Crash and burn? Probably. Have a great time doing it? I already am.

I recently re-read Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone for a Crime & Thrillers reading group I attend. I was particularly struck by one of the minor characters who pops up towards the end, the lawyer Mr Bruff’s office boy, Octavius Guy—better known as Gooseberry.

As I read I began to realize that Gooseberry would make a fantastic protagonist for a novel and it occurred to me that here was the perfect project for my summer break—writing and publishing a serialized novel in weekly installments, just as Collins did a hundred and fifty years ago.

I immediately started researching the period, hoping to find some hidden little nugget of history that might begin to suggest a plot—but I discovered zilch! 1852 was a very uneventful year. I also started writing to try to find Gooseberry’s narrative voice—again, nada! So at this point, I’ve no plot and no narrative voice and only two weeks in which to find them.

On the bright side, I have got a title (Gooseberry), a prototype cover, a charming protagonist who now has a fleshed-out back story, and I’ve inherited a number of The Moonstone’s other wonderful characters to play with. Oh, and I’m still hugely excited by the prospect of trying to write a serialization on the hoof!

One thing I’m very clear about: Gooseberry will never be a sequel to The Moonstone. The novel I envisage writing will be a detective story with an historical setting—and quite a comedic one at that. Think Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce novels, and Colin Cotterell’s Siri Paiboun mysteries.

I’ll be publishing it in weekly installments here on my Goodreads blog, so I do hope you’ll join me. Please wish me luck. I’ve a feeling I’ll need it.

Michael

Michael Gallagher’s Gooseberry (not exactly a sequel to Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone but more of a spin-off) is serialized here at Goodread in weekly installments every Friday from July 4th 2014. You can also follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.

1852. With the business of the Moonstone diamond finally laid to rest, Mr. Franklin Blake and his wife Rachel are now happily married, living in London, and blessed with a healthy baby daughter named Julia. Mr. Blake has taken his late father’s seat in Parliament, and his party’s fortunes are on the rise—in fact they are about to overthrow the coalition government of the day.

But when Rachel and her aunt are attacked in the street by a group of feral children, they soon discover that something quite inexplicable has occurred.

Enter the Blakes’ lawyer’s office boy, Octavius Guy—better known as Gooseberry—who once helped the family bring the mystery of the Moonstone to a close. Join in the fun as young Gooseberry descends into London’s demi-monde and underworld to investigate this new affair, following up the clues wherever they may lead him.

Michael Gallagher’s Gooseberry (not exactly a sequel to Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone but more of a spin-off) is serialized here at Goodread in weekly installments every Friday from July 4th 2014.

You can also follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry. . Will Gooseberry be perfect or pear-shaped? You decide!

London. Monday, January 19th, 1852

George and George, the other two office boys at Mr. Bruff’s law firm, sat snoring beside me on the bench, the victims of over-indulging on a plate of chops for their lunch. I gave the closer George a hefty nudge with my hip to try to claim back my fair share of the space. He came to for just a moment, blinked his eyes wearily, and then adjusted his hulking frame so that I had even less room than before.
Mr. Bruff’s office door swung open. Mr. Bruff came out and stood there contemplating the three of us. The look on his face suggested that he didn’t much care for what he saw.

“Gooseberry, with me,” he said, and, closing the door behind him, made directly for the stairs. I leaped up and padded along after him.

“The local chophouse again?” he inquired, as we exited the building together into a cold and foggy Gray’s Inn Square.

I nodded.

“Gooseberry, kindly inform George and George that from now on their favorite chophouse is officially off-limits.”

I don’t object to Mr. Bruff calling me Gooseberry, though I would have you know that it is not my real name. It’s a name that’s been given to me by one of Mr. Bruff’s clerks on account of my eyes. They bulge. At least, that’s what this clerk delights in telling me almost every single day. Naturally I can’t help them bulging any more than I can help being blessed with brains, and blessed with brains I am—to a far greater degree than either of the Georges, or that fool of a clerk, come to that.

I hasten to add, lest I later appear anything but entirely truthful on the subject, that having brains is not the only talent of which I am possessed, nor is Gooseberry my only nickname, which I’m sure will become clear in good time.

Mr. Bruff spotted a passing cab and put his hand out to hail it. As it pulled to a halt beside us, he directed the driver to an address in Montagu Square. I recognized the address as that of his close friend and client, Mr. Franklin Blake—Member of Parliament—a man to whom I have had the privilege of being useful in the past. I gripped the handrail to haul myself up to my usual seat beside the driver, but Mr. Bruff clasped me by the wrist and informed me that today he required my presence in the carriage. “There is a matter,” he said, “that I wish to discuss.”

Despite the ominous words, Mr. Bruff remained silent as the cab pulled away from the curb. It wasn’t until after we’d traded High Holborn for that long stretch of road that is Oxford Street that he finally opened his mouth to speak.

“Octavius,” he said, using my proper name for a change—a name which translates from Latin as ‘the eighth child’; not that I am the eighth, you understand, I’m actually the first—“do you recall how we met?”

“I do, sir, I do,” I replied, “although it’s a good six years ago now.”

“It was a day not unlike today,” he reminisced, “thoroughly miserable and wet. I was in Regent Street attending to a small matter of business when I observed a young lad loitering on a corner—a barefoot urchin trembling in the rain, his toes turning blue from the cold.”

Mr. Bruff does like to over-sentimentalize our meeting. I imagine it helps him justify the choice he made that day. But don’t be fooled by his sweeping sentimentality. This image he was painting hadn’t prevented him from grabbing me by the scruff of the neck, just as I was about to remove my hand from a gentleman’s pocket—with the gentleman’s wallet attached. When I tactfully pointed this out to him in the cab, he immediately began to bluster:

“I had every right to march you straight in front of a magistrate, Gooseberry! Instead I chose to take pity on a young, shivering ragamuffin and offer him a position as my office boy! Can’t you be grateful for that?”

I was grateful to him for getting me out of the Life, and I told him so—before he decided to clip me round the ear. But there was more to this story than he was aware, for I’d never got around to sharing it with him. He had always assumed I was barefoot because I was poor, but that just wasn’t so. I was barefoot because one of my trusty colleagues had stolen the boots off my feet while I slept. They say there’s no honor amongst thieves, and they’re right. It was only because of this temporary state of bootlessness that the old man had been able to nab me that day, for I guarantee you, at the age of eight—with my boots on—there was no swifter, slipperier pickpocket in all of London than yours truly, Octavius Guy.

It’s what Mr. Bruff might term ‘an irony’ (a word which he assures me has everything to do with the jesting of Fate and nothing to do with scrap metal), for my lack of boots was not just my downfall. When the lawyer took pity on my poor freezing feet, it also became my salvation.

“Gooseberry, over the years you have proved yourself trustworthy, resourceful and loyal,” Mr. Bruff went on, his wistful smile returning, “and in return I have kept your former profession a secret from employees and clients alike. But today, Octavius, for the greater good, it may become necessary to divulge its nature.”

“To Mr. Blake?”

Mr. Bruff grunted.

“Sir, have I done something wrong?”

“No, not at all. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. Mr. Blake’s summons was uncharacteristically vague, but the few details it gave made me think that your specialist knowledge might come in handy.”

“How so?” I asked, but Mr. Bruff would say no more, preferring not to speculate until he had all the facts at his disposal. I gazed out the window. We were passing by Hyde Park and the rain was billowing about us in sheets. I tried peering into the distance to see if anything remained of the Crystal Palace, where the Great Exhibition had been held the previous year. I couldn’t make out so much as a dickey-bird. Perhaps they’d already dismantled it. It set me thinking: what had they done with all those millions of panes of glass?

It was Samuel, the footman, who answered the door to us at Montagu Square. I’d met Samuel before on several occasions, just as I’d met most of Mr. Blake’s household. He took charge of Mr. Bruff’s cane and hat (though he pointedly ignored mine, obliging me to keep hold of it myself), and ushered us into the library where the family had gathered.

What a mournful sight! In the middle of the room sat a small, elderly lady, unknown to me, who was working on a piece of embroidery—or rather not working on it, for each time she inserted the needle, her fingers would shake and she’d burst into tears. Young Mrs. Blake was on her knees at her side, her arms around her, trying in vain to comfort her as best she could.

Mrs. Blake’s maid, Miss Penelope, stood in the background, miserably wringing her hands in distress. It shocked me to see the complete disarray that both her locks and her clothing were in, for she was a young woman who normally took such pride in her appearance. Wisps of red hair hung loose about her face, as if she’d just been in a cat fight, and her blouse, which had been wrenched loose from her skirts, was ripped in at least three separate places.

Miss Penelope’s father, the ancient Mr. Betteredge—the family’s faithful steward—lay slumped in a chair by the flickering fire with a tattered old book clutched to his chest. I couldn’t be certain whether he was awake or asleep, for, ranked as I was as being little better than a tradesman, I was obliged to keep my distance when Mr. Bruff stepped forward to greet the family.

Mr. Blake, who’d been pacing listlessly about the room, grasped my employer’s hand and shook it. But it was his wife—and not he—who quickly took charge of the interview.

“Mr. Bruff, thank you for coming on such short notice,” she said, as she rose to her feet. “You will remember my aunt, Mrs. Merridew?”

“A pleasure as always, madam.” My employer smiled and gave a stately little bow.

The woman acknowledged it with a nod of her head. “I had hoped to quieten my mind by occupying myself with something trivial and mundane,” she said, staring down at the embroidery in her hand, “but it doesn’t seem to be working.”

With this she broke into a fit of sobs.

“My aunt has had a rather nasty shock,” Mrs. Blake explained. “Actually, apart from my husband—who did not accompany us this morning—we all have.” She glanced meaningfully over her shoulder at Miss Penelope, who blinked, bit her lip, and wrung her hands again.

“My dear, as your trusted friend and your lawyer, I suggest that you start at the beginning and tell me everything that’s happened.”

“Then perhaps we should sit down.”

Mr. Blake drew up chairs for them both and then resumed his pacing.

“Mr. Bruff, do you consider me an imaginative woman?”

My employer gave the question some careful thought before he hazarded a reply. “Miss Rachel, I have known you your entire life. If you ask whether I believe you possess an active imagination, then I would say, yes, you display a healthy and inquisitive one; a match for any man’s. But if you ask whether I think you imagine things, then, no. Lawyer that I am, I would still take your word over others, were all the evidence on God’s good earth to speak against you.”

Mrs. Blake seemed pleased with this answer and rewarded him with a faint smile.

“Then I shall begin where I believe this mystery begins,” she said, “even though I have no proof that it does. Last week we happened to receive an unusual number of nuisance callers. When Samuel, our footman, answered the door he would find an old beggar woman on the doorstep, with sprigs of winter heather for sale—or one of those preposterous suppliers of religious tracts—or a man who grinds knives for a living. It became ridiculous, quite ridiculous, and really rather tiresome. Occasionally he would even respond to the bell to find nobody there at all!”

“Oh, my!” exclaimed Mrs. Merridew. “How very odd! We had the same trouble at Portland Place…just before my footman gave his notice. I wondered if the bothersome callers had anything to do with his leaving, for I have no doubt they played havoc as much on his nerves as they did mine, so I asked him straight out, but he said not; rather that he was obliged to attend to his sick brother.”

“You had nuisance callers too? But, Aunt Merridew, why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

“I didn’t think it important, dear.”

“Surely it cannot be a coincidence! Aunt, has anything else out of the ordinary happened to you recently? For instance, have any of your windows been broken?”

“Oh, my…not that I can think of. Why do you ask?”

“Because last Friday morning Penelope discovered a broken pane of glass in the servants’ quarters.”

Mr. Bruff sat forward with a look of concern. “You experienced a burglary?”

Mrs. Blake shook her head. “Apparently not, Mr. Bruff, for when I had Betteredge check the inventory nothing appeared to be missing.”

“An accident, then?”

“Perhaps.” She sounded doubtful. “Though if so, I’m surprised that no one has come forward to own up to it. It was never in my mother’s nature to dock the servants’ wages for breakages, nor is it in mine.”
“How very curious.”

“Curious indeed. Which brings us to the events of today. I had plans to attend an early luncheon with my aunt at her house in Portland Place, and I decided to take Julia, my baby daughter, along with me. I asked Penelope to accompany us, to look after her on the way there. Then Betteredge insisted on coming, with umbrellas for us all in case it rained.”

On hearing his name, the old servant sat bolt upright in his chair.

“And rain it might have, Miss Rachel,” he spluttered, “and rain it finally did. But, in truth, that is not the reason I requested to come.”

“No?”

“No!” With trembling hands he held out the book he’d been clutching. His forehead was fevered with sweat. “Just this morning I opened my copy of Robinson Crusoe—the one your dear late mother presented me with on the occasion of what was to be her final birthday—and what should I find there?”

He riffled through its dog-eared pages, located the passage he was looking for, and then solemnly began to read aloud: “‘It was the howling and yelling of those hellish creatures; and, on a sudden, we perceived two or three troops of wolves on our left, one behind us, and one on our front, so that we seemed to be surrounded with them!’

“You see? You see?” he cried. “As I live by bread, miss, I knew in my heart that these self-same perils I had been directed to in this book were fated to befall you today! It was my sworn duty to come with you; no more, no less. My duty!”

An uncomfortable silence descended on the company, during which even Mr. Blake stopped his pacing.
“Robinson Crusoe? What has Robinson Crusoe to do with this?” my employer demanded.

A shorter silence ensued, broken this time by Mr. Blake. “The good Betteredge firmly places his trust in Dafoe to steer him safely through life,” he explained.

“I do, sir, I do!” Mr. Betteredge came back, and with such passion in his voice that I wondered whether he had been drinking. “And you would be wise to, too, Mr. Bruff, lawyer though you may be!”

Lawyer that he is, my employer is not easily lost for words, but in this case he was rendered speechless. He finally responded with a shake of his head and turned his attention back to Mrs. Blake.

“Mrs. Blake, will you please continue?”

She nodded and took a deep breath. “It was a perfectly pleasant meal, Mr. Bruff, but then I noticed that the weather was taking a turn for the worse. I rose to leave. My aunt had pledged to come with us, as she wished to consult my husband over the hiring of a replacement footman. I suggested that she, Julia, and I take a cab home, but Aunt Merridew refused to hear of it, saying she would prefer to walk while the rain held off. We strolled back along Wigmore Street, and were just passing Portman Square when my aunt spied a woman selling flowers at the side of the road.

“‘Let me stop and buy a nosegay,’ she begged, and opened up her handbag to retrieve her purse. Suddenly a shriek rent the air, and then another and another, as we found ourselves surrounded by a pack of howling children, lunging and pecking at us from every side.

“I don’t know what would have become of us were it not for Penelope’s quick thinking. She pushed me and Aunt Merridew back against the railings, thrust the baby into my arms, snatched one of her father’s umbrellas and began to beat those monsters off, even as she shielded us with her body. It was so frightening! Their hands went darting everywhere—everywhere, all over us—though it was Penelope who bore the brunt of their attack. Their wailing, animal screeches finally brought people running, but the children saw them coming and swiftly scattered. By the time our rescuers got there not one of them remained.

“We were all understandably shaken, though no one was actually hurt except Penelope here. The men who had come to our aid kindly saw us home. I had Cook clean and bathe Penelope’s wounds, and asked Betteredge to make us all a restorative drink.”

Everyone looked towards the fireplace. Exhausted by his earlier outburst, the steward had fallen fast asleep.

“It was only while we were recovering,” Mrs. Blake continued, “that I realized the attack might have been purposely staged, perhaps to try to rob us, so we all checked our capes and belongings to see if anything had been taken.”

“And?”

“Well, this is the most perplexing part of all, Mr. Bruff. Nothing had been taken.”

The lawyer’s eyes narrowed. “But Mr. Blake’s summons…I was led to believe—”

“I repeat, nothing had been taken. But something had most definitely been left.”


Gooseberry continues next Friday, July 11th.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.

So what did you think? Love it, or hate it, or too early to tell? Find any typos or continuity errors? Do let me know! I’d love your feedback. Please use the comment box below.

“Left?”

“Inserted into Aunt Merridew’s bag. Here, see for yourself.”

Mrs. Blake rose and walked over to the table. She retrieved a small palm-sized leather case, not unlike a notebook, and carried it back to my employer.

“Open it.”

Mr. Bruff turned the case over in his hands, found the tiny clasp at the side, and unlatched it. All I could see was the occasional glint from where I was standing, but even so I was ninety-nine percent certain that what he was holding was a daguerreotype—a photograph on a sheet of silvered copper, mounted behind glass in a plush-lined case. There was a time not so long ago when I would have hopped up on a chair to get a better look. I should like to be able to tell you that I have since learned the value of patience, but it wouldn’t be true. What I have learned is that the upper classes don’t appreciate your boots on their furniture, no matter how pressing your needs may be.

“So,” my employer summed up, having studied the photograph at some length, “both you and your aunt were subjected to nuisance callers; a pane of glass was found broken in the servants’ quarters; and then today a gang of hooligans attacked you in broad daylight—not to rob you of anything, but to place this about your aunt’s person?”

“It sounds incredible, Mr. Bruff, I grant you, but how else can that daguerreotype have found its way into my aunt’s handbag?”

“Mrs. Merridew, do you recognize either of the people in this photograph?”

“No, Mr. Bruff, they’re perfect strangers.”

“Mrs. Blake?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“Mr. Blake?”

“I’ve never seen either of them in my life. But observe, sir—the boy. The tone of his skin…his manner of dress. Though the man’s a Caucasian—and most probably English, judging by the cut of his suit—the boy is an Indian, is he not?”

Mr. Bruff nodded. “And an extremely wealthy one, by the look of it.” He peered at the daguerreotype again. “It’s a very formal portrait,” he remarked, “carefully composed and beautifully rendered. It’s not the work of an amateur. And yet, notice the boy’s scarred right eye; there’s been no attempt to disguise the lad’s disfigurement.”

“You don’t suppose that this could have anything to do with that accursed Moonstone diamond, do you? I had hoped I’d put that business behind me for good.”

“Because the lad’s Indian? No, Mr. Blake, your investigations were faultless. I’m sure the boy’s race is purely a coincidence.”

“Then perhaps someone’s trying to discredit me. The political party I serve may be in opposition at the moment, but, trust me, sir, things are about to change. This unholy coalition—which would take its grain from other countries instead of from our own worthy farmers—they’re on their way out, and they know it! I wouldn’t put it past them to pull some dastardly stunt to embarrass us first.”

“If they were trying to embarrass you, Franklin, why give the photograph to my aunt?” Mrs. Blake inquired of her husband. “Why not to you?”

“A very good question,” said Mr. Bruff. “But what I’d like to know is why a street gang would go to these extraordinary lengths to do such a thing? That is the crux of this matter. What we need is someone versed in their ways who might help us unravel this puzzle. Gooseberry, I think the time has come for you to tell us what you can.”

I stepped forward, expecting to be quizzed about my credentials. Instead I found myself being fussed over handsomely by Mr. Blake.

“Upon my word! Gooseberry!” he cried, shaking my hand and slapping me on the back. “I didn’t see you there!”

Mr. Bruff quickly intervened and directed me to business. “What is your opinion,” he asked, “of all that you’ve heard here today?”

“First, can I please see the daguerreotype?”

“‘May I see the daguerreotype’,” Mr. Bruff corrected me, as he handed over the picture.
If anything it was even grander than I had imagined it: a portrait of a man and a boy seated side by side in chairs that could almost pass for thrones, in what can only be described as an opulently—and quite exotically—furnished room.

“Gooseberry, your contribution, please.”

I passed the picture back and turned to address Mrs. Blake. “Gangs such as you describe, miss, work in two particular ways, both of which depend on creating as much chaos and confusion as possible.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Well, to dazzle people’s senses, miss. It makes them slow to react.”

“I see. Go on.”

“In the first, the gang runs in, causes a commotion, grabs what it is they’re after, then scatters as soon as they can. It requires a little planning, but hardly any skill, which is why the second way is infinitely more satisfying—”

“Satisfying?”

As I considered what my response should be to this, I placed my hat, which their footman Samuel had obliged me to keep hold of, down on the nearest chair, earning myself a look of reproach from Miss Penelope, Mrs. Blake’s maid.

“Well, intellectually satisfying, if you like, miss. While the gang is wreaking chaos and everyone’s attention is diverted, somebody else—someone on the spot who seems quite unconnected to any of the troublemakers—he stealthily slips the desired items inside his jacket—an overly-large jacket like the one I’m wearing now.” Or down his trousers. Or under his hat. “Once the gang has scarpered, that person calmly walks away, taking his booty with him.” While lifting wallet after wallet as he saunters through the crowd. Ah, my glory days, indeed. “Later the gang meets up at some predetermined location to share out their spoils—in accordance with each person’s rank, of course, and the amount of risk each person took.” Well, the spoils that they know about, that is.

Mrs. Blake looked at me thoughtfully and asked, “Gooseberry, how do you know all of this?”

The time had come to own up to my past. I’d been thinking about how best to present it, and it seemed to me that what was called for here was a judicious mixture of remorse, honesty, and diffidence.

“Though it shames me to say it,” remorse, “there was no swifter, slipperier pickpocket in all of London,” honesty, “than…well, me, miss—your humble servant—Octavius Guy.” Diffidence dispensed in a generous measure.

Mrs. Blake burst out laughing.

“Please, Mrs. Blake, it’s true.”

“Gooseberry, you really mustn’t joke.”

“I’m not joking, miss.”

“I don’t believe it for a moment!”

Mr. Bruff gave a cautious lawyer’s cough that managed to get everyone’s attention. “He’s telling the truth,” he said quietly, and shot Mrs. Blake a meaningful look.

“But this is Gooseberry we’re talking about! Our Gooseberry! He’s no thief!”

“If he’s telling us the truth, then I think he should be made to prove it,” said Mr. Blake, a mischievous grin breaking out on his face that even his thick, black beard couldn’t hide. “I propose a challenge. Gooseberry, come and try to pick my pocket!”

“Please, sir—I don’t want to pick your pocket.”

“But I insist,” he said, stepping closer and closer till there was barely a foot between us. With everyone watching (save for the good Mr. Bruff, whose features plainly registered his disapproval), Mr. Blake leaned forward so that our noses were practically touching. On reflex, I found myself stumbling backwards, a move that Mr. Blake took as a sign of defeat.

“So much for the swiftest, slipperiest pickpocket in all of London,” he laughed, and, like a performer taking his curtain call, turned and bowed deeply to his wife.

“Franklin, look,” she advised him, pointing her finger at me.

Mr. Blake looked. His mouth dropped open. He stared, blinking in amazement at the silver cigarette case in my hand.

He patted the vicinity of his jacket’s left inside-breast pocket, feeling for something that was no longer there. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs. Blake’s aunt place her embroidery in her handbag and hug the handbag to her chest. My heart suddenly crumpled; I should have realized how people might not take too kindly to discovering a thief in their midst.

Mr. Blake regarded me solemnly for several long seconds. “How did you manage it?” he asked at last. “I didn’t feel a thing. Not a thing.”

“It’s just a skill I have,” I replied, preparing to duck his blows as I handed him back his case.

“During my travels in the East, five men attempted to pick my pocket—and five men ended up regretting it. But you! That wasn’t skill, young man; it was art! By all that’s wondrous, you’re going to have to teach me how you did that!”

“Teach you to steal things? No, Mr. Blake! It wouldn’t be right.”

Mrs. Blake arched her eyebrow at the both of us and said, “I’m glad to see that one of you is old enough and wise enough to appreciate right from wrong. So, tell me, Gooseberry, expert pickpocket and moral compass that your are, in your opinion, what do you think happened to us today?”

“It’s very hard to say, miss. I can’t begin to fathom why a gang would want to plant something on you, especially if it’s something that holds no apparent meaning for any of you. However, from what you’ve told me, I’m fairly sure that the method they employed was the second one I outlined. Your attackers were simply the distraction. Somebody else—someone on the spot, seemingly unconnected—was responsible for slipping that photograph into your aunt’s handbag.”

“But who?” she asked. “The only people present were my aunt, myself, Penelope and her father, and my baby daughter Julia. You surely don’t suggest that one of us did it?”

“I beg your pardon, miss, but you’re mistaken.”

“Gooseberry, I know who was there. There was nobody else, believe me.”

“But there was, miss. There was the flower girl; the one selling flowers by the side of the road. Did anyone see where she went to?”

Mrs. Blake stared. “She was with us, I think. I really can’t remember. Aunt Merridew, do you recall?”

“I was too terrified to notice, dear. I expect my nerves will be shattered for weeks.”

“Penelope, what about you?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Rachel,” the maid responded shakily, speaking for the first time since we’d entered the room. “I was too busy battling off those horrid beasts of children. I have no idea where the woman went.”

Mrs. Blake glanced across the room to where her faithful retainer lay dozing. Choosing not to wake the old man, she turned her attention back to me.

“So you think it was the woman selling flowers?” she said.

“I certainly think it’s possible, miss. I can’t see who else it might be. Do you think you can you describe her?”

Mrs. Blake frowned. “She was a big girl. I remember that.”

“Very big. And certainly no beauty,” added her aunt. “A poor, ungainly thing, crouching on her haunches beside her basket. I recall seeing her pock-marked face and taking pity on her, which is why I insisted that we stop to buy a posy.”

“I don’t remember pock-marks,” Miss Penelope cut in, apologizing for the interruption, “but I have to say she wasn’t all that big.” On finding herself the center of attention, she quickly looked away. A moment later she was wringing her hands again.

“Of course, I could be wrong,” Mrs. Merridew admitted, “but I honestly don’t think that I am. You see, although I couldn’t say why, I was truly fascinated by the creature. There was something utterly compelling about her state of wretchedness.”

Miss Penelope’s objection aside, a picture was already beginning to form in my mind. “What color was her hair?” I asked. “And how was she dressed?”

“Coarse, dark brown shoulder-length hair, parted in the middle and pulled back into a bun,” the aunt reeled off excitedly, her distrust of me temporarily forgotten. “Yellow cap and ribbons instead of the usual headscarf affair. A light gray blouse, which hung from her shoulders like a sack, and a tattered, dark gray skirt. A filthy red shawl, one end of which she held across her mouth, I imagine to try to hide her scars.”

“I remember the shawl,” Mrs. Blake agreed, her nose wrinkling up at the thought. “I wouldn’t put it anywhere near my lips.”

“Broad-shouldered? Arms like hams?”

“Why, yes.”

“And softly spoken?”

“So softly spoken I could hardly make out anything she said,” Mrs. Blake replied. “Aunt Merridew had to ask the price of the posy several times.”

The old lady nodded in agreement.

“Kept her eyes averted? Never once looked at you directly?”

“Gooseberry? Do you know her?”

I was almost positive that I did, back in the Life. Everyone knew her—Big Bertha, they called her. Bertha, whose real name was Bert.

I can’t rightly say whether it was out of a sense of propriety or a sense of embarrassment that I chose to keep the delicate nature of Bertha’s gender to myself. Not that it mattered either way; the important thing was that we now had a lead.

Mr. Bruff wound up the meeting by promising the Blakes that I would follow up on it the very next day. He also requested they entrust him with the daguerreotype, as he had an idea of his own he wished to pursue.

“May I please take another look at it,” I asked on the cab journey back, remembering just in time his strictures over the use of the verbs can and may. He pulled it out and handed it to me, but I was sorely disappointed. I had hoped to divine some link between the people in the photograph and Big Bertha. But study it as I might, nothing came to mind.

The streets were deserted and bracingly chilly as I made my way homeward up the Gray’s Inn Road, stopping only to collect a couple of eel pies and some macaroons from the eating-house on the way. Turning east, I set off along the New Road, past the site of the old smallpox hospital. They’re in the process of building a railway terminus there, which locals claim will bring train-loads of people from Scotland—though why any of them would want to visit my own little part of the world was a complete mystery to me. But, ah, the wonders of living in the Golden Age of Steam, eh? Board a train in the morning in Edinburgh and disembark in the evening at King’s Cross!

I have lodgings off the Caledonian Road, or the ‘Cally Road’ as it’s commonly called. There’s talk of them erecting a cattle market up by the prison, but till then the Cally remains the principal route into Smithfield for every drover herding their cattle from the north. The area’s much quieter at night, mind, without a single cow’s lowing to be heard; so quiet in fact that, with your window open, you can hear the lapping of the nearby canal and the gentle thud of the coal barges moored up together in pairs.

That night, as I rounded the corner, I saw that my window was closed, but a flicker of light in the glass warned me someone was already home. I ran up the stairs two at a time and silently pushed open the door.

“Octavius!” came the shout of pure joy from inside.

A small, lithe figure of a boy cannonballed into me from halfway across the room, gripping me so tightly that I nearly let go of the pies. My younger brother Julius.

“Did you have a good day today, Octavius? Did you get to do anything interesting? We sold all the fish on the stall by four o’clock, so I got to come home early. I came straight here, Octavius, just like you said to do; I didn’t hang round. Did you bring us anything for supper? It doesn’t matter if you didn’t because I had a hot potato for my lunch.”

I wriggled out of his grasp and, like a conjurer, made a show of presenting him with the pies. His eyes lit up like beacons.

“Eel pies?” he cried, dancing with excitement. “You know they’re my favorite!”

We set the table and ate, both of us savoring for as long as we could the rich jellied meat in its crust. Afterwards I scoured the plates with cold ashes from the stove while Julius collected his supply of scrap paper—scavenged from the waste bins at the office—and then proudly retrieved his treasured pencil from the shelf.

“What word will we do tonight?” he asked.

“I don’t know…what word do you think will be useful?” This was a routine we repeated every night.

“How about ‘sprats’?” he suggested, after a moment’s thought. “We had sprats on the stall today.”

I carefully wrote down the word for him and he began to copy it. I sat and watched him as he wrote, his face set hard with concentration and his small, pink tongue sticking out. I could have spent a lifetime watching him that way, but eventually the candle burned too low.

We were up the next day before dawn, for we both had early starts; Julius off to his fish stall in Old Street, and me on my hunt to find Bertha. Bertha was a creature of habit, so I knew where he’d probably be, the day in question being a Tuesday. The flower market at Covent Garden.

The sun was still struggling to rise as I made my way down Drury Lane and into Long Acre, dodging wagons loaded to the brim with fresh produce. Although it was early, the piazza was crowded and the streets leading into it jammed. I passed stalls stacked high with cauliflowers and cabbages, swerving to avoid the bustling porters. Did my fingers itch to perform as they once had? No. But I did wonder if Mr. Bruff had given any thought to what he was asking of me, requiring me, as it did, to rub shoulders again with my former partners from the Life.

If I remembered correctly, Bertha’s pitch was on the west side of the square, at the rear of the Actors’ Church. Six years may have passed since I’d last seen him, but if I knew Bertha, he’d rather kill than give up such a desirable site.

And I was right. As I turned the corner, there he was. Dressed in gray and draped in his dirty red cape, his head bowed low to show off the bright yellow cap and ribbons he wore, he was squatting on the pavement and looking quite ungainly as he sorted through his basket full of flowers.

He must have seen my boots as I approached, for all at once he pulled his shawl across his mouth, bowed his head a little lower, and quietly began to mumble in a deep, hoarse whisper: “Buy a nice posy from a poor, honest woman, sir? Or a bouquet for your sweet, faithful wife?”

“Hello, Bertha.”

Big Bertha’s face shot up. “Oh, my Gawd, as I live and breathe!” he squawked. “I’d recognize those bulging big ogles anywhere! It’s you. It’s young Octopus, back from the dead or Van Diemen’s Land!”

Octopus. My other nickname.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, July 18th.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.

So what did you think? Love it, or hate it, or still too early to tell? Find any typos or continuity errors? Do let me know! A big thank you to Lara and Alice who have sent me feedback, but I’d love your feedback, too. Please use the comment box below.

I like to think that I am a man of the world—or, to be more accurate, having attained the grand age of fourteen, I am now two-thirds of a man of the world—and I would have you know that in my time I have seen both men dressed as women and women dressed as men. Of these, some have been most convincing. Many have been less so. Bertha, I’m afraid, didn’t even make it into this category. There was nothing feminine or effeminate about him whatsoever. In a sense he was simply a big, jowly bloke in a dress. No wonder Mrs. Blake’s aunt had been fascinated by him. I’m sure she’d never seen anything like him in her life.

“Look at you!” he cried, rubbing his eyes as if he’d seen a ghost. “My, ain’t you grown! Why, you’re almost a fully-fledged omi,” he said, meaning ‘man’ in palari, the actors’ slang he liked to use. “So where the hell you been, then?”

“Well, I wasn’t sent to some Australian penal colony, if that’s what you imagined.”

He blinked. “Wot, then?”

“I simply needed a break from the Life, that’s all.”

“But where d’you take yourself off to? Ain’t no one just disappears like that.”

No? I’d managed it pretty well up until now.

“I went to live in Edinburgh,” I lied.

“Edinbra?” He considered this carefully. “Ain’t that somewhere up norf?”

By the time I agreed that it was, he’d already begun to lose interest. Instead he was employing his critical eye to give me a quick once-over.

“Well, well, well! You’ve grown to be quite a looker, ’aven’t ya? You seeing anyone, then? If not, I’d be more than happy to—”
“No, Bertha, I’m really flattered, truly I am, but…”

“No, no, no! I ain’t talking about me!” He wagged a fleshy finger in my face. “You got to learn to lower those sights of yours, lad. No, I was trying to tell you ’bout this matrimonial bureau wot I runs now—strictly a sideline, o’ course. A young omi such as yourself, I could get you fixed up in a jiffy.”
“But what if I don’t want to be fixed up?”

He wasn’t listening. Something or someone had caught his attention on the other side of the piazza.
“’Ere, Florrie, get those scrawny little hips over ’ere! Octopus, I want you to meet Florrie. Florrie, this here’s Octopus.”

“Octopus?” The girl Bertha had summoned was gawking shamelessly at my eyes. “That’s an unusual name,” she said. She was dressed, as most of the market girls were, in a blouse and skirt, with a shawl draped over her shoulders. Her blonde hair was pulled back from her face and tied up with a black velvet band.

“Forget those bona big ogles, girl,” chortled Bertha, referring to my eyes. “It’s his lills you ought to be worried about. ’E’s got eight of ’em.”

“Eight?” Florrie’s gaze dropped to my hands in a panic. She gave a sigh of relief when she saw I only had two.

“This young omi used to troll through the streets lifting wallets left, right, and center—just like an octopus would if it ’ad any real appreciation of money! You keep your eye on him, girl, or his lills will be all over you in no time.” The girl blushed as Bertha gave a deep throaty chuckle. “First assignation’s free,” he continued, now addressing me, “it’s the second that’ll cost ya; strictly no third unless it’s a wedding!” Bertha gave me a big, theatrical wink. “Got to make it look proper, see; I won’t have no one thinking I’m procuring. Me, I’m a respectable woman!”

Florrie and I regarded each other in a state of nervous embarrassment. She looked almost alarmed; I’m sure I did too.

“Young people these days!” griped Bertha. “No sense of romance! Go on, Florrie, if he ain’t going to kiss ya, you may as well give us a hand with these posies.”

The two of them knelt on the pavement and began binding stems with green twine.

“So how’s the flower business going?” I asked. “Everything in the garden blooming?”

“Mustn’t grumble, mustn’t grumble,” he replied. “’Ere, wot do you think of my new line of patter?” He bowed his head, pulled his shawl across his mouth, and started whispering the same catchphrase he’d whispered before: “Buy a nice posy from a poor, honest woman, sir? Or a bouquet for your sweet, faithful wife?”

“It’s good. Really good.” It was a definite improvement on the one I remembered: ‘Varder me dolly flowers, sir.’—meaning, look at my pretty flowers—‘Get ’em quick before they die.’
Bertha grinned.

“I hear you were over on Wigmore Street yesterday,” I said.

The grin faded. “Oh? And where d’you hear that?”

“Some friends of mine were accosted…by a gang. The odd thing is, when I asked them about it, they managed to describe you perfectly.”

“Friends of yours, eh?”

“People I care about, yes.”

He took a moment to digest this. “Shame,” he said. “Seems like a poor, decent woman can’t go nowhere no more wiffout being set on by ruffians.”

“Wigmore Street’s a bit outside your territory, Bertha. And that got me thinking. This job had to be special—planned to order by someone much higher up.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know, ’cos I wasn’t there!” he bawled.

We eyed each other warily, like a pair of fractious circus tigers, until Bertha finally cracked and looked away. It wasn’t stalemate yet, however, for I still had one move left to me.

“So you weren’t the one who slipped the daguerreotype in the old lady’s bag?” I said.

For the second time in twenty minutes, Bertha’s pock-marked face shot up. Florrie, who’d been watching our little exchange with increasing discomfort, rose to her feet and announced she was leaving.

“No, you stay right where you are,” Bertha growled at her, even though he was glaring at me. “It’s young Octopus here wot needs to leave. Go on, Octopus—” And here he bellowed a two-word Anglo-Saxon phrase at me, causing everyone in the square to look.

I beat a tactical retreat into the bustling piazza, and hid myself behind a barrow-load of celery. I’d purposely kicked the hornets’ nest, and I wanted to see what Bertha would do next. I didn’t have to wait long. Leaving his stall in Florrie’s care, he threw his shawl over his shoulders and set off at a cracking pace down King Street. Despite the considerable number of pedestrians, he made an easy target to follow. His yellow cap and ribbons bobbed a good six inches above most of the heads in the crowd.
At the corner he turned north, as if heading towards Long Acre, but then pulled up short outside a public house. I knew the pub, but only by reputation: they regularly staged bare-knuckled prize fights there. It was the Lamb and Flag, referred to hereabouts as the Bucket of Blood. After a moment’s hesitation, Bertha went inside.

I crept up to the windows and peered in. Though the hour was still early, business was brisk, as it tends to be for any pub on a market day. I scoured the room, but there was no sign of Bertha. I stepped back a little and gazed up at the windows above. Was one of the old crew up there, holding court in a private suite? Perhaps even Ned himself, if he still happened to be in charge. How would he react when he heard I was back, I wondered?

It seemed as if I had a choice. Burst in and confront him, or whoever it was who was running things now—a strategy that hadn’t played so well with Bertha—or wait and see what would happen. I took a coin from my pocket and flipped it. Tails. Better to wait.

I returned to the corner and stood by the railings, watching and biding my time. Ten minutes passed, and then twenty. At last the door opened, and Bertha emerged.

I held my ground for a moment as he marched away, curious to see if anyone else would appear. When no one did, I sped off after him, just in time to see him cross the road into Bedford Street. At the Strand he turned left and began to head east, past Temple Bar into Fleet Street. The pavement here was not so crowded, so I could afford to fall back a little.

Still he trundled eastwards, past St. Paul’s, past London Bridge, then past the Tower. Now came the docks with their innumerable ships moored up in miniature cities. Gulls reeled and circled among the masts against the steel-gray, mid-morning sky. Surrounded by beer-bellied dockers, Bertha was in his element, lapping up the hoots and wolf whistles he’d started to attract.

Somewhere between the London Dock and the East London Dock, Bertha paused. He peered to his right, then took a road that led down towards the river. A few minutes later he made another quick turn, this time to his left. As I came round the corner, I saw that he’d reached his destination. He’d joined a small line of people queuing up outside an octagonal marble tower. As those in the queue were all dressed rather fashionably, Bertha stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. So did the tower, come to that. Being new, and built of pale gray marble, it seemed truly at odds with the neighboring warehouses, all of which had seen better days. Gradually the line grew shorter and Bertha vanished within.

I followed a minute or so later, in time to see him picking a fight with a man in a ticket booth. “But it’s only a penny!” I heard the chap saying, as I popped my head round the entrance.

“A penny’s a penny!” growled Bertha. “And I’m not some damned sightseer; I’m ’ere on business! Now bleedin’ well let me in!”

Grudgingly the fellow complied, operating the narrow brass turnstile to allow him to pass.

I made my way across the blue and white tiled floor and handed over my penny. The man still looked livid from his encounter with Bertha, so I was dreading asking for a receipt—a matter of some necessity for me, for Mr. Bruff’s clerk who handles the petty cash claims is a tyrant where receipts are concerned. But before I’d plucked up the courage to do so, the man pressed some kind of lever, and I was forcibly propelled through the turnstile gates and spat out on the other side. I suppose I could have knocked on the back door of the ticket booth, but even I have my pride. In front of me loomed a doorway. Without knowing quite what to expect, I squared my shoulders and stepped on through.

I found myself at the top a circular shaft, lit entirely by gaslight. A lengthy spiral staircase descended forty feet or so to a marble floor below. Here and there, there were landings to break the descent, hung with paintings of palaces and waterfalls. There was even the odd plaster statue or two. Ghostly organ music echoed up from the depths, Rule Britannia, The Marseillaise, and a number of other tunes that sounded stirring enough, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. Below me, I saw that Bertha had nearly reached the bottom of the stairs. I quickened up my pace; I didn’t want to lose him in the crowd.

He barely glanced at the sideshow attractions dotted about the room (‘Your Fortune Told’, ‘The Egyptian Rune Reader’, ‘The Monkey Answers All Your Questions’), and made directly for the pair of tunnel entrances that stood opposite the stairs. Choosing the right-hand one, he set off down it, with me still in hot pursuit.

The tunnel seemed to stretch for as far as the eye could see. Strategically positioned gas lamps lit the way, and every so often there was a gap in the wall that allowed access from one tunnel to the other. Stalls selling various lines of cheap goods were set up in each of these gaps, staffed in the main by pallid young women, with skin that was even paler than mine. Ahead of me, Bertha drew up in front of one such stall and began to examine the merchandise. As I huddled against the tunnel wall, I felt a drop of ice cold water hit the back of my neck and trickle its way down my collar. By now I had a very good idea where I was.

Bertha was on the move again. As I passed the stall where he’d stopped, I glanced down at the ribbons he’d been inspecting. Each had the words ‘Souvenir of the Thames Tunnel’ woven through it. I’d been right. Here I was in the world’s first sub-aquatic tunnel, well below the bed of the Thames, with ten thousand of tons of water pressing down on me!

My moment of reflection came at a cost. When I looked up, Bertha had vanished.

He couldn’t have gone far, I reasoned; my attention had wavered for a few seconds at most. I kept going in the direction he’d been heading. To my left was another gap, this time with a stall selling magic lantern slides. Twenty yards on, there was another, this one a coffee shop decked out with tables, nearly all of which were occupied. An eccentric-looking waiter in a costermonger’s jacket, stitched with rows of mother-of-pearl buttons, weaved his way between the tables delivering drinks and light refreshments. Bertha couldn’t have got any further than this.

I moved swiftly through the underwater coffee shop, searching amongst the faces, till I came out in the adjacent tunnel. I peered up and down. Bertha was nowhere to be seen. I retraced my steps back to the shaft, checking each of the stalls as I went. As impossible as it seemed, Bertha had given me the slip.
I loitered at the base of the stairs and watched the procession of people. I made a tour of the room, and examined the organ that was churning out music. Driven by steam, it somehow managed to play itself. I considered consulting the monkey, the one that ‘Answers All Your Questions’, for I had several that were puzzling me deeply. The problem was his method. Two nuts were placed on a board before him; one on a square that said ‘yes’, the other on a square that said ‘no’. The nut he chose first indicated his answer. Is Bertha still in the tunnel? Is Bertha still in the right-hand tunnel? At a penny a shot, and with only yes-or-no answers to guide me, it could cost a small fortune to locate Bertha this way. I took out a coin, but it wasn’t for the monkey. Should I stay or should I go? I flipped it.

Heads. Stay, then.

I wandered back to the coffee shop, took a seat, and ordered a piece of cake from the man in the button-clad jacket. Idly I wondered where he kept his supplies, for he was doing a roaring trade.
The afternoon wore on. I began to notice that nearly everything in the tunnel cost a penny. It was rather clever, really; for the price of a couple of nice, fat herrings anyone could buy a piece of tat to remind themselves of their time spent down here. I bought a candle at one stall and moved on to the next, which just happened to sell writing equipment. It was staffed by a young woman with bright auburn hair, whose mouth gaped open in an undisguised yawn. I couldn’t resist following her example, and gave a big yawn myself.

“Who buys these things?” I asked, as I browsed through the pencils and dip-pens laid out on the white marble counter-top, each stamped with the brand, ‘Souvenir of the Thames Tunnel’.

“Tourists,” she replied without enthusiasm.

“How much?” I asked, selecting a fine looking pencil for Julius. “No, don’t tell me. It’s a penny, right?” I saw her eyes roll towards the ceiling. “Oh, and may I have a receipt, please?” I added.

“A receipt for a penny?”

“If you would be so kind…?”

She threw me a look of pure hatred.

Before too long the music ground to a halt, and stewards began to herd everyone out. “Ladies and Gentlemen! The Tunnel is closing in fifteen minutes. Please make your way to the exits!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I nipped up the stairs and was outside in a shot. Night had fallen, but it couldn’t have been late. I took shelter in a nearby doorway and watched as people emerged—first the patrons, who took their sweet time about it, and then the staff (including the monkey), who were champing at the bit to get home. The waiter from the coffee shop had changed out of his jacket. He looked positively run-of-the-mill without it. The last person to leave was the man from the ticket booth; it was he who was in charge of locking up. He took the task seriously—he checked the doors twice before tucking his keys in his pocket. I followed him as he set off towards the river, making, as it turned out, for the nearest public house.

Retrieving the receipt for my pencil, I crumpled it a little (to add an air of authenticity), then ran up and tapped him on the elbow.

“Yes?” he said, peering down at me, as his fingers closed round the handle of the pub’s glazed door.

“Sir,” I addressed him in my most earnest voice, “I believe that you might have dropped this.” I held out the receipt for inspection.

He looked at it, recognized the commercially-printed header, and dismissed my claim with a wave of his hand. Then he pulled the door open and stepped into the pub, shutting me out on the footpath.

Though I kept my face blank, on the inside I was beaming, for I now had his full set of keys.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, July 25th.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.

So what did you think? Love it, or hate it, or still too early to tell? Find any typos or continuity errors? Please let me know—use the comment box below.

Getting in was easy. The biggest key opened the main door. Once I was in, I locked it behind me and lit the candle I’d bought. I thought the turnstile might prove problematic, but for some reason the mechanism had been disengaged, and now it turned freely. By simple trial and error I found the key to the shaft, unlocked the door, and made my way down the stairs.

It was extraordinary the transformation that had taken place in little under an hour. Before the Thames Tunnel had seemed like a fairground; now, minus the gaslights, the organ, and the ebb and flow of the patrons, it felt more like an empty crypt. The only sound to be heard was the occasional pitter-patter of the river raining down from above.

I retraced my steps down the right-hand passage, keeping my wary eyes peeled. The marble counters had been cleared of their merchandise, so it was hard to gauge the distance I’d come. Ahead of me lay the coffee shop, its tables now bare. Though I had no idea where the rest of the tat had gone, I knew exactly where the coffee shop’s provisions were stored, for I’d kept a careful eye on the waiter every time he went to fetch more cakes.

I sent up a quick prayer to St. Quentin, patron saint of locksmiths, that one of my new-found keys would fit the storeroom door, for though there may be no swifter, slipperier pickpocket in all of London, I have to admit to a certain ham-fistedness when it comes to picking locks. I knew the theory, of course, but had always had a tough time putting it into practice.

I found the key on the fifth try, and felt the bolt slide back as the teeth engaged. Cautiously I prized open the door and took a look inside.

Running parallel with the tunnel, the room was narrow and long. It smelled overwhelmingly of coffee, and as I shone my candle around I spied a large cast-iron coffee grinder in the corner. Most of the space was taken up with shelving on which dozens of cakes—mainly Dundee cakes and Bakewell tarts—were stored. Further down there were bottles; fortified wines, by the looks of things.

Suddenly I heard a moan—a low muffled keening that originated at the far end of the room. I made my way towards it, and found Bertha trussed up like a chicken, with both his hands shackled to the wall. One side of his face had been beaten, so it was a bloodied, swollen eye that stared up at me in surprise.

“Octopus?” he said, once I’d fished out the filthy tea towel that was crammed in his mouth. “Wot the hell are you doing ’ere?”

“It looks as if I’m saving your hide,” I replied, glancing over my shoulder at the array of bottles.
“’Ere, where you going?” he demanded, when I left him to collect a few bits and pieces. I returned a moment later with a bottle of port and a knife.

“Careful with that,” he kept squawking, as I sawed through his ropes. “Oi! That’s my arm, that is!”

“Stop complaining! Here, take a swig of this.” I opened the bottle and held it to his lips. He drank noisily, guzzling the plummy, sweet liquid with obvious relish.

“Ooh, that feels better,” he sighed. “Now, how’s about getting me out of these?” He raised his shackled wrists to show me his handcuffs. Grimly I stared at the lock.

“Prepare yourself, Bertha. This may take me some time.”

It did, even when I’d found a nail to use as a pick. Back in the day, I really should have paid more attention to Billy the Shim when he tried to instruct me in the mysterious ways of locks. No slower, sloppier lock-pick in all of London hasn’t quite the same ring to it as my regular sobriquet, as true as it undoubtedly is.

Between Bertha’s many calls for further refreshment and my own frequent breaks to prevent my fingers cramping, I have no real idea how long it took me—but by the time I’d finally managed to spring the catch, my hands were aching, Bertha was paralytic, and the candle had burned to a stump.

“Here, Bertha, put your arm around my shoulder.”

I slipped a few choice items from the shelves into my jacket, and then, supporting him as best I could, we staggered to the door. But as it swung open I instinctively drew back.

Something was clearly wrong. The gaslights were lit, and one quick glance was all it took to establish that Bertha and I were no longer alone. When I say that there were young women on the counters, I mean they were literally seated on the counters. And parading back and forth in front of them, eager to sample their wares, were seedy, drooling men of all shapes and sizes—and of all ages and manner of dress, come to that.

Bertha began to giggle. “Looks like the night shift’s begun.”

“Night shift?”

“The Fair Maids of Wapping. ’Ospitality offered to gentry and sailors alike, every night except Sundays.” The words came out in intoxicated fits and starts. “Nice touch, that, about the Sundays—makes it look real proper. All Johnny’s idea.”

“Johnny?”

“You remember Johnny!”

I shook my head.

“Nah, ’course you do, Octopus. Johnny Knight. Goes by the name Johnny Full Moon these days—Johnny Full-Moon-Every-Bleedin’ Knight.”

“Johnny Knight’s running things now?”

Bertha nodded.

Oh, I remembered Johnny, all right. We’d risen up through the ranks together—me because of my skills; Johnny because he took risks…lunatic risks—hence the reference to the full moon, I imagined. Even when I eventually came to outrank him, I was always wary of Johnny, for Johnny Knight wasn’t just some mad risk-taker, he also had a nasty vicious streak. What, I wondered, had become of Ned, the man who’d been in charge when I was around?

“Bertha, listen; this is important! Will Johnny be here tonight?”

“Might be. Wot day’s it?”

“It’s a Tuesday.”

“Then, nah, nah, he won’t be. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, they’re market days, see. He’ll be at the Bucket of Blood, overseeing ’is fights.”

“But these girls…they all work for Johnny?” They’d be bound to notice a fourteen-year-old boy and a man in a dress in their midst. The question was, what would they do about it?

As if reading my thoughts, Bertha pulled his shawl across the lower half of his face and steered me rather drunkenly into the tunnel.

“Concentrate, Octopus!” he whispered in my ear. “You’re an omi and I’m a palone,” by which he meant that I was a man and he was a woman. “Wot’s more natural than a young omi like yourself desiring my company for the evening? We’re just taking little walk together, see, to find some place a bit more private? Who could object to that?”

His plan seemed to be working. We’d made it all the way to the shaft before anyone clocked that something was amiss. The girl I’d requested a receipt from, the one with the auburn tresses, spotted me and began raising all hell.

“What’s he doing down here?” she shrieked, pointing in my direction. But the client she was with wasn’t having it; he clearly had other things on his mind. He grabbed her wrists, forced himself on top of her, and started smothering her cries with his kisses. The more she protested the more passionate he became. As quickly as I could—which was not quickly at all—I bundled Bertha up the stairs.

I had no idea what I would find at the top, but I prayed that it wouldn’t be the chap whose keys I had lifted. It wasn’t. It was some oily-haired toad-of-a-man, who, according to Bertha’s overly-loud whisperings, ran the ticket booth in the Rotherhithe shaft.

Now I had the problem of what I was going to do with Bertha, who’d begun to nod in and out of consciousness. I needed him to answer my questions, so I needed him sober and awake. My only option, it seemed, was to take Bertha home with me. As foolish and risky as this proposition appeared, I felt I had no other choice.

Reeling under his weight, I propelled him back towards the main road. I had very little money left, and doubted that any cabbies in this neck of the woods would recognize me as Mr. Bruff’s office boy and offer to take my fare on account. But I had a plan. First I had to find a cab—easier said than done—then I had to convince the driver to take us back to the Cally Road, a distance of some few miles, in exchange for a bottle of port. In the end I had to throw in a Dundee cake as well, to sweeten what was already a very good deal.

“Oh, Octopus, Octopus!” moaned Bertha, as Julius helped me to lower him on to my bed-roll an hour or so later.

“Why is he calling you that?” asked Julius, his eyes fixed nervously on Bertha. “And why is he wearing a dress?”

“Perhaps he’s in disguise,” I suggested, hoping that this might satisfy his curiosity.

“It’s not a very good disguise, Octavius.”

Looking down at the large, clumsy figure with the battered face, I could only agree. “No, it isn’t, is it? The truth is, Julius, Bertha thinks he’s a woman.”

“But he’s not a woman.”

“No, I know he’s not. But just try to understand that he thinks he is.”

My brother took a moment to consider this. “I’ll try. I’m not sure it will work, though,” he added, as Bertha started to snore.

“Hungry?” I asked, as I produced a second Dundee cake from my jacket.

“Starved!”

I cut two massive wedges and his smile became animated once more. As we ate, I quizzed him about the ‘panic word’ I had drilled into him from a very early age. With Bertha in our midst, my former life was now too close for comfort.

“Do you mean ‘Unnecessary’?” he said, his smile fading fast. “I don’t have to write it again, do I?”

“No, no,” I reassured him, remembering every bungled attempt that had featured too many c’s, and not enough n’s or s’s. “I just want to be sure that you’re clear about what you’re to do if I ever use that word in your hearing.”

“I’m meant to run, Octavius. Run as fast as I possibly can.”

I smiled. “And what are you supposed to do then?”

“Hide myself until night falls, then make my way back here.”
“And then?”
“Well, if you’re not here, or it’s not safe, or you don’t return by morning, I’m meant to go to Gray’s Inn Square and present myself to your employer, Mr. Bruff.”

“And if anyone tries to stop you from entering the building?”

“I dash past them—whoever they are. I run up the stairs and find Mr. Bruff’s office, which is halfway along the corridor. I knock respectfully—unless I’m being chased, in which case I rush in.”

“And what do you tell Mr. Bruff?”

“I tell him that I am your brother Julius, and that something bad has happened to you. If he doesn’t believe I’m your brother, I tell him to look at my eyes, for they should be proof enough.”

I beamed at him. “Here, I have a present for you,” I said, and handed over the pencil.

“Oh, thank you, Octavius! I love it! What does it say?”

“It says ‘Souvenir of the Thames Tunnel’”

“Does that mean we have to do a word tonight?” He glanced uneasily at Bertha.

“No, it’s late. You should get some sleep.”

Julius collected his bed-roll and laid it out as far away from Bertha as he could manage. I briefly considered falling asleep in my chair, but then thought better of it. I fetched my winter coat off the peg, spread it out like a rug in front of the door, and stretched out on top of it. If Bertha woke before me, there was no way he was getting out of here without waking me first.

In the event, I needn’t have worried, for it was Julius who woke me when he was leaving for work. Bertha was also awake. He sat slumped over the table, cradling his head in his hands. He glanced up at me as I joined him, and let out a mournful groan.

“’E’s got your ogles” he said, gingerly tracing the cut on his cheek with the tip of his finger. “Is ’e your brother, then? If he ain’t, he ought to be. ’E’s like this tiny, little you. Oh, gawd, me head bleedin’ hurts!”

“Who did this to you, Bertha?”

“That omi…the one wot calls himself ‘The Client’.”

“What on earth did you do to make him beat you and chain you up?”

“I don’t know, do I? Johnny sent me to give him a message. I give him his message—and everything’s sweet—then all of a sudden he turns round and whacks me in the face!”

“What message, Bertha?”

“Well, you know, just what you told me…how it’s really the old lady wot’s got the duggairiotype now. And I says, ‘It must be a damned good likeness, to go to this much trouble getting it back.’ Next thing you know, he whacks me in the eek!” Bertha sniffed. “They’re not always bona likenesses, see, and I know that for a fact. You remember Pan-faced Dora? The palone with the mole, wot she claimed was a beauty spot?”

I was forced to admit that I did. There’d been a cruel, heartless saying about Dora’s beauty spot, how it was in fact the only spot of beauty that Dora possessed.

“Well, each week Dora would put a little something aside from her earnings, and, when she’d saved up enough, she and ’er girlfriend went and got their pictures took. When she showed it to me, I couldn’t believe me ogles. Dora’s mole had upped and moved itself over to the other cheek! Never told her, mind. It would have had her spitting nails.”

“Bertha, I need you to be honest with me…it really wasn’t you who put the daguerreotype in the old lady’s handbag?”

Bertha sighed and shook his head. “Of course it wasn’t, Octopus. I was the one wot was meant to lift it, see? But I never got the chance. The mark must’ve ditched it in the old girl’s bag, so, when it came down to it, she never had it on ’er.”

“The mark?”

“The girl—the one we was meant to follow. The feelie palone wot was carrying the duggairiotype round with her.”

“Girl? What girl?”

He tutted. “The one wot works as a lady’s maid. She was the one that the Client hired us to lift it from.”

Lady’s maid? Surely he couldn’t be talking about Miss Penelope? No, it was unthinkable. And yet, when I did think about it, it was the only way that this thing made sense.

Though I still couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it fully, I was sure of one thing. Bertha was telling me the truth.

Gooseberry continues next Friday, August 1st.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry, but be warned, as this week’s post reflects on the process of writing, it contains spoilers.

So what did you think? Did you love it, or hate it? Did you find any typos or continuity errors? Please let me know—use the comment box below.

“Where was you yesterday?” George hissed into my left ear, as he trudged beside me down the corridor in the direction of Mr. Crabbit’s office.

“Yes, where was you?” echoed his namesake in my right. “We was made to run errands!”

“That’s right. Errands. All of them!”

I thought about different ways to respond to this—including (but not limited to, as Mr. Bruff would have me add) the obvious, the fact that, as office boys, this was their job—but then it suddenly dawned on me. If I wanted to cause a reaction, why not tell them the truth?

“George, George, if you really want to know, yesterday Mr. Bruff paid me to sit in a coffee shop and eat cake.”

“You was eating cake while we was running us-selves ragged?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And Mr. Bruff was paying you?”

“Well, he will have paid me as soon as I claim back my expenses,” I said. And, with that, I pulled my receipts from my pocket and knocked briskly on Mr. Crabbit’s door.

A crotchety voice called out, “Enter!”

To rub salt into their wounds, I purposely left the door ajar as I strode into the petty cash clerk’s tiny sanctuary, so that George and George would be able to witness the transaction for themselves. As it turned out, this was a gross miscalculation on my part.

Mr. Crabbit inspected each of the three receipts I handed him as if he were a judge assessing the admissibility of evidence in a murder case.

“What’s this, boy?” he asked.

“It’s a receipt for a pencil, sir. I had to buy a pencil in order to make some notes.” The way I saw it, I had bought the pencil for my brother out of my own pocket; I was simply using the receipt in lieu of the one I had failed to get at the ticket booth.

“I can see it’s for a pencil, boy. No, look again. Look carefully. What’s this?”

“It’s crumpled?”

He smiled and lowered his spectacles on to the bridge of his nose. “Yes, it’s crumpled.”

“So?”

“Observe, boy.” Without turning to look himself, he raised a short, bony finger and pointed to the sign that hung behind him on the wall:

No illegible receipts
No indecipherable receipts
No torn receipts
No crumpled receipts
No defaced receipts
No stained or water-damaged receipts
No receipts with additions or alterations
No receipts that require further explanation

A burst of muffled sniggering wafted through the doorway. Mr. Crabbit rose from his desk like a whirlwind—not an easy task for a slight, balding man of his particular stature—and pulled the door open as if he were about to rip it off its hinges, unstoppable force of nature that he had become.

“George and George. Why am I not surprised? Well? What do you require?”

“N-nothing, sir.”

“N-no, sir, nothing.”

“Then be about your business, both of you, before I report your idleness to Mr. Bruff.”

Mr. Crabbit shut the door and calmly returned to his desk.

Having collected my money, but only for the cake and the candle, I made my way up the stairs to Mr. Bruff’s office. The Georges were perched on the bench outside. They scowled at me as I knocked and entered.

I was in two minds as to just how much of yesterday’s adventure I was prepared to share with Mr. Bruff. Without incriminating Miss Penelope directly—a thing that I wished to avoid until I’d had a chance to investigate her myself—it seemed prudent not to reveal too much. Too many facts were bound to lead to questions, and questions demanded answers—answers that I wasn’t yet ready to give. Mr. Bruff, bless him, was quite entranced by the dry and rather limited account of my movements, as I described how I had traced the flower girl in question, followed her to a nearby pub noted for hosting bare-knuckled fistfights, then trailed her as she made her way east as far as the Thames Tunnel, where, upon entering, she had managed to give me the slip. I summed up by saying that I was sure I could trace the girl again, and that I had devised a plan for making her talk.

“Excellent work, Gooseberry,” said Mr. Bruff. “I really don’t know how you manage it.”

It’s easy, I thought. I simply leave out all the important parts, such as the fact that the flower girl was actually a man, who was currently moping about in my lodgings, too scared to set foot outside my door. And he would happily whistle like a canary if he thought I might turf him out.

Aloud I said, “Sir, it occurs to me that the gang may attack again.”

It was almost certain they would, now that they thought Mrs. Blake’s aunt was in possession of the daguerreotype.

“You may be right. I’ll warn the Blakes to take extra precautions.”

“I think you should include Mrs. Merridew, too.”

Mr. Bruff grunted his assent. He took out a sheet of paper and began to scrawl a hasty note.

“George!” he called out at the top of his voice. I kept my eye on the door, curious to see which one of them would appear.

It was the younger of the two who answered the call. He glared at me mutinously as Mr. Bruff gave him his instructions. When it came time for him to leave, instead of going, he hovered like a lump in the doorway. He turned a bright beet-red when Mr. Bruff asked what the matter was.

“Sir, why can’t you send him?” he said, pointing his finger at me. “George and me, we ran all the errands yesterday. Why can’t he go this time?”

Mr. Bruff raised his eyebrows. “Gooseberry? No, it’s out of the question. I require Gooseberry for other duties.”

“Like bleedin’ eating cake,” George muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

He scowled angrily at Mr. Bruff and then he scowled at me. “I didn’t say nothing,” he replied at last, before finally shutting the door.

For several seconds Mr. Bruff sat staring at the spot where George had been standing. “Would you believe that boy is only sixteen? The other one’s seventeen, yet they waddle about like a pair of middle-aged men. I only have myself to blame. I should never have allowed them to become so slothful or fat.”

Mr. Bruff rose, took a key from his desk drawer, and proceeded to open his office safe. He extracted the daguerreotype, dusted it down with his fingers, and placed it in his pocket.

“Come,” he said. “We have an appointment with a certain gentleman in Hanover Square. I am hopeful that he will be able to identify the people in this picture.”

Again he requested my presence in the cab. As he was in an amiable mood, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to bring up the matter of my expenses.

“Mr. Bruff, sir,” I began, “last night I was obliged to take a cab home from Wapping. As I didn’t have any money, I was forced to find an alternative method of payment.”

Mr. Bruff stared at me. “Octavius, please tell me that you didn’t resort to stealing?”

“I didn’t filch anyone’s wallet, sir.” Which was true as far as it went. Mr. Bruff looked touchingly relieved. “But if I am to investigate this case as you would have me do…” I left it up to my employer to finish the sentence.

“Then you will require sufficient funds to enable you move about the city at will. Yes, I can see that. I shall have a word with Mr. Crabbit when we return to the office. He will provide you with an allowance by the end of the day.”

The cab turned off Oxford Street into Hanover Square and pulled up outside an impressive-looking building, which, Mr. Bruff explained, was a rather exclusive gentleman’s club. He also warned me that there might be a problem about my accompanying him in. There was. The man at the desk was quite adamant that on no account were children to be admitted to the Oriental Club. We remained in that polite state of impasse until Mr. Murthwaite, the gent we had come to see, arrived and insisted that the three of us be shown to a private chamber, out of sight and out of sound of any member who might object to my obviously troublesome and distressing presence. The man at the desk regarded me sullenly, and called for one of his minions. I returned his look with a beaming smile as the underling led us away.

We were shown to a surprisingly nice room, the likes of which Mr. Bruff might call ‘well appointed’. It had a roaring fire down one end, and prints of Indian scenes on the walls. Upon entering, Mr. Murthwaite, a tall, lean man with skin the color of mahogany, turned to my employer and clasped his hand warmly.

“It’s been a long time,” he said.

“Too long, sir,” Mr. Bruff replied. “May I present Octavius Guy, one of my most trusted and valued employees, who, you might be interested to hear, was instrumental in unraveling the mystery of the Moonstone diamond?”

A pair of steady, attentive eyes studied me with interest. The gentleman whom they belonged to reached out and offered me his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Octavius.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, sir.”

“Mr. Murthwaite is the celebrated Indian traveler, famed for his exploits in the East,” Mr. Bruff explained.

“If we have time, I do hope you will honor me by relating your contribution to the Moonstone affair, for I had some small part to play in it myself. However, I believe Mr. Bruff wishes to consult me on another matter first.”

“I do, sir.” My employer took the daguerreotype from his pocket. “I wonder if you can cast any light on this?”

Mr. Murthwaite opened the case and gazed at the photograph. For a minute he neither moved nor spoke.

“What is it you would like to know?” he asked presently.

“Can you identify either of these people?”

“Certainly. During my time in India I was privileged to meet them both. The man’s name is Login. Dr. John Login. Solid sort. Dependable. The boy seated next to him is Duleep Singh, the Maharajah of Lahore, leader of the deeply troubled Sikh Empire.”

“The boy’s a maharajah?” I burst out, unable to hold my tongue. Note to self: if you can keep your expression suitably blank when you’re pocketing things, surely you can learn to control your tongue?

Mr. Murthwaite smiled. “He most certainly is. He was five when he assumed the title. He would would be about your age now, Octavius. I imagine this photograph was taken two or three years ago.”

“This Dr. Login, is he some kind of adviser?” inquired Mr. Bruff.

“In one sense, yes. Though it may be fairer to say that he is boy’s warder. It’s a long story.”

“Sir, I would be grateful if you can tell me anything you can.”

Mr. Murthwaite nodded. “Then we should sit.”

He herded us towards the fireplace and we took our seats around the fire.

“Duleep’s father was the great Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab,” he began, “who conquered the rival Sikh nations and forged them into one great Sikh empire. During the course of his life he took several wives, who between them bore him a total of eight sons. Only two of these were ever recognized as his legitimate offspring, however: Kharak, the eldest, and Duleep, the youngest, who was born barely a year before Ranjit’s death in 1839.

“Naturally, it fell to Kharak to succeed him. But within three months Kharak found himself brought up on charges of sedition, the most damning of which alleged that he’d been colluding with the British. You can bet your last cheroot that these charges were pure trumpery, for they were based solely on the rumors spread by one man—Ranjit’s old adviser, the Wazir Dhian Dogra, a deceitful wretch who had designs on the throne himself. Nevertheless Kharak was deposed and imprisoned, and died within the year, the victim of slow and gradual poisoning.

“It was Kharak’s son, the nineteen-year-old Nau Nihal, who inherited the title on his father’s deposition—though he was not to hold it for long, as things turned out. He was struck by falling masonry when re-entering the Fort of Lahore, having just overseen his father’s cremation. While his companion was killed outright, Nau Nihal was merely wounded. Dhian had the unconscious ruler dragged inside, and then ordered the gates to be locked, so that none, not even his mother Chand Kaur, could enter the fort. By the time she was permitted to see him, a strange transformation had occurred. What was once a simple flesh wound had become a mortal injury. Somehow his skull was now cracked wide open, and Nau Nihal lay dead.”

Mr. Bruff threw me a nervous look. I think he was worried that the tone the story was beginning to take on was unsuitable for my young, delicate ears. Bless his naive, deluded soul!

“Chand Kaur now proclaimed herself regent,” Mr. Murthwaite continued, “ruling in the place of Nau Nihal’s as yet unborn son, for, as it happened, Nau Nihal’s young widow was with child. Chand’s brazenness so infuriated the wazir Dhian that he wrote at once to Sher Singh, son of Ranjit by his estranged first wife, urging him to muster his troops and march on Lahore. Sher Singh did as the wazir requested, and after the ensuing battle, Chand Kaur conceded defeat. She agreed to retire to her late son’s palace on one singularly ill-conceived condition: that she receive a pension of a million rupees. It was a fatal error of judgment on her part. When her daughter-in-law gave birth to a stillborn infant—signaling the end of Kharak’s bloodline and any further claim to power—Dhian replaced her servants with his own, and had them club her brutally to death.”

“I say,” Mr. Bruff interjected, “remember the boy is listening!”

“Do not trouble yourselves on my account, good sirs,” I tried to reassure them both. “There’s nothing I love more than a good story, and the bloodthirstier the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

Mr. Bruff nearly choked. Mr. Murthwaite, on the other hand, burst out laughing.

“Then I shall try to make the climax as gruesome as I can,” he promised. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Sher Singh. By all accounts the new leader was anxious to re-establish harmonious relations between all the feuding Sikh factions. He managed to broker approximately twenty months of relative peace, but then, one morning, when he was attending a friendly wrestling match on the outskirts of the city, he was lured outside by a pair of brothers who’d been supporters of the late Chand Kaur. Sher had always had a fascination with weapons, so when they offered to show him their latest rifle, he readily agreed to accompany them. As Sher took the barrel in his hand to examine it, the first brother pulled the trigger and shot the maharajah in the chest. The second brother then took his sword and hacked off the poor man’s head. That done, the pair rode away to Lahore, carrying the severed head with them. They tracked down the wazir and made him grovel at their feet, then placed the rifle at his temple and put a bullet through his brain. Which is how the five-year-old Duleep came to rule an empire, although, of course, it was his mother who acted as his regent.”

“Extraordinary!” I cried, clapping for all I was worth while Mr. Bruff sat fuming.

Mr. Murthwaite took out his cigarette case and extracted a cigarette, having offered Mr. Bruff one first. He lit it, drew the smoke into his lungs, then blew it out again towards the ceiling.

“In December of 1845,” he said, “Britain declared war on the Sikh nation, in what was to become known as the First Anglo-Sikh War. They—or should I say we?—won.” I sensed a touch of bitterness in his voice. “Although they kept Duleep as the nominal figurehead, they imprisoned his mother, and subsequently sent her into exile. After the Second Anglo-Sikh War four years later, Britain annexed the Punjab, deposed young Duleep, and placed him in the care of Dr. John Login. At first the two of them went to live in the fortress of Fatehgarh. I imagine they hoped that his followers would come to forget him. Out of sight and out of mind, and all that. In all likelihood, this photograph of yours dates from that period. 1849; 1850, at most. It can’t be any later.”

“Why not?” asked Mr. Bruff.

“Because although Fatehgarh was capable of holding a twelve-year-old boy captive with astonishing ease, it proved unequal to the task of containing his story. While Duleep remained on Indian soil, he would always inspire supporters. So last year they brought him here to England on the pretext of visiting the Great Exhibition. I know this because I saw him there.”

“So the maharajah’s here? Do you know by any chance where he is staying?”

“I may be on a nodding acquaintance with royalty, Mr. Bruff, but I can hardly claim a place in his social circle. Dr. Login, on the other hand, is quite another matter. I happen to know he’s a member of this club. The secretary is bound to have his address on record. If I remember rightly, the chap runs some kind of hospital, somewhere out Richmond way. If anybody can tell you where the maharajah is staying, it is he.”

Mr. Murthwaite smiled and stubbed out his cigarette. He closed the clasp of the daguerreotype and handed it back to my employer.

“Now, Octavius,” he said, as he turned to me, “it’s almost midday. Let us see how that damnable lackey, who refused you entry, likes it when I order us all a good, slap-up dinner.”


Gooseberry continues next Friday, August 8th.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.

So what did you think? Did you find any typos or continuity errors? Please let me know—use the comment box below.

Lunch started off with a carrot soup that tasted very strange indeed. I’m not sure I liked it. Then came the main event, a dish of rice, which Mr. Murthwaite called ‘kedgeree’. He said that, although it was actually a breakfast food, he enjoyed it so much that he happily ate it at any time of day. It took my mouth a little while to get used to all the competing flavors, but, once it did, I found it was really quite more-ish. I didn’t imagine it was something I could taunt George and George with, however. I had a shrewd suspicion they’d turn their noses up at rice.

By the time we got back to the office there was a reply awaiting us from Mr. Blake. He expressed his thanks for Mr. Bruff’s concern, and assured him that he would put measures in place forthwith to increase security at both his own and Mrs. Merridew’s residences.

Mr. Bruff was true to his word, and arranged for Mr. Crabbit to provide me with a sum of money—a per diem, he called it—that I could use at my discretion, to be topped up each day as required. When I asked if I would need to provide receipts, Mr. Bruff assured me that I would not, but I wasn’t convinced that Mr. Crabbit would see things the same way. So when he called me to his office to give me my seven shillings and sixpence—an extremely generous amount on Mr. Bruff’s part—I made sure I put the question to him as well. I half expected to see his finger point to the sign on the wall.

No illegible receipts
No indecipherable receipts
Etc., etc.

Instead he shuddered a little, gritted his jaw, and said, “No receipts will be necessary.” I’m not sure there wasn’t a tear in his eye. “But,” he added quickly, in a tone that sounded like begging, “any receipts that you do provide will be gratefully received.” I almost felt sorry for him.

With the coins rattling happily around in my pocket, I set off homeward, stopping only to purchase three pork pies, a whole black pudding, and three bottles of ginger beer on the way. When I got to my lodgings, I was surprised to find the door locked. First I tried knocking. No response. Then I tried shouting.

“Bertha, it’s Octopus! Open up!”

When that didn’t work, I tried looking under the doormat for the key—for I’d given one to Bertha to lock up with, in the unlikely event that he needed to go out. There it was, damn the man! I still had a great many things that I needed to know, and he was the only person in a position to enlighten me. I picked it up off the floor and let myself in.

The room was exceedingly warm. Judging by the heat that was radiating from the stove, Bertha must have lit it before he left. When I looked, I saw a puzzling amount of firewood stacked neatly in the crate in the corner. There was twice, maybe three times as much as there had been that morning. I placed the victuals I’d bought for our supper on the table and went and stoked the fire, opening and closing the metal door with the handy makeshift tool we always use. I slipped off my jacket and sat down on a chair. I might have fallen asleep but for Julius’s arrival home.

“Octavius!” he shouted, as he ran to hug me. All at once he noticed the feast on the table. “Black pudding! Ginger beer! And are those eel pies?”

“No, pork.”

“Well,” he said philosophically, “you know I like pork pies, too, don’t you?”

“I know, Julius, I know.”

Our reunion was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. When I answered it, there stood Bertha, looking extremely sheepish.

“I hoped to get back before you did,” he said, bustling past me into the room as Julius’s face fell, “but I got stuck on the wrong side of the road, and had to wait till all those damn cows had gone by. Look, I got us some potatoes,” he added. “We’ll cook ’em and ’ave ’em for supper.”

“Bertha, I already got us some supper.”

Ignoring the spread on the table, Bertha knelt by the stove, grasped the poker, and began to rake through the ashes in an unnecessarily elaborate fashion. He inserted the trivet, and, taking care not to burn himself, placed three large potatoes on top.

“I won’t have you thinking that I don’t contribute nothing,” he mumbled, as he manipulated the stove door’s catch back into place.

“What word will we do tonight?” piped up Julius, who’d been watching all this from his seat.

“I don’t know…what word do you think will be useful?” I asked, grateful for the sudden diversion.

“How about ‘welcome’? As in, ‘I know someone here who isn’t—’”

“Julius!” I barely managed to circumvent him in time. “Can we talk about the word later, please? After we have supper?”

“Potatoes should take an hour,” growled Bertha, as he sat on the floor with his back to the wall, for Julius had piled the two remaining chairs with stacks of scrap paper.

It was one of the most uncomfortable hours I have ever spent. By the end of it, I understood one thing: scared or not, this was not a flip-a-coin situation; Bertha was not staying here.

We ate in silence, with Julius nudging his potato further and further away from him till it was perched on the edge of his plate. Bertha took a bite out of his and suddenly burst into tears.

“How can I go back?” he wailed, the soft potato chunk still swilling round his mouth. “The Client’s bound to peach on me to Johnny ’bout how I done something wrong—though for the life of me I don’t know what it was. And Johnny being Johnny, he won’t hesitate to punish me. Like as not he’ll throttle me to death. Oh, wot am I to do? Wot am I to do?”

Julius had been in the throes of biting into his pork pie when Bertha burst out crying. He now sat frozen in that position, staring at the fully-grown man before him who was sobbing into his shawl.

“Johnny always had a temper—you know wot he was like—but when he took over from Ned, it just got worse and worse. He changed, Octopus. He changed, and not for the better. Set up his headquarters at the Lamb and Flag—started running bare-knuckle fistfights out of there. Now they call it the Bucket of Blood, and with good reason, too. Those fights are to the death; it’s no holds barred with Johnny.” Bertha clapped his hand over his mouth to try and silence the great, heaving sobs that were rising up out of his chest.

“Bertha, what happened to Ned?”

“Oh, Octopus, the Yard nabbed Ned a good five years back. Hauled him up before the magistrate on some trumped-up charge of burglary. Claimed some old geezer got himself hurt while the job was going down, so everyone thought he’d swing for it. He didn’t, but they transported ’im off to Tasmania. Ned, though, he never done it. You know wot he felt about violence. There are some as say Johnny was behind it all—not to his face, o’ course. Say it to his eek and he’d cut you up in bleedin’ ribbons.”

Bertha was still sobbing sporadically throughout this and Julius was still gawking at him. I wondered how much of this my brother understood. Very little, I hoped, though even very little was more than I was comfortable with.

“Bertha, what can you tell me about the Client?”

“’E’s just some bloke wot Johnny knows. A regular at the fights, I think. Came to Johnny not long before Christmas, offering to pay him a king’s ransom to get his bleedin’ duggairiotype back.”

“What was he doing in the tunnel?”

“The tunnel’s where he works.”

“Works?” My thoughts immediately turned towards the waiter.

“Not works like you and me works.” Bertha brushed the tears from his eyes with the heel of his palm. “The Client’s a toff, see. Sits at one of the tables, right? Sits there all day, treating it like it’s ’is office. ’E wanted somewhere to base himself, like, till we got our ’ands on the picture, so Johnny suggested the tunnel. Just because ’e runs all the scams there, I reckon ’e’s come to think the tunnel’s ’is.”

“But the waiter must be working for Johnny?” He had to be. There was no way on God’s earth that he didn’t know what his storeroom had just been used for.

“Lots of ’em as work there do. They all know wot side their bread’s buttered. Gawd, I wish I’d never gone and given ’im ’is message. And by now he’ll have told Johnny all about me, and, Johnny being Johnny, who knows wot the hell he’ll do!”

No matter how much Johnny might be Johnny—no matter how sorry I might feel for Bertha—I couldn’t allow him to stay here, not at the expense of my brother’s peace of mind.

“Bertha,” I said, as gently as I could, “I understand you’ll need to lay low for a while, but after tonight I’m afraid you’ll have to—”

I felt a sudden burst of pain as a foot delivered a swift, nimble kick to my shin under the table. Julius was staring at me with big, bulging eyes—well, eyes that were bulging more than normal, that is. When he saw that he had my attention, he gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

“Octavius,” he said, keeping his voice carefully modulated, “can I have a word with you…outside, please?”

He rose and I followed. On the landing he pulled the door closed, and, as there was no moon that night, we were left standing in the dark.

“Octavius, he’s really scared.”

“I know, Julius.”

“He’s scared for his life.”

I nodded.

“This man, Johnny, is he really as bad as he says he is?”

I didn’t want to scare him, but I thought he deserved the truth. “Yes.”

“Will he hurt him?”

“Probably.”

“Then we have to let him stay.”

I smiled, not that he could see it.

“Octavius?”

“Yes, Julius?”

“How do you know Johnny?”

I sighed. I had been dreading this question. For Julius’s sake, I’d always kept my work and my private life separate. Even now that I was respectable, I still did. Mr. Bruff had no idea I had a brother.

“Julius, do you remember our mother? Do you remember when she died?”

“I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I do.”

“You were very young at the time, so I had to look after us. I had to make sure that we had food and clothes, and somewhere to sleep for the night. Sometimes that meant I had to do things, things that I wasn’t very proud of.”

“Bad things?”

Good question. “Yes, bad things,” I said, and gave him a minute to let this sink in. “Johnny also did bad things. At the start we used to work together.”

“Like you and Mr. Bruff?”

“No.” More like George and George, I thought to myself. “Mr. Bruff’s a good man.”

“Would you have done bad things if our mother hadn’t died?”

“Oh, Julius. I don’t know. I certainly hope not.”

“Octavius?”

“Yes, Julius?”

“Why does Bertha call you Octopus?”

“It’s the nickname I had when I first met him.”

“Who gave you the nickname?”

“A man named Ned.” He’d given it to me when he made me his second-in-command, but I didn’t think my brother needed to know that.

“Did Ned do bad things too?”

“Yes.”

“As bad as Johnny?”

“No. The things Johnny did were far worse.”

“Then we have to help Bertha.” Despite the dark I could sense he was smiling.

“We do, don’t we? Which one of us is going to give him the good news?”

“I know it should be you, because he’s your friend, but I would like to do it.”

We spent the remainder of the evening in far better spirits than in which we’d started. When Julius settled down to practice his word for the night—‘welcome’—he loaned Bertha his old pencil so that Bertha could practice too. Bertha was at a disadvantage, for he didn’t know his alphabet, but Julius took him in hand and taught him how to pronounce each of the letters. Soon it was time for bed. While Julius got himself ready, I took Bertha outside.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” I told him, “but know this. The less Julius knows about my past, the better. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

“And another thing. The less my past knows about Julius, the better that is, too. When all this is over—when it’s safe for you to go back to your old life—Julius will remain our little secret. You’re to tell nobody about him. All right?”

“Thieves’ honour.”

That didn’t inspire my confidence. As I knew only too well, there was no honor amongst thieves.

“Bertha, you would be wise never to cross me where Julius is concerned.” I don’t know if it was the tone of my voice that impressed him, but when Bertha responded, he sounded petrified.

“’Course. O’ course, Octopus. Our secret. I understand.”

The next morning Mr. Bruff received another summons from the Blakes. As our cab rattled its way down Oxford Street, I considered the tricky question of how much I should tell my employer. In the event, I decided against telling him anything, at least until I got a chance to question Miss Penelope myself. It was almost certain that she’d hidden the daguerreotype in Mrs. Merridew’s handbag. But if she had a good, honest reason for putting it there, why remain silent about it? Why not tell the Blakes what she had done? And how had she come to be in possession of a portrait of Duleep Singh in the first place? Had she stolen it from that shadowy figure who called himself the Client? That particular gentleman, I reflected, was definitely worthy of closer investigation, for it wasn’t the police he had turned to when it came to recovering the picture; it was the violent, bloodthirsty leader of a London-wide criminal gang. No, the Client was almost certainly more sinner than sinned against; that much was clear. But how had a lady’s maid like Miss Penelope got herself mixed up with such a man?

As the cab pulled into Montagu Square, I wondered if I was about to find out.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, August 15th.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.

So what did you think? Did you find any typos or continuity errors? Please let me know—use the comment box below.

The Blakes’ library looked much the same as it had done the previous Monday. Mrs. Blake’s aunt, Mrs. Merridew, was seated in the middle of the room with an embroidery hoop in her hand. Mr. Blake was no longer pacing; instead he was seated at the table with his wife. The fire was lit, and in front of it Mr. Betteredge, the Blake’s elderly retainer, lay dozing. His daughter, Miss Penelope, stood gazing out the window at the street outside. Although she no longer looked like she’d been in a cat fight, the late morning light showed the tension in her face.

Mr. Blake rose and shook my employer’s hand. “But where’s the swiftest, slipperiest pickpocket in all of London?” he inquired. “Is Gooseberry not joining us today?”

It occurred to me that either Mr. Blake suffered from the most rotten eyesight or he’d been trained from birth not to notice his lessers.

“I’m here, sir,” I said, as I stepped forward grasping my hat behind my back—for once again it was Samuel who had answered the door to us, and once again he’d left me holding it. After Mr. Blake made his usual fuss of me, I surreptitiously placed it on the seat of one of winged armchairs, where it was effectively hidden from view. There’d be no reproachful looks from Miss Penelope today.

“You’re the goods, Mr. Bruff! The very goods, sir,” waxed Mr. Blake lyrically. “I don’t know how you foresaw this latest attack, but I’m very glad you did.”

“It was Gooseberry who warned me it could happen. What did happen, by the way? Your message only indicated that there had been another incident.”

“There was an attempt on my wife’s aunt’s house during the night. Thanks to you and Gooseberry, Mrs. Merridew’s steward was prepared for them. He managed to fire off three shots, which sent the beggars running.”

Mr. Bruff turned to the old lady with a look of concern on his face. “Mrs. Merridew…how terribly distressing for you.”

“Not at all,” she replied. “I wasn’t even there. My niece, who is fully aware of my dislike of explosions going off in the night—pistol fire included—thought it best I come and stay with her. That way, in the event of an explosion, she would be on hand to comfort me.” She smiled at Mrs. Blake, who rose from the table and went to pat her aunt’s hand. “What I don’t understand,” she continued, “is what they were hoping to achieve.”

“I assume they were looking for the daguerreotype,” replied Mr. Bruff.

“But that makes no sense whatsoever,” Mrs. Blake pointed out. “Why would these bullies go to the trouble of planting the daguerreotype on poor Aunt Merridew, only to attempt to steal it back a few days later?”

I saw Miss Penelope’s jaw begin to clench.

“It might make sense if what we were dealing with here was not one gang but two,” Mr. Bruff suggested. “Two rival crews competing over the same photograph—one desperate to conceal it, the other to retrieve it.”

Everybody eyed him doubtfully. Only Miss Penelope, who had balled her hand into a fist, remained unmoved. As I watched, the knuckles began to turn white.

“Well, it’s just a theory,” he sighed.

And a rather poor one, as theories go, for although there were hundreds of gangs in London, none of them were rivals. Instead they were structured along army lines, with all of them reporting to Johnny. If anyone tried to set out on his or her own, Johnny would quickly put a stop to it. Even Ned, despite his marked distaste for violence, was not beyond forcibly insisting that everyone kept ranks.

“I do, however,” my employer continued, “bring news of the photograph itself. I have made some inquiries and have managed to identify the two subjects. The man is a Dr. John Login, who I am told acts the boy’s guardian. The boy himself is Duleep Singh, the Maharajah of Lahore.”

As Mr. Bruff paused for emphasis, I glanced about at people’s faces. Everyone’s mouths had dropped, including Miss Penelope’s. Whatever her part in this, this was clearly news to her.

“The boy? A maharajah?” Mr. Blake spluttered incoherently.

“Yes, although he was deposed by the British after the Second Anglo-Sikh War. I have reason to believe that he now resides in England, in the care of his guardian, who runs a hospital of sorts, out Twickenham way. I’ve written asking for an interview, and I await his reply. In the meantime, I think it might be safest if the daguerreotype remains with me.”

As there seemed to be little more to add, we started to take our leave. Having summoned Samuel to fetch Mr. Bruff’s hat and coat, Mr. Blake turned to his wife and said, “I am sorry to abandon you, Rachel dearest, but I have important speeches to write. I’ll be tucked away in my study until dinnertime.”

“Then Aunt Merridew and I will take a turn around the square,” Mrs. Blake replied.

“Are you sure that’s wise? What if there’s another attack?”

“Samuel can come with us. He’s a fair shot with a pistol. You can handle a pistol, can’t you, Samuel?” she added, as the footman returned with Mr. Bruff’s things.

“Yes, miss.”

Mr. Blake led us out into the hall; his wife and her aunt followed. I glanced back into the library, where I’d purposely left my hat sitting on the chair.

“Mr. Bruff, Gooseberry, I wish you both a good day.” Mr. Blake saluted as the door closed behind us.

We hadn’t long to wait before we spied a passing cab. Mr. Bruff hailed it at once. As soon as it had drawn to a halt, he called out our destination to the driver and climbed in.

I hung back.

“Sir,” I said, as he held the door open for me, “I seem to have forgotten my hat. I think I left it in the the library. Please don’t wait for me—I’ll retrieve it and make my own way back.”

He nodded his assent and pulled the door closed, then gave the cabbie the signal to drive on.

I went and stood a little distance from the house, waiting to see in which direction Mrs. Blake’s party would head. Thankfully they headed away from me when they finally emerged. I sprinted back to the house and rang the bell. As I had hoped, it was Miss Penelope who answered the door.

“Gooseberry?” she said, gazing down at me. “Is anything the matter?”

“I think I left my hat in the library, miss.”

“Wait here and I’ll get it for you.” She went to shut the door in my face. I quickly put my hand out to stop it from closing on me.

“Miss Penelope, the truth is I left my hat here in order to get a word with you in private.”

“Indeed? With me? And why would that be?”

“Let me in, miss, and I’ll explain.”

I would like to say her pale blue eyes were full of apprehension as she opened the door to me. In reality, they were only mildly curious.

I had imagined our interview would take place in the library, for that’s the room we were always shown to. Instead she simply stood her ground, forcing me to face her in the hall. Of all the rooms in the house, this was her domain. It was she and Samuel who ruled the roost here, deciding who would be granted entry and who would not.

“Now that you have my attention, young man, I think you had better begin.”

“First a question, miss. Between you, how do you and Samuel divide up the task of answering the door?”

“It normally falls to Samuel. But he’ll warn me if he’s going out, or if he’s about to take his break, and then it falls to me. Why do you ask?”

Ignoring her question, I plowed on. “And when you were plagued with nuisance callers, miss, what was the routine then?”

Her mouth tightened. “It was decided that only Samuel should answer the door.”

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

“Miss Penelope, I know the truth.”

“The truth?”

“I managed to locate the flower girl, miss, the one who was there when you were attacked. She admits to being hired, though not to plant the daguerreotype. She was there to steal it…from you. It was you who put the daguerreotype in Mrs. Merridew’s bag.”

Miss Penelope stared. “And why would I do such a thing?” she asked.

“It’s my belief that you were trying to protect it, miss. You see, this is what I think happened. When you no longer answered the door to them, the gang was forced to take stronger measures. They broke a window in the servant’s quarters to gain entry to the house. Either by a stroke of luck, or, as I suspect, because you had already started carrying the photograph about with you on your person, they didn’t find what they were after—hence their last ditch attempt to steal it from you in the street. You knew you were their target, and you knew that they would find it, so you took the one course of action left to you: you slipped it in the old lady’s bag, where you hoped they wouldn’t look.”

“I must say, you have a very vivid imagination.”

“You’re right, miss, I do. For example, I imagine you expected to retrieve the daguerreotype once you were safely back home. But you’d been hurt, and Mrs. Blake insisted that Cook tend your wounds, so you never got the opportunity. Now, I don’t imagine for one instant that you are a bad person, miss, so what I’d like to know is why you didn’t then make a clean breast of things to the Blakes?”

As I gazed up intently into Miss Penelope’s face, I saw the last thing I expected to see. A trace of a smile. She was glad to be rid of the photograph. She’d kept it safe from those who had plotted to take it from her, and now she’d delivered it into someone else’s protection.

Miss Penelope gave me a shrewd look and asked, “Gooseberry, what do you want?”

“You’ve always been kind to me, miss. So I wanted to give you the chance to tell me your side of the story before I go to Mr. Bruff.”

“Then we’re done here.” She made a move towards the door.

“Please, Miss Penelope, I beg you. Tell me how you came by the portrait. When Mr. Bruff revealed whose portrait it was, you were as astonished as everyone else was. That makes me think that though you needed to keep it safe, you had no idea of its significance.”

“Gooseberry, it’s time for you to leave.”

“Who is the Client, miss? And why does he want it so badly? Please! You must answer my questions if you want me to help you!”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” she cried, losing her temper at last. “Now, go! Leave this place!”

Just then the door to the library opened and her father, Mr. Betteredge, stepped into the hall. He was carrying my hat.

“What is going on here?” he asked, studying both our faces in turn. “Why all the shouting?”

Miss Penelope took one look at her father and burst into tears. Beating a retreat, she fled up the stairs to one of the floors above. Mr. Betteredge came forward and held out my hat.

“Yours, I believe,” he said, as he handed it over. “Young man, while it is true that I have never entirely understood my daughter, in my heart I know her to be a good and honest girl. I will not stand idly by to see her upset by the likes of you.” He nodded thoughtfully and then hobbled to the front door. He pulled it open and stood waiting for me to take my leave.

Although I’d told Mr. Bruff I would return to the office, I now had a change of plan. When one door closes, it forces you to knock on the other. Since Miss Penelope refused to tell me what she knew, I had no other choice but to hunt down the Client myself. So, with my seven and sixpence jangling in my pocket, I headed south towards the pier at Hungerford Bridge.

Steamboats for Greenwich departed from here twice hourly, making a number of stops along the way. On inquiring when the next one was due, I discovered that I had twenty minutes to spare, so I went and bought a spot of dinner—a bun with a great slab of cheese in the middle, and bottle of ginger beer to wash it down. I took it back with me to the pier, then settled down to wait. Before very long I was boarding the boat with the other passengers. I found a seat with a decent view of the river and, as the boat pulled noisily away on its slow journey eastward, I tucked into my bun.

It’s not often I get to travel by boat, so it felt like an adventure. I soon found myself regretting not having brought my winter coat along, however. The freezing, damp air whipped frenziedly around me, chilling me to the bone. I began to stroll about the deck, searching for somewhere to take shelter. Failing to find anywhere at all, I was forced to go and sit down again.

“Tunnel Pier!” came the captain’s cry at last, when my earlobes had lost all feeling. “Disembark here for the Thames Tunnel!”

It seemed that most of my fellow travelers were bound for the same destination. I joined the queue at the gangplank, and simply followed the herd through the streets. Soon the pale gray marble tower came into view and people started forming a line.

Having paid my penny, I descended the stairs and made directly for the coffee shop. Business was even brisker than it had been on Tuesday, and people were obliged to share tables if they wanted a seat. That made my task infinitely harder. I had counted on identifying the Client by looking for a gent sitting alone at a table. But nobody was seated alone today.

I stepped back into the shadows and kept my eye on the waiter. After ten minutes, I began to see a kind of pattern to his movements. As tables emptied and tables filled, he would take people’s orders as he cleared dirty crockery, and would presently return with their chosen cakes and drinks. After thirty minutes, he’d worked his way around the entire floor, serving every single person…bar one.

The gentleman in question was a man in his late twenties, pale of complexion, with dark hair and a beard. He was seated at a table with a group of three women, all of whom he patently ignored. He passed the time by reading his newspaper and making notes in a small pocket diary. The cake and the glass in front of him remained untouched. I had my target, and now I just had to wait.

“The Tunnel is closing in fifteen minutes. Please make your way to the exits!”

Now timing became everything. As he rose, I passed by his table, and for the merest instant my arm brushed his. He looked up, but by then I’d already gone, dodging into the crowd before circling back to follow him. Up the stairs he went and out through the exit, with me in hot pursuit. He turned right and stalked up to the main road, then headed west past the docks and the Tower. He was going at a rollicking pace, forcing me to put on a burst of speed every now and then to try and keep up. At Aldgate he turned left, and took the turning into Leadenhall Street. Throngs of people crowded the pavement, homeward bound after a long day’s work. One second I’d lose sight of him, only to glimpse him again the next.

Then I lost him for good.

I looked around and took my bearings. Leadenhall Street was the heart of London’s financial district, where commodities from all over the world were traded, and deals that could make or wreck entire countries were struck. All its grand buildings smelled of money and profit, and it was into one of these that the Client had escaped.

Retracing my steps, I hailed a cab. The cabbie looked skeptical till I showed him the color of my coins. I climbed into the carriage, then sat down and took out the Client’s diary—well, you knew I’d lifted something, and you surely can’t imagine it was the newspaper! I opened it to the front page.

‘Property of Mr. Josiah Hook, Esquire,’ it said. So now the Client had a name. ‘If found, please return to Room 219.’

As I prepared to take my first ever ride in a cab on my own, I turned the page.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, August 22nd.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.
Photograph: Workers on the Silent Highway by John Thomson, used courtesy of the London School of Economics’ Digital Library under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence.

So what did you think? Did you find any typos or continuity errors? Please let me know—use the comment box below.