Michael Gallagher's Blog, page 8

Gooseberry: Chapter Seventeen

Though we had Mallard in custody, Josiah Hook—his underling—managed to escape. We could only surmise that he’d seen Sergeant Cuff rallying his men, realized what was about to go down, and immediately took flight. We had more pressing matters to deal with, however, for word arrived from the Bucket of Blood: Johnny was holed up in one of the upstairs rooms, firing his pistol at anyone who tried to enter. So far two men had been wounded.

To my great annoyance, Sergeant Cuff forbade me to come when he and his officers set off for the scene in their police wagon. Believe me, hauling yourself up on to the driver’s box is a hard enough task for someone of my height even when the vehicle’s stationary; when the horses are being whipped into a frenzy, as they were when the wagon pulled away, it’s a feat of pure gymnastics. It felt exhilarating, though. You should have seen the driver’s face when I suddenly appeared at his side!

Cornhill, Cheapside, Ludgate, Fleet Street, the wind whipped through my hair, for I hadn’t had a chance to change back into my own clothes, let alone grab my hat. Up Drury Lane and down Long Acre we flew, till the driver pulled the horses up short just shy of St. Martin’s Lane. I ducked down out of sight as Sergeant Cuff and his men alighted from the covered wagon at the back, then I lowered myself to the ground and took chase. I could hear the muffled sound of gunfire echoing through the streets, punctuating a man’s bellowing screams. The screams turned out to be from the pub’s landlord; blood gushing from a wound to his jaw, the great bear of a fellow was staggering round in circles outside his own establishment in his apron. Ignoring his distress, Cuff’s men charged at the doors. Needless to say I was hot on their heels.

Inside, too terrified to move, a handful of late-night patrons sat staring at the body of a man who was lying on the sawdust-covered floor by the foot of the stairs. I glanced at it in passing and was pleased to see that it wasn’t anyone I knew.

So far my presence had gone unnoticed. Even in the corridor at the top of the stairs, I managed to evade the sergeant’s vigilant gaze by falling in behind the stout, trusty officer at the back of the line. Almost immediately there came a rapid succession of shots that blew away yet another section of the door’s paneling. Everybody ducked.

“As far as we can tell, he’s in there alone, but he has more than two pistols at his disposal,” explained one of the men who’d been sent there originally. “Four, possibly five, I believe.”

“Then it will take him time to reload them,” remarked the sergeant. “We’ll storm the room after his next volley. Men, charge your weapons.”

Everyone set to work with their powder and pellets. Sure enough, before very long Johnny started firing again. I counted the blasts, just as every other man in that corridor did. One. Two. Three. A pause. Four. Was there a fifth pistol or not? The seconds ticked by.

Holding his hand up to restrain his men, Sergeant Cuff cried, “Ready men? Go!” He kicked open what remained of the door but, like everyone else, he held his ground. A fifth shot rang out, followed closely by a sixth, taking away two solid chunks of the door frame.

“Charge!”

We piled through the doorway amid a flurry of gun-fire, all of it our own. After the initial confusion, I saw that the room was empty.

“He’s gone,” said the sergeant, making a quick but careful search of the room.

I ran to the open window and looked down.

Sergeant Cuff joined me a second later, too late to see what I’d seen: the look of fury in Johnny’s eyes as he clambered to his feet and quickly limped away; a look of fury that was directed entirely at me.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” cried the sergeant to his men. “Get down there and hunt for him!”

Though they searched the neighboring streets and buildings for close on an hour, they found no sign of him. Johnny was gone.

The surprises of that Wednesday evening were not over for me yet, however. Back into my own clothes at last, I arrived home late at my lodgings only to find Julius and Bertha entertaining company. Seated with them at the table, braving the heat to cram small amounts of steaming potato into his mouth with his fingers, was the boy I had last seen in Twickenham posing as the Maharajah of Lahore. He was thinner, his face unwashed, his clothes disheveled, yet still a spark of devilishness managed to burn in his eyes.

“Your Highness,” I greeted him with a nod of the head, “ for I confess I know not what else to call you…”

“My name is really Sandeep,” he replied, in his rich, sing-song voice. “Sandeep Singh—though I’m no relation to His Highness,” he added, when he saw the puzzled look on my face. “All Sikh boys are given the name Singh. It’s our tradition. But most people call me Mutari, which in my language means Magpie, for there is no fleeter-of-foot, less likely to be caged pickpocket in all of Lahore.”

I had to stop myself from gasping at the boy’s out-and-out cheek. The impudence of the fellow; the audacity; the sheer brass neck! Personal vanities aside, the lad’s skills were no match for mine.

“How did you find me, Sandeep?”

“Well,” he said, laying the potato aside and settling in as if to recount a lengthy story, “when I overheard Treech plotting to destroy the daguerreotype by burning down your employer’s bank, I knew it was my duty to escape. So I made my way to London on foot, keeping to the quieter lanes and byways. The days were cold and the nights even colder. When the sun went down, I sought refuge in farmers’ barns. But the words I remembered you saying spurred me on, how you lived on the Caledonian Road, near where they are building a new railway terminus. It should not be too hard to find this place, I imagined, but each time I ask for directions, people notice the color of my skin and remark upon it, and I realize I am putting myself in danger. Aieee! And when I do eventually find this place, it turns out to be such a godless spot! I see drovers herding cattle to the slaughter by their dozens. Dozens! In spite of this I force myself to sit by the side of the road, and I wait and watch. And when, after many hours, I spy this young man here trudging his weary way homeward, I approach him, for it cannot be a matter of coincidence that he shares the same eyes as you, Gooseberry—or should I say Octavius?”

Julius beamed.

“When I explained how I knew you,” Sandeep continued, “your brother was kind enough to take me in and, as you can see, he and your good friend Bertha have been entertaining me lavishly by showing me their wonderful new photographic portraits and providing me with much needed sustenance.”

“Lad’s as skinny as a rake,” grunted Bertha. “Needs feedin’ up. Been tellin’ us about the plan to steal some whopper of a diamond, ’e has.”

“Yes,” said Sandeep, “my one consolation in this whole business is that I—and I alone—have foiled Mr. Treech’s plot. Without me he cannot hope to make the planned substitution.”

Hmm. What did I tell you? Sheer brass neck. “Actually, Sandeep, Treech is dead,” I enjoyed telling him. “His superior shot him, either out of rage or simply to tie up loose ends.”
The boy stared at me in alarm. “But the maharajah, he is safe?”

“I believe so, yes. One of the gang took him into hiding quite some time ago. As for the substitution, they found another way to do it.” I went on to relate the evening’s events, much to everyone’s delight—even Sandeep’s, to give him his due—though Bertha looked somewhat down-in-the-mouth when I revealed that not only had Josiah Hook—the man that he knew as the Client—flown the coop, but Johnny Knight was in the wind, too. “The question is,” I concluded, “where do we go from here?”

“Nowhere,” muttered Bertha despondently. “I can’t go bleedin’ nowhere till Johnny’s caught.”

“I have been thinking,” said Sandeep, “this your friend of yours, this Sergeant Cuff. Perhaps I should meet him and explain my side of the story.”

“You can take it from me, it don’t do no good to go blabbing your screech off to no law,” advised Bertha, as he poked one final log into the stove. “That’s wot comes from ruminatin’ ’bout things so late at night.”

“It really depends,” I said, “on whether or not you were ever a willing accomplice.”

“ A willing accomplice?” Sandeep looked horrified at the very suggestion. “Do you imagine for one moment that I wanted my face to be cut? Or that I wished any harm to come to the maharajah? The hopes of the whole Sikh nation rest with him.”

“Then why did you do it? Why did you go along with them?”

“I was given a choice between that and prison,” he said simply.

So much for the legendary Magpie, the fleetest-of-foot, least likely to be caged pickpocket in all of Lahore, I thought. Aloud I said, “All right, I’ll see what I can do to arrange a meeting.”

I noticed Julius nodding off in his chair so, after resolving the increasingly-cramped sleeping arrangements, we all bedded down for the night.

Given the happenings of the past two days, Thursday felt rather flat by comparison—apart from one small event, that is. I needed to consult Mr. James, Miss Penelope’s beau, as to how best to communicate to his brother that it was now safe for him and his guests—the maharajah and his guardian—to make their return. When I arrived at the Montagu Square house, it was Mr. Betteredge who answered the door. Having explained my business to him, I expected to be shown up to Mr. James’s room. Instead he stood there waiting and looking down at me expectantly.

A whole minute must have ticked by before he eventually asked, “May I take your hat, son?”

“My…hat?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.

“Your hat,” he said. I swear on my life that I didn’t shed a single tear, yet I was so overwhelmed by the gesture that he quickly added, “Would the young master care to be shown to a room where he can compose himself?”

By two in the afternoon, I was leaning against a tree close to Hyde Park’s Cumberland Gate. That particular position afforded me an unobstructed view of the park bench under which James and Thomas left notes for each other. There was a note for Thomas there now that James had penned at my request. Though it was a chilly day, there was still a steady stream of people keen to take a breath of fresh air. As I watched, a man detached himself from the group that had just entered and sat himself down on the bench. His face hidden beneath a swaddling of scarves, he slowly glanced left and right, then casually reached under the bench. Locating the note I’d placed there, he opened it, read it, and looked up in surprise. I smiled and waved. For a minute I thought he might bolt.

“Please do not make me run after you, sir,” I begged him, as I approached. “What your brother says is true. Sir Humphrey Mallard is in custody. The plot to steal the diamond has failed.”

“And the boy standing by the tree is someone I can trust with my life?” he added skeptically, referring to the final paragraph on the sheet of paper.

“Yes, Mr. Thomas, you can. My name is Octavius, though most people call me Gooseberry. I’m here to see that you and those you protect get safely home.”

He took some convincing, I must say, but in the end he agreed to accompany me back to the Blakes’ house for a meeting with his brother.

Next I paid a visit to the good Sergeant Cuff, in the hope of learning his intentions regarding Thomas and Sandeep, as there was a distinct possibility that both might be viewed as co-conspirators in Mallard’s scheme. Disappointed, though not entirely surprised by the result, I found I had one more journey to make before taking a cab back to my lodgings. I needed to deliver a letter, one that I’d had the foresight to compose during my brief time at the Blakes’. I was going to miss traveling like this, I reflected, as the cab wended its way through the London streets; I’d become very used to this most expedient form of transport.

I arrived at work on Friday at the normal time, only to be taunted again by Mr. Grayling as I went to collect my final per diem and—by comparison—my rather paltry wages for the week. This time I was ready for him. When he started on about my eyes, I took a crumpled ball of paper from my pocket and tossed it on his desk. Mr. Grayling—or Mr. Christopher, as I’d decided to call him, for it could be said with a larger measure of insolence—blanched and fell silent.

Sandeep, who I’d brought with me, turned to me and asked in Mr. Christopher’s hearing, “Is that the fool of a clerk who gave you your nickname?” When I agreed that it was, he added, “Well, well. You certainly seem to have the situation under control.” Perhaps I had misjudged the boy after all.

George and George couldn’t stop themselves gawking at Sandeep as I led him along to Mr. Bruff’s office.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I was you,” the older George warned me as I went to knock, which earned him a punch on the arm from his younger colleague. “Mr. Bruff’s got some bigwig from Scotland Yard with him,” he carried on, despite it. “He won’t like you barging in.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “It was me who invited the sergeant here. He’s keen to meet my friend, Sandeep.”

“Hello there, my name’s George,” said George, offering Sandeep his hand. The younger George took exception to this and dug his friend in the ribs with his elbow. As the pair shook hands, I explained that my companion had once been the Maharajah of Lahore—which wasn’t entirely untrue—much to the older George’s delight and the younger George’s huffy consternation.

When we finally entered the office, we found Sergeant Cuff and Mr. Bruff reminiscing about their parts in the Moonstone affair, with two of the sergeant’s men in attendance, respectfully looking on. That put the wind up me, I’m not ashamed to say. The fact that there were two of them seemed significant. Mr. Bruff’s mouth dropped open as I ushered Sandeep into his presence. Worryingly, Sergeant Cuff’s did not.

For quite some days now I’d been keeping Mr. Bruff in the dark about my various activities. Though once again he was brimming with questions, I managed to stave them off by promising to reveal everything as soon as we got to the Blakes’. So, without further ado, he retrieved the daguerreotype from his safe at my request and we all set off.

It was Samuel, the footman, who once more answered the door to us. He took Mr. Bruff’s hat quite willingly and then deigned to take the sergeant’s. The sergeant’s two men, however, he pointedly ignored. As Mr. Bruff led the way towards the library, he finally turned to me.

“You hat, sir?” he asked. If even the judgmental young Samuel was prepared to take my hat, I had clearly come up in the world. I smiled as I handed it to him, then followed my employer in.

With the addition of Mr. James, who I had finally forgiven for attempting to cut my throat, everyone in the household was present, just as they had been on that previous Monday, when we’d first been summoned to attend. Though they greeted Sergeant Cuff warmly enough—for it was some two or three years since they had last seen him—the warmest reception they reserved for me.

“Is this who I think it is?” Mrs. Blake whispered in my ear, as she stole up behind me. She’d been regarding Sandeep with an almost reverential stare ever since we’d entered. Unfortunately he overheard her.

“My name is Sandeep,” he said, introducing himself, “though most people call me Mutari, which in my language means Magpie, for there is no fleeter-of-foot—”

“No,” I hastily cut him short. “It’s not. But we’ll get to him presently, I promise. You see, we’re still waiting for people to arrive, miss.” Turning to my employer, I asked, “What time is it, sir?”

Mr. Bruff consulted his watch. “Nearly half-past ten,” he replied.

“Mr. Betteredge,” I said, “I see you have your copy of Robinson Crusoe with you. While we wait, may I ask, has that excellent tome any guidance for us today?”

Eyeing the sergeant and his men warily from his seat by the fire, the elderly servant nodded, cleared his throat, and read, “‘…if they were sent to England, they would all be hanged in chains, to be sure; but that if they would join in such an attempt as to recover the ship, he would have the governor’s engagement for their pardon.’ For their pardon, sir. For their pardon.”

It really was uncanny what the man could do with that book of his. He was better than a gypsy fortune teller in a tent. My thoughts were interrupted, however, as Samuel entered the room. He was looking decidedly shaken.

“A Mr. Thomas Shepherd and a Dr. John Login to see you, sir,” he announced. “And…and…and…”

“And what?” asked Mr. Blake.

My hopes rose, only to fall again as Samuel replied, “Well, some poor, thin wretch of a lad who claims to be the Maharajah of Lahore.”


Gooseberry continues next Friday, October 31st.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
If you’re prepared to write an honest review, click on this link to bid for an advance reviewer’s copy at LTER. You’ll find the listing approximately three-quarters of the way down the page.

You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.
Photograph: Old Furniture by John Thomson, used courtesy of the London School of Economics’ Digital Library under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence.

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Gooseberry: Chapter Sixteen

The orchestra, wielding their instruments loudly for once, struck up a fanfare—no easy task for a bunch of string players without a horn in sight, but they gave it their best—as the prince and his escort of three grave-looking gentlemen entered the banqueting hall. Prince Albert surveyed the room with a somewhat bewildered expression, as if he couldn’t quite understand why all the guests were bowing to him or—perhaps—why all the waiters were not. He was a pale-skinned gentleman with light blue eyes and a mop of dark hair that had all but receded from his forehead. He sported a fine pair of sideburns all the way to his jawline, which, together with the receding hair, created an almost perfectly oval frame for his face. It gave the impression that, instead of showing any actual flesh, he was wearing a porcelain mask.

Slowly the guests began to rise, only to replace their former bowing with a round of muted clapping. If anything, His Royal Highness looked even more uncomfortable with this. Turning to the most senior of the men accompanying him, he whispered something in his ear. The man raised his hand and gestured to the orchestra, who quickly struck up a waltz. It was barely audible.

People were starting to circulate again. I looked to see where Johnny and Eric had got to, but they’d both vanished. I did spot Josiah Hook, however, dressed to the nines and looking every bit the kind of young gentleman to add term esquire to his name. I began to make my way across the room to warn Sergeant Cuff, but was stopped in my tracks as Colin appeared before me, also kitted out as a wine waiter. He looked none too pleased to see me. Within seconds he was joined by two others, effectively hemming me in by the side of the stage. I would have tried catching the sergeant’s eye, but by now he too had disappeared.

“You got me into so much trouble,” snorted Colin, whose jaw was bruised and looked painfully swollen.

“I’m sorry about that,” I replied, then added, “Looks like you have more trouble coming your way,” as I noticed the prince’s party rapidly approaching.

Colin threw them a glance but stayed where he was regardless.

People were bowing and moving aside as Prince Albert headed towards the stage. He pulled up a pace or two away from me and regarded the orchestra thoughtfully. He opened his mouth and asked a question, which sounded like, “Ken the note ply lot earthen this?” The musicians glanced nervously at each other.

“You heard His Royal Highness,” said the senior dignitary at his side, who had been eyeing the enclave of stationary wine waiters. “Louder!”

The musicians played louder. “March bitter,” remarked the prince. “And water these find a liquor sea spray?” he asked, turning to me. I gaped up at him, blinking.

“Look, the boy’s clearly in awe of you, Your Highness,” the dignitary responded, and everybody laughed.

Though not in awe exactly, I was however speechless, having no idea of what was being asked of me. I wasn’t even sure if the prince was speaking English. Colin and his cronies took the opportunity to melt into the crowd, positioning themselves where they could pounce on me again, and in a hurry if need be.

“The look entry king,” mumbled the prince, reaching for the very pastry I’d had my finger in scarcely ten minutes before. I quickly spun the tray around so that he’d pick a different one. “Tell me,” he said, examining the pastry I was offering him, “water the cold?” His hand paused in mid-air.
“What are they called, boy?”

“ Oh! Pastries?” I suggested. “Savories? I think they’re made with chicken livers, sir, but it’s very hard to tell.”

“Your Royal Highness,” said the dignitary, addressing himself to me.

“What?”

“‘I think they’re made with chicken livers, Your Royal Highness’.”

I studied the man’s puffy, red face, wondering if by any chance he was related to Mr. Bruff. “Oh…sorry, yes, of course,” I said at last. “I think they’re made with chicken livers, Your Royal Highness, but it’s very hard to tell. They’re not as good as Mrs. Grogan’s, see.”

“Whose?” asked the prince, settling again on the one I’d had my finger in.

“Mrs. Grogan’s. She runs the best eating house on the Gray’s Inn Road, Your Royal Highness. You should think about going there sometime.” I gave my tray another spin, but to no avail, for this time he kept his eyes trained on the pastry in question. “Here, why not try this one?” I picked up choicest of the batch and held it in front of his face.

“I think the lad’s a little simple,” the senior dignitary whispered in the prince’s ear, just as the prince snatched the one he’d been after all along and stuffed it in his mouth.

He chewed on it appraisingly, nodding several times, and then gave his judgment: “You contest dash hairy.”

The dignitary selected one and took a bite. “You certainly can, Your Highness,” he said, seemingly agreeing with him.

“The sack white nice,” said the prince, taking another, though not the one in my hand. “Hmmm…note bed atoll. Half the let for low me.”

“Stay at His Highness’s side, boy; he may require more. And no more small talk, understand?”

“Understood, sir.”

The prince set off towards the middle of the room. I followed, platter in hand, walking with the stately, dignified gait that I now had down pat. All the guests bowed before him as we moved through the crowd, and I began to get a sense of what it was like being His Royal Highness. Whenever he moved, he was a ship plowing a sea of roiling bodies. When he stood still, they stared at him. Or talked and stared, which was even worse, for any fool could tell that he was the subject of their conversations. As he came to a halt under the broadest of the chandeliers, I noticed that everyone was now talking and staring. No wonder he seemed embarrassed by it all.

“Chin up, Your Royal Highness,” I whispered to him softly, so that the senior dignitary couldn’t hear. “They can’t all be talking about you.” The prince looked down at me and smiled. “Here, have another pastry,” I suggested. I held up my platter but, just as I did, a hand thrust a bottle under his nose.

“More wine, Your Imperious Majesty?” It was Colin, who was glowering at me even as he spoke. He was so intent on intimidating me in fact that he failed to notice the silence that was overtaking the room. It was only when the orchestra stopped playing that he finally looked about, and saw that everyone was staring at him rather than the prince.

“Imbecile!” snapped the dignitary. “That is not a proper form of address for His Royal Highness! Guards! Remove this oaf at once!”

“No!” begged Colin, looking at the man with pleading eyes. “I’m needed here—I’m really needed here!”

“You most definitely are not,” came the reply. Two guards from the door appeared and bundled the bewildered Colin from the hall. The dignitary mopped his brow, then turned to the prince and said, “Your Highness, I cannot apologize enough.”

The prince nodded and said, “Lettuce half music.”

The dignitary lifted his hand and signaled to the orchestra, who quickly struck up another waltz.

“What did he do wrong?” I whispered in the prince’s ear.

“Apart from implying that I’m overbearing? He addressed me as one would a king,” the prince whispered back, enunciating every word perfectly, “yet I can never be king. A minor embarrassment for me, but major embarrassment for everyone who heard him draw attention to the fact, no? Son, your eyes are bulging.”

“You speak English!”

“Naturally I do! Just promise not to tell anyone. People might come to expect conversation from me, heaven forbid, and what would I have to talk about?”

All through this hushed exchange, the dignitary—a florid, portly man who gave the prince a run for his money in the whiskers department—was getting redder and redder in the face. I think nothing would have pleased him more than to have me removed from the hall, too.

“Your Highness,” he said at last, interrupting us to stem his imminent apoplexy.

“Yes? Wet a sit?”

“It’s time to present the diamond, sir.”

“Egg salad!” Prince Albert turned to me and murmured, “And about time, too.”

The senior dignitary and the elder of the other two men walked slowly towards the back of the hall. The crowd parted before them, opening up a splendid view for myself and the prince of a small mahogany table set against the far wall. Just as they reached it, two stewards came shuffling in, bearing a velvet-draped, rectangular object between them. This they positioned on the table top with painstaking care, fussing over the folds of the cloth for what seemed like minutes. Finally they turned to the dignitary and nodded.

“Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “I present the Kohinoor diamond!”

The crowd gasped as the two stewards whipped away the cover, revealing a glass case containing a large, dark, amber-colored stone.

“Did you see it on display at the Crystal Palace?” whispered the prince.

“No, Your Royal Highness. I couldn’t afford the admission.”

“‘Sir’ will suffice, lad. You may address me as one gentleman to another. What is your name?”

“Octavius, sir, though most people call me Gooseberry.”

“Would you like to see the Kohinoor, Octavius? Yes? Then follow me.”

With both of us walking at a slow, stately pace, we set off down the broad walkway left by the retreating guests. Now the people on either side of us dipped rather than bowed, due to the cramped conditions they found themselves in. I scanned the crowd, but though I spied a number of waiters and wine waiters—Sergeant Cuff’s men among them—I saw no sign of Johnny and Eric.

The closer we got to the diamond, the more detail I could make out. The stone was enormous, the size and shape of a baby tortoise shell. It had been cut to resemble one, too. Its dark, murky appearance bore a suggestion of trapped smoke. It looked nothing like any of the diamonds I’d handled during my time in the Life—nor those that I’d seen after, for that matter, adorning the fingers, earlobes, and throats of Mr. Bruff’s clients.

The prince and I were barely ten paces away from the cabinet when it happened. From the left side of the hall, Eric came charging at the case like a raging bull. At precisely the same moment, Johnny’s wine waiters struck, pushing anyone and everyone near them to the ground. Knowing that glass was about to go flying, I ducked in front of the prince, threw myself at him, and screamed, “Down!”

As the prince toppled backwards, shards of glass rained down on top of us, missing his face, but catching me in the back of the neck. Amidst the screams and the sobbing, I heard Eric’s roar of triumph bellowing out behind me through the hall.

Suddenly I felt hands grab me, wrenching me off the prince and spinning me round. As I looked up into my captor’s eyes, I immediately stopped struggling for I recognized him at once as one of Sergeant Cuff’s men.

Whether or not he recognized me in turn, he didn’t relax his grip. “Attack His Royal Highness, would you?” he growled.

“No, you got it wrong! I was only trying to protect the prince! Don’t you recognize me? I’m with Sergeant Cuff, too!”

“I got him!” boomed a voice, drowning out my protests, so loud that everybody in the hall froze on the spot. Each and every last one of us gazed at the the shattered remains of the glass case where Johnny stood clutching a kneeling Eric by his long mousy hair. Eric looked shocked, betrayed, and every bit as baffled as I myself was. Johnny, who was clearly delighting in being the center of attention, bawled, “I got the thief!” again, then reached into Eric’s pocket and drew out the diamond, holding it up for everyone to see. Sergeant Cuff, who was only a few feet away from him, came forward and removed the stone from his hand. He examined it momentarily, turning it over and peering at its surface.

Order was rapidly being restored throughout the room. Two guards appeared and took charge of Eric. When I tried calling out that they should be taking Johnny too, the man who had me in his clutches put his hand over my mouth to gag me. Transformed once more into an amiable sheep, Eric allowed himself to be led away without protest. The same could not be said of Johnny’s other men, who were still wrestling with their captors as they were dragged from the hall. When my captor started prodding me towards the doors, I realized that I was to be counted among them.

“Sergeant Cuff!” I screamed at the top of my voice through his fingers while I wrestled like an eel in the man’s firm grip. “Sergeant Cuff! Help!”

Hearing my muffled pleas, the sergeant looked up. “You can give that one over into my charge, Evans,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me. “I doubt he’ll try to run away.”

“But, sir, he attacked His Royal Highness.”

The prince was looking shaken, but at least he was on his feet again. “Heated nose arch thing,” he told the man sternly, and then turning to me, as clear as a bell, he added, “Thank you, Octavius. You saved my skin, sir, and most probably my sight.”

The senior dignitary, who’d been stationed close enough to the exploding glass to have received a number of minor cuts to his forehead and cheek, approached the sergeant and spoke quietly to him for a few moments. In all the kerfuffle, Johnny had vanished. I spotted Eric’s brother Colin, though. Having managed to sneak back into the hall, he was standing by the doors with a look of utter shock on his face.

The sergeant summoned Evans, the man who’d dragged me off the prince, and handed the florid, portly dignitary the gem. I went and joined Sergeant Cuff as the two men moved away, taking the diamond with them.

“Sir, that man who apprehended the wine waiter was none other than Johnny Knight, the head of the gang I was telling you about.” The sergeant regarded me gravely. “He planned this, sir, so it makes no sense at all that he would actively participate in his own man’s capture…unless—” In my mind’s eye I could see Johnny murmuring a question in my ear: what do you call someone who’s second-in-command? When I’d suggested the term deuce, he’d laughed and told me, “Stooge.”

“Unless?” prompted the sergeant.

“Unless he substituted the diamond for a replica.” The words just fell out of my mouth. “Then, hero of the day, he’s free to disappear.” Just as I’d told Mrs. Blake at the start of this case, of the two ways of lifting things, the second is infinitely more satisfying. While the gang is wreaking chaos and everyone’s attention is diverted, somebody else—someone on the spot who seems quite unconnected with any of the troublemakers—he stealthily slips the desired items inside his jacket. Once the gang has scarpered, that person calmly walks away, taking his booty with him.

“But he didn’t make a substitution,” insisted the sergeant, breaking my train of thought completely.

“What?”

“I guarantee you he handed me the Kohinoor itself. The diamond was no replica.”

“How can you be sure?”

Sergeant Cuff blushed. “Fearing just such a situation, I took measures.”

“Measures?”

“I did something to it, if you must know.”

“Did something?”

“Gooseberry, does it really matter?”

I put on my hurt face and blinked a bit. “I suppose not,” I sniffed. Bertha would have been proud of my performance.

“Oh, very well,” the sergeant tutted. “I took a roll of brown paper tape and tore off a tiny piece of it. Then I licked the gummed edge and affixed it to the underside of the gemstone. You couldn’t really see it unless you looked for it. When this Johnny person handed me the diamond, it was the first thing I checked. It was exactly where I put it.”

“Genius!” I cried. I meant it, too. I really couldn’t have done better myself. Unfortunately it brought us back to square one, though, for Johnny’s actions no longer made the slightest bit of sense. Could it be that, in the heat of the moment, he’d forgotten to switch the diamond? Or was he just as mad and deluded as I’d originally thought? I pictured the look that I’d seen on his face, the look of someone who’s just succeeded in bringing off a major coup. No, I was missing something here. “Where is the diamond now, sir?”

“With Sir Humphrey Mallard.”

“What?”

“With Sir Humphrey Mallard,” repeated the sergeant.

“The man you gave it to? That florid, portly gent?” To my horror, I saw the sergeant nodding. “But he’s the one behind all this! Why did you give it to him?”

“I had no choice. As the man who negotiated the Kohinoor as part of Britain’s settlement after the Anglo-Sikh War, it’s his task to hand it over to the head of the firm charged with re-cutting the stone. Given this evening’s events, the transaction’s now to be held in private. Don’t worry…the diamond is safe. Evans will have his eye on it. Gooseberry, what’s the matter?”

I barely heard Sergeant Cuff, for I was deep in thought. Somebody else—someone on the spot who seems quite unconnected with any of the troublemakers—he stealthily slips the desired items inside his jacket. Not Johnny, but rather the senior dignitary in charge: Sir Humphrey Mallard.

“Johnny didn’t make the exchange, sir, because Mallard’s going to do it. If everything had gone strictly to plan tonight, would Mallard have had a chance to touch the gem?”

The sergeant frowned. “No, he wouldn’t. His role was purely ceremonial.”

“Then Johnny’s job was to make sure that he could…and to provide a plausible scapegoat in the form of Eric for when the replica is found to be fake.”

“If you’re right,” said the sergeant, “then we have no time to lose.”

“No…no, sir,” I warned him. “Timing is everything now. Until Mallard exchanges the diamond, there is nothing we can prove. You said this transaction was taking place in private?”

“Follow me,” said the sergeant, setting off at a rapid pace and summoning one after another of his trusty men along the way. Some he tasked with searching the building for Johnny. Others he sent off at my suggestion to investigate the Bucket of Blood. The rest of them trailed behind us to a room at the back of the building. The chamber’s four occupants looked up in surprise as the sergeant and I burst in on them.

Mallard, who was on the point of placing the diamond in a plush-lined a casket, froze. His counterpart, whom I recognized from earlier, frowned. Evans, the sole person standing, glanced over at the sergeant with a questioning look. Only the prince spoke.

“Octavius! Sergeant Cuff! Is there a problem here?”

“No, Your Highness,” replied the sergeant. “I’m sure everything’s perfectly in order. Sir Humphrey, won’t you continue?”
The portly man’s hand was trembling as he lowered the gem into the box. His face was flushed. Reluctantly, ever so reluctantly, he eventually closed the lid. A bead of sweat worked its way down the scratches of his wounded cheek as he held out the casket. But even then he seemed unwilling to relinquish it. The man sitting opposite him had to pull it out of his hands. Had he failed to switch the diamond and didn’t want to give the real thing away? Or did he know the game was up and was reluctant to hand the replica over while there was still a chance to switch it back?

“Sir Humphrey, I require you to stand,” said the sergeant.

Quaking, the man rose to his feet. I applied my pickpocket’s eye to his generously-cut attire.

“The inside left breast pocket of his waistcoat,” I whispered in the sergeant’s ear.

The sergeant deftly inserted his hand and pulled out a smoky-brown diamond. I held my breath as he turned it over. There, on the back, was glued a tiny strip of brown paper tape.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, October 24th.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
If you’re prepared to write an honest review, click on this link to bid for an advance reviewer’s copy at LTER. You’ll find the listing approximately three-quarters of the way down the page.

You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.
Photograph: Covent Garden Labourers 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.

Gooseberry: Chapter Fifteen

I cannot deny that I nearly jumped out of my skin as I felt the hand land on my shoulder. My first instinct was to bolt, but I was prevented from doing so by a second hand that seized me firmly by the collar. For the pickpocket, one reason you sport an overly-large jacket is so you have room to stow the things you filch; another is that it’s much easier to shrug it off if someone makes a grab for it. My assailant must have known this, for he went directly for my shirt.

“Calm down, boy,” hissed a voice in my ear. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself, and I dare say you wish to avoid making public displays…especially here, in front of East India House.”

The voice trembled with a deep melancholy undertone, suggesting perhaps that paradise had fallen and the vast majority of mankind had consequently gone to rack and ruin. It struck a chord in my memory. I turned my head and looked.

“Sergeant Cuff!”

“Gooseberry.” Steely light-gray eyes stared at me from a yellow, weather-beaten face. They twinkled as my old acquaintance slowly began to relax his grip. Before his retirement to the small town of Dorking, the good sergeant had been Scotland Yard’s most celebrated detective. Three years earlier, I’d had the privilege of working with him to uncover the truth behind the Moonstone diamond. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been dressed in whites and grays, and looked every bit the country gent. The man who stood before me now wore sombre black, with one small flourish: a white cravat at his throat. Being so lean and wiry, he now had the appearance of a seasoned undertaker, and one who’s done mighty well for himself from his long career.

“I thought you retired to grow your roses, Sergeant Cuff.”

“I did, lad, I did. It would seem that you haven’t, though…”

“I’m sorry?”

“Retired, boy. This is the third time I’ve seen you here this week.” When I put on my puzzled face, he tutted and proceeded to tell me, “You were here on Thursday, you were here on Saturday, and you’re here again today. I ask myself, could it be that you’ve found alternative employment to your post in a solicitor’s office, or do you happen to be working on a new case?” The sergeant smiled at me gravely, drat him.

It’s one thing to run rings around members of the upper classes, who can barely see past the tips of their own noses, so engrossed are they in their public and private affairs. Sergeant Cuff, on the other hand, was a very different wheel of cheese. Retirement aside, he was essentially a working-class man who had kept company with the most talented crooks and thieves in the land. He’d learned a trick or two in his time. He was not someone, like Mr. Bruff, who would be dazzled by the simplest smokescreen; he could read men’s hearts.

“It’s a long story,” I replied.

“Excellent. I love a good story, and I have a feeling I shall wish to hear it all.” He emphasized the word ‘all’. “There’s a public house down that alley there that serves a mighty fine porter,” he continued. “We shall retire its gloomy interior for refreshments and you can tell me everything.” You can guess for yourself which word he emphasized this time.

By common consent we chose a window seat, so that we could actually see what we were drinking. Sergeant Cuff had his glass of oily, brown bitter in front of him. I had my bottle of ginger beer. I started by explaining about the portrait: who it depicted, how it was found, and who put it there. At some point the sergeant pursed his lips and muttered, “The Maharajah of Lahore, you say? Hmmm. Significant. Undoubtedly significant.”

If he considered that significant, I don’t know what he’d call my next revelation, for beer sprayed from his mouth in all directions when I told him about our trip to Cole Park Grange Asylum.

“How did you know the boy you saw was an impostor?” he demanded.

“Besides his remarkable ability to pick pockets? Well, the note specifically said that the maharajah would be put to death; it didn’t say, ‘I’ll be put to death’.”

“Good point.” Sergeant Cuff was looking seriously worried. “But this can only mean…” His voice trailed off as he lifted his glass to his lips.

“That they were planning to use the boy to steal the Kohinoor diamond,” I said, finishing his sentence for him. Beer went spraying everywhere again. I discreetly took out my handkerchief and gave my face a wipe.

“Gooseberry, you really will have to explain yourself. How on earth do you arrive at that conclusion?”

I told the sergeant about how Mr. Bruff had claimed to have deposited the daguerreotype with his bank and how the bank was subsequently razed to the ground, how the Indian lad I’d met had absconded and how, as a consequence, Mr. Treech had been shot. I recounted the man’s dying words as fully and accurately as I could, though focusing mainly on the diamond.

“As soon as he mentioned the word ‘diamond’,” I explained, “I immediately thought of the Kohinoor. It stands to reason that the prize these people were after had to be worth all the expense and trouble they invested into getting it. What better fits the bill than the largest diamond in the world? Of course, now that the boy they had posing as the maharajah is on the run, whatever plans they were hatching have been put paid to.”

Sergeant Cuff nodded thoughtfully. “Hold on,” he said. “You say this chap Treech was shot on Monday. Yet I saw you coming out of the East India Company, looking rather pleased with yourself, last Saturday—two days before the man’s dying confession.”

I told you the sergeant was sharp. I began to explain Johnny Knight’s role in the matter and how he reported to a man named Josiah Hook. I was careful not to give away how I’d come by Hook’s name for, as far as I’m aware, the sergeant is still unaware of my skills and I should like to keep it that way. I described how I’d followed Hook back to Leadenhall Street, and my little ruse with the diaries to establish not just where he worked, but whom he worked for as well: Sir Humphrey Mallard.

“Mallard, eh?” The sergeant’s face looked grim as he pondered the name. “So what did they do with the real maharajah, I wonder?”

“He’s safe for now,” I told him, and went on to explain about James’s wayward brother Thomas, and how he’d had a change of heart and taken the maharajah and his guardian into hiding.

“Do you know,” said the sergeant, “I once made a prediction about you, lad, to Mr. Franklin Blake himself. I said that one day you would go on to do great things in my late profession. It seems you have proved me right.”

“Your late profession, sir?” Sergeant Cuff was not the only person at the table with brains enough to see through smokescreens.

His eyes narrowed. “You heard me, lad. My late profession.”

“So it’s just a coincidence that you happened to be standing outside the East India Company on the occasions of all my visits?” The great man’s face remained impassive. With control like that, he could have gone on to do great things in my late profession. “If I recall rightly, sir, you were all too keen to retire and grow your roses. The only reason you returned to investigate the later developments in the Moonstone case was the debt you felt to Mrs. Blake’s mother, who you considered had overpaid you for your time.”

The sergeant gave a guarded nod. “There were professional reasons, too,” he added. “I don’t like being wrong. I don’t like unsolved cases. I prefer my world to be orderly.”

“So I find myself wondering,” I pressed on, “what it would take to bring you out of retirement once again? Another unpaid debt, perhaps, but not necessarily of a financial nature? The threat to a loved one? A belief in a righteous cause? A sense of obligation or duty?” I was studying his eyes as I ran through my list. His eyelids had flickered ever so slightly at the suggestion of obligation and duty, yet the sergeant said nothing.

“A sense of obligation or duty, then,” I continued, no longer phrasing my thoughts as questions. “An appeal that cannot be denied. A request from the highest in the land. Her Majesty Queen Victoria herself, perhaps. No—not the Queen.” His eyelashes had wavered, but not in the way I was expecting them to. “The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell? No? Then there’s only one person it can be.”

“Really?”

“The Queen’s husband, Prince Albert.”

Sergeant Cuff puckered his lips and gave a long, low whistle. “I take my hat off to you, young detective. I couldn’t have done better myself. Yes, the prince himself requested my presence on a matter of security. You have become every bit my equal. No, that’s not quite true, for in the matter of the Kohinoor diamond, you have surpassed me.”

“Surpassed you, sir?”

“While I’ve been keeping my eye on the building, and getting gossip from the porters and the kitchen staff, you’ve been unearthing the plot that I should have had wind of from the start.”

“But I had the good fortune of being called for by the Blakes when Mrs. Blake’s aunt discovered the daguerreotype in her possession. It was just a stroke of luck, sir.”

“Tell me again about the boy, this impostor of Mallard’s. You’re certain he’s on the run?”

“As certain as I can be, sir. The boy didn’t seem to be a willing accomplice.”

“Good. All the same, it wouldn’t do to become complacent. I imagine they’re searching for him as we speak.” It was a possibility, of course, though after seeing Johnny and Eric’s performance of the previous night, it seemed unlikely. Johnny was too caught up in his own madness to organize anything like a search. “But what if they were able to find him in time?” the sergeant added, posing the question to himself.

“In time for what, sir?”

“The reception they’re holding tonight at East India House.”

“Reception?” Something stirred at the back of my mind. Something that James had told Miss Penelope when he met her at the zoo. Something about how Thomas believed they only needed the maharajah out of way until the day after the reception. “What’s this reception in aid of, sir?”

Sergeant Cuff laughed. “Do you mean to tell me that there’s something you don’t know?”

“Please, sir. I’ve a feeling it may be important.”

“Do you know the history of the Kohinoor diamond? Its recent history, I mean.” Sergeant Cuff gave me a reproving look as I shook my head, as if to say that I should have made it my business to find out. “Until a couple of years ago, it belonged to Duleep Singh.”

“So that’s how the young maharajah comes into it?”

The sergeant nodded. “Yes, lad. He inherited it from his father, Ranjit Singh, who obtained it from a man named Shujah Shah Durrani, the deposed ruler of Afghanistan, as the price for granting him asylum in Lahore. When East India Company troops won the Second Anglo-Sikh War and annexed the Punjab, the stone was counted among the spoils of war and, as such, it was presented to Queen Victoria. Last year it went on display at the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. Did you happen to catch it there?”

“No.” Not at a shilling a pop, I didn’t. Those were the days before my per diem.

“Being the largest diamond in the world, it naturally drew in the crowds, but it also caused quite a controversy.”

“In what respect, sir?”

“It didn’t catch the light, lad. No matter how they angled it in its glass display case, it simply didn’t sparkle the way that everyone imagined it should. The powers-that-be decided that something ought to be done about it. The stone is to be re-cut, and the Prince Albert himself is to oversee the operation personally. At tonight’s reception, he’ll be handing the gem over to the firm that has been tasked with doing the work.”

“And the Maharajah of Lahore was expected to attend?”

“Yes, as a guest of honor. Gooseberry, are you all right?”

No, I wasn’t all right. I had a bad feeling about this. Some phrase, some turn of words the sergeant just used had triggered it but, for the life of me, I couldn’t think what.

“Sir, there’ll be adequate security precautions taken tonight, won’t there?”

“I am in charge of all the arrangements,” Sergeant Cuff replied warily.

“And I take it Prince Albert isn’t bringing the diamond himself?”

“No that would be highly irregular.” The sergeant leaned across the table, tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger, and addressed me in a whisper. “Officially it will be transported by an armed escort, due to arrive at six this evening. Unofficially two of my best men will be bringing it by a different route. The reception, which starts at eight, is to be held in the banqueting hall and my men will stay with it throughout. It’s a large room, so I’ve arranged for twelve of my officers to pose as waiting staff. They’ll be able to circulate while keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of trouble.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Gooseberry?”

“Can I…may I…please attend? I have a very bad feeling about tonight.”

The sergeant looked at me and smiled. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said. “Come on. Let’s see if we can’t get you kitted out. I expect they’ll have some livery in your size. You won’t be able to wear that bowler hat of yours, mind, and I imagine we’ll have to hide those bruises round your throat.”

By a quarter to eight I was garbed up like the rest of the waiters—Sergeant Cuff’s men included—in white shirt and breeches, and a tail coat of red and gold brocade. We were receiving our final orders from the steward, which included strict instructions of how we were to act—and not act—should we be lucky enough to encounter His Royal Highness. It all seemed like a great fuss about nothing, if you ask me. I mean, who amongst us would even consider trying to shake his hand?

“To your trays!” barked the steward. “Quickly now!”

I picked up a large silver platter of puff pastry cases filled with some gray-looking sludge and garnished with a bit of parsley. As I lined up in the queue for the banqueting hall, I tested one by dipping my finger in it. I think it was a concoction of chicken livers—it was hard to tell—perhaps with some sherry thrown in. The sherry saved it. It still wasn’t up to Mrs. Grogan’s standards and I began to feel sorry for the prince.

“And out you go!” the steward commanded us. “No jostling, now! Proceed in a stately, dignified manner!”

The banqueting hall was lit entirely by candles, their beams caught and reflected in the crystals that drooped like shimmering fruit from the chandeliers. A fire blazed in an ornate fireplace that was large enough to accommodate an ox roasting on a spit. There was even an orchestra of sorts, made up solely of string players, whose aim in life seemed to be to play as quietly and inoffensively as possible. Small groups of people stood chatting together, their glasses charged to the brim by the circling wine waiters. I myself began to circle, but nobody seemed to fancy the savories on my tray.

I spied Sergeant Cuff by one of the windows, keeping a wary eye out. Just as I was about to go over and greet him, some chap at the door announced the imminent arrival of the prince: “Ladies and gentlemen, I present His Royal Highness Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony.”

The waiters had been warned to move to the sides of the hall, stand stock still, and pretend to be invisible. With a stately, dignified gait that the steward would have been proud of, I made my way over to the orchestra, whose stage was by the wall nearest me, and stood like a marble statue as the prince made his grand entrance. I decided to chance a sneaky glance at the doorway, but my eyes never quite made it that far.

As the guests started bowing and curtseying, the only people left standing upright were the waiting staff. In the opposite corner of the room, staring back at me with a furious, glowering expression, stood Johnny Knight, togged up in a wine waiter’s outfit. And next to him, in similar attire, stood Eric.

Suddenly I knew the phrase that had bothered me when Sergeant Cuff was talking about the diamond: ‘no matter how they angled it in its glass display case’. Its glass display case. Johnny Knight may not have been as mad as he appeared after all.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, October 17th.
Copyright Michael Gallagher 2014.
If you’re prepared to write an honest review, click on this link to bid for an advance reviewer’s copy at LTER—you'll find the listing about three-quarters of the way down the page.

You can follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.
Photograph: Cast Iron Billy 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.

Gooseberry: Chapter Fourteen

How six years can change a person. The last time I’d seen him, Johnny Knight had been a tall, thin, spotty adolescent with a mop of hair the color of rat’s urine. He’d sprung up and out since then, but the main difference was in his face. His rotting teeth had caused his cheeks to collapse inwards, puckering his mouth and giving him the appearance of a bitter, old man. I noticed his dress sense hadn’t changed any, despite his elevated position—but then, I suppose, neither had mine.

“Heard you was back,” he said, taking a swig from the whiskey bottle he was holding, as two young lads ran forward and began sweeping up the glass. “Edinburgh, was it?” That’s certainly where I told Bertha I’d been. “As you can see, there’s been a few changes round here, so don’t go getting any funny ideas. It wouldn’t be healthy.”

“It’s nice to see you, too, Johnny,” I said brightly.

Johnny frowned, unable to work out whether I was being sarcastic or not. Though ‘sarcastic’ may not have been in his vocabulary, he had a keenly honed sense of when someone was being disrespectful to him. Note to self: do not push your luck.

“Was that any better, Johnny?” Eric asked, giving me a nod of recognition, albeit a wary one. Like his brother, Colin, perhaps he thought I was here after his job.

“Me old mother could have made a better hash of it,” barked Johnny, “and she’s been dead nigh on ten years. Again! You’ll do it again!”

The two lads who’d been cleaning up placed another pane of glass across the bar stools. Eric glowered at me and began to pace the room again, attempting to work himself up into a frenzy.

“Remember when you and me were mudlarks together, Octopus?” Johnny turned to me and asked. “Picking through the stones on the riverbank at low tide? Me, I always got the bits of bone, the scraps of wood. You, you got the copper nails and the lumps of coal. And do you remember when winter came, and we was both stuck on the shore freezing our behinds off? It was me what found us that Ragged School to take shelter in, but even then you had to go one better. You couldn’t just accept their hot potatoes and their magic lantern shows, you had to go and suck up to them teachers with all their bleedin’ book learning. But don’t think for one minute that you had them fooled. They knew you was in with the local gang like the rest of us. They knew what you got up to when we all went out on a job. Why is it, do you think, that they never grassed us up to the magistrate?”

“Perhaps they were being kind,” I suggested carefully.

Johnny took another swig of whisky. “Kind? Kind? Nah. You got it all wrong. Remember that old coot, what had the whiskers down to here? He took a liking to me. Too much of a liking, if you catch my drift. Swore he’d do anything for me. That’s why we was never grassed up. That’s why you was never grassed up.” Behind me, Eric was raging like a bull. “Because of that—and only because of that—you got to rise up through the ranks. Now—fair’s fair—I know that I did too. But it was you what became Ned’s second-in-command, not me.”

Johnny paused. He glanced at Eric and, judging him to have reached a sufficiently fevered pitch, screamed the word, “Now!” at him at the top of his voice. Sweat pouring off him, Eric raised the cane above his head and launched himself at the fresh pane of glass.

“What do you call someone who’s second-in-command?” asked Johnny, breathing the question into my ear as needles of glass exploded in all directions.

“A deuce?” I whispered back.

“A stooge,” replied Johnny, and he began to howl with laughter. Meanwhile, Eric was swaying, as if on the brink of collapse. Johnny ran at him and struck him across the face. “Again!” he screamed. “And this time put more backbone in it!”

Bertha was right. Johnny had changed, and not for the better. From what I could see, he’d descended into the depths of madness and seemed intent on dragging all those around him with him.

“So why are you here?” he asked, as the two lads set about sweeping up the glass again. “Come to take Eric’s place?” On hearing this, Eric threw me a filthy look. The cane in his hand started twitching.

“I’ve come to see James Shepherd. I’ve come to make him talk.”

“You?” Johnny’s cold, colorless eyes narrowed.

“Our mutual friend sent me. He believes that I may be…well, more persuasive, shall we say, at getting his brother’s whereabouts out of him.”

“Oh? And what mutual friend would that be?”

“He wouldn’t appreciate either of us using his name, now, would he? Let’s just call him the Client.”

In the blink of an eye, the whisky bottle was on the floor and Johnny hands were around my throat. “Let’s not,” he hissed, as he began to squeeze. “Let’s respect him by giving him his proper name.”

“Hook,” I gasped, while I could still get the words out. “Josiah Hook. I work for him.” Johnny didn’t relax his grip.

“If that’s true you’ll know his guvnor’s name.”

“Sir Humphrey…Sir Humphrey Mallard.”

Reluctantly Johnny let go of me. I gently fingered the tender muscles of my throat. I’d be wearing the bruises for weeks.

“What makes Joe think you’ll get anything out of him? I can be very persuasive, yet I got nothing.”

Joe? Clearly Johnny and Hook were as thick as, well, thieves. “Mr. Hook is appreciative of that. But he believes that maybe violence isn’t the answer in this particular case.”

“So what you going to do? Ask him pretty please? Promise he’ll get to live if he gives his brother up?”

“Something along those lines, yes.”

“You’re wasting your time!”

“Mr. Hook doesn’t think so.” Johnny snarled and bared his sadly diminished set of teeth. He looked set to choke me again. “Where have you put him?” I asked, shying away from the stench of his mouth. Even the whisky on his breath failed to disguise the smell of decay.

“End of the corridor. Last room on the left. Go knock yourself out.” Then he seemed to have an afterthought. “Anything you learn,” he added, “you report it to me. I get the credit for it, see?”

“Fine by me.”

By this point the lads had replaced the sheet of glass, and Eric had worked himself up into another frenzy. What had happened to the amiable sheep, I wondered? Silly question. He’d come under Johnny’s influence. As I closed the door behind me I heard Johnny shouting, “Now!”

The room where I found James was icy. Someone had left the window open on purpose and his skin was blue from the cold. First I removed his blindfold. One eye was bloodied and swollen, so swollen that it refused to open; the other blinked in dispirited fear. A hank of shoulder-length hair was missing from above his right ear where someone had taken the shears to it. The stubble on his chin now had all the makings of a beard.

“I’m going to remove your gag,” I told him, “but I need you to stay quiet. Do you understand? Nod if you understand.”

He stared at me with his one good eye, still blinking, but otherwise motionless.

“Mr. James, my name is Gooseberry. I work for the Blakes, Miss Penelope’s employers, and I’m going to try to get you out of here, but you have to promise to do everything I say. Can you nod?” This time there was a slight movement, though I’d scarcely call it a nod. “Good. Now, no talking, if you please.”

I took Bertha’s knife and carefully cut through the kerchief. James spat the small rubber ball out of his mouth, the one that the kerchief had held in place.

“I…know you,” he said softly, the words barely making it through his chattering teeth. “You’re the boy…from the zoo. You…threatened to hurt Penelope.”

“Mr. James, Miss Penelope is my friend.” This was somewhat of an overstatement, but there was no time to explain further. “I apologize for the deception, but it was a test to see how you really felt about her.”

“I…love Penelope.”

“I know. But I had to know for certain, so I devised a little test. I’m going to cut you free now. Ready?” In response, James gave another twitch of his head.

I started by cutting through the ropes at his wrists. Whoever tied him up had made a first-rate job of it. There was no way James could have escaped these bonds on his own. When I eventually managed to free his hands, he began to flex and stretch his fingers as I set to work on the cords that kept him strapped to the chair.

“What did you say your name was?” James asked quietly. I could feel his body trembling as I hacked away with the knife.

“Gooseberry. At least, that’s what they call me in the Blakes’ household. I actually work for Mr. Mathew Bruff, the Blakes’ lawyer. A junior clerk at his offices gave me the name.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Octavius. Octavius Guy.”

“Why are you helping me, Octavius?”

“Because if I don’t, they’re going to kill you. You understand that, don’t you?”

“But aren’t you’re risking your life?”

“Yes, Mr. James, I am.” I tugged at the ropes and they came away in my hands. James shuddered and stretched his arms. Hugging himself to keep warm, he started rocking back and forth in his chair. “Sit still, sir. I’m going to tackle your ankles now.”

Though he still kept rubbing himself to get his circulation flowing, he managed to get his rocking under control. “Octavius, why are you risking your life for me?” he asked.

“Because Miss Penelope insists you are a good man.”

James nodded, a proper nod this time.

“There,” I said, as I finished. James attempted to stand, but his feet refused to bear his weight and he collapsed back into the chair. I put down the knife and went to help him up. “Put your arm around my shoulder, sir, and let me take your weight. We’ll get you walking again in no time.”

For a minute or so, we staggered around the room until James was able to support himself again. I bent down and opened the canvas bag, and fished out Bertha’s clothes.

“Mr. James, I need you to put these on. They may be a little loose, but they’re going to have to do.”

Suddenly James had his arm around me, pulling me to him. The blade of the knife was pressed against my throat.

“One final question, Octavius…or whatever your name is,” James hissed in my ear. “Just how would a young lad at a law office, and one who claims intimate acquaintance with the Blakes, come to know that I was being held here?”

“Mr. James, please put the knife down. You’re liable to hurt me with it.”

“Answer my question!”

“All right! All right! Six years ago I used to be part of this gang. But then Mr. Bruff found me and rehabilitated me. I do know the Blakes, sir, I swear it, and I’ve met Mrs. Merridew, in whose household you were once employed.”

“Then tell me something about her, something that the madmen holding me captive wouldn’t know.”

“Mrs. Merridew?” I had to rack my brains to remember anything about the old lady. Then it came to me. “She never realized that servants go courting on their afternoons off.”

The blade pressed harder. “That could be said of all the best families in London!”

“Wait! I have it. When you handed her your notice, she asked you if you were quitting because of the nuisance callers getting on your nerves.”

“And that, my friend, might be nothing more than a lucky guess on your part.”

I could feel the knife’s edge digging into the bruises Johnny had given me. “Explosions,” I said quickly. For a moment the pressure abated.

“What about explosions?” asked James.

“She doesn’t like them when they occur at night. Gunfire included.”

Slowly James released me. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I had to be certain that this wasn’t some intricate plan to get me to lead you to my brother.”

I held out my hand. “Knife,” I said bluntly.

“What?”

“Give me my knife back. Now. Then get into those clothes I brought you, and be quick about it.”

He handed back the knife, then went to examine the articles on the floor.

“Octavius?”

“What?”

“I really am sorry.”

“Then tell me, where is your brother Thomas?”

James’s one good eye blinked. “Honestly, I don’t know. If I need to contact him, I leave a message for him under a bench in Hyde Park. He does the same if he wants to contact me.” He stared at me imploringly. “That’s the truth, I promise. Now do you forgive me?”

“James, just put on the damned skirt.”

While James got changed, I went to deal with Colin, who was still on guard at the foot of the stairs.

“What’s up with you?” he asked. “You look angrier than a poke in the eye.”

Suffice it to say, no acting was required. “It’s Johnny,” I explained. “He wasn’t happy to see me. And he’s not happy with you for allowing me up there.” The smile on Colin’s face melted away, replaced rather rapidly by a look of alarm. “If I were you,” I continued, “I’d make myself scarce for a bit, at least till his temper dies down. Tell him you were dealing with some trouble out on the street.”

“Yeah…yeah, of course,” he mumbled, already backing away. “Trouble on the street…yeah…”

Once he’d turned and fled, I nipped back up the stairs. James had put on Bertha’s clothes, and was ready and waiting, the canvas bag they’d arrived in tucked under his arm.

“Keep your head down and keep the shawl pulled tight across your lower face,” I instructed him. “Move naturally and don’t run unless I tell you to, and try not to draw any attention to yourself. I’ll be at your side all the way; just follow my lead. I have a cab waiting for us in Long Acre that will take us to Montagu Square. I’ve asked the Blakes to set up an around-the-clock armed watch, so you’ll be safe there. Ready?”

“Tell me again,” said James, “why are you doing this for me?”

“At this point I really couldn’t say. Let’s just go before I change my mind.”

As we crept along the hallway and down the stairs, I heard one last pane of glass shattering behind the closed door.

It was going on midnight by the time we got to Montagu Square. Despite the lateness of the hour, the whole household rallied to receive Miss Penelope’s beau—even Mrs. Merridew, who seemed relieved to see her former footman safe, if not quite sound. James was soon divested of Bertha’s clothing, then put to bed so that Cook could treat his wounds, while Mrs. Blake and Miss Penelope sat on either side of him, pressing him for his story. Mr. Blake stood watching at the foot of the bed. I gathered up the clothes, returned them to the bag, and prepared to take my leave. As I reached the hall—where Samuel, armed with his pistol, sat guarding the entrance—I heard the sound of running footsteps following me. I turned and saw both Miss Penelope and Mrs. Blake standing there.

“You’re not very good at following orders, Gooseberry,” Mrs. Blake observed. “What happened to not putting yourself in any danger?”

“Miss, if you please, I’ve had a long night and I just want to go home.”

Mrs. Blake smiled. “We are in your debt, young man.”

Miss Penelope came forward and planted a kiss on my forehead. “I am in your debt,” she said. “Thank you for saving James.”

I nodded. Samuel opened the door for me and let me out, and I jogged down the steps to the waiting cab.

The room was in darkness when I got to my lodgings. I could hear Julius’s slumbering snufflings over by the stove.

“You all right, Octopus?” came a soft voice out of the dark.

“Yes, Bertha. I’m all right.”

“You done wot you was gunna do?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are we safe?”

“It would be best if you kept wearing your disguise,” I replied.

“Wot about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you need a disguise now?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “I put your bed-roll out for yeh, just in case. Come and get some shut-eye. You’ll be tired.”

I woke up late on Wednesday morning. Julius was long gone and even Bertha was already on his way out to pick up the daguerreotypes. I went and ate a leisurely breakfast at Mrs. Grogan’s fine establishment. Sated at last, and feeling the need to replenish my sadly diminished funds, I decided to tackle Mr. Crabbit. Needless to say, he was furious at my lack of receipts—so furious that he insisted on sending for Mr. Bruff. Thankfully, Mr. Bruff had already received a note from Mr. Blake, which praised my actions of the previous evening to the hilt. He politely but forcefully reminded Mr. Crabbit that he had given me his word that receipts would not be required for my per diems.

The slightly warmer, overcast afternoon saw me standing on Leadenhall Street, gazing up at East India House with its portico of towering Greek columns about the entrance. How was I ever going to get inside—not just through its doors, you understand—but inside the company, where I’d have access to Sir Humphrey Mallard and his cronies? And, just supposing that I somehow did, how was I ever going to bring them to book for what they’d done? My mind, I’m sorry to say, was a blank. Even as I let out an audible sigh, fate lent a hand—a hand that literally grabbed me by the shoulder.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, October 10th.
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: “Hookey Alf” of Whitechapel 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.

Gooseberry: Chapter Thirteen

“Gooseberry, I have no idea how you can know the things you do, but since you seem to know everything, what can you tell me about this? Who has James? What will they do with him?”

I could hazard a guess on both counts and even speculate on his current whereabouts. Instead, all I said was, “Miss Penelope, these people are dangerous.”

“James is a good man. If you know anything, anything at all, I beg you to help me.”

I reached in my pocket for a coin. I took it out, looked at it, considered flipping it, then thought better of it. I stowed it away again.

“Miss Penelope, have you told Mrs. Blake about this?”

“Not yet.”

“Then I want you to go home and explain it to her. Tell her Gooseberry suggests that she closes Mrs. Merridew’s residence and has the servants transferred to Montagu Square. She should use them to set up an around-the-clock armed watch. As for yourself, miss, you must not set foot outside the house for the next few days, or at least until hear from me next. May I keep the note, please?”

“What do you plan to do with it?”

“I’m going to use it to try and get Mr. James back for you.”

“So you know where he is?”

“I have a fairly good idea.”

“Will you tell me your plan?”

“I’d rather not, miss.”

She blinked. “And when do you intend to act?”

“Tonight.”

Retaining the note, I replaced the lock of hair inside the envelope and handed it back to her.

“James is a good man,” she repeated, as she rose and took her leave.

I needed to think, but first I needed to prepare. I headed down to Mr. Crabbit’s office and handed in my receipt. He was not impressed that I’d managed to spend the entire sum he’d given me.

“Two daguerreotypes at a pound a piece? A pound! Would one have not sufficed?”

“I sneezed during the first attempt and spoiled it, sir.”

“Costly sneeze! Well, what are you standing there for, boy? I have your receipt; now be about your business.”

“Sir, may I have my per diem, please? I’ve a feeling I’ll be needing it tonight.” If I was lucky enough to survive.

Mr. Crabbit sighed and dug out his petty cash tin. “Don’t think it goes unnoticed what you’ve been spending this money on,” he warned me. “Expensive pocket diaries and luxury photographic portraits. And the number of pencils you get through! Here. Seven shillings and sixpence. Now, on no account forget the—”

“The receipts. Yes, sir. Sir?”

“Well?”

“Take a look at this paper, if you please, sir.” I showed him the back of Miss Penelope’s note. “Do we keep anything like this in stock? I just need one or two sheets, so it seems a waste to go out and buy a whole ream of it.” That got him.

“I sincerely doubt you could buy such a thing. This paper’s yellowed with age. But I may have something here that will serve,” he said, wrestling in the bottom drawer of his desk. God bless misers and hoarders.

“Perfect!” I said, as he handed me exactly two sheets. “Now, I wonder if I can impose upon you for an envelope, a pen, and a drop of blue-black ink?”

“Would you care to use my desk while you’re at it?”

Having worked with the chap for six years, I can recognize the man’s sarcasm when I hear it. “Not at all, sir,” I replied. “I can kneel on the cold, hard floor and use my bench upstairs as a desk.” My own particular brand, however, went straight over his head. Not that it mattered; the last thing I wanted was Mr. Crabbit peering over my shoulder. I needed privacy for what I was about to do.

Since the day was a Tuesday—a market day—this evening Johnny would be hosting his fights. If Josiah Hook, esquire, remained true to form—as evidenced by the markings in his diary—he would undoubtedly be in attendance. For my plan to work, I had to keep him away from the Bucket of Blood.

Having checked Mr. Bruff’s office and found it empty—and, yes, I did consider using it for the briefest of moments—I knelt on the cold, hard floor in front of my bench and opened Miss Penelope’s letter. Now, while may I own up to being the slowest, sloppiest lock-pick in all of London, I also happen to be a dab hand at the beautiful and beguiling art of forgery. Whoever had written this note—for it couldn’t have been the illiterate Johnny Knight (unless a miracle of biblical proportions had occurred)—they formed their letters slowly and shakily. There was no flow to the penmanship and very few of the letters joined up. So far, so good. Next I studied the text. We got James. If he don’t tell us where his brother is, be warned: we’ll be coming for you.

Trying to remember how Johnny spoke, I dipped my pen into the small, brass inkwell Mr. Crabbit had loaned me, and wrote:

‘Stay clear of the pub. Old Bill’s got a raid planned for tonight.’

I compared the two notes and decided mine would do nicely. I waited for the ink to dry, then folded it twice and popped it into the envelope. Not a minute too soon, for I could hear George and George, back from their reducing dinner, lumbering up the stairs.

“Now, which of you two lads has heard of the Thames Tunnel?” I asked them, as they eventually appeared at the end the corridor.

“I heard of it,” admitted the elder George. “It’s out Wapping way.”

“Excellent,” I said, handing him the envelope. “Mr. Bruff would like you to deliver this.”

“But I just had me dinner and I ain’t had me nap yet…and Wapping’s miles away.”

The younger George sniggered.

I extracted a threepenny piece from my pocket. “You’ll need a penny for the entrance fee. Halfway along the tunnel at the bottom of the shaft there’s a coffee shop. Look for a gent in his late twenties, with a pale complexion, and dark hair and a beard. He’ll be sitting at a table but, depending on how busy they are, he may not be on his own. Approach him and quietly ask if he’s the client—quietly, mind. If he says yes, give him the envelope. There’s another penny for a piece of cake—”

“Cake?”

“Yes. I can recommend the Dundee cake. It’s got lots of lovely almonds on top. You’ve also got another penny to spend at your discretion.”

“At my what?”

“You can spend it on whatever you like.”

“Cor!”

“And best of all, George, you don’t need to worry about any receipts.”

By now the younger George was looking green with envy. “Why didn’t you pick me?” he asked.

“Because you, my friend,” I told him, “failed to volunteer.”

I had the elder George repeat his instructions back to me until I was sure he knew them by heart. Then I patted him on the shoulder and sent him on his way. Having done all the preparation I could for the time being, I now needed somewhere quiet to think. I took myself outside into the square, and went and sat on one of the benches.

Johnny had taken James, presumably at Mallard’s request, to ferret out Thomas’s location. Given that the boy I’d met in Twickenham had put paid to Mallard’s plans by absconding, that meant there could only be one reason for this. Mallard was desperate to clean shop. On the bright side, I couldn’t see James giving up his brother—and thank goodness, for it was only that one tiny piece of information that was keeping him alive.

Taking James on his own had been a mistake. Johnny should have abducted Miss Penelope, too. Threatened her life, not his. But then, Johnny isn’t noted for his brains, and nor, I suspect, does he understand what people will do for love. The only person Johnny loves is Johnny.

For quite some time I had been aware of the fact that I would end up having to face Johnny. I’m not trying to excuse my increasingly reckless, recent spending, but if I was about to die—a strong possibility, given that my only advantages over an older, taller, and stronger opponent were my swiftness and brains—I wanted some extraordinary memories, some to take with me and some to leave behind. If the impossible were to happen and James and I made it out alive, it was my sincere hope that Mallard would come to blame Johnny for the loss, and get rid of him, just as he had done with Treech.

A gust of cold wind whipped around the square, lifting piles of leaves into the air and rattling gutters. Shivering, I made my way back inside. George returned shortly before the close of business.

“So what did you spend your penny on, George?” I asked, as he sat down on our corridor bench.

“The monkey,” he answered, though he seemed somewhat out of sorts. I really should have warned him about the monkey. “Had to,” he explained after a moment. “The man I gave the note to asked me a question, and I wasn’t going to come all the way back just to ask Mr. Bruff. So I asked the monkey instead.”

Oh, God. I hadn’t foreseen this. “What question George?”

“Whether it was still on for tomorrow night.”

“Whether what was on?”

“Dunno.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“I told him I’d go and find out.”

“George, this is important. Did the man see you consulting the monkey?”

“I didn’t hurt the monkey! I wouldn’t do that!” George stared at me indignantly.

“Did he see you asking it? Think!”

“Nah. He didn’t follow me. He was too busy writing in his book.”

“And what was the monkey’s answer?”

“The monkey? He said, ‘yes’.”

That was fortuitous, since the police raid was entirely of my own invention, and whatever was planned would most likely go ahead. I reached in my pocket and pulled out a shilling.

“What’s this?” George asked, as I placed it in his palm.

“It’s for the penny you were obliged to use. You can spend it on anything you like, but I hope you’ll consider using it to visit the zoo this weekend.”

I don’t know if I expected him to smile, but I certainly didn’t expect the reaction I got. The coin seemed to puzzle him so much that he couldn’t stop frowning at it.

I picked up some eel pies at Mrs. Grogan’s on the way home. Accompanied by the potatoes that Bertha had cooked, they made a nice enough meal. While Julius got ready to practice his writing, I took Bertha out on to the landing for a quick word.

“Wot’s up with you?” he asked. “You been quiet all evening.”

“Bertha, I have to go out tonight, and I might not be back till tomorrow. I want you to do me a favor. See that Julius gets off to work in the morning, then go and pick up the photographs. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow night, give Julius the picture of me holding the sheet of paper, and pass on this message for me. Tell him I said ‘unnecessary’.”

“Unnecessary?”

“He’ll know what to do. Listen, Bertha, another thing. I need to borrow your clothes.”

“No problem. I can change out of me disguise in a jiffy.”

“Not your disguise, Bertha. Your normal clothes. Your skirt, your shawl, your cap and ribbons. I could also do with a knife, if you’ve got one.”

“You’re starting to scare me, Octopus.”

“I’m starting to scare myself. But enough of this. Let’s go in before Julius comes looking for us.”

“What word will we do tonight?” asked Julius, as Bertha and I re-entered the room.

I gave my usual reply. “I don’t know…what word would be useful?” All the while, I was studying his eyes. As always, I could see my mother in them.

“How about ‘duggairiotype’?”

I didn’t bother correcting him. I knew that if I didn’t make it back, he’d soon be speaking permanently like Bertha—the price of having Bertha look after him. A small price at that, come to think about it.

“Would you settle for ‘picture’?” I asked. Julius nodded and I wrote out the word.

It was blowing a gale as the cab drew into Long Acre and pulled up by St. Martin’s Lane. There was hardly any traffic on the roads, yet, despite the cold, the pavements thronged with life. Groups of drunken porters staggered from one pub to the next, while working girls stood warming themselves in front of scalding charcoal braziers, much to the wry bemusement of the roasted chestnut vendors who operated them. With the bag of Bertha’s clothes slung over my shoulder, I hopped down from the carriage and had a word with the cabbie. I knew I could trust him to wait, for he was one of Mr. Bruff’s regulars and I had ridden up on the box beside him many times before.

I turned the corner and for a moment stood looking up at the Bucket of Blood, its windows all aglow with a soft, yellow light. Above, dark clouds scudded across the jet-black sky. The door screeched open on its rusty hinges and an elderly couple lurched out, taking wild, unsteady steps into the street. I slipped through the door before it closed and, keeping my head down, made my way quickly across the crowded, sawdust-strewn floor.

The fights were held in a yard at the back, with access via an outdoor passage that was used as a urinal. Squeezing past a man who was availing himself of the facilities, I arrived at a large flagstoned area, hemmed in on all sides by neighboring buildings. Fires blazed in huge tin drums, lighting the central ring, where one man was pummeling another to the ground while onlookers bellowed their support. Behind them, on a raised platform, a good two feet above most people’s heads, sat a chair resembling a kind of throne. Johnny’s chair, but it was empty. So where was Johnny?

I headed back inside and scanned the room. It was then that I noticed a guard who stationed at the bottom of the stairs. Though many years had gone by, I still recognized him. It was Colin, who’d been fourteen when we knocked about together. Now he was a young man of twenty. What puzzled me was where his twin brother Eric was, for the pair had always been inseparable.

“Hello, Colin,” I greeted him as I approached.

“My word! If it isn’t young Octopus! Where you been these past six years?”

“Oh, here and there,” I answered, and tapped the side of my nose knowingly. “Where’s Eric?”

Colin gave a sideways nod at the stairs behind him. “Up there. Johnny just made him his second-in-command.”

“His deuce?” That came as a bit of a shock. Neither Colin nor Eric was especially talented, and nor was either prone to violence. I would never consider them natural born leaders. They were more like a couple of amiable sheep.

“Wait, you ain’t come to take his place, ’ave yeh?” He was referring to the fact that I’d once been a deuce myself, a position that even now demanded his loyalty and respect.

“No, Colin, have no fear of that. But I do need to see Johnny.”

“Johnny’s a bit tied up at the mo’,” said Colin evasively. “Why don’t you come back on Thursday?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, as I pushed my way past him. “Johnny will want to see me.”

Colin squirmed as he tried to stop me. It was a halfhearted attempt at best and he quickly gave up. I padded up the stairs to the corridor at the top.

A door at the end stood open, giving a narrow view of the spacious room beyond. As I got closer, I spied Eric, Colin’s thinner, wirier brother, pacing in circles and balancing a gent’s cane in his hand. I could see how extremely nervous he was, flinching as he constantly readjusted his grip on the handle. All the while I could hear Johnny screaming at him to put his back into it. Eric set his jaw grimly, raised the cane, and took a few steps back.

“Get it over with!” cried Johnny, from wherever he was in the room. Eric steeled himself and started running.

I bolted through the doorway, convinced by now that Eric was about to deal James a thrashing. But James wasn’t even there. Instead, the object of Eric’s wrath was a pane of glass that had been suspended across two high bar stools. As he brought the cane down with all his might, the pane shattered, sending fragments flying into the air. Behind me there came a burst of maniacal laughter. As I turned, I saw Johnny perched on a third bar stool at the back of the room, well out of reach of the exploding glass.

“Well, well,” he said, as he noticed my arrival. “If it ain’t my old friend, Octopus.”


Gooseberry continues next Friday, October 3rd.
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: Street Advertising 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.

Gooseberry: Chapter Twelve

“Step back!” snapped the diminutive Mr. Crabbit, as Mr. Bruff pressed his way through the gaggle of clerks. “I said step back and let your employer through!”

“Mr. Crabbit, what in God’s name is happening here?”

“This gentleman’s been shot, sir.”

“Here? On the premises?”

“No, sir, we found him like this when he stumbled in off the street. I fear he’s in a bad way. He’s been asking for you, Mr. Bruff.”

Mr. Bruff knelt by the dying man’s side and took hold of his hand. At the sight of his face, Treech rallied for an instant.

“I am not…who you think,” he said, coughing all the while.

“Hush, now,” said Mr. Bruff. “We know. Who shot you, sir?”

“Mallard. Mallard…shot me. The boy…escaped on my watch…overheard…plan to burn the bank down.”

“Who’s Mallard?”

“Mallard? All…his idea. Wants…the diamond…” Treech’s eyelids began to flutter.

“Stay with me! Stay with me, damn it!”

“Daguerreotype…”

“Yes?”

“The scar…the boy…”

“What about the boy?”

Another fit of coughing. “I…I picked…the wrong side.” His chest heaved as he attempted a painful, shallow laugh. “Been…betrayed. Get me…my revenge.”

One last spasm, and Treech’s body came to rest. Ever so gently, Mr. Bruff let go of the man’s hand.

“George and George, go and rouse the local police. Mr. Crabbit, if you would be so kind as to stay with the body until they get here? Gooseberry, my office, please. The rest of you, back to work.”

Just at that moment, a crushed-up ball of paper landed at Mr. Bruff’s feet. Still kneeling, he picked it up and examined it.

“Who threw this?” he asked, his face turning redder and redder. No one answered. Standing up, he asked again, “Who threw this?” When he still got no reply, he handed the ball of paper to Mr. Crabbit. “Mark my words,” he muttered, as he started up the stairs, “there will be changes in this office.”

I followed him up. He showed me into his office and shut the door.

“Well, this is a fine kettle of fish! Whatever Miss Rachel’s wishes, we cannot keep the police out of it now. A murder! And the poor chap dies in my very own reception!”

“Sir,” I said, “with regards to the police, you could always be economical with the truth.” It was a risky thing to suggest, because it could lead him to suspect that this was my own preferred strategy.

“I’m a solicitor, Gooseberry. It’s my job to be discreet. The police shall have the bald facts from me and nothing more. But who on earth is Mallard? And what was this diamond he was babbling on about?”

“A mallard’s a type of duck, sir,” I said, providing him with a bald fact of my own. As to the question of the diamond, I was sure I knew the answer. For the past year, any mention of a diamond in public had generally meant but one thing: the Kohinoor—the Mountain of Light—which had been on display at the Great Exhibition, at least until last October when the Crystal Palace finally closed. I had to give Mallard marks for audacity, for the Kohinoor was meant to be the largest diamond in the world.

Mr. Bruff sighed. “So the boy we met at Twickenham has bolted. He could be anywhere by now.”

Effectively scuppering Mallard’s well-laid plans, I reflected. Presently the man had neither the real maharajah, nor the fake. The worrying question was whether Mallard shot Treech in a fit of anger over losing the boy, or, more sinisterly, now that his scheme had failed, whether he was starting to tie up loose ends?

“Did you catch that fellow’s dying confession?” Mr. Bruff asked. “How he picked the wrong side?”

Actually I’d heard every word of it, and I had my own ideas about what it meant. If I was right, then I also knew why Hook had turned on Bertha, and why he now wanted him dead. In a sense it had to do with Pan-faced Dora’s mole—the only spot of beauty she ever possessed. Bertha, bless him, didn’t know when to keep his trap shut.

“Sir, there’s something I wish to follow up,” I said, “but I’m afraid it will be expensive.”

“How expensive?”

I hadn’t a clue how much it cost to have a daguerreotype made, but I knew it cost a lot—and I ideally wanted two of them. “I’m not sure, sir.”

“I see no problem, since Mr. Blake has generously agreed to foot the bill. Have a word with Mr. Crabbit when the police are done with him. Tell him you have my blessing.”

It was late in the afternoon when the police eventually departed, having removed the body and taken everyone’s statements. Mr. Crabbit nearly fell out of his chair when I requested two pounds, preferably in shilling coins.

“Don’t worry. What I don’t use, I’ll return,” I promised.

“I shall require receipts,” he reminded me in a trembling voice, quite possibly as a result of handing over the equivalent of half his month’s wages from the firm’s dwindling reserves.

I found Julius and Bertha working together on money when I got home, but it wasn’t going especially well, for they were reduced to using torn scraps of paper instead of actual money. I was relieved to see that Bertha was still wearing his blue serge suit, for, having forgone dinner due to all the excitement, I was planning to take everyone out for a meal.

Being a Monday evening, the eating house on the Gray’s Inn Road—where I normally pick up our supper on my way home—wasn’t as packed as it normally was. Mrs. Grogan, who runs the place with the help of her husband, Jack, was delighted to see that I’d brought Julius. She fussed over him and messed with his hair as she showed the three of us to a candle-lit table in the corner.

“So, what’s your pleasure to be, gentlemen?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Gawd, she thinks I’m an omi,” Bertha grunted in my ear.

“We’ll start with soup, if you please, Mrs. Grogan, and Julius will have an eel pie. After that, we’ll place ourselves in your capable hands, and you may serve us with what you judge best. We’re all very hungry.” A murder at the office can do that to a person.

The woman beamed at me, then went to fetch our soup.

Halfway through the enormous meal, Bertha burst into tears.

“What’s the matter, Bertha?” Julius asked solicitously.

“Nothing, Sprat. Nothing,” he replied, drying his tears with the back of his hand. “It’s just I mustn’t let meself get too used to this, that’s all. Thank you for this lovely meal, Octopus. I’ll never forget these past few days for as long as I live.”

“You certainly won’t forget tomorrow.”

“You got something planned, then?”

“Yes, Julius is going to be sick.”

“I am not,” protested Julius. “I haven’t eaten that much.”

“Tomorrow you’re going to be sick, Julius, so sick, you won’t be able to go to work.” The truth is my brother works hard and without complaint. He deserved a day off now and again.

“Oh,” he said, as enlightenment came. “Pity,” he added, with a serious expression, “that I have to go sick just when my guvnor was coming round to the idea of calling me Sprat. Another day might have done it.”

“Rand,” Bertha corrected him. “Comin’ rand to the idea.”

I held my tongue.

Tuesday morning dawned bright and chilly. I had Bertha pack his normal clothes into a canvas bag while I wrote out a few words on a sheet of scrap paper, and then we headed off.

“This ain’t some kind of trick to get rid of me?” laughed Bertha nervously, as he eyed the canvas bag that contained all his worldly belongings.

“No trick, I promise. This is something you will love.”

I would have liked us to have taken a cab—for it would have been the first time Julius had ever ridden in one—but after the blow-out meal of the previous evening, I wasn’t sure if we could afford it.

“That’s where Octopus works,” said Julius, pointing as we passed Gray’s Inn Square.

“That’s where who works?” I demanded.

“Bertha calls you Octopus. Why can’t I?”

“Because you’re not Bertha.”

The traffic on Oxford Street was chaotic, as was the traffic on Regent Street. Cabs were banked up all the way down to Piccadilly.

“I done that one, and that one, and that one,” said Bertha, pointing out the shops he’d lifted things from. Since they were all even more select than the stationer’s in Bishopsgate, I wondered how he’d managed to charm his way through their doors.

“What do you mean you done them?” asked Julius.

“He just means he’s been in them,” I said, glaring at Bertha. “Look, we’re here.”

The three of us stood and stared at the tastefully painted shop-front sign:

Mr. William E. Kilburn,
Daguerreotypes of Distinction

A bell rang as I opened the door, and a woman appeared from behind a curtain.

“Can I help you?” she asked, eyeing us all with suspicion.

“Good morning, miss. Can you tell me, please, how much does it cost to have a daguerreotype made?”
“It all depends on the size you want.” She gave a smile as if to say she knew what I was up to, and that she could play this game all day.

“What’s the most popular size, miss?” I could play it too.

“A lot of people choose the sixth-plate,” she replied, leaving me entirely in the dark.

“And how much is a sixth-plate?”

“A sixth-plate? Let me think. A sixth-plate will cost you one pound. Now, are we done here?”

“I’ll take two, miss.” Thank God we didn’t come by cab.

“You’ll take…”

“Two.”

“I…I’ll need to take your payment up front.”

“And I,” I said, extracting the bag of shillings from my jacket, “shall require a receipt when we’re finished.”

Having tamed the dragon at the gate, we were led through to the back of the shop, which was lit by an enormous glass skylight. Mr. Kilburn was a slightly-built man of about forty-five years of age, with dark, unkempt hair, a full mustache, and a generous sprinkling of freckles on his face.

“Group shot, is it?” he inquired, studying the three of us from what I imagined was an artistic point of view.

“The first one, yes. My friend here will need somewhere to change his clothes.”

“He can change in there,” he said, indicating a small dressing room off one corner of the studio. “It’s quite private.”

As Bertha hurried away to change, I turned to Mr. Kilburn and said, “Would you believe that that was none other than Bertram Gubbins, the Theatre Royal’s premier comedic actor, and toast of London society for his role as the drunken butler in last year’s production of ‘Miss Penelope’s Secret’?”

“Really? He honestly didn’t strike me as the type.”

“That’s because he’s trying to get into character, sir. Most actors are content to declaim their parts loudly and accurately, but Gubbins believes in walking around in his character’s shoes. For this latest role, he’s preparing to play a Covent Garden flower girl.”

“A great big man like that?”

“He is a comedic actor, sir,” I pointed out, as Bertha rejoined us, looking utterly relieved to be back in a skirt again. The photographer burst out laughing.

“Very good, sir!” he cried. “Truly, I applaud you.”

“Wot the ’ell’s ’e on about,” growled Bertha, giving him the evil eye.

Hearing the deep bass voice, Mr. Kilburn laughed even louder. “Extraordinary! Absolutely extraordinary! All he needs is a basket!”

“Wot about me damned basket?”

“Oh, how I wish I’d caught his drunken butler! Tell me, sir, why have I never seen you before?”

“Clearly ’cos you ain’t bleedin’ looked!”

Mr. Kilburn doubled up in hysterics.

“Look, are we gunna get this duggairiotype done, or are we just gunna stand ’ere all day?”

“No more! No more! I can’t take it!”

“Bertha, hush, and let the man do his job.”

Eventually Mr. Kilburn calmed down enough to start arranging us in front of the backdrop, a wall of the studio that had been staged to look like a drawing room. He placed Bertha in a chair in the middle, with Julius standing on his left, and me on his right. “You’re lucky,” he said, “it’s a nice, clear day. You’ll only have to stay still for ten seconds.”

“Ten seconds?” gasped Julius, realizing how impossible that was going to be for him.

“Don’t worry,” said Mr. Kilburn. “I’ll be bolting you all in.”

Ten minutes later, he’d done just that, bolting us into what he called ‘posing frames’.

“Have you ever played at staring matches, to see who will blink first?” he asked. When nobody nodded their head—because nobody could without ripping away the back of their neck—he said, “You can still speak, you know.”

“We know wot starin’ matches are, don’t we, Sprat?”

“Good. So you’re going to have a staring match with me. Ready? On the count of three. One—two—three!”

Still staring at us with his eyes wide open, he whipped the lens cap off his camera.

“Can I get a copy of that?” asked Bertha, once he’d replaced it again.

“Daguerreotypes aren’t Talbotypes, Mr. Gubbins. They’re one-off originals. You can’t print them. But I tell you what. If you’ll permit me to take your portrait—at my own expense, of course—and allow me to exhibit it in my celebrity showcase, I’ll make another group shot for free, gratis.”

“Wot about a third for me mate, Sprat?”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Gubbins. Very well. I believe you’re worth it.”

Bertha looked delighted. “Ready for another starin’ match, boys?” he muttered.

Almost an hour had gone by before we got round to taking the daguerreotype I was officially there for. This time it was me on my own, sitting in the chair and holding the piece of paper—with the writing on it—across my chest.

“Son,” said Mr. Kilburn, “I hate to see you wasting your money. Daguerreotypes come out laterally reversed. You’ll never be able to read what it says.”

“That’s what I’m counting on, sir,” I replied. It occurred to me as I sat perfectly still for the fourth time that day that a dead body would make the perfect photographic subject. It got me thinking about Mr. Treech again.

As our portraits needed to be processed and wouldn’t be ready till the next day, once Bertha had changed back into his disguise, and the dragon had written me my receipt, the three of us set off; Julius and Bertha for our lodgings, and me for the office. Little did I realize as I bounded up the stairs that I was in for quite a surprise.

“Miss Penelope!”

Mrs. Blake’s maid was seated on the bench outside Mr. Bruff’s office, while George and George stood shuffling their feet and casting resentful glances in her direction. She looked up when she heard her name.

“Gooseberry, I…”

“Miss, I’m sorry for what I did to you yesterday, but you have to understand I had no choice. Before he knew that you were involved, Mr. Bruff was all for going to the police. So I had to tell him, you see, to keep the police out of it, and then he felt obliged to tell the Blakes.”

“I understand. Really, I do. I suppose I should probably thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank me, miss.”

“Gooseberry, is there some place private we can talk? It’s important. It’s very important.”

That’s the trouble with being an office boy. We had no privacy at all. “You two!” I snapped. “Isn’t it your dinnertime yet?”

“We’s not allowed to go to our chophouse no more,” said the elder George sulkily. “Mr. Bruff’s put us both on reducing diets.”

“Yeah, reducing diets.”

Reducing diets or not, I was sure Mr. Bruff didn’t intend them to starve. “Why don’t you go and get yourselves a hot potato each? There’s a street vendor on the corner of High Holborn.”

I saw a look cross their faces which suggested to me that they’d never considered this option. They glanced at each other, then bolted for the stairs.

“Now, what can I do for you, miss?”

“This morning I received this.” She opened her small handbag and extracted an envelope. Her face was taut as she handed it to me.

Inside I found a lock of coarse, sandy blond hair. There was also a note scribbled on a yellowing sheet of paper. It said:

‘We got James. If he don’t tell us where his brother is, be warned: we’ll be coming for you.’


Gooseberry continues next Friday, September 26th.
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: A Convicts’ Home 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.

Gooseberry: Chapter Eleven

“How are those eyes of yours doing, Gooseberry?” inquired Mr. Grayling, the infuriating junior clerk who bestowed on me my nickname. “Either of them popped out of your head yet?”

Not so far, Christopher, but I’m sure they would, the moment your brain produces one intelligent thought.

I headed for Mr. Crabbit’s door and knocked.

“Enter!”

“Good morning, sir,” I said, as I slipped into the room.

“What’s this, boy?” he asked.

“A receipt, sir. For two diaries and a pencil.” I swear there was a tear in the old man’s eye, and foolishly imagined it could only be from gratitude.

“I expect you have come for your per diem?”

“If it pleases you, sir.” He cast me a look to demonstrate just how much it pleased him, but he counted out my money nonetheless.

“Undoubtedly you will have heard about the fire?”

“If you’re speaking of that terrible blaze last night, sir, I think the whole of London saw it.” Julius, Bertha, and I had joined our neighbors down on the street, watching as the horizon lit up like a Roman candle. Although it was a chilly evening, it wasn’t long before lanterns were brought out, food and drink was being passed around, and jokes were being traded about the chances of a building catching fire on Burns’ Night. I really couldn’t have wished for a more exciting end to a perfect Sunday—one I expect Julius will take with him to his grave.

“Then I presume you will appreciate the need to spend conservatively at this time,” said Mr. Crabbit, as he handed me the coins, “and I shall require a valid receipt for every purchase.”

“Sorry, sir, I don’t follow…”

“We hold a small reserve of cash in this office for contingencies, and we shall just have to make do until the bank can arrange an emergency line of credit.”

“The bank?”

“Mr. Bruff’s bank, boy.”

“What about Mr. Bruff’s bank, sir?”

“Last night it burned to the ground.”

I dashed out of there like I myself was on fire, sprinted past Mr. Clueless Grayling—who was occupying his time by lobbing crushed-up balls of paper at his fellow clerks—and then bolted up the stairs as quick as I could. Abandoning my normal practice of knocking, I threw open the door.

Mr. Bruff sat slumped in his office chair, his features drawn and gray. “I can’t bring myself to believe it,” he said, looking up at me. “To destroy a single photograph, they burn down an entire bank? Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me the blaze was just a coincidence. Tell me something—tell me anything!”

“Mr. Bruff, I think we both know it was no coincidence,” I said, closing the door on the Georges, who, having been woken by my sudden arrival, were now trying to peek through the crack. “First you inform Mr. Treech that you deposited the daguerreotype with your bank, then two days later your bank burns to the ground. That sounds like a classic case of cause and effect to me.”

Mr. Bruff let out a wail. “To think I liked that man! And now that they believe the daguerreotype is no more, they’ll kill the maharajah.”

“They believe it’s no more?” I queried.

Shamefaced, Mr. Bruff rose and crossed the floor to his safe. “Last Friday, as I was waiting in line to be served at the bank, I started thinking: what if Gooseberry’s suspicions are just figments of the boy’s imagination? What if he wrote the note himself? What if Mr. Treech was exactly what he seemed to be, an honest, congenial man? Fearing that I was over-reacting by depositing the photograph, I returned it to my pocket and brought it back here.” He pulled open the safe door and extracted the slim, leather case. “Now I feel I have no choice but to take the matter to the police.”

“Mr. Bruff, you can’t!”

“Let Scotland Yard deal with these rival gangs! Let them be responsible for protecting the maharajah!”

“Mr. Bruff, I’m begging you. This is not something you want to do.”

“Gooseberry, I have no wish to discuss it further. I have made my decision.”

“You cannot involve the police in this, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because one of those gangs is not a gang. It’s Miss Penelope.”

Mr. Bruff’s eyes, which had shrunken into his head, suddenly grew wider. “Miss Penelope?” he stammered. “Miss Rachel’s maid?”

I nodded. “If you bring the police into this, they’ll find that she was the one who put that daguerreotype in Mrs. Merridew’s handbag. She was trying to keep it from falling into the wrong hands, for it’s the only proof that the boy we met is not the real Maharajah of Lahore—though how it proves it, I really cannot say. For the moment, however, the real maharajah is safe…at least, I believe him to be. He’s in the care of a Mr. Thomas Shepherd, brother of one Mr. James Shepherd, Mrs. Merridew’s former footman and Miss Penelope’s Sunday sweetheart. As far as I can tell, Dr. Login is with them too.”

Mr. Bruff blinked and rubbed his chin. “How long have you known this?” he asked.

“Honestly? I’ve known about Miss Penelope’s part in it for some time. I didn’t inform you because I knew you would wish to confront her, and I wanted to give her the chance to tell me her side of the story. The rest of it I only discovered yesterday.”

“And that’s everything? You’re holding nothing back?”

I put on my offended face, knowing that my honest face wouldn’t suffice. “Why should I hold anything back, sir?” I demanded, perfectly aware that I’d made no mention of Josiah Hook and Sir Humphrey Mallard, or the East India Company connection to the case.

“Gooseberry, even if I don’t call in Scotland Yard, I do have a duty of care to tell my clients what I know.”

“The Blakes? But if you tell the Blakes, sir, they might sack Miss Penelope.”

“True. And they’d be well within their rights to bring the police into it themselves.”

“But, Miss Penelope…she was only trying to help.”

“I am not insensitive to her position, Gooseberry, yet I still believe the Blakes deserve to know.”

“Then let me be the one to tell them, sir.”

On the cab journey there, Mr. Bruff hemmed and hawed most the way, and twice he had to stop himself from asking me to explain it all again. Awkwardly, it was Miss Penelope who answered the door to us. This time, I’m sorry to say, her eyes were full of apprehension. She could hardly bring herself to look at us as showed us to the library, and appeared to be on the verge of tears when she went to fetch the family. If Mr. Bruff had any doubts about the veracity of my statement, after a minute in her presence they all went up in smoke.

“Mr. Bruff, are you sure we should do this?” I asked, as soon as we were alone together.

“Octavius, we must. You may wish to leave out the part about the bank, though. It makes me look rather…rather…”

“I’ll leave out the part about the bank.”

Mr. Blake arrived first, followed shortly by his wife.

“Penelope is just collecting Aunt Merridew,” Mrs. Blake explained, as she took her seat. “They should be along shortly. I take it there have been developments?”

“Of a sort, Mrs. Blake, of a sort,” my employer replied. “Gooseberry has discovered something that I feel you should know.”

“Really? Ah, here comes my aunt now.”

Miss Penelope helped the old lady into a chair, bobbed a brief curtsey to Miss Rachel, and went to leave the room.

“If Mrs. Blake has no objections,” said Mr. Bruff quickly, “I would prefer that Miss Penelope remained.”

It was as if a mask had dropped from the poor girl’s face. Suddenly she looked frail and wretched”.

“I beg your Ladyship’s pardon,” came a voice from the doorway, “but if my daughter is to stay, then I should like to be present, too.” Mr. Betteredge, the Blakes’ elderly steward, cast a severe look in my direction as he entered the room. I noticed he was carrying his copy of Robinson Crusoe with him.

“Well, now that everyone is here,” Mrs. Blake said pleasantly, “why don’t you begin?”

“Before I start, miss,” I requested, “I’d like to ask Mr. Betteredge to share with us the passage he’s been reading from his book.”

The old man smiled, and with great deliberation opened the volume at a page about three-quarters of the way through. He cleared his throat, and in a tremulous voice he read, “‘As for the maid, she was a very honest, modest, sober, and religious young woman; had a very good share of sense; was agreeable enough in her person; spoke very handsomely, and to the purpose; always with decency and good manners, and not backward to speak when any thing required it, or impertinently forward to speak when it was not her business’.” He closed the book with a thump and looked up. “When it was not her business,” he repeated.

Mr. and Mrs. Blake looked distinctly puzzled, as did Mrs. Merridew. Mr. Bruff closed his eyes and started massaging his eyelids with his thumb and forefinger. Miss Penelope stood by the door, tears streaming silently down her cheeks.

“Thank you, Mr. Betteredge, sir,” I said, meeting his frosty stare. “I will try to bear that in mind when I say what I have to say.”

“Come on, Gooseberry,” urged Mr. Blake. “Out with it! All this suspense is killing me.”

“Very good, sir. I am going to tell you a story. There are some aspects that I’m still not clear on, but it starts with a plot to replace Dulip Singh, the young Maharajah of Lahore, with an impostor—and then do away with him, and his guardian, Dr. Login.”

Mrs. Merridew gasped. “The boy in the portrait?”

“Yes, miss. The boy in the portrait you found.”

“But why would they wish to replace him?” asked Mrs. Blake. “What did they hope to achieve?”

“I’ve been giving that a lot of thought, miss. I think it’s because the boy they replaced him with happens to have skills.”

“Skills?”

“He’s a common thief, miss,” I replied, though I thought it best not to add ‘like me’—not that I’m in the least bit common. But then, if I’m going to be honest, neither was the boy I’d met.

“Gooseberry, how do you know this?”

“When Mr. Bruff and I went to see him on Friday, he filched my handkerchief from inside my jacket, miss, in order to smuggle me a note. The note said, ‘Do not let Treech—’”

“Treech?”

“The man who seems to be in charge of Dr. Login’s asylum now. He’s definitely one of the ringleaders, though I’m not sure the boy is a willing accomplice. I think he’s being coerced into it.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the note said, ‘Do not let Treech get his hands on the photograph. He will destroy it, and the Maharajah will be put to death.’”

“Hold on,” said Mr. Blake, “your telling us the plot failed? The real maharajah is still alive?”

“Yes, sir. You see, their plan was only partially successful. One of the conspirators, a certain Mr. Thomas Shepherd,”—I heard a sharp intake of breath from the doorway—“baulked at the idea of killing a child. So he spirited the maharajah and his guardian into hiding, and took the one piece of evidence that could prove the impostor was an impostor.”

“The daguerreotype…”

“Yes, sir. The daguerreotype, which he gave to his brother for safekeeping.”

Mrs. Merridew stirred in her seat. “So how did I come to be in possession of it?” she asked.

All cried out, Miss Penelope raised her eyes and looked at me. “If you’re going to tell them, then get on with it,” she said, raising frowns on everyone’s faces. It was not the place of servants to speak so directly.

“You must understand,” I continued, “that Thomas Shepherd is a man who made bad choices, then wanted to put things right. If the gang ever finds him, his life is forfeit, too. Anyone who helps him, helps him at his or her peril.”

“Young man, as noble as you may paint the man, that hardly answers my question.”

“Mrs. Merridew, Thomas Shepherd’s brother’s name is James. Mr. James Shepherd.”

Now the woman was frowning with the effort of remembering. “My footman?” she said at last.

“The same. Persuaded by Thomas that the boy’s life was in danger, he swore to protect the daguerreotype, but when the gang tracked him to your residence, he too was forced to go into hiding. Under the circumstances, there was only one person he could entrust it to: his Sunday sweetheart—”

Everyone looked as the library door swung open, and Miss Penelope ran from the room. Mrs. Blake, whose expression showed that she had guessed what was coming, rose and ran after her. Mr. Blake, who is not quite as sharp-witted as his wife, pieced the story together a few seconds later, and sank down into his chair with a sigh.

“For the edification of Mrs. Merridew,” said Mr. Betteredge, steadfastly refusing to look in my direction, “pray continue.”

“Yes, whom did my footman entrust with the portrait?”

“Miss Penelope, miss. She and James were courting.”

“Courting? But that’s ridiculous. They never had time to court.”

“They both had Sunday afternoons off, miss.”

Mrs. Merridew blinked, as if grappling with a new and disturbing idea. “Betteredge, do servants court?” she demanded.

“It has been known, madam.”

“Oh.” She sat back with a troubled look on her face as she tried to digest this news.

Mr. Blake had recovered sufficiently by this point to ask, “So it was Miss Penelope who slipped the daguerreotype into Aunt Merridew’s bag when the gang attacked them in the street?”

“Yes, sir, it was. But she did it with the best of intentions. Surely you can see that?”

“I do, I do. But a boy’s life is at stake, Gooseberry. We have an obligation to take this matter to the police.”

“The police, sir?” howled Betteredge. “But my poor daughter! Her good name will be dragged through the dirt!”

For a second, it looked as if the old man was trying to take a small step forward, but for some reason was unable to do so. Then slowly his body started to topple.

“Bruff!” cried Mr. Blake, springing to his feet. “Help me!” Supporting the steward by his armpits, the two men assisted him into a chair.

“I’m fine, sir, I’m fine,” complained the old man. “It was just a slight turn. I shall be as right as rain in a minute or two.”

“What’s your opinion, Bruff?” Mr. Blake asked in a whisper, as his wife re-entered the room. “We need to call the police in on this, don’t we?”

Mrs. Blake froze. “Franklin, did you not learn a thing,” she asked, “from your wretched involvement with the Moonstone? Miss Penelope has told me everything, and we are not about to summon the police.”

“But, my dear, we have to do something.”

“It occurs to me that we already have one of the finest detectives in London on the case,” she said, turning to me. “Gooseberry, are you prepared to investigate further?”

“I am, miss.”

“I won’t stand for your putting yourself in any danger, mind.”

“No, miss.”

“And Mr. Blake will bear all the expenses.”

That was indeed music to my ears. Per diems can only get you so far in this life. “Thank you, miss.”

“There. Then it’s all settled.”

Mrs. Blake was a most determined woman, I reflected, on the journey back to the office. She brooked none of the objections that her wearying husband put forward, often stilling his tongue with a single withering look. When she said something was settled, it was settled—much to my own satisfaction, God bless her. But all these admiring thoughts were blown away like thistle seeds in a gale as the cab turned into Gray’s Inn Square, for who should come running—running no less!—out of Mr. Bruff’s offices, but the younger of the two Georges. As he bolted into the path of the cab, the cabbie had to pull his horse up sharpish, sending Mr. Bruff and I flying forward in out seats.

“George? What on earth are you playing at?” screeched my employer out the window.

“Sir! Sir! I has to call for a copper, sir. There’s been murder…actual murder!”

“Murder?”

“Inside, sir,” said George, pointing.

“Pay the cabbie, Gooseberry,” cried Mr. Bruff, as he jumped from the carriage to the pavement below, and dashed into the building with George.

I paid the man as quickly as I could, and then followed. The door stood open, so as I clambered up the steps, I could see that every single member of staff had crammed themselves into the reception area. They were staring at a man who was gasping his final breaths as he lay dying on the floor by the foot of the stairs. His wire-rimmed spectacles sat crookedly across the bridge of his suntanned nose, and a dark, red stain blossomed from the breast of his well-cut jacket. It was Mr. Treech.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, September 19th.
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: Caney the Clown 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.

Gooseberry: Chapter Ten

Sunday is a day of rest—for the carriage class, at least. For their servants it’s a different matter, though even they can expect a few sweet hours in the afternoon to conduct their lives in a manner of their own choosing. By a happy coincidence, Sunday is also the only day that my brother officially has off, so it’s the one day of the week when we get a chance to do things together. He was going to love what I had planned for him for today: ‘Jas. S. meets girl Rgnt’s zool. gards. monk. ho. 2.30 pm.’

Julius was overjoyed when I told him. So, unfortunately, was Bertha.

“I’ve never been to the zoo,” he said, his face lighting up at the prospect.

“Neither have we,” said Julius, “’cos it ain’t cheap to get in.”

“Isn’t cheap,” I corrected him. “Bertha, it’s not a good idea for you to come with us,” I added.

Bertha’s face fell. “’Course not, ’course not,” he mumbled. “It ain’t cheap to get in.”

“It’s not the cost I’m worried about.”

“No? Wot, then? Wot you bleedin’ worried about?”

I didn’t want to say that Miss Penelope might be there, and that I was hoping to spy on her—at least, not in front of Julius. I had to settle for: “The lady’s maid you were following, it’s possible she might try to meet someone there today. She could recognize you, Bertha.”

“Not if I was in disguise, she couldn’t.”

“Disguise?”

“Turn round, both of you. You don’t want to be gawking at no lady while she’s undressing!”

We did as Bertha requested and both averted our eyes. Two minutes went by, punctuated by rustlings and the occasional grunt.

“All right, you can look.”

Julius’s eyes were popping out of his head. I expect mine were too. There stood Bertha, looking extremely uncomfortable in a pair of blue serge trousers and a matching jacket. He’d hidden his long, dark hair under the rim of a docker’s flat cap. Since I knew Bertha had no money to speak of, I dreaded to think how he’d come by this get-up.

“Wot d’ya think?” he asked nervously.

I was so used to seeing Bertha in a dress, that, for a moment, I couldn’t speak. In one sense, he still looked like Bertha; in another, he didn’t.

“You look like a man,” said Julius.

“Uncanny, ain’t it? Gawd, I never thought I’d be reduced to doin’ drag.”

“It’s the perfect disguise, Bertha.”

“So I can come?”

“I’ll need to use the coins you’ve been practicing with…but, yes. You can come.”

“If you take ’is coins, how will young Sprat ever learn his money?”

“Young who?”

“Young Sprat here.”

Young Sprat beamed his approval at his new nickname.

“I’ll replace them tomorrow,” I promised.

Though Miss Penelope wasn’t due until two-thirty (if in fact she was going to be there at all), we set off early in order to make the most of the day. We walked up to the Thornhill Bridge, then took the steps down to the canal path below. There’d been a frost during the night, and the grass beneath our feet was still crunchy, as it was only now beginning to thaw.

“You want to steer clear of that place,” muttered Bertha, as we passed the grim-looking workhouse on our left. We all stared at it and shivered, as if the air in its vicinity was somehow colder.
“Come, let’s move on,” I suggested.

We followed the cut as it curved its way through open fields, calling out to any lock keepers we knew by sight, and waving at the occupants of the narrowboats we encountered. Normally Julius would have attempted to pat the horses that pulled the barges along—a thing that on occasion had landed him in trouble with their owners—but today he ignored them, his mind clearly on other things. He even ignored the railway yards that lay beyond the wharves at Camden, where we’d spent many a happy Sunday watching trains come and go.

When we finally reached the zoo gates, Julius could scarcely contain his excitement. He was practically dancing a jig as we lined up outside the ticket hut. I fished the money out of my pocket—God bless per diems—and started counting out what we needed. Bertha saw what I was doing, and laid his hand on my wrist to stop me.

“Why don’t you let young Sprat do that?” he asked.

Doubtful of the outcome, though figuring it couldn’t hurt, I held out the coins on my palm.

“How much is it?” asked Julius.

“A shilling each,” replied Bertha, peering at the only part of the sign he could read.

Julius stared at my palm so hard, it felt like he was trying to read my fortune.

“Come on, Sprat,” urged Bertha. “You can do it. Just keep rememberin’ who needs wot.”

“One for you,” he said, picking out a shilling coin and glancing up at Bertha. “And one for you,” he said, choosing another one for me.

There was a least one more shilling in my hand, but it was partially hidden by the pennies. When I went to uncover it with my finger, Bertha slapped my hand away. As the seconds dragged by, the tension became unbearable.

Suddenly Julius’s face lit up. “And one for me,” he said, unearthing the silver piece from the pile of coppers. “Three shillings, one for each of us.”

Julius handed the coins to the man in the hut and received his three tickets in return. He looked as if he might faint with joy. I briefly wondered how Miss Penelope could afford an expensive outing like this on a weekly basis, but then realized that, unlike us, she didn’t have to shell out for her food and her lodgings. Even the coal for her fire was paid for. Every penny she earned was hers for the spending, and, like all servants, she had precious little time to spend it in.

“See, Sprat? Told yeh you could do it.”

“I really did it, didn’t I?” He threw his arms around Bertha and gave him a hug.

We started down the long walkway in high spirits. They were soon to be extinguished when all we saw were cattle and horses grazing in the field on our right.

“I seen enough damned cows to last a bleedin’ lifetime,” growled Bertha, referring to the ones he’d encountered along the Cally Road.

“Look!” cried Julius, pointing in the distance. At the end of the path, half-hidden by the dozens of people gathered there, was a bear climbing up a pole. “Quick,” he said, and started running towards it. Bertha and I were hot on his heels.

As we got closer, it became apparent why the bear was climbing. The crowd was supplying him with fruit and cakes, which his keeper passed to him on the end of a stick. Sometimes he dropped them into the pit below, where they were quickly snapped up by one of the other bears.

When we finally managed to pry Julius away, we discovered a wealth of different creatures just around the corner—pelicans, leopards, raccoons, and wolves.

“What are they?” asked Julius, staring in wonderment at a herd of bizarre-looking animals with tiny heads and arms, but huge tails and feet.

“The sign says ‘Kangaroos’. According to this, they’re native to Australia.”

“Do you think they make good pets?”

I sincerely hoped they didn’t.

“Gawd, to think that Ned looks out ’is window, and sees them every day of his life!”

It was a sobering thought.

By one o’clock we’d worked up quite an appetite, so I bought us some buns and a slab of veal and ham pie each. The sun had come out, so we sat on the grass to eat, watching the llamas as they careered about their pen. I could also keep an eye on the time, for there was a clock on the roof of their stable. The afternoon wore on. By two-fifteen we’d positioned ourselves out of sight on the far side of the monkey house, which afforded us a view of the entrance, but only if we peered round the corner. I began to question the wisdom of this approach, since three heads poking around the side of the building was bound to draw attention, especially as Julius had begun to whisper, “Is that her? Is that her?” about every young woman he spied.

“This isn’t going to work,” I told them. “Bertha, why don’t you take Julius back to see the zebras?”

“But, Octopus, I want to help. So does Sprat here, don’t yeh, Sprat?”

Julius gave a violent nod of agreement.

“Then we need a way to get out there in the open without being noticed.”

“I got an idea,” said Bertha, grabbing me and Julius by the arm, and spinning us round so that we were both facing away from him. He prodded us together till we stood shoulder to shoulder. “Concentrate, you two! You’re a couple of feelies, see—?”

“We’re what?” gasped Julius.

“Young lads, young lads,” he snapped. “I’m your beloved father—right?—and all three of us is havin’ a nice day out.” Pulling us closer, he clapped one large hand over the left side of Julius’s face, effectively shielding it from view. He then clapped his other over the right side of mine. Blinkered like this, I suddenly understood what it felt like to be a cart horse. “I’m just showing me boys the sights, yeh? Wot could be more natural than that? Ready?”

He steered us out on to the patch of ground in front of the entrance, and not a moment too soon, for even with my restricted view of the world, I could see Miss Penelope approaching.

“It’s her,” I whispered to try and warn Bertha.

“I see ’er,” said Bertha, already turning us to face another direction.

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s talking to some cove in the doorway. ’E looks like ’e ain’t eat or slept for a week.”

“How does she look?”

“Like she’s a palone in love. Damn it all! They’re goin’ inside.”

I felt a sudden pressure on my cheek. “Bertha, what are you doing?”

“Shush! I’m gettin’ us in there with them. How else will we hear wot they say? Just you relax and let me guide yeh. Remember, we’re a family—right?—out seeing the sights.”

In this respect, Julius was far more adept at playing the part than I was. As soon as he set eyes on the monkeys, he became entranced. He kept pointing out one gibbering primate after another as Bertha moved us ever closer to Miss Penelope and James. Eventually the pair came into earshot, and I finally heard James speak.

“What happened to you last Sunday? Why didn’t you come?”

“James, the house was under siege. I couldn’t get away.”

“Under siege?”

“From the same people who were pestering you at Portland Place, I think.”

“Oh, Penelope! I never imagined for a moment that they’d connect you to me. You don’t know how sorry I am that I put you through all this. But the photograph, it’s safe?”

Miss Penelope remained silent.

“For heaven’s sake, Penelope, tell me it’s safe!”

“It’s safe enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“James, they broke into Montagu Square. They searched my room, but luckily they didn’t find it. From then on, I had no choice but to carry it about with me—which would have been fine—but on Monday Miss Rachel insisted I accompany her to Mrs. Merridew’s. They ambushed me in the street.”

“No! Darling, were you hurt?”

“Just my pride, James—but, honestly, it was was awful.”

“It weren’t so bleedin’ awful,” muttered Bertha. “I seen a damn sight worse than wot she got.”

“Bertha! Shhh!”

“I knew that if I kept hold of it,” Miss Penelope continued, “they’d be bound to find it on me, so I slipped it into Mrs. Merridew’s handbag. Fortunately, they didn’t look there.”

“Oh, thank God. And you managed to get it back afterwards?”

“That’s the problem, James. I didn’t. Your old mistress discovered it before I had a chance to.”

“What?”

“She found it in her bag, and was so perplexed by it that she had Miss Rachel call her lawyer.”

“No! No, no, no! How could you let this happen?”

“James, I had no choice. I could hardly claim it was mine, and if I told the truth, it would have meant involving you. You have no idea what it cost me to hold my tongue! Miss Rachel is not merely my employer, James; we grew up together, she and I. We were playmates when we were younger. Oh! How I loathe abusing her trust.”

“Curse it and damn it to blazes!” His outburst set the nearest group of monkeys off screeching and clambering about. “Oh, let me think, let me think! Where is the daguerreotype now?”

“With Mr. Bruff, Miss Rachel’s lawyer. In all likelihood, it’s safer in his care.”

“Safer? What if these people go to him, and say, ‘Actually, that photograph’s mine’? What if he simply hands it to them? What then?”

“Please do not adopt that tone of voice with me. I was only trying to help.”

“You don’t seem to understand, it’s not just the boy’s life that’s at stake!”

“Boy? He’s no mere a boy, James. Oh, yes! That’s right! I know! He’s a maharajah, no less. Did it not occur to you to mention that to me when you enlisted my aid?”

There was a brief, awkward pause before James replied, “I was trying to protect you, Penelope.”

“Protect me? How? By keeping me in the dark?” I could practically hear James scowling. “Just what has your brother got himself mixed up in, I ask myself?”

“Thomas may be overly ambitious, but deep down inside he’s a good man! When his guvnor approached him with an odd proposition, he saw it as an opportunity to further his career. Then he discovered how shady it was: he was meant to keep the boy and his guardian captive, to clear the way so they could replace the maharajah with an impostor.”

“To what purpose, James?”

“He’s not sure. As the junior clerk with least seniority, he wasn’t privy to his guvnor’s scheme. He was kept in the dark about most things, which was hardly difficult, seeing as he and his prisoners were stuck on their own in some remote farmhouse, out Twickenham way. He certainly didn’t realize they planned to murder the boy; he thought they just needed him out of the picture until the day after the reception.”

“What reception?”

“Some special function they’re hosting at Thomas’s work. Look, I know he’s been an idiot—my brother would be the first to admit it—but, honestly, as soon as he got wind of what they were up to, he tried to do the decent thing. He took the boy and his guardian and went into hiding.”

“And the daguerreotype? How does that figure into this?”

“According to Thomas, it’s the only proof that the lad they have working for them is an impostor. While it survives, there’s still a chance that he can be exposed for what he is. But if they manage to destroy it, then…”

“Then what, James?”

James sighed. “No one is safe. Not me, not Thomas, and certainly not the maharajah. Perhaps, Penelope, not even you.”

So the maharajah—the real maharajah, that is—was now in hiding, beyond the reach of Treech and his cronies. Was the boy who was posing as him aware of the fact? I rather thought not.

“If the photograph’s proof,” Miss Penelope went on, “why didn’t Thomas use it weeks ago, and expose these people and their horrid plans?”

“Because he doesn’t know what it’s meant to prove—or how it’s meant to prove it, exactly. The only reason he knows that it’s proof at all is because his colleague happened to joke about it when he entrusted the portrait to him. Oh, I bet they’re kicking themselves that they didn’t get rid of it when they had the chance.”

“So where is Thomas now?” Miss Penelope’s question was greeted by silence. “James?”

“I don’t know,” he said at last.

“You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me?” More silence. “Oh, let me guess,” she continued, her anger rising and setting off another bout of shrieking from the monkeys, “you’re just trying to protect me again!”
“Penelope, wait! Where are you going?”

“Home, James. I’m going home. I find myself tiring of all this protection!” She stormed out.

James ran after her, but when he caught her up, she batted aside his restraining hand.

“Bertha,” I said, “stay here with Julius. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

I set off after James, who was standing motionless by this point, staring at the rear of Miss Penelope’s retreating form. Bertha was right; the man looked to be in really bad shape. His face was gaunt, his sandy-blond hair was unbrushed, and three days of prickly stubble adorned his prominent chin. His dull, glassy eyes barely registered my approach.

“What do you want?” he asked, once he realized I’d been gazing up at him for more than a minute.

“I wants yeh to know wot we’ll do when we get our ’ands on the duggairiotype,” I growled, doing a passable imitation of Bertha, though obviously nowhere near as deep. “We’re gunna cut that dear, sweet girl of yours. Cut ’er to shreds, we is.”

James paled. “You’ll leave her alone,” he gasped. “It’s me you want, not her. I swear she knows nothing.”

Then he added, “Oi! Where do you think you’re off to?” as I raced to take cover behind the nearest tree, for coming down the path were two of Johnny’s men. I didn’t recognize them per se, as Mr. Bruff might put it; I simply recognized the type. Despite the modest finery of their attire, they stuck out a mile from the crowd—two young men on their own amid the ebb and flow of courting couples and family groups. I kept watch to see if they would make a move on James, but they seemed perfectly content just keeping him under surveillance. James must have noticed them also, for within minutes he’d given them the slip.

The fact that Miss Penelope adored James had been clear to me from the outset. And now I was sure that James loved Miss Penelope, too.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, September 12th.
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: Clapham Common Industries 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.

Gooseberry: Chapter Nine

“Gooseberry, could you not have pressed the subject of the daguerreotype further?”

Mr. Bruff and I were walking back towards the station. The Maharajah’s note, if indeed that’s what it was, was still concealed within my handkerchief, safely inside my pocket. Though I was burning with curiosity, I wanted to be alone when I examined it. Until I knew its contents, I wouldn’t be able to judge whether this was something I wished to share with my employer—or, at least, share just yet.

“Mr. Bruff—”

“No, no, you’re right. I’m being unfair. The maharajah clearly forbade you to talk about the photograph. I see that. And I can’t think of anything I could have done in your position that might have changed his mind. Come. I think we both deserve a good dinner after all that. Let us see if we can find ourselves a place that serves a decent meal.”

After inquiring at the station, we set off towards the river in search of the establishment that had been recommended to us.

The Jolly Boatman was a public house that commanded a fine view of the Thames, but apart from the occasional passenger-carrying wherry, there was very little river traffic to be seen. When I asked why, Mr. Bruff explained that, this far inland, the Thames was no longer tidal, which prevented larger vessels—those that could only sail on high tide—from navigating it.

Being the dinner hour, the place was busy, but we still managed to secure a table near the fire. Mr. Bruff ordered the pea and ham soup for us both, with cheeses and chutney to follow. He had a glass of white wine, while I opted for a bottle of ginger beer. As soon as the publican had taken our order, I casually rose from the table.

“Call of nature,” I explained in response to Mr. Bruff’s unspoken query. Quickly catching the publican up, I asked directions to the W. C. I made my way outside, as I’d been told to do, and followed the cinder track that brought me to a fenced-in yard at the rear of the building. Along the far wall stood a short row of water closets.

I entered the nearest and bolted the door. Though I really was anxious to use the facilities, my call of nature could wait, whereas my curiosity could not. I pulled out my handkerchief and extracted the scrap of paper. It was a message, all right. In a hastily written, almost scrawled, cursive hand, this is what it said:

“Do not let Treech get his hands on the photograph. He will destroy it, and the Maharajah will be put to death.”

I read it through several times. The first sentence seemed clear enough, even though the word ‘photograph’ was a last minute substitution, after the writer had tried and failed to spell the word ‘daguerreotype’. It was the second sentence that worried me. He will destroy it, and the Maharajah will be put to death. As much as I hated to share information with my employer—at least until I fully understood its significance—this was far too important to keep to myself.

A steaming bowl of soup was awaiting me when I returned to the table. I sat down with every intention of showing Mr. Bruff the maharajah’s message, but then I clocked a man standing in the doorway. I recognized him immediately as one of the guards at Cole Park Grange. He spotted us, and casually took a seat at the nearest table. For the hour or so that followed, I managed to steer the conversation, sidetracking Mr. Bruff whenever I felt he he was about to mention the case. Anyone watching or listening would have thought we were having a great old chat—and in a sense we were, for the meal was good, the company spirited, and the surroundings tolerably fair.

I thanked Mr. Bruff for the dinner as we walked back to the station. I wasn’t surprised to see that the guard was following us; what surprised me was how extremely clumsy he was at it. Can you believe he stood a mere five feet away from us on the almost empty platform? I began to wonder if he had plans to board the train when it arrived, but in the event he didn’t. Having seen us enter a carriage, he simply waited where he was, and only turned to leave when the train pulled away.

“Sir,” I said, now that we were finally alone together, “did you see that fellow who followed us from the Jolly Boatman?”

“What fellow, Gooseberry?” Mr. Bruff may be an extremely astute lawyer, but sometimes his powers of observation fall pitifully low of the mark.

“The one with the pointy ears, sir. He was the guard on the gate at the asylum—the one who let us in. I think Mr. Treech sent him to spy on us.”

“Spy on us? Surely not! What possible reason would Mr. Treech have to do such a thing?”

“I think he wanted to find out if the maharajah slipped me a message.”

“Slipped you a message? That’s absurd.”

“But, Mr. Bruff, he did slip me a message. It was wrapped up in my handkerchief. Here, look…” I pulled the scrap of paper from my pocket and handed it to my employer.

His eyebrows raised considerably as he read it through. “But what can this mean?” he asked.

“Sir, the boy went to a great deal of trouble to get this message to me. I didn’t drop my handkerchief; he stole it from my jacket—and with all the skill and daring of a natural pickpocket, I might add. Now, unless he’s referring to himself in the third person, in the way that our good queen prefers the royal ‘we’, that leaves only one possible explanation, as far as I can see. The maharajah we met is an imposter.”

Faced with this brilliantly constructed piece of logic, I’m sorry to say that my employer remained singularly unconvinced. He opened the daguerreotype and held it up to the light of the carriage window.

“We know that this is a portrait of Duleep Singh, the Maharajah of Lahore. How do we know this? We have Mr. Murthwaite’s testimony to the fact. Two or three years may have passed since this picture was taken, but I’d be willing to bet that this is the same young man that we met today.”

I studied the flawless skin, several shades darker than my own, the perfect white teeth, and the soulful eyes, marred only by the short, livid scar on the right side of his face. I had to admit he was right.

Yet how did this square with the maharajah’s ability as a thief? The boy was good at it, for when he took my handkerchief, I didn’t feel his hand inside my jacket. If only he could learn to control the tension in his body, one day he might even be as good as me. One thing was certain, though: he was no novice pickpocket—he’d done it before. So when exactly had picking pockets been part of His Highness’s lessons?

“How do you explain the handkerchief,” I asked.

“Very simply,” said Mr. Bruff. “It’s just as the boy said. You must have dropped it.”

I knew I hadn’t, but with Mr. Bruff stubbornly refusing to believe me, it seemed futile to press the point. “What about ‘the Maharajah will be put to death’, then? Who writes about himself in the third person?”

“Maharajahs, for all I know. And please don’t tell me you know otherwise, because you’re no more an expert on Sikh culture than am I. No, Gooseberry, these flights of fancy simply will not do.”

“Sir,” I tried one last tack, “at the very least, you must concede that this note suggests the maharajah’s life will be forfeit if Mr. Treech gets hold of the daguerreotype?”

That pulled him up short.

“Yes…yes,” he agreed reluctantly. Then he appeared to cheer up a bit. “It does seem to fit with what we’ve discovered about the rival gangs. I suppose it is possible that Mr. Treech is in league with one of them.”

The wrong one, of course; not Miss Penelope and her sweetheart, who had both tried to keep the portrait from falling into the wrong hands. No, this gang was made up of mad Johnny Knight, Josiah Hook, and now—it would seem—Cyrus Treech. Why did they want the daguerreotype so badly?

“Sir, the portrait is key to this affair. What do you intend to do with it when we get back to London?”

“I think it would be best if I deposited it with my bank.”

“Then may I please examine it one last time?”

“Certainly.” He handed over the case.

I studied the scar carefully, but couldn’t find fault with it. It seemed identical to the one I’d just seen.

“Gooseberry, what in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” screeched Mr. Bruff. “I order you to desist at once!”

All I was doing was prying the photographic metal plate out from under its protective glass. I just wanted to see if there was anything hidden beneath it—some secret papers, perhaps, or even a treasure map. A treasure map would have been perfect. Unfortunately there was nothing of the sort.

“You had better be able to put that back in one piece, young man, or, so help me, I’ll tan your hide till Sunday!”

“Look…look, Mr. Bruff. It simply slots back into place. See? No harm done. Honest.”

“Hmmph!”

Mr. Bruff was true to his word. On our arrival at Waterloo, he hailed a cab and we made directly for his bank in Lombard Street. While I waited for him in the carriage, my thoughts turned again to Mr. Hook, for Leadenhall Street, where I’d last set eyes on him, was just around the corner.

When I reached home that evening, I found Julius and Bertha sitting at the table together, engaged in some kind of lesson.

“Nah, you got to say it quieter, Julius,” Bertha was explaining. “Say it like you got the consumption eating away at yeh and you won’t last to see another day. Cough a little. Wipe those bona, big ogles like you’re brushing away tears. You want to get their sympathy, see? Now try it again.”

“Varder me bona, fat eels, missus,” whispered Julius, coughing right on cue at the end. “Wouldn’t you love to get your ’and round—”

“Rand! Rand! Didn’t no one ever learn you to talk proper?”

Julius blinked and tried again. “Rand one of these whoppers?” he mimicked, undoing years of hard work on my part.

“Better. Now a few tears—that’s it—no, don’t go bleedin’ overboard. Bona! If that don’t get ’em buying up the whole damn barrel, nothing will!”

“What are you two doing?” I asked.

“I was just helping young Julius ’ere work up ’is patter.”

“His patter’s just fine, Bertha.”

“But he tells me they don’t let him serve on the barrow. All he gets to do is gut fish all day. A shame, I call it. Waste of good talent.”

“If you want to help him, then teach him something useful.”

“There ain’t nothing more useful than a good line of patter.”

“I’d say that totting up a bill and making the correct change ought to come a close second, wouldn’t you?”

“Wot? The lad don’t know his money?”

“I do too!” Julius protested. “I know all my coins by sight.”

“I know you do, Julius. But if Bertha’s serious about helping you, he’ll teach you how to add up and give change.” Anything had to be better than ‘Varder me bona, fat eels, missus’. And who could tell, maybe Bertha would succeed where I had failed?

Bertha looked thoughtful. “We could do with some proper money to practice with,” he said.

“Funny you should say that,” I replied, and delved into my pocket for a handful of my per diem.

Saturdays are unusual in that they may or may not be workdays, depending upon your station in life and also on your chosen profession. For Julius, it’s his busiest day, and he’s often not back from his fish stall until it’s well gone midnight. For me, it very much depends on the whims and needs of Mr. Bruff. For Mr. Bruff, it depends on the whims and needs of his clients. While businesses that sell things will probably be open, the more successful and profitable those businesses are, the fewer staff they will have in attendance—for men of wealth tend to flee the capital on weekends, preferring to breathe the superior quality of air that their country homes provide. A perfect day, in other words, to tackle the little project I had in mind.

First I needed to purchase a gift of sorts. I briefly considered buying a rat in a cage, but realized in time that such an odd present would stick out in the memory. No, this had to be something inconsequential, and something that wouldn’t cost me a fortune, for I also had plans for the Sunday.

After much deliberation, I took myself off to a rather select stationer’s in Bishopsgate, and picked out two nicely-bound pocket diaries.

“That will be one and six,” said the woman, when I took them up to the counter.

“Can you wrap them for me, please? In separate packages?” I gave her my best beaming smile.

“Why, certainly,” she replied, and set about parceling them up in brown paper and string as deftly as a butcher wraps meat.

“Do you by chance have a business card?” Of course they did; this was a select stationer’s, and their prices were outrageous.

“We do.”

“May I have two, please?”

“Two?” She frowned.

“I’d like to recommend this shop to my employer, you see.”

“Of course.” She handed me two cards. “Will there be anything else?”

“I’ll take a pencil. And, oh,” I added, with a sudden burst of benevolence towards Mr. Crabbit, “may I please have a receipt?”

Leadenhall Street was only around the corner. Today there was less traffic about, and the pavement was practically empty. I found the spot where I’d last seen Hook, and paused for a moment to study my surroundings. I was searching for the street’s most impressive building, and there was one less than thirty yards down the road that towered heads above the rest. Quite literally. It might easily have been a palace. I wandered along to the entrance, set behind a portico of towering Greek columns, and ran my eyes over the doors. They were standing open.

“Can I help you?” a man’s voice called out.

I climbed the steps and poked my head inside. The person who’d hailed me, a jovial, bearded chap in his late fifties, stepped forward. He was dressed in a sumptuous uniform of red and gold livery.

“I have some parcels to deliver, sir, but as I’m new to the area, I’m not sure that I’ve come to the right place.”

“This is East India House, lad, the premises of the East India Company.”

“Oh, good.” I certainly hoped it was good.

“Who are the parcels for?”

“The first is for a certain Mr. Josiah Hook, esquire, of Room Two-nineteen. Is Mr. Hook here today?”

“Bless you, no, he won’t be back until Monday. It’s generally just us porters on a Saturday.”

“Is Mr. Hook your gaffer, then?” Since the man was only in his twenties, this seemed incredibly unlikely.

“My gaffer? Heavens, no! He’s merely one of Sir Humphrey’s junior clerks.”

“Sir Humphrey?”

“Sir Humphrey Mallard. A director of this esteemed company.” Bingo! Here was the man who pulled the strings. Somebody obviously sanctioned Hook’s informal little office in the Thames Tunnel—which was far better suited to meetings with London’s criminal fraternity than these hallowed halls—and who more likely than his boss?

“A director?” I queried. “Why, how many are there?”

“Twenty-five if you count the board’s chairman.”

I tried to look suitably awestruck. “And what does this esteemed company do?”

“Do? Why, it makes money, lad. Lots and lots of lovely money.” The porter burst out laughing, leaving me none the wiser.

“Sir, the second parcel’s for a certain Mr. Thomas Shepherd, esquire, of Room…of Room…”

“Two-twenty—but Mr. Shepherd hasn’t worked here since Christmas.”

“Oh, dear! What on earth am I to do?” I asked.

“I don’t rightly know what you ought to do with Mr. Shepherd’s package, but you can leave Mr. Hook’s with me. I’ll see that he gets it.”

“I’ll need you to sign for it, sir,” I said, hugging it to my chest as if I were about to protect it with my life.

Again the porter laughed, and readily agreed to sign. I took out my pencil and the two cards, which I kept sandwiched together so they looked like one. On the back of the bottom card I’d already written the words: “One pocket diary to be delivered to Mr. Josiah Hook, Room 219. Received, Saturday, January 24th, 1852.”

On the back of the top one, I now wrote this: “Compliments of the East India Company.”

Palming the card I’d just written, I handed the porter the other. As he read it through and appended his signature, I slipped my one inside the brown paper wrapping. I handed the porter the package and bid him good day.

So now I had a fourth name to add to my list. Sir Humphrey Mallard, a director of the East India Company. A man who made lots and lots of lovely money. I hasten to point out, lest I appear anything but entirely truthful on the matter, I also had a very nice diary for Julius. And another pencil. What I didn’t realize at that point, as I exited the building, was that I was being watched.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, September 5th.
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: The Independent Shoe Black 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.

Gooseberry: Chapter Eight

Mr. Hook—esquire—’s diary was only helpful to a point. As he had started it on New Year’s Day, there were only twenty-two entries in total. Each of these was made in small, cramped writing, and most featured items of news copied from newspapers, such as ‘Royal Mail’s Amazon burns and sinks in the Bay of Biscay’ or ‘Transvaal receives its independence’—various goings-on from around the world, with all the place names underlined twice.

Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday was marked with the letters ‘BOB’, followed by a set of figures that obviously referred to an amount of money. Some days the amount recorded was positive, some days negative. This stumped me at first—in fact to begin with I assumed ‘BOB’ was a name—but then I realized all the labeled days were Covent Garden market days, when the Bucket of Blood held its bare-knuckle fights. Mr. Hook, it seemed, liked a bet. Presumably this was how he’d met Johnny in the first place.

The parts that will be of greater interest to you (and the parts that were of greater interest to me) were even harder to make sense of, for all were written in abbreviated script, like this snippet from January 1st:

‘Our recs. show Thos. Shep. Broth. in service Port. Pl. res., name of Jas. Have J. F. M. set watch on ho. in case Thos. left port. w/ Jas.’

By working backwards from incidents I could identify, I was eventually able to expand it to this:

‘Our records show that Thomas Shep[herd?] has a brother in service at a Portland Place residence—Mrs. Merridew’s residence, on the face of it—who goes by the name of James. Have Johnny Full Moon set a watch on the house in case Thomas left the portrait with James.’

As far as I could tell, this whole affair had started with Thomas, an unknown entity, who’d given the daguerreotype to his brother, James, for safekeeping. I’d bet two pairs of boots that this James was the footman who, claiming the need to tend to his sick brother, gave Mrs. Merridew his notice.

Had Thomas stolen the portrait from Hook? Though this was unclear, there was one thing I was certain of. He’d gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure Mr. Hook did not get it back. The daguerreotype was obviously the key to this business.

But how had Miss Penelope come by it? Two identical entries on Sundays 4th and 11th provided a tantalizing hint:

‘Jas. S. meets girl Rgnt’s zool. gards. monk. ho. 2.30 pm.’

Translation:

On both dates, James Shep[herd?] met a girl—Miss Penelope, given the nature of later entries—in or by the monkey house at Regent’s Park zoological gardens at 2.30 pm.
She’d been seeing James on her afternoons off, and quite regularly it seemed. When Johnny’s lot was sent to deal with him, James gave her the portrait to look after before quitting Mrs. Merridew’s service.
There was one entry that especially worried me—the penultimate one, as Mr. Bruff would have me call it:

‘Freak escpd. Tell J. F. M.: need to be dealt w/ termin. Entry into Port. Pl. res. set for tonight.’

There wasn’t a chance in a million that the escaping freak could be anybody but Bertha. But why, exactly, was it necessary that he be dealt with terminally?

What was it Bertha had said? “I give him his message—and everything’s sweet—then all of a sudden he turns round and whacks me in the face!” What had caused this sudden fit of rage? What had Bertha seen or done to make Mr. Hook want him dead?

I was in two minds whether to tell Bertha about this. In the end I thought it best he be warned, so I broached the subject with him as soon as Julius left for work.

“Looks like I’ll need a disguise, then,” was his only response.

When I got to the office that morning, I barely had a chance to top up my per diem before Mr. Bruff was calling for me. Within minutes we were outside, climbing into a cab.

“This came this morning,” he said, handing me a letter as the cab rumbled south towards the Strand:

Cole Park Grange Asylum,
Twickenham.
January, 22nd inst.

Sir,

With reference to your recent inquiry, I regret to inform you that Dr. Login is currently abroad, and cannot be contacted for the foreseeable future. However, if you would care to visit, I am happy to place myself at your disposal if you think I can be of help to you in any regard.

Yours humble servant,
Mr. Cyrus Treech,
Director in Dr. Login’s absence.

“Sir, what do you hope to achieve by seeing the doctor’s second-in-command?” We were crossing Waterloo Bridge at this point, and the cab had just pulled up at the toll gate.
“Perhaps he will be able to throw some light on this,” he replied, pulling the daguerreotype from his pocket.

My heart sank. I knew that possessing the portrait was dangerous, and the fewer who knew that he had it, the better. But how was I going to warn him of this without telling him what I’d found out?

“Mr. Bruff,” I began, “after we parted yesterday, instead of returning to the office I went to follow up a lead I’d been given. It turns out you were right: there are two rival gangs at work here.”

“I knew it!” he cried, elated to find out he’d been right.

Well, it was true after a fashion. I slowly went through the whole story for him, substituting the word ‘gang’ for any involvement by Miss Penelope, the footman James, or Thomas, James’s shadowy brother. Mr. Bruff listened attentively as we boarded our train at Waterloo. He was still listening attentively as we sped our way westward towards Twickenham.

On arrival, we were told that Cole Park Grange Asylum lay within walking distance from the station. The air was as crisp as an autumn apple as we crunched our way along the gravel path. Soon we came to a pair of wrought-iron gates set into a high brick wall. Inside the gates there stood a tiny hut, where a guard was stationed on duty. Mr. Bruff stated our business and the man let us in.

Cole Park Grange Asylum was a sprawling two-storied building set in several acres of grounds. Some attempt had been made at landscaping, though there was nothing as formal as an actual garden. Rather, the sweeping lawn had been broken up in places with the occasional tree or a few lonely shrubs. To my mind, it made the estate look windswept. On the journey up to the house, I counted five of the doctor’s patients standing about on the lawn, looking for all the world like they too were part of the design.

On entering, we were shown to the doctor’s study, and told that Mr. Treech would join us presently. Before very long, the door opened and a gentleman in his late forties entered the room. His face was clean-shaven, his hair was brushed back, and his eyes gleamed warmly behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. His skin was deeply tanned—not quite as dark as Mr. Murthwaite’s, but he’d certainly seen the sun quite recently—and he was dressed rather finely in a well-cut jacket. He came forward and gave Mr. Bruff’s hand a hearty shake.

“Welcome, sir, to Cole Park Grange.” He seated himself behind the large mahogany desk. “I am Mr. Treech, Dr. Login’s assistant. Perhaps you have come to see the good works we do here? As you’re no doubt aware, Dr. Login is a specialist in ailments of the mind—delusions, sir, feeble-mindedness, and despair.”

“Mr. Treech, my name is Bruff.”

“Ah, Mr. Bruff! Of course! You wrote requesting an audience with the good doctor. Unfortunately he’s away traveling—somewhere up near the Prussian border, I believe. But perhaps I can be of assistance?”

“The matter we are here on is a delicate one, I fear.”

“Indeed?” A look of inquisitive bemusement appeared on Mr. Treech’s face. He tilted his head to one side.

“I have been led to believe that Dr. Login acts as guardian to the Maharajah of Lahore.”

Mr. Treech smiled. “Yes, that is quite correct.”

“I wished to inquire about a certain daguerreotype that was made—a portrait of Dr. Login with the maharajah at his side. It recently came into the possession of a client of mine in a highly unsatisfactory manner.”

“Unsatisfactory?”

“Highly unsatisfactory,” repeated Mr. Bruff, refusing to go into detail.

“Do you have the portrait with you?”

I glanced at my employer, wondering if I’d managed to persuade him of the threat the daguerreotype posed.

“No,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “I have deposited it with my bank for safekeeping.”

Mr. Treech shrugged. “Then I’m afraid I cannot help you.” As Mr. Bruff and I rose from our chairs, he suddenly raised his hand. “But perhaps there is someone who can.”

“Who?”

“Why, His Highness himself, sir. The Maharajah of Lahore.”

“The maharajah is here?”

“Not in the house, no; this building is reserved for patients. The maharajah resides in the doctor’s private quarters, which are located elsewhere on the grounds. I can take you to him, though I can’t guarantee he will see you. His Highness is a very private person.”

“We would be indebted, sir.”

Mr. Treech led us down a passage and out through a door into the stable yard at the back.

“Before its conversion into a hospital,” he said, pointing to the delivery of vegetables we could see being made at the kitchen door, “this house used to have its own tenant farmers. Although no longer tied to us directly, they still keep us supplied with fresh produce. Dr. Login believes that the first requirement of a healthy mind is a healthy body. We serve only the best, nutritious food here.”

We rounded the stable and followed a rutted dirt track, which brought us to another set of gates. Beside it stood an old gatehouse, with small leaded windows, roses round the door, and a low trellis fence at the front.

“Dr. Login had the interior refitted before he moved in. It is truly most charming inside. If you will please follow me?”

He opened the gate, walked up to the door, and knocked. After a brief interval, a man who was somewhat younger than Mr. Treech appeared. When he saw Mr. Treech standing there, he held the door open and ushered us in.

“How is His Highness today?” Mr. Treech inquired, as we all removed our hats.

“Fair to middling, sir,” the young man replied, taking Mr. Treech’s and Mr. Bruff’s, but leaving me with mine. Oh, the joys of being socially inferior. “At the moment he’s practicing his letters.”

“Will he receive us, do you think?”

“I couldn’t rightly say, sir.”

“Well, we can but try.”

We followed Mr. Treech up the stairs, to a doorway halfway along the short corridor at the top. He tapped gently and waited. Upon receiving no reply, he gently pushed the door open. I edged my way in between him and Mr. Bruff, so I might see what they could see.

At the far end of the room, a brown-skinned boy my own age was seated at a table. Light from the window fell sideways across his face, casting one side of it into shadow. He had been in the process of writing something, for a dip-pen was poised in his right hand. He regarded the three of us thoughtfully, before at last settling on Mr. Treech.

“Why do you disturb me?” he asked, his warm, sultry voice almost singing out the words.

“Your Highness, this gentleman is Mr. Bruff. He wishes to beg an audience.”

The boy studied my employer for a moment. Then he smiled. “No, I will speak with him,” he said.

He was pointing at me.

I thought Mr. Bruff might have an apoplexy, but instead he put his hands on my shoulder and propelled me into the room.

“Your Highness,” Mr. Treech protested, “this is highly irregular!”

“I have made my decision,” the boy replied. “If you worry for my safety, you may, of course, leave the door open…as I am sure you will.”

He placed his pen on the table and rose, then came forward to greet me. “Welcome,” he said, putting his hand out to me. “What is your name?”

“Octavius,” I said, tucking my hat under my left arm, then grasping his hand and shaking it, “though most people call me Gooseberry.”

“Gooseberry? What an odd name. And yet it suits you. And where do you live, Gooseberry?”

“In London, sir. Just off the Caledonian Road—near where they’re building the new railway terminus.”

“A railway terminus? How very fascinating and modern. Come. Come see what I am doing.”

He led me to the table and offered me a chair. Resuming his seat, he turned the sheet of paper around so I could see it. Written repeatedly in flowing script was the phrase: ‘Duleep Singh, Maharajah of Lahore, former leader of the great Sikh Empire.’

“I am learning to write your English,” he explained.

“You write it very well, sir,” I said, and he smiled. I wanted to tell him that I was teaching my brother to write, but that would have involved talking about Julius in Mr. Bruff’s hearing. I settled instead for partial lie. “I teach my neighbor’s boy,” I said. “Each night I give him a different word, and he sits and practices it.”

“Oh? And how is that going?”

“Honestly? Very, very slowly, though he tries his best.” I could feel Mr. Bruff’s eyes on me, willing me to move on to the subject of our visit. “Your Highness, we have come to ask you about a portrait you had made, a daguerreotype that has recently come into our possession—”

“No! We will talk about writing English! Give me a word!”

“What?”

“Each night you give your neighbor’s boy a word. Give me a word and I shall write it.”

I scratched my head. “What word do you think will be useful?”

“‘Sovereignty’,” he said at last, “since I no longer have sovereignty over my own people.”

He offered me a fresh sheet of paper. I dipped his pen in the inkwell and began to write the word out. As I slid it back across the table, I wondered what Julius would make of this term, with its tricky vowels that could all too easily be transposed, and its ‘ign’ just begging to be written as ‘ing’.

I studied the lad’s face as he wrote. He was as handsome in real life as he was in the photograph, his flawless skin only marred by the short, angry-looking scar that ran from the far corner of his right eye down to the top of his cheek.

“There,” he said, dashing off the ‘y’ with a flourish, “how is that?”

I rose from my seat and went and peered over his shoulder.

“You’ve transposed the ‘i’ and ‘e’,” I said, and he looked up with a frown. “This letter here, and this one here…they should be the other way round.”

As I lowered my head to point to them, he unexpectedly whispered something in my ear:

“When you go, leave your hat behind. Trust me. I promise to return it.”

His eyes met mine, and for the briefest instant they burned intensely. Aloud he said, “This is a most difficult word. I will need to practice it. Sit.”

Aware that I was still being watched from the doorway, I casually propped my hat upon a chair, the back of which I judged would hide it neatly from view. That accomplished, I went and sat down again. For five minutes the boy worked in silence. Then he placed his pen on the table in front of him, and smiled at me.

“I have enjoyed your company, Gooseberry, and I thank you for teaching me a new word. But now I should like to rest.”

I rose and gave a little bow, then turned and walked towards the door. Just as I reached it, however, Mr. Treech cleared his throat.

“You’ve forgotten your hat,” he said.

“So I have,” I agreed unhappily, and went to retrieve it. As I picked it up, I noticed the boy. His features had frozen on his face. Then he rallied a little. He stood up and walked towards me.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said, and reached out to shake my hand again. I could feel the tension in his body—his shoulders were perfectly rigid. And then he suddenly relaxed. As I turned to go, I even thought I saw a smile.

The man who had opened the door to us was waiting to show us out. He fetched the two hats he had taken and handed them back to their respective owners. We were just on the verge of leaving when the young maharajah came bolting down the stairs.

“Gooseberry,” he said breathlessly, “I believe that you dropped this.”

In the palm of his hand was my handkerchief, embroidered the letters ‘O. G.’. I got an overwhelming feeling that Mr. Treech would have snatched it from him then and there, had such an action not seemed wildly inappropriate.

“Isn’t that the one I gave you for Christmas?” asked Mr. Bruff, who was also peering at it with interest. He seemed pleased to see that I was actually using it, and hadn’t yet consigned it to the rag and bone.

“It is, sir,” I replied, as the boy pressed it into my hand. The question was, how on God’s good earth had he come by it? I’d certainly had no cause to take it out during the time I spent in his room. Which only left one possibility, as implausible as it might sound. The Maharajah of Lahore was a pickpocket. A pickpocket just like me.

I also had a good idea why he’d returned it, for through its folds I could feel the unmistakeable texture of paper. The thieving maharajah had used it to smuggle me a note.


Gooseberry continues next Friday, August 29th.
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: Public Disinfectors 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.