Read Online Death at Hungerford Stairs by J C Briggs - Free Book Online Page A

find Scrap. Zeb was disappointed, too, and angry. Well, he thought, Tommy Titfer would pay for this when he found him.
    St Giles’s clock struck nine; it was time to go. Tommy Titfer was not coming. At that moment a weazened little man slipped on to a stool at their table. His face was like a shrivelled walnut, all creases, and jaundiced, too. His nose dripped, and his squint eyes were inflamed with pus in the corners – and he stank. He must have worn those grime-encrusted clothes all his adult life.
    ‘Yer waitin’ fer Tommy? ’E ain’t comin’. Nobody seen ’im. Vanished ’e ’as. Owed money ter Fikey Chubb – dangerous ’e ’is. Not seen ’im neither. Could ’elp yer. Wanter find a dog, doncher? ’Eard yer talkin’ last night.’
    They had not seen him. For all they knew he might have been crouching under the table like a dog. Unsavoury as he was, Dickens felt that there was a chance.
    Zeb asked, ‘Know any fanciers?’
    ‘Could take yer ter Georgie Taylor – ’e’s the big man round ’ere. Brother o’ Sam Taylor – up at Shoreditch. They ’ates each other, now. Georgie knows all the dog takers round ’ere. They all goes ter ’im – don’t matter wot sort o’ dog. ’E’ll make money – yer’ll ’ave ter pay ’im – an’ me o’ course.’
    ‘We’ll pay when we get there. Five bob.’
    The weazened man thought. ‘Two bob, now. I might lose yer – an’ a man’s gotter live.’
    ‘All right,’ said Zeb, handing him the two shillings.
    ‘Yer bringin’ the old ’un? T’ain’t really fittin’ for ’im – ’oo knows wot might ’appen?’
    The weazened man was twice Dickens’s age and he almost laughed. However, he nodded his head to Zeb who told Weazen that the old gentleman was stronger than he looked, and that he wanted his grandchild’s dog back.
    They went out into the narrow passage by Rats’ Castle where Tommy Titfer had gone last night with his purse of gold and silver, and where a gigantic hand had squeezed the life out of him. Weazen led them through a maze of alleys which twisted and turned, went off at right angles, seemed to take them backwards, and in circles, so that they were lost in the labyrinth with no skein of thread to lead them out. Sometimes the lanes were so suffocatingly narrow that it was hard to breathe; sometimes Dickens thought he heard steps behind him, shuffling steps as though the feet were shod in rags; sometimes, looking back, he thought he saw a monstrous apelike shadow on a wall, and he hurried, his breath clotted in his throat, to catch up with Zeb who looked back as though he, too, had sensed something.
    City of dreadful night. Always, in the solid darkness, pierced by no star, there were sounds: a scream, running footsteps, a child sobbing, a shrill, mocking voice singing a ghastly song, outcries of sorrow, voices high and hoarse quarrelling in a cellar, curses loud and deep, accents of anger, terrible oaths and terrible laughter, a boy shouting, and somewhere, far away, a dog howling. And there were faces, faces marked with weakness, marked with woe; faces that twisted down at them from windows above, like the gargoyles at St Giles’s Church, and faces appearing at subterranean gratings, looking up at them as if from hell. And shadowy forms passing and repassing as if condemned to some perpetual traversing of a terrible limbo, forever seeking light and never finding a way out of this blind world, and all the time Dickens and Zeb pressed on, following their ragged and wretched Virgil deeper into the maze.
    The creature shuffled behind them, stopping when they stopped, folding into the shadows when Dickens held up his lamp. The creature saw a dead man walking with eyes like small moons. It muttered to itself. It was afraid now.
    ‘No eyes, no eyes. Wot is it? Ghosts all round – hell this is. Dark, always dark. Gotter get away.’
    Still muttering its fearful words, the creature took another byway and vanished into the murk. When