A Christmas Revelation Page 6

  “She thought as they’d got the woman, but not sure it was going to do them any good. Wildcat she was, purring one minute and scratching their eyes out the next—”

  “I don’t care about that,” Pockets cut across him. “Go on. Go on! What else?”

  “It was about a robbery.” Worm was trying to keep it all straight in his mind. “Lot of gold, but none of them know where it is now. Where’s my scarf?”

  “Yes, what? Oh.” Pockets pulled it from inside his coat. “There! Now, what else? Where’s the old man…the one that took the loot?”

  “He’s dead, at least Ginger says he is.”

  “C’mon, get on with it or I’ll tie that scarf around your neck and pull it tight!”

  “They chased him and he fell into the river. They think he drownded.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “So what are they gonna do about it? Come on! They must’ve said something!”

  “Yeah. They’re going to get the truth out of the woman with the temper, about where the old man, who’s her father, hid the gold. They reckon as she knows.”

  “They got her, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “They never said.”

  “Are you sure? Think hard.”

  “Somewhere not far, but they didn’t say. That’s the truth. Can I go now? It’ll take me an hour to get back, and they’ll skin me for being out so late.”

  Pockets looked reluctant. “Then I suppose you expect me to cough up the fare for a hansom to carry you back and all?”

  “Yeah? I mean”—he hesitated a moment—“yeah.”

  Pockets fished in his coat and brought out a shilling. “Cab fare, mind, no going out and buying ’am sandwiches!”

  “Cab fare, promise.”

  “Go on, then, get out!”

  * * *

  It seemed like a long cab ride back to Portpool Lane, but it was over far too quickly, and exactly as Worm had expected, he was barely inside the back kitchen door when Squeaky’s bony hand descended on his shoulder.

  Worm jumped. He had been half expecting it, but it still caught him by surprise. “Ow!”

  “That all you’ve got to say for yourself?” Squeaky said softly, which was more frightening than if he had shouted.

  “No…”

  “What, then? I lied to Miss Claudine for you. You’d better have a very good answer, or I’ll tell her the truth.”

  “No, you won’t.” Worm wriggled hard but could not get free. “You lied so she wouldn’t worry, for her, not for me.” He realized he was taking a great risk. Maybe too much. “I’ve got a present for her, but I had to earn it. Let me go, and I’ll show you.”

  “Earn it? How?” Squeaky said suspiciously.

  “Go on an errand. Let go of me and I’ll show you.”

  Squeaky let go.

  Worm shook himself and then fished inside his jacket, then inside his shirt, and pulled out the scarf. Even in the one light left on in the kitchen all night, it still looked magically beautiful. He looked into Squeaky’s eyes, waiting for approval. It mattered a lot.

  “Where’d you get that?” Squeaky said in amazement. He put out one finger to touch it and felt its softness. “Where’d you get it?”

  “You think she’ll like it?” Worm asked.

  Squeaky breathed out slowly. “Yes. It’ll be the most beautiful scarf she’s ever seen. Now where the hell did you get it?”

  Worm grinned. “I ran an errand, and I earned it. I didn’t take it!”

  “Never thought you had,” Squeaky lied. “Give it to me. I’ll put it somewhere safe, like with the money. We’ll have to find some piece of paper and wrap it up.” His eyes narrowed. “Now what? Worm! This errand—tell me about it.”

  “I…in the morning.”

  “Now! Want a cup of tea?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a piece of fruitcake?”

  “Yes.”

  Ten minutes later they sat at the kitchen table in a pool of light, mugs of tea and two large slices of cake before them.

  They ate in silence for several minutes. The tea was too hot to drink straightaway. Finally, Squeaky spoke. “What’s wrong, then?”

  Worm considered saying that nothing was wrong, but Squeaky always knew a lie when he heard it. Perhaps he had told so many himself that he could know from the moment you started. And Worm did want to tell someone.

  Squeaky waited. He tried his tea, but it was still too hot. He cut another slice of cake for each of them. It was very good, moist in the middle, nothing dried out and hard. He would have to consider some way to explain the cake’s absence in the morning.

  “I had a story to remember and get exact,” Worm began, his mouth full of cake. Then he stopped.

  “So, what was it?” Squeaky asked.

  Worm swallowed. “There was a robbery. Two men, plus one older. The older man took the loot, they don’t know where. The only person who might know is a woman—with a terrible temper. But they killed the older man, or they think they did.” His eyes never left Squeaky’s face.

  Squeaky’s mind raced. He knew now what Worm was afraid of. “You see any of these people?” he asked, more to give himself a moment to think than because he expected any useful answer.

  “Just the man and the woman what was talking.” Hope flickered in Squeaky’s eyes, but already Worm had an answer. “They’re called Ginger, because he has ginger hair, and Pie, ’cos she’s always pie-eyed.” He said it with a lift in his voice, as if he thought it might help.

  “Any other name?” Squeaky asked.

  “No.”

  “What’re you thinking?” Squeaky did not wait for an answer. “It’s a big imagine from that to Eloise. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” Worm asked earnestly. “They said they got the young woman—and with a temper—and they think they killed her father, but they dunno where the gold is, and she does.”

  Squeaky really did not want this to be true. “Could be,” he agreed. “Or fifty others.” He looked at the hope and the fear in Worm’s face. Could he lie to him, to ease his fear? If it were Eloise, then she was in bad trouble. It would explain why the two men wished so much to keep her. It didn’t explain why she went with them. He pointed that out to Worm.

  “Yeah, it does,” Worm said very quietly. “If they killed the old man, and he were her father, she’d want to get back at them for it.”

  Squeaky had to think of an alternative. “Well, maybe she wants the money, too, and thinks they know where it is,” he pointed out. And then instantly he regretted it. Which was worse, that she was a victim and might end up dead? Or that she was going to try to kill one or both of them, in revenge for her father’s death? Either way, they could not help her, and Worm would suffer knowing that.

  What kind of story would make it all right?

  Worm was watching and waiting for him to say something.

  Squeaky’s mind slid back to a time and a place he had never meant to go again. Once, when he was young and more than a little awkward, a woman he had admired had been in difficulties. He had hesitated and his courage had failed him. She preferred someone else, he was certain of that, and he had stood aside rather than risk being rebuffed. She had been hurt in both emotion and reputation. He could have persisted, or at least he could have tried. He still remembered it with regret. How different would his life have been if he had tried? Better? Worse? He would never know. Memory remained, always touched with guilt.

  Now here he was, trying to protect Worm, the same way he had protected himself and never known what he had lost. Better to hurt for trying and failing than hurt for not trying.

  He plunged in. “We should think hard, and then make a plan.” />
  Immediately Worm sat up a little straighter, his eyes bright.

  Squeaky felt his throat tighten until he could hardly breathe. Had he lost his wits? After a lifetime of playing it safe, always thinking before he acted, always knowing the way to escape if need be, here he was rushing into something he had absolutely no need to even think about! Let alone do.

  “What?” Worm prompted. “What should we do?”

  Squeaky chose his words very carefully. “First, we have to know as much as we can, and know it right, not just guessing.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Worm said immediately.

  “No, you won’t! They’ll remember us if we’re together. I’ll dress different, so’s even you wouldn’t know me.”

  Worm looked skeptical, but he didn’t argue.

  “And anyway, there are things to do here. You’re to help Miss Claudine with Christmas…”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Just do as you’re told! Tie ribbons, climb up ladders, fetch and carry stuff. Tell her stories about where I’ve gone, if you have to.”

  Worm bit his lip. “She knows when I’m lying.”

  “You won’t be lying. You’ll just be repeating what I tell you. Don’t argue, or we’ll be here all night. Drink your tea and listen. We’ve got to tidy up, get rid of those cake crumbs.”

  “They’ll know,” Worm pointed out. “Half the cake is gone.”

  Squeaky looked at it. “Not quite half, but near as makes no difference. Well, there’s one thing I’ve got to do—fetch more stuff for baking cakes.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Whatever she tells you, so she’s so busy looking after you, she won’t wonder where I am!” Squeaky told him. “Now go to bed!”

  * * *

  But Squeaky did not sleep well, even though he was tired. What had he got himself into? He was probably going to discover that Eloise and her father were thieves, and he had been killed when they tried to take all of the money instead of sharing it. The whole story would end in a squalid mess. Poor Worm, and his lady with the light in her hair.

  Could Squeaky make up something that sounded better? Almost anything was better than that.

  Except that Worm smelled a lie as quickly as Claudine did, so then he would have lost Squeaky as someone he could trust. It would hurt him very much indeed. More than a lost dream of Eloise? Perhaps, because it was a real loss.

  Was it? Squeaky was no one’s ideal of anything. Why did he care so much what Worm thought of him? It was ridiculous. Perhaps it was better anyway if Worm realized Squeaky was a scoundrel, and sometimes a thief. Or used to be! He was still a good forger, when needs called for it. Respectable on the outside now, but it was only as thick as a coat of paint.

  You could make beautiful pictures with paint, but there was nothing behind it.

  He lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling he could not see. Did anybody really change? Could he be what Worm thought he was?

  And what was that? Apart from someone who didn’t lie to him.

  What was the truth about Eloise, anyway? Perhaps he should begin by finding out. He would decide what to say to Worm when he knew what the reality was. A good lie had to have some element of truth in it, if possible.

  * * *

  He began in the morning, as soon as his urgent chores were done. As usual, they were matters of money: what they could afford to restock in their supplies of medicine, bandages, bedlinen, and food suitable for invalids recovering from fevers, injuries, or just the effects of being outside in the London winter. No doubt every bed in the whole of these two and a half houses joined together would be occupied. Why should someone be outside and alone at Christmas? It was even possible, if the night were wet or freezing, that they might have people sleep on the floor at the entrance hall. They had done so last year.

  And food! There was certainly no limit to the amount a hungry urchin like Worm would eat! It didn’t have to be stuffed goose and Christmas pudding; it could be a heel of stale bread and a little jam. Good thing Claudine supervised the making of barrel-loads of jam in the season when you could buy a cartful of plums, a little overripe, for a few shillings. And rhubarb. Who would’ve thought that rhubarb would make such nice jam? He had seen her put a little ginger in it. Perhaps that was what made the difference. She had a good hand at certain things, for a woman who had a cook at home and never even went into her own kitchen.

  He was avoiding the issue. The books were all balanced. He had accomplished jobs he had been putting off for weeks. There was nothing left to keep him at Portpool Lane. He found his oldest coat and a hat with a crumpled brim, just the look of which made him appear drunk. He put them on and went out into the wind and rain.

  He began by looking up a few old acquaintances and asking casual questions. He learned very little. He didn’t know the names of the two men who had taken Eloise, although he could describe them well enough to learn that the older was called Oldham. Easy enough to remember. The younger was known by various nicknames, none of them memorable. Apparently, the two were cousins and had practiced their thieving and various other skills for years. Squeaky was happy to call the second man Younger. Both had served time in the Coldbath Fields Prison. They must be tough to have survived that and come out alive. Not many did.

  That was instructive, but not good news. It put the whole issue in rather a different league from the petty theft he had supposed. This was bad.

  Squeaky sat in a café over a cold cup of tea and thought about it, putting off the decision. He had a suspicion as to which robbery it was all about. It had been recounted in the newspapers. He argued with himself for over half an hour about why it was not that robbery, but some other. And if it was, it was far better he leave the whole matter alone.

  Yet he knew this kind of person. A picture of Goldie came to his mind, as she used to be, way back. It was not one he wanted, but he could never completely shake it from his mind. It was woven through everything else he would prefer to forget. He was a different person now. For a start, he was thirty years older! Thirty hard years, full of events he was not proud of. He had thought them all right at the time: clever, necessary for survival in the hard world to which he belonged. But looked back on now, too many of them were shabby.

  He knew Goldie was still alive. He heard news of her every so often, though he tried to avoid it.

  No. That was a lie. Sometimes he tried to avoid it. Sometimes, like any other old wound, it came back in a surprising echo, when he passed a place where they had been together, quarreling as usual. Or someone mentioned a name from the past, usually these days saying that they were dead. Always he pretended not to care. And always he did.

  Regret? Not really. Not now. He would much rather not know how she had changed with time. It probably wasn’t good. Her temper would be even worse with hard times and growing old. She could be spiteful. She was beginning to fade even then.

  But the longer he stared at the cold tea, the more he knew that he would have to go and find her in the end. She was the one source of the kind of information he would need if he was going to help Eloise get free of the two men who had killed her father.

  He put it off a little longer. There were more things to find out first. He stood up slowly and went out into the street. It had stopped raining and the wind was blowing harder, colder. There were clear patches in the sky. Tonight it would certainly freeze.

  There was a policeman who had made one or two mistakes of which Squeaky knew the details. He would be willing to help. It would be easy to see him and ask.

  Squeaky had exerted a little pressure as second nature in the past. Now he thought of what Claudine would think of him and was distinctly uncomfortable, which was ridiculous! She thought he was a disgusting old reprobate, who happened to be very clear-minded at keeping the books at the clinic and finding supplies they needed at very
reasonable prices. And it was her Christian duty as a good woman not to remember his past too closely. And she was a good woman, a fact that both gave him pleasure and irritated him, like salt in a cut. He wouldn’t change it, even if he could. He did not want another Goldie or anything like her. She belonged to the past.

  He was familiar with the policeman’s beat. It was a good piece of knowledge to have. Never knew when it might be useful.

  He had to take an omnibus to make certain he was on time to catch Alf as he came off duty. As it was, he nearly missed him.

  “Hello, Alf,” Squeaky said, catching up with him on the narrow footpath, as they turned the corner onto Tooley Street. Lamplight was momentarily bright, a little over to their right. Higher up the hill the train rattled by on its way to London Bridge station. Beneath them the wide spread of the river reflected the riding lights of the big ships glittering on the black water.

  Alf froze, then turned around slowly. “If you creep up on me again, you squint-eyed sod, I’ll do you, I swear! I thought you’d died. I haven’t heard from you for so long, I thought all my wishes had come true. What do you want?”

  “Same as always,” Squeaky said, as if he hadn’t even heard the insult. “A little information. Not much, just want it quickly and without anyone knowing I’m interested.”

  Alf was in no way reassured. “What information?”

  “About a robbery, two years ago. The loot was never found…”

  “It’s never found in most of them,” Alf said witheringly. “Why? You think you found it? Then you’re a fool to tell me, ’cos I’ll just turn you in.”

  “More like you’ll keep it yourself,” Squeaky rejoined immediately. “Like before! Maybe you’ve conveniently forgotten. I haven’t.”

  Alf flushed a dull red. “There were only a few bob!”

  “I don’t remember the details,” Squeaky said with a smile that should have turned Alf’s blood cold if he could see it in the dusk. “But I could—if I have to.”

  “What robbery was it, then?” Alf asked, trying to smile back.