Dodger

chapter 15

In the hands of the Lady



AS SEVEN O’CLOCK neared, Dodger went over all his precautions and preparations and came up out of the sewer a little way away, in order to be seen cheerfully walking to The Lion public house.

He was not surprised to find Mister Bazalgette sitting on a bench outside, wearing what might be called serviceable clothes for someone who is going to perambulate underneath the streets of London. The young man looked like a kid waiting for the Punch and Judy show to begin, and had festooned himself with various instruments and a large notebook, and had also very thoughtfully come with his own lantern, although Dodger had made certain to borrow three of these already. It meant calling in a few little favours, but that was surely what favours were for.

The young engineer was primly nursing a pint of ginger beer, and right there and then he struck up a conversation with Dodger about the nature of the sewers, with reference to the amount of water that Dodger had seen in them, the prevalence of rats, the dangers of being underground and other things of interest to a gentleman as enthusiastic as Bazalgette.

‘Looking forward to seeing your Lady, Mister Dodger?’ he asked.

Dodger thought, Yes, both of them, but smiled and said, ‘I ain’t never seen her, ne’er even once. But sometimes, you know when you are by yourself, you get a feeling that someone’s just walked past, and there is a change in the air, and then you look down and all the rats are running very fast, all in the same direction; and then sometimes, as it might be, you look at a bit of rotted old sewer wall and something tells you that it might just be worth fumbling around in the crumbling bricks. So you take a look, and glory be, there’s a gold ring with two diamonds on it. That’s what happened to me one time.’ He added, ‘Some toshers say they’ve seen her, but that’s supposed to be when they are dying, and I ain’t intending to do that right now. Mind you, sir, I’ll be happy to see her right now if she points me to a tosheroon.’

There followed a conversation on the legendary tosheroons and how they were formed. Fortunately, at this time a growler pulled up and disgorged Charlie and Mister Disraeli, who was bright and shining and somewhat nervous, as sensible citizens tended to be in the general vicinity of Seven Dials. Charlie sat him down on the bench and headed into the pub, coming back shortly afterwards with a man carrying a couple of pints of beer on a tray, and Mister Bazalgette rubbed his hands and said, ‘Well now, gentlemen, when do we start?’

‘Very soon, sir,’ Dodger replied. ‘But there’s been a slight change of plan. Miss Burdett-Coutts wants one of her young footmen to come down with us because she wants to encourage him to better himself.’ He added brightly, ‘Maybe he might become an engineer like yourself, sir.’

Dodger stopped, because a very smart coach with two beefy coachmen had spun into the pub’s yard, and its doors opened to disgorge the aforesaid young footman, somewhat plumper in certain regions than the average footman, and remarkably – yes, thought Dodger – the signs of shaving around his jaw. Simplicity, and just possibly Angela, was really taking this charade seriously. The rest of them were taking it on the chin.

It wasn’t at all a bad disguise and quite a lot of young serving men were on the plump side, what with all the leftovers, but to anyone who had seen her in a dress she was Simplicity, absolutely Simplicity, and if you were Dodger, looking more beautiful – even if unshaven – than ever before. But she had been wrong; her legs were not fat! No, in Dodger’s mind, they were perfectly shaped, and he had to fight to take his mind off her legs and back onto the task ahead of him.

He wasn’t sure what Joseph Bazalgette was thinking, but quite possibly he was thinking about sewers and couldn’t have seen that much of Simplicity at the party in any case. And since Angela was right there, Charlie and Disraeli were seeing – my word, yes! – what they were supposed to see. It was, thought Dodger, a kind of political fog.

Miss Coutts leaned out of the coach window and said, ‘I will return for my young footman in an hour and a half, gentlemen. I trust you will take care of him because I have no wish to answer for him to his grieving mother. Roger is a good boy, rather shy and does not talk much.’ She added meaningfully, ‘If he is sensible.’

The coach window closed again, and Miss Angela was gone. It was left to Charlie to say, ‘Well, gentlemen, maybe we should start? We are in your hands now, Mister Dodger.’

All things planned in the rookeries had to be carefully thought through, Dodger knew. That was why, just before they left, he threw a handful of ha’pennies and farthings down where they were standing, so that the urchins around the place had more interesting things to do than follow them, so engrossed were they as they struggled against one another for this sudden storm of wealth.

Dodger kept the pace brisk with a number of unnecessary twists and turns and doubling back until he got to the sewer entrance of his choice, and proceeded to help the party down one at a time with the young footman first.

When they were all assembled, staring around at the rotting bricks and the curious unnamed growths that hung from the walls, he put a finger to his mouth to indicate silence, walked a few steps and gave out a two-tone whistle, which floated along the pipes. He waited; there was no answering call. He wasn’t expecting any other toshers today, but if there had been any, they would have answered; generally speaking, it was common sense to know if other people were working down there as well.

‘And now, gentlemen,’ he said jauntily. ‘Welcome to this, my world. As you can see, in this light sometimes it even seems a little bit golden. It’s amazing how the sun gets through. What do you think of it, Mister Disraeli?’

Disraeli, who Dodger was slightly unhappy to see had come in proper useful boots for the occasion, wrinkled his nose and said, ‘Well, I cannot recommend the smell, but it is not quite as bad as I expected.’ This was quite probably true, Dodger knew, because for quite some time in the last few hours he had done his level best to prepare the most salubrious bit of sewer there had ever been. After all, Simplicity was going to be walking in it.

‘It used to be nicer, in the old days,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Not so good now people are banging holes through from their houses, but just step careful, and please, if I ask any of you to do anything, please do it with alacrity and without question.’ He was pleased with ‘alacrity’; every so often Solomon hit him with a word he didn’t understand and Dodger had a good memory. He let them walk for a little while and then, like a tour guide, glanced down and said in the gluey tones of a Crown and Anchor man, ‘Now here’s an interesting place that’s occasionally kind to toshers.’ He stepped back and said, ‘Mister Disraeli, will you now try your luck as a tosher? I noticed you have clapped your eyes on what might be generously called a “sand bar” on the floor over there by that rivulet, and may I say, well done, sir, and so I will give you this stick and suggest you have a go.’

The group moved forwards as Disraeli, with the fixed grin of someone who wants to seem a good sport and dare not seem to be a bad one, took the stick from Dodger and approached the pile of miscellaneous debris with caution. He hunkered down and stirred about fastidiously until Dodger produced a pair of small gloves and handed them to the man, saying, ‘Try these, sir – very useful in certain circumstances if you can afford them.’ He thought Disraeli almost giggled at this point – the man did have some gumption after all – but the politician put on the gloves, rolled up his sleeves and trailed one hand in the pile, being rewarded with a clinking sound.

‘Hello,’ said Dodger. ‘Do we have some beginner’s luck here? That’s the sound of specie, right enough. Let’s see what you’ve got.’

They crowded round and Disraeli, almost in a daze, held up a half crown, as shiny and as untarnished as the day it had been coined.

‘My word, sir, you have the luck of a tosher and no mistake. I see I had better not let you down here again, hey? If I was you I would have another go, sir; where you find one coin, you tend to find another one. After all, it takes two to make a clink. It’s all to do with how the water’s running, you see; you never quite know for certain where the specie might turn up today.’ Again they craned as Disraeli, this time with every evidence of enthusiasm, rummaged in the heap of litter, and there was another clink and he held up a gold and diamond ring. ‘Oh my word, sir.’ Dodger reached for the ring and Disraeli pulled his hand away until he realized that was bad manners, so he allowed Dodger to handle the ring and was told, ‘Well, sir, it’s gold, that’s true. It ain’t diamonds though, just paste. Shocking, isn’t it, but there you go, sir, first time out and you’ve already earned a working man’s daily wage.’ Dodger straightened up and said, ‘I think we ought to be getting on because of the light, but maybe our young man here would like to try next time? Would you, Master Roger? You could make a day’s wages like Mister Disraeli here!’

Dodger was rewarded with a wide smile, and Disraeli, smiling just as much, said, ‘This is rather like a lucky dip, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Dodger, ‘but there aren’t many rats around at the moment, and it’s not particularly wet. I mean, you are seeing it at its best.’

Bazalgette and Disraeli began talking about the construction of the sewers, with the former tapping the brickwork occasionally and the latter trying not to be drawn into expressing an opinion, such as paying for something better. Charlie followed behind, noting and observing, his sharp eyes worryingly everywhere.

Now as they strolled carefully, sometimes bending where the roof seemed to sag, Dodger pointed to a couple of broken bricks and said, ‘There’s a place that might trap a coin or two. It’s like a little dam, see? The water goes past, heavy stuff gets trapped. This one is yours, Master Roger. I have another pair of gloves.’ He handed them to the footman with a wink.

He was entirely elated when she knelt down in the muddy gloom and stared at the brickwork, then pushed and pulled for a while and came up holding something. She gasped, and so did Disraeli, who said, ‘Another golden ring? You must live like a lord, Mister Dodger. Well done, Miss Simplicity.’

Suddenly the sewers were silent except for the occasional drip. At last Charlie cleared his throat and said, ‘Ben, I cannot for the life of me understand why you confused this young man, handsome though he is, with the young lady in question. Quite possibly the vapours here must, I suspect, alongside your evident joy in your new-found profession, have just for a little while gone to your head.’

Disraeli had the grace to say, ‘Yes, yes indeed. How silly of me.’ Joseph Bazalgette simply smiled nervously, like a man who knows someone has cracked a joke that he hasn’t understood, and returned to his detailed inspection of the sewer wall.

It was Charlie who worried Dodger, Charlie who held back and watched and had leaned forward and perhaps had noticed Simplicity’s gasp as she saw the inscription on the ring, and almost certainly must have noticed that she turned wide-eyed to look directly into Dodger’s face. He wasn’t quite certain about Charlie; he always had the feeling that here was a man who could see through Dodger and out the other side.

Quickly, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what, friends, let me go ahead. Tosh all you want to and I will point out some matters of interest to Mister Bazalgette. Of course, anything you find is yours for the keeping. And if I was you, Master Roger, I’d put that ring in your pocket for safety right now.’

He knew what would happen next. It happened to every new tosher; once you’d found your first coin the toshing fury was at your throat. Here was money for the taking, and already Simplicity and Disraeli were fascinated by holes in the brickwork, interesting holes, small mounds of rubbish and anything that seemed to sparkle.

Mister Bazalgette, on the other hand, was grumbling and measuring at the same time. ‘These bricks are useless,’ he said from a nearby corner. ‘They are rotten, they should be taken out and put back and faced with ceramic tiles – that can be the only way forward; it would keep the water out.’

‘Alas, we don’t have the money,’ said Disraeli, staring intently at what turned out to be one half of a dead rat.

‘Then if you don’t have the money, you have the stink,’ said Bazalgette. ‘I’ve seen the river at low tide and it is as if the whole world has taken a purgative. It surely cannot be healthy, sir.’

They walked on while the light allowed, and the total yield to the two ‘would-be toshers’ was a further one shilling and a farthing which, to give him his due, Disraeli handed over to Simplicity with a bow. And Charlie watched, with his hands in his pockets and a curious and calculating smile, occasionally taking out his damned notebook and scribbling, occasionally cheering a find, sometimes staring around at the debris and the smaller outlets.

Now the light was beginning to go. Not a problem; there were lamps galore – Dodger had made certain of one each, even though he could generally get around without one. But the lamps only lit small pools in the darkness, and as the light changed the sewers began to take on their own life. Not sinister, exactly, but little noises became more acute; the rats which were otherwise minding their own business fled out of the way, the dripping of water from the ceiling seemed louder, shadows seemed to move, and it was then that the thought might creep up on a person that if you tripped over some of these crumbling bricks, or took the wrong turning at those places where sewers met and merged, you were suddenly a long way away from what you knew as civilization.

Dodger thought, Well, Simplicity shouldn’t have any problem; he had been very careful about the special route, with the occasional brick lighter than the others and debris and other rubbish masking every wrong turn. He noticed her watching him intently now and it was no time to lose his nerve. A few more minutes would do, he thought. Once you lose the sun, then that’s when you really become a tosher.

Then Charlie said, ‘There’s a likely-looking place over there, Dodger. You can just about make out something like an entrance.’

Dodger bustled back to him quickly and said, ‘Do not go any further down there, sir. It is very dangerous; the floors are washed out. All very, very nasty, and all jammed up too, lots of places like it in the sewers – they just don’t get cleaned out enough. Now since we really haven’t got much light left, could we all agree that Mister Disraeli, although a gentleman, is also a tosher. Hurrah!’

Simplicity, that is to say Master Roger, burst out laughing, as did Bazalgette, and Charlie clapped, and as the clapping came to an end there was another sound – a scraping sound, the unmistakable sound of a crowbar somewhere ahead of them opening a drain cover, and Charlie said, ‘What was that, Dodger?’

Dodger shrugged it off and said, ‘Could be anything, sir. A trick of the sewers, you might say. The sun has gone down, things expand and contract, like they say, and you get all kinds of little noises then. It’s been quite a hot day really; sometimes you could think there was someone else down here with you, and if we simply turn round it’s an easy stroll back to where we came in. It’s not as though we’ve gone all that far, to tell you the truth.’

Mister Bazalgette, waving his lamp, said, ‘I would really like more time, if you don’t mind.’ In the end, Dodger pacified him with the promise to take him further afield on the following day, possibly in the company of Mister Henry Mayhew, who had been unable to join this little excursion.

After saying that, he once again delivered the two-tone whistle of a tosher. It was not returned and this worried him, for any tosher would have whistled back . . . Even the rat-catchers knew enough to shout out when a tosher whistled – that saved embarrassment all around. Well, he thought, it was quite a good plan, it really was, but I can’t do it if there is somebody else stamping around down here. Inwardly he groaned. Well, maybe tomorrow he could come up with another plan.

He had not, he thought, heard any more noises since that scraping, apart from those made by the company, and that meant that somebody was trying to keep quiet. So right now it was important to get Simplicity out of here. It could be a very young tosher who hadn’t yet learned the ropes. Or it might be something else . . . but it wasn’t worth taking the chance. Nothing must happen to Simplicity.

Keeping his tone cheerful, he ushered his little flock back along the way they had come, silently cursing every step. It was not as easy as may have been thought, even by the lamplight, which didn’t penetrate all that far.

‘Gentlemen, if you don’t mind there are a few things I’d like to look at down here,’ he said as they approached the sewer exit. ‘When you are above ground I hope that you can take care of . . . Roger until the coach turns up. Sometimes you get undesirables down here, well, more undesirable than what’s down here already. I’ll just have a little glance around and then come back. I’m sure it’s nothing, but with Mister Disraeli here as well, I feel a little caution is sensible.’

Simplicity was watching him intently, Mister Bazalgette was looking somewhat dismayed, and Charlie was just strolling carefully back the way they had come. Mister Disraeli, quite surprisingly, took Simplicity’s hand. ‘Come along . . . Miss . . . young man. Frankly, I could do with a breath of fresh air.’

As they climbed up and out, Dodger took care to say again, ‘Probably nothing at all, nothing at all, but I had best check.’ Then he dropped back into the sewer and was free, free of other people. Someone else had got into his sewer and if it were any of the work gangs there would have been a shout along the lines of ‘Bugger off, you toshers!’ – not exactly a cheerful greeting, but at least something human. No, someone was there. It couldn’t be the Outlander, could it? That would be too glib. But the Lady knew there were still a number of people after Dodger, and everyone knew where Dodger could usually be found. Oh well, at least he was on his own ground, sticky and stinking though it was.

In the dark now, he heard the rattle of a coach overhead, and the sounds of voices, one of which was unmistakably that of Simplicity. He breathed a deep sigh of relief. Well, whatever happened now couldn’t happen to her. Of course, he told himself again, it almost certainly wasn’t the Outlander, who was surely just a bogeyman, after all . . . though try as he might, his thoughts dived from being optimistically cheerful to: I’m a bloody fool. If the Outlander has been so successful in his trade, then he must surely know just about everything concerning Dodger and Simplicity.

That was just the start of the terrible scenarios jostling for space in front of his eyes. Pictures flashed across his mind at speed, nasty pictures. Well, would someone like the Outlander go down into the sewers? Perhaps someone had paid him enough money. And then what further scenarios could near-panic throw up? Everybody knew Dodger had gone into the sewer with his group. Who did the Outlander know? How fast did news travel? And how clever must someone like the Outlander have been still to be alive when by now he must have so many enemies in so many countries. Just how stupid had Dodger, good old Dodger, been to have thought that the threat was something he could just brush off? But perhaps it was someone else?

Well, Simplicity was safe, for now. Then the sensible thing for Dodger to do was to be up and out of the sewer as soon as possible before the stranger caught him up, but with his heart pounding most unusually against his ribs, he considered his limited options. He could get out of the sewer by another drain further along, but if he took the time to get there, anything could happen, and if he tried to leave by the nearest one, whoever it was – and suddenly he felt certain that it was the Outlander and he was trapped down here with him – could come out right behind him.

Then the last of the sunlight faded. He thought, This is my world. I know every brick. I know every place where if you put a foot wrong, you are up to your waist in stinking mess. He thought, Here I am. Maybe he could use this to his advantage. Make a new plan, a plan with a different way of getting to the same end. And Julius Caesar appeared in his mind, admittedly sitting on a jakes (an image which would stay with him for a long time) – and Dodger thought, He was a warrior, wasn’t he? A cove who was difficult to kill too. He whispered, ‘There!’ and said aloud in the gloom, ‘Come along. Here I am, mister; maybe you want to be shown the sights.’

Looking down, he realized that someone was most definitely on his way, because the rats were running straight towards him, trying to keep ahead of whoever or whatever was coming up the sewer. Dodger, by now, was up against the sewer wall, mostly in a little alcove where several ancient bricks had fallen out (and where, he recalled fondly, he had once picked up two farthings and one of the old-fashioned groats that you didn’t see around these days).

The running rats clambered over and around him as if he wasn’t there, and he thought, They see me nearly every day. He had never hunted them, slammed his boot on them or even tried to shoo them away. He left them alone and so they left him alone. Besides, he didn’t know how he would stand with the Lady if he was nasty to her little subjects. Grandad had been very firm about this, saying ‘Tread on a rat and you’re treading on the Lady’s robe.’ Dodger whispered to the silence and said, ‘Lady, it’s Dodger again. About that luck I mentioned? If you can see your way clear, thanking you in expectation, Dodger.’

And up there in the darkness, there was the scream of a stricken rat. They were capable of dying quite noisily, and there was another squeal, and even more rats were pouring past him, surrounding him.

There, suddenly, barely visible in the grimy light, was the intruder, crawling with commendable stealth along the sewer, actually passing Dodger in his stinking hideaway, since Dodger was clearly invisible, being the same colour and certainly the same stink as the sewer itself. The rats were running over the intruder too, but he was hitting out at them with something – Dodger couldn’t quite see what – and the rats were screeching, and most certainly the Lady would be listening.

Now, in his hand Dodger had – yes! – Sweeney Todd’s razor; he had brought it with him not so much as a weapon but as a talisman: a gift from fate that had changed his life, just as it had changed that of Sweeney Todd. On a day like this, how could he have left it behind?

In the darkness, Dodger’s dark-accustomed eye saw the gleaming stiletto dagger in the man’s hand. It was an assassin’s weapon, if ever he had seen one. No decent murderer would use something like that. The thought came to him fast and all at once: he had nothing at all to fear down here. It was his world, and he could feel the Lady helping him, he was sure of it. No, the person who ought to be afraid was the man stealthily crawling along the drain just where Dodger could see him . . . and Dodger jumped on him, pinning him down immediately, and assassin or not it is hard to use your dagger when you are splayed in the muck of a sewer with Dodger sitting on your back.

He was a wiry boy, but he held the man more or less fixed to the ground as if he had been nailed to it, and pummelled every bit of the man that could be pummelled. Even as the man struggled, Dodger pressed cold steel to his throat and whispered, ‘If you know anything about me, then you know that pressed to your neck is Sweeney Todd’s razor – wonderful smooth, so it is, and who knows what it could cut off?’ He allowed the prone man to at least lift his mouth and nose out of the muck for a moment, and added, ‘Upon my word, I was expecting rather more of an assassin than this. Come on, speak up!’ Dodger grabbed the stiletto and flung it into the darkness.

The man below him spat out mud and a piece of what might once have been part of a rat and tried to say something that Dodger couldn’t understand, so Dodger said, ‘Come on, what was that again?’

A voice – a female voice – said, ‘Good evening, Mister Dodger; if you look carefully, you will see that I am holding a pistol, quite a powerful one. You will not make a single move until my friend here stops throwing up so unpleasantly, whereupon I expect he will wish to do unto others that which hath just been done to him. In the meantime, you will stand where you are and I will pull the trigger if you move so much as an inch. Later I will kill your young lady friend . . . By the way, I can’t say I like that gentleman very much, not the best assistant I’ve ever had. Oh dear, oh dear, why is it that everybody assumes that the Outlander is a man?’ The owner of the voice stepped nearer and Dodger could now see both her and her pistol.

There was no doubt about it. The Outlander was attractive, even in this gloom, and Dodger could not pinpoint the accent. Not Chinese, certainly not European, though very fluent in English. He had Sol’s pistol strapped in his boot; that had been for use later, for the plan which was now of course in tatters, and so he said, ‘Excuse me, miss, but why do you want to kill Simplicity?’

‘Because I will then be paid quite a considerable sum of money, young man. Surely you know that? Incidentally, I have no particular quarrel with yourself, although Hans – once he can stand up straight – almost certainly would quite like to have a brief, very brief, conversation with you. We just have to wait for the poor man to recover.’

The girl – and the Outlander looked like a girl not much bigger than Simplicity and, he had to admit, slightly thinner – gave him a charming smile. ‘It won’t be long now, Mister Dodger. And what is it that you are staring at, apart of course from myself?’

Dodger, almost swallowing his tongue, said, ‘Well, miss, not staring, miss, just praying to the Lady.’ And indeed he was praying, but also watching the shadows shift. They lingered even here.

‘Ah yes, I have heard tell of her . . . the Madonna of the sewers, the goddess Cloacina, the lady of the rats, and I see so many of her congregation here with us this evening,’ the Outlander continued.

The shadows behind her quite subtly changed again. And hope, which had disappeared for some time, suddenly returned. Although Dodger made certain to keep it out of his face.

‘You are a fervent believer to turn to the darkness in supplication, but I am afraid it will take more than rats to save you now, however hard you stare into the darkness . . .’

‘Now!’ screamed Dodger, and the quite hefty lump of wood in Simplicity’s hands was already in flight, hitting the Outlander on the back of the head and knocking her straight to the ground. Dodger jumped and slid and snatched up the pistol, banging his head on the side of the sewer in his haste as the rats ran and squeaked in panic.

He gave Hans another swift boot to ensure he stayed on the ground a little longer and Simplicity, with great presence of mind, sat on the woman. Dodger thought, Thank goodness for all that heavy German sausage, then he shouted, ‘Why did you come back here? It’s dangerous!’

Simplicity gave Dodger a bewildered look and said, ‘You know, I looked at the ring that I found, and on it I saw it said in tiny writing: To S, with love from Dodger. So of course I had to come back, but I kept quiet, because you said we should keep quiet in the sewers. I told them I was going to wait until I saw you come out of the sewer, and I thought something was wrong. Well, you told me that the Outlander always had a good-looking lady with him, and I thought, well, a good-looking lady who went around with somebody like that assassin would be a very powerful woman. I wondered if you realized that; it would appear, my dearest Dodger, that I was right.’

In the echoes of that little speech, for just one bleary moment, Dodger thought he heard the voice of Grandad, with its cheerful, toothless sound, saying, ‘Told yuz! You is the best tosher I known. You got your tosheroon now. That young lady there – she’s your tosheroon, lad!’

There was nothing for it. Treading heavily on the Outlander, he grabbed Simplicity, gave her a hug and a kiss, one which regrettably couldn’t go the optimum distance because now, surely, there was so much to do.

Simplicity had hit the Outlander quite hard; there was certainly a pulse, but also a bit of blood here and there, and the assassin definitely wasn’t going to get up for a while. The man, however, was, but not with much enthusiasm, since a mouth full of mixed sewer water can slow down anybody. He was groaning, swaying and dribbling – dribbling green slime.

Dodger grabbed him and said, ‘Can you understand English?’ He couldn’t understand the answer, but Simplicity stepped forward, and after a brief interrogation said, ‘He’s from one of the Germanys, from Hamburg, and he sounds very scared.’

‘Good, tell him that if he is a good boy and does what we ask he might see his home country again. Don’t tell him that what he’s likely to see there could be the gallows, ’cos I wouldn’t want him to worry. Right now, of course, I need to be a friend to this poor man led astray by a wicked woman. So he will, I reckon, be very very helpful . . . Oh, and tell him to take his trousers off, quickly!’ They were foreign and pretty good, but as the man sat there, naked, Dodger tore the German trousers to shreds and used them to bind the recumbent Outlander and her employee.

Simplicity was wreathed in smiles, but a cloud passed over her face and she said, ‘What should we do now, Dodger?’ and he replied, ‘It’s like the plan. You know the place I told you about. We call it the Cauldron, ’cos that is what it is like when there is a real storm, but at least it means it’s a lot cleaner than most of the places down here. You remember all the lighter bricks? There’s food up there, and a bottle of water too. And people will come running down when they hear the gunshot.’ He gave her Solomon’s pistol and said, ‘Do you know how to fire one of these things if necessary?’

‘Well, I have seen men shooting, with my . . . husband, and I think I can.’

‘Right!’ said Dodger. ‘You just point the bit at the end at anyone you don’t like, and that generally works. If all goes well, I think I should be able to come and find you around about midnight. Don’t you worry now; the worst thing in these sewers right now is me, and I’m on your side. You will hear voices, but just lie low and keep very quiet, and you will know it’s me that’s coming to find you when you hear me whistle; just like we planned . . .’

She kissed him and said, ‘Do you know, Dodger, your first plan would have worked too.’ Very pointedly she put on her finger the ring she had ‘found’ on the tosh, then she left, following the slightly lighter bricks in the darkness.

Dodger worked fast now. He scurried at speed back down through the sewers to the place he most emphatically had stopped Charlie going into, and with care pulled out from hiding – and from the sheaves of lavender – all that remained of the unfortunate girl, yellow-haired and wearing exactly the same breeches and cap as Simplicity was wearing. He slid the wonderful ring on her cold finger – the gold ring with the eagles on the crest.

Now there was the worst bit. He drew out the Outlander’s pistol, took a few breaths, shot the corpse in the heart twice, because the Outlander as a matter of course would use two shots to make sure, and – horribly, and almost without looking – once in the side of the face where the rats had begun to . . . well, do what rats usually do to a nice, fresh corpse. He whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then he took from another hidey hole amongst the junk in the sewer a bucket of pigs’ blood. He tipped it out, trying all the time to not exactly be there, trying to become a disembodied spirit watching somebody else doing all these things, because as often as he told himself that he had done nothing really bad, there would always be a little part of him that would argue.

And then he walked back along the tunnel, sat and sobbed and listened to the noise of splashing feet coming at speed down the sewer, led, interestingly, by Charlie, followed by a couple of policemen. They found Dodger curled up in tears, tears that right now came of their own accord.

‘Yes,’ said Dodger, crying. ‘She’s dead, she’s really dead . . . But I did my best, I really did.’

A hand landed on Dodger’s neck and Charlie said, ‘Dead?’

Looking at his boots, Dodger said, ‘Yes, Charlie, she was shot. There was nothing I could do. It was . . . the Outlander, a right proper assassin.’ He looked up, tears glistening in the lamplight. ‘What chance would the likes of me have against someone like that?’

Charlie looked angrily at Dodger and said, ‘Are you telling me the truth, Dodger?’

Now Dodger looked up with his head held high. ‘It all happened so quickly that it’s all a bit of a fog. But yes, I’d say that’s the truth of it all right.’

Charlie’s face was suddenly much closer to Dodger’s. ‘A fog, you say?’

‘Yes indeed, the kind of fog in which people see what they want to see.’ Was that just a hint of a grin in Charlie’s eye? Dodger had to hope so.

But the man said, ‘Surely there is a corpse?’

Dodger nodded sadly. ‘Yes, sir, I can take you to it right now; indeed I think I should.’

Charlie lowered his voice and said, ‘This corpse . . .?’

Dodger sighed and said, ‘A poor girl’s corpse . . . and I have the culprits and will bring them to justice with your help, Charlie, but Simplicity, I am afraid you will never see alive again.’

He said these words very carefully, eyes glued to Charlie, who said, ‘I cannot say I am pleased by what I hear, Mister Dodger, but here is a constable and we will follow your lead.’ He turned to Disraeli, who almost stepped back, and said, ‘Come along, Ben, as a pillar of Parliament, you should witness this.’ There was an edge of command in that suggestion and a few minutes later, they had reached, indeed, the sad corpse of ‘Simplicity’, lying in a pool of sewerage and blood.

‘Good lord,’ said Mister Disraeli, doing his best to appear shocked. ‘It would appear that Angela’s footman is really . . . Miss Simplicity.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, what was a girl doing down here dressed as a man?’ the constable said, because he was a policeman, even though right at this minute he looked like a constable who found himself in a position that needed a sergeant at least.

Charlie turned to him. ‘Miss Simplicity was a girl who knew her own mind, I believe. But I beg of you all, please, for the sake of Miss Coutts, let it never be known that the girl was dressed like this when she died.’

‘I should think not,’ Mister Disraeli pronounced. ‘The death of a young girl is appalling, but a young girl in breeches . . . whatever next?’ There was a hint of politician in this little speech; a whiff of wondering, What would the public think if they knew I was here, down here, mixed up in all this?

‘Perfect for a working girl,’ Dodger said. ‘You don’t know the half of it. I’ve seen girls working on the coal barges, and strapping big girls they were too. Nobody told them they shouldn’t, ’cos I remember seeing one that had a fist on her that many a man could wish for.’

Charlie turned back to the corpse. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we are all agreed that this lady, who is wearing breeches, is Miss Simplicity. But her death – what do you think, Constable?’

The policeman looked at Charlie, and then at Dodger, and said, ‘Well, sir, that’s a bullet wound and one more at least with no doubt about it. But who done it? That’s what I’d like to know.’

‘Ah well,’ said Dodger, ‘for the answer to that, I must beg you gentlemen to follow me over here. If you would be so good as to keep your lanterns bright, you will see trussed up a lady who I think you will find is the Outlander.’

Even Charlie looked surprised at this, saying, ‘Surely not!’

‘She told me she was,’ said Dodger, ‘and lying down there is “exhibit B”, her accomplice. Speaks German, that’s all I know, but I rather feel he will be very anxious to tell you everything, since I must tell you that to the best of my knowledge he had no part in the death of Simplicity, and as far as I am aware hasn’t committed any other crime in London. Apart from trying to murder me.’ Then he held up the pistol and said, ‘This was the weapon, gentlemen, and there wasn’t much I could do to stop her shooting Miss S . . . Miss . . .’

Dodger began to cry, and Charlie patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘Well, you couldn’t have stopped a pistol, and that’s the truth of it. But well done for catching the miscreants.’ He sniffed and went on, as an aside, out of the hearing of the constable, ‘You know, clearly you’ve told us the truth, but I have seen a corpse or two in my time – oh, haven’t I just – and this one appears to me to be possibly . . . not very fresh . . .?’

Dodger blinked and said, ‘Yes, sir, I think it’s the miasmic effusions, sir. After all, the sewers are full of death and decay, and that finds its way in, sir, believe me it does, most egregiously, so it does.’

‘Miasmic effusions,’ Charlie repeated, louder this time. ‘Hear that, Ben? What can we say? I think that all of us know that Mister Dodger would never have hurt Simplicity, and we all understand that he was very caring of her. So I hope that you will join me in sympathy for this young man, who despite the loss of his lady love has managed to bring a dreadful killer to justice.’ Then he added, ‘What do you think, Constable?’

The policeman looked rather stern and said, ‘Well, sir, so it seems, sir, but the coroner will have to be informed. Has the corpse any next of kin that you know of?’

‘Alas, no,’ said Charlie. ‘In fact, officer, I am aware that nobody really knows who she is, or where she came from. She was somewhat unfortunate – an orphan of the storm, you might say. A girl whom Miss Coutts had taken under her wing out of the sheer goodness of her heart. What do you think, Ben?’

Mister Disraeli appeared horrified by the entire business and looked nervous, saying, ‘A dreadful matter indeed, Mister Dickens. All we can do is let the law take its course.’

Charlie nodded in a statesmanlike way and said, ‘Well, Mister Dodger, I think that all you need to do is give the constable here your particulars, and of course I can vouch for you as a pillar of the community. As you may know, Constable, Dodger here is the man who set about the infamous Sweeney Todd, and may I add my own dismay at how our innocent little excursion came to such an unhappy end.’

He sighed. ‘One can only speculate as to why this poor, unfortunate girl was the target of this madwoman. But I have taken note, Constable, that the dead girl is wearing a fine gold ring, very ornate and with a ducal seal on it too. This may or may not be of interest, but I must ask you to take it as evidence which may be very germane to the investigation. But then,’ he added, glancing again at Disraeli, who still looked appalled, ‘in the circumstances, Constable, I am sure you and your superiors, when of course they have satisfied themselves about the sad facts of this matter, will see to it that the whole business does not lead to unnecessary speculation because, of course, surely the facts speak for themselves.’

He looked around for agreement. ‘And now,’ he concluded, ‘I think we should leave, although I think that some of us’ – and now he glanced meaningfully at Dodger – ‘should wait here until the coroner’s officer comes along. May I say, Constable, you should approach him in all haste.’

To Dodger’s amazement the policeman saluted, actually saluted, and said, ‘Yes indeed, Mister Dickens.’

‘Very good,’ said Charlie. He then added, ‘But you do have here these killers, and if I was you I should right now make an immediate report and have the wagon here as soon as possible. I will wait with Mister Dodger and the pistol, if you don’t mind, until you and your colleagues return.’ He turned to Mister Bazalgette. ‘Joseph, how do you feel?’

The surveyor looked a bit unnerved but said, ‘Honestly, Charlie, I have seen worse things.’

‘Then would you be so kind as to see that Ben gets home safely? I think he is rather shaken by all this; I am sure that it wasn’t the happy little jaunt we were all expecting.’

Two more policemen arrived almost immediately, and then others soon followed suit, and by now a crowd was forming around the entrance to the sewer, and more policemen were called in to hold the crowd back. Every policeman at some time went down into the sewers just so they would have something to tell their grandchildren. And the newspapers were already churning . . . another ‘ ’orrible murder!’ would be front-page news tomorrow, oh yes.

It was indeed a very strange evening for Dodger; he was interrogated several times by different policemen, who were themselves watched like a hawk by Charlie. It was embarrassing when some of the policemen came up to Dodger to shake his hand, not because the Outlander had now been captured – after all, who could believe that a girl could be a dangerous assassin, after all? – but because of Mister Todd, and how Dodger now appeared to be a hero in more ways than one, even though a young girl had died. And all the time the fog spilled over everything, finding its way in everywhere, silently changing the realities of the world.

They took away the Outlander and her accomplice. Then the coroner’s officer came and the coroner as well, and there were coaches and carts, and everywhere there was Charlie, and eventually the last remains of the poor dead girl were put into a coffin for the eventual destination at Lavender Hill.

The coroner, said Charlie afterwards, had taken the view that since the girl had no friends or relatives to speak of, except a young man who clearly loved her very much and a lady who had kindly given her shelter and tried to stop her following other young girls down the wrong path, then surely this was an open and shut case if ever there was one. Even if there were a few little mysteries.

The killer was now under lock and key, despite the fact that the wretched woman now denied shooting anybody, an assertion belied by her confederate who, it must be said, was talking his heart out in the hope of salvation.

Dispatches were sent to Downing Street, along with the ring for examination, once the crest on it was noted, this being political. And indeed the word ‘political’ seemed to hover like the fog over the case as a warning to all men of good will, with the meaning that if your masters are satisfied, so you had better be as well.

Now it was nearly midnight, and there was only Charlie and Dodger. Dodger knew why he himself was there, but since Charlie had already filed his copy to the Morning Chronicle, he had no idea why the other man was still there.

Then, in the gloom of midnight, Charlie said, ‘Dodger, I think there is a game called Find the Lady, but I am not asking to play it. I simply wish to know that there is a lady to be found, in good health, as it might be, by a young man who can see through the fog. Incidentally, both as a journalist and as a man who writes things about things and indeed people that do not exist, I rather wonder, Mister Dodger, what you would have done if the Outlander had not turned up?’

‘You were watching me all the time,’ said Dodger. ‘I noticed. Did I give very much away?’

‘Amazingly little. Am I to assume that the young lady we all saw so emphatically dead did not die by your hand, if you will excuse me for being so blunt?’

And Dodger knew that the game was up but not necessarily over, and said, ‘Charlie, she was one of those girls that drowns herself in the river and no one cares very much. She will get a decent burial in a decent graveyard, which is more than she would have got in other circumstances. And that’s the truth of it. My plan was simplicity itself, sir. Simplicity would have excused herself, being a very “shy lad”. Alas, she would have wandered into the sewers where I would rush to find her. In the dark there would be a great noise of a scuffle and a scream as I fought valiantly, I’ll have you know, as I came to blows with an unknown man who must have heard of our little excursion and may even now be still at large. Whereupon I would rush to meet yourself and the others and implore you all to help the dying Simplicity, and not least chase the dreadful assassin through the sewers. It would be a terrifying but fruitless pursuit.’

‘And where would the living Simplicity be, pray?’ said Charlie.

‘Hidden, sir. Hidden in a place where no one but another tosher would ever find her – a place we call the Cauldron on account of the way the waters wash it clean – with a waterproof packet of cheese sandwiches and a bottle of boiled water with a dash of brandy to keep the cold out.’

‘Then, Mister Dodger, you would have made fools of us all.’

‘No, sir! You would have been quite heroic! Because I would never tell and nor would Simplicity, and then one day everyone would know the name of Charlie Dickens.’

It seemed to Dodger that Charlie was trying to look stern, but in fact Charlie was rather impressed, saying, ‘Where did you get a pistol?’

‘Solomon has a Nock pepper-box pistol. Dangerous brute. I think I thought about everything, sir, except for you, that is.’

‘Oh,’ said Charlie. ‘Those bricks over there look so beguilingly higgledy-piggledy. I wondered why they were there. Also, I am wondering now why you are hanging around here? Would it help if I say that I won’t pass on my suspicions to any third party because, frankly, I don’t think I would be believed!’ He smiled at Dodger’s discomfiture and said, ‘Dodger, you have excelled yourself, by which I mean to say you have done exceptionally well, and I salute you. Of course, I am not a member of the government, thank goodness. Now I suggest that you go and find Miss Simplicity, who I imagine must by now be feeling a little chilly.’

Caught unusually unawares, Dodger burst out, ‘Actually, it can be quite warm down here at night time – tends to hold the heat, you see.’

Charlie laughed out loud and said, ‘I must be off and, I suspect, so should you.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dodger, ‘and thank you very much for teaching me about the fog.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Charlie. ‘The fog. Intangible though it is, it is a very powerful thing, is it not, Mister Dodger? I shall follow your career with great interest and, if not, with trepidation.’

When he was absolutely certain that there was no one else around, Dodger made his way through the sewers until he came to the little hidey hole where Simplicity was waiting, and he whistled softly. No one noticed them leave, no one saw where they went, and the veil of night spread over London on the living and the dead alike.