The Skeleton Army, page 18
As she spoke, Brother Blenny and his unsanctioned correspondence in the Mercury came to mind, and I wondered just how irksome and disruptive his loose cannon presence in the corps was.
‘If that’s the case with the Skeleton Army,’ she continued, ‘and different people sending notes tells me that perhaps it is, then it makes them more dangerous, not less.’
I watched her distractedly running her fingertips to and fro along the newly polished wood in front of her. Behind the bar stood a counter with braziers to keep kettles of boiling water hot, and in the back room, more than a dozen coffee pots of various kinds waited to be put to use. ‘More cast-offs from the great and the good,’ Non had pronounced.
‘Have you had other threats?’ I asked.
Captain Lyall was silent for several seconds. ‘I have, yes.’
‘Similar to this one?’
‘No.’ She glanced up at me, then away again. ‘The other threats came directly to me. At home.’ She hesitated, then continued, ‘And they were of a more intimate, female nature. I’m sure I don’t need to say any more.’
Threats of personal violation. The thought disgusted me. That men would threaten – or contemplate actually carrying out – such acts made me feel ashamed to be a man. Would Captain Lyall have received threats like that if she hadn’t been an actress in her previous life? If one of the presiding ladies of the AEW chose to stand at the head of a Salvation Army procession, would she attract similar intimidation? It was too grotesque to contemplate.
‘Have you reported them to the police?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘The police would like to see us gone as much as the Skeletons. They’d say it was just words. Or that my behaviour had led men on.’
I thought of the reports I’d read of Captain Lyall dancing and singing as she led her corps in procession through the streets, calling the Tomrags and the ’Friars to the barracks with the promise of ‘something the like of which you’ve never seen!’
And indeed, the music hall tunes with their easily caught refrains, the sometimes scandalous stories of the converted in their ‘testimonies’, and Captain Lyall’s red-hot gospel preaching represented a spectacle that was likely to be uniquely attractive to the deprived souls of St Thomas’s and St Ebbe’s.
But, in a city that clung to tradition as much as Oxford did, such startling novelty was bound to raise hackles; Captain Lyall was, I feared, correct in her summary of her likely reception were she to complain of the notes she had been sent.
‘But I did tell the General and Mrs Booth about them,’ she said. ‘And they’re taking action.’ She looked around her. ‘As soon as this place is open and running, I’m being moved. Lieutenant Hammond’s asked to be released from her commission because she wants to get married, and the General thinks it would be good for me to move on at the same time. They’ll bring two men in. It’s harder to threaten men.’
That, I reflected, depended on the man concerned and the nature of the threats.
‘When?’ I asked, realising that I would miss her lively presence. My friendship with Non seemed to have awoken in me an affinity for women whom society might denigrate.
‘I haven’t been given an exact date yet. But soon.’
‘Do your members know?’
‘I’ve told a few. Those I can trust.’
I wondered if that list included Joss Blenny.
‘I need a word with Mr Blenny,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me where I might find him?’ If Captain Lyall was soon to leave, I would do well to make use of her assistance while I still had some standing with the corps.
She frowned. ‘I’ve already spoken to him about that letter—’
I shook my head. ‘I need to speak to him about the second confession Ernie Ayott was supposedly going to make.’
‘You think he might know what Ernie was going to say?’
‘I think it’s possible.’ In fact, I had no reason to suspect that Blenny knew anything. Non, however, did, and I had learned to trust her intuition.
‘I fear you’d be wasting your time, Mr Rice. I spoke to Joss about that after the conversation you and I had with Miss Vaughan, and he knows no more than Miss Langridge overheard. D’you not think you’d do better to speak to Maud Ayott or Clara O’Hare?’
I sighed. She was right, of course.
Non, I knew, had already spoken to Maud Ayott, but to no avail. Whatever Ernie’s widow knew – and Non was convinced that she knew something – she was keeping to herself.
I must confess, I didn’t relish a conversation on the subject of Ernie Ayott with his former mistress. However, in the absence of any progress by the constabulary, I agreed with Non that we must make such enquiries of our own as we were able to, in order to prevent the Skeleton Army being emboldened, as the coroner had said, to commit further atrocities.
Chapter 33
Non
Basil had given the coroner a general description of the boys responsible for the dove prank on the day of the arson attack, but when Dr Hussey’d visited St Thomas’s to see if anybody could identify them, he’d had no luck. Which, as a doctor to the poor for many years, wasn’t a surprise to him, I’m sure. But at least he’d tried, which was more than the police had.
There was no point me traipsing down to St Thomas’s parish and asking questions. For a start I wouldn’t know who to speak to and, even if I had known, they wouldn’t have told me anything. I was an outsider.
It would have to be somebody they knew. Somebody who cared about the answers as much as I did. More even.
Lucy Ayott.
I asked Lily to keep my dinner warm in the bottom oven and rode the Contraption down to the High Street to wait for Lucy outside Cooper’s grocery.
The day had been dry, but it was overcast now, and the early evening had turned chilly. Perched on the saddle, I huddled down inside my coat like a cab driver waiting for a fare.
I got the usual reactions from the few undergraduates about at this time of the evening: hostile stares from the ones who thought I had no business being out and about on my own, a nod of the head from some who knew me from lectures, and a look of curiosity from the rest. Shop boys going home at the end of the day felt free to leer and make personal comments, but most people were at home, eating dinner, so the street was relatively quiet. And anyway, I’d had plenty of practice in giving young men their stares back in their faces.
A dust cart stopped in the road. While the man pushing it shovelled horse droppings into his bucket, I watched the windows over the shops on the opposite side of the street light up. Shopkeepers were locking up and moving upstairs into their private lives.
Just after seven, Lucy came out of Cooper’s, buttoning her coat. She wasn’t paying attention to anything but what she was doing, and she almost walked into the tandem.
‘Steady!’ I said, putting my hand out to stop her getting tangled up in the wheels.
‘Miss Vaughan! Have you got news?’
I didn’t like to disappoint her, but I couldn’t lie. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid. But I’m hoping that if you can help me, we might make some progress on finding out who killed your father. And Thea Langridge.’
‘Me? How?’
‘I’ll walk home with you,’ I said and grabbed the rear saddle and one of the steering handles to start pushing.
I hadn’t seen Lucy since Thea’s death. She hadn’t turned up at the funeral, though I’d thought she might. ‘Were you at the Salvation Circus?’ I asked. ‘When the barracks was set on fire?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I was going to. Had the afternoon off. Then Mum needed me to help her with a job.’
‘Still, I suppose you heard about the so-called “descending dove of peace” before the fire started?’ I asked. According to Basil, who seemed to spend half his time with the Salvationists these days, ‘the descending dove of peace’ was what all the recruits had started calling the stunt.
‘Yeah, I ’eard. I don’t think people really liked to talk about it, after the fire and all, but you don’t see a thing like that every day, do you? Not even at the barracks.’
‘The coroner couldn’t get anybody to tell him the names of the boys responsible,’ I said, ‘but I suppose everybody knows?’
‘Course. Tom and Bobby Harrison.’
‘D’you think they did it off their own bat?’ I asked. ‘Or did somebody put them up to it?’
Lucy didn’t hesitate. ‘Somebody put ’em up to it. Had to get the bird from somewhere di’n’t they? Harrisons ’aven’t got money for somethin’ like that.’
Whoever had given the dove to the boys must have got it from a pawn shop. The taxidermists of Oxford weren’t making their money out of people from St Thomas’s. Half of them couldn’t keep their children in shoes.
The popularity of stuffed animals in middle-class houses had amazed me when I first came to live in Oxford. I just couldn’t fathom why rich people wanted dead creatures cluttering up their mantelpieces.
According to Basil, the Salvationists all believed that the prank had been played to lure Blenny onto the stage so that he’d start jabbering about the holy spirit, and I said as much to Lucy.
‘Most likely,’ she said. ‘Joss Blenny’s a lunatic.’
‘You don’t mean literally?’
She turned towards me with a grin on her face. ‘No, course not. Mind you, wouldn’t surprise me if somebody ’ad ’im put away one day, ’e’s that annoying. If ’e wasn’t part of such a big family, ’e’d be in the workhouse by now. Pass ’im around, they do. Lives with one sister for a bit, then when she and ’er lot get fed up with ’im, ’e moves on to the next one. None of the brothers’ll ’ave ’im because they reckon their wives won’t stand for Joss’s nonsense.’
‘What kind of nonsense?’
‘Just talks all the time, doesn’ ’e? Whatever’s on ’is mind, it’s got to be on your mind, too. Ten minutes with Joss Blenny’ll wear you out more’n a fortnight with anybody else.’
‘And what is on his mind?’
‘Oh, it’s all ’sclusively the Army now. But before that you could never tell. Half the time it’d be ’ow the breweries could work better – lost ’im any number of jobs, that did, telling the foremen how to do their jobs. Or ’e’d be givin’ ’is sisters instructions about ’ow to keep their children ’ealthy. Always got ’is nose in a book, Joss has. Always full of the latest thing. Mostly nonsense, mind. Like, ’e reckons the water in St Thomas’s i’n’t no good for you. ’S why ’e only drinks milk. ’Cept they water the milk don’t they, the milkmen? And you can be damn sure Tilly Beasley’s watering the stuff she sells at the Devil ’n’ Tailors. She’ll be laughing up her sleeve at Joss over that ’cause ’e reckons ’e’s struck a blow for temperance gettin’ ’er to serve milk. But it’s all one to Tilly what people drink, as long as they come in ’er pub. And if men are goin’ to go over to the Army and don’t want to drink beer no more, she’d rather have ’em in the ’Tailors drinking milk than outside tryin’ to give folk the War Cry.’
I listened to her prattling on. Ironic that she criticised Joss Blenny for not knowing when to stop talking. The chapel minister back home had been fond of saying that our besetting sins are the ones we most dislike in other people. Perhaps he’d been right.
‘D’you think you could talk to these Harrison boys for me,’ I asked, ‘find out who put them up to it?’
‘Could probably lay you good odds without talkin’ to them, to be honest.’
‘Oh yes?’ I tried not to sound too keen.
‘But better not, just in case I’m wrong.’
I pushed the tandem into Castle Street. All the shopkeepers were closing their doors, drawing up the awnings that’d kept the goods in the windows from fading in the sunlight all day. ‘When d’you think you’d be able to find out?’
‘Harrisons’re always about till all hours. I’ll see if I can find ’em tonight. Or tomorrow morning before work.’
‘How are you going to get the boys to tell you? Won’t they be suspicious?’
Lucy didn’t miss a beat. ‘I’ll say a lady come into the shop talking about the white dove with a friend of hers, saying how she’d like one. I’ll tell ’em she said she’d pay good money to know where to get such a thing.’
‘And they’ll have to tell you who put them up to it because that’s the person who will’ve bought the dove? Clever.’
She turned and grinned at me. ‘Frank Cooper doesn’t employ just anybody y’know.’
‘How much money d’you think you’ll need to give them to tell you?’ I asked. I knew boys like that wouldn’t give up the information on the vague promise of money later from some unknown lady.
‘I reckon half a crown’ll do. I’ll offer them a sixpence, they’ll laugh, then I’ll offer a shilling, they’ll reckon they want ten bob, and we’ll agree on half a crown. They’ll be cocks of the walk for a month with thirty pennies between them!’
A twist of sweets every day for a month would certainly make a boy popular. ‘Here’s five bob, in case,’ I said, handing over the coins. But then I realised. ‘They won’t want silver, though, will they, in case somebody thinks they’ve stolen it?’
‘I’ll deal with that,’ Lucy said, ‘don’ you worry. Only thing is, I’ll ’ave to change it from the till tomorrow, so I won’t be able to speak to them tonight.’
Which meant I’d just have to be patient.
Chapter 34
Basil
Captain Lyall might have suggested I speak to Clara O’Hare rather than Joss Blenny, but the following day, when I followed her directions to the Devil and Tailors, the public house where Miss O’Hare worked, I found Joss Blenny there. Though the figure at the bar looked considerably more sober, today, he was immediately recognisable as the man who’d capered so ludicrously with the stuffed dove on the day of the barracks fire.
Blenny wasn’t alone, however. Standing next to him at the bar was the man I’d last seen with his sister at Ernie Ayott’s funeral. Patrick O’Hare.
O’Hare and I recognised each other in the same instant and I saw the shock of recognition on his face. He muttered something to Blenny and left through a door at the back of the pub.
Putting Patrick O’Hare aside for now, I approached Blenny. I was surprised to see a pint pot in front of him but, as I got closer, I saw that it contained nothing stronger than milk.
‘Mr Blenny,’ I said, my hand outstretched. ‘We’ve not met. My name’s Basil Rice.’
He frowned while he was placing me, then smiled. ‘Ah, the college man who’s helping us with the Punt!’
‘Indeed.’
‘Captain Lyall persuaded you to drink milk too, has she, Mr Rice?’
I returned his smile warily. There was a guarded edge to his bonhomie, as if he was appraising me under the cover of affability. ‘No. I actually came to speak to Miss O’Hare.’
Clara O’Hare watched us from the other end of the bar, a position she’d taken up as soon as she’d seen me enter. Her expression, like Blenny’s, was wary, and I understood why. Men of my social class simply didn’t frequent the public houses of St Thomas’s and my appearance was bound to cause apprehension.
Though I tried not to further discomfort Miss O’Hare, I couldn’t help noticing that, when I’d seen her in St Thomas’s churchyard, I’d significantly underestimated her beauty. Standing at Ernie Ayott’s graveside, she’d been a crumpled figure, her face distorted by grief. Now, I saw her in all her careless, unfashionable loveliness. Had she been born into a different social class she would have been feted as a society beauty, her photograph in illustrated magazines, her clothes and manner faithfully followed by the hundreds of thousands who wished to be like her.
Instead, she’d been born here, in one of Oxford’s poorest parishes, to immigrant parents. Her burnished copper hair, caught up in an untidy knot on the top of her head which allowed stray tendrils to curl about her face, would have marked her as a striking woman even were it not for her regular features and flawless complexion. And whereas her brother was heavily freckled, Clara’s skin was milk white. Had I been a different sort of man I might have been smitten.
Small wonder that Ernie Ayott had been prepared to scandalise the parish and forsake his marriage vows for her. Maud Ayott was an admirable woman, but if a man valued looks over character, she couldn’t hold a candle to Clara O’Hare.
I turned back to Blenny. ‘However, now we’ve chanced to meet, there is something I’d like to discuss with you.’
‘Then let’s sit like civilised men, shall we?’ he said, drawing me aside to one of the clean but much-scarred tables. ‘Will you allow me to buy you a half of milk?’
Though I was not particularly fond of milk, I acquiesced. Allowing Blenny to treat me might induce him to drop his guard a little. He called over to Miss O’Hare, and while she poured my drink from an earthenware jug behind the bar, I said, with studied casualness, ‘Since becoming involved with the plans for the Old Punt, I seem to have been drawn into the circumstances surrounding Ernie Ayott’s death. I’ve recently learned that, on the night when he was killed, he wasn’t at the barracks where his family thought he was.’
Blenny blinked but said nothing.
‘Apparently, he was seen coming in here. With the man who’s just left. Patrick O’Hare.’
‘Paddy?’
‘Is he a friend of yours?’
He shrugged. ‘I just know him, like I know everybody in the parish.’
‘Why do you think Ernie might have been talking to him instead of going to a meeting?’
Blenny’s gaze moved and, turning slightly, I found Miss O’Hare approaching with my milk. She put the mug down, but instead of retreating behind the bar once I’d thanked her, she remained at my side.
‘Paddy di’n’t ’ave nothin’ to do with what ’appened to Ernie,’ she said, her hands clenched into little fists at her side. ‘’E wouldn’t—’
‘It’s all right, Clara,’ Blenny soothed, ‘you go back to work. I’ll explain things to Mr Rice.’
