“I’m not staying,” Pitt said quietly. “I’m going to the Dog and Duck, a mile away, to have lunch. I thought you might like to join me in, say, half an hour? I’m going to have steak and kidney pudding, hot; Mrs. Billows does that a treat. And spotted dick, made with suet and lots of raisins, and cream. And maybe a couple of glasses of cider, brought up from the West Country.”
The Stoat swallowed hard. “Yer a cruel man, Mr. Pitt. You must want some poor bastard cropped!” He made a sharp gesture with his hand at the side of his throat, like a noose under the ear.
“Perhaps, in the end,” Pitt agreed. “Right now it’s only burglary information. Dog and Duck, half an hour. Be there, Stoat, or I shall have to come and see you somewhere less agreeable-and less private.” He stood up, and without looking backwards, head down, he pushed his way through the drinkers and out into the street.
Thirty-five minutes later he was in the more salubrious parlor of the Dog and Duck, with a mug of cider, bright and clear as an Indian summer, in front of him, when the Stoat crept in nervously, ran his fingers round his grimy collar as if easing it from his neck, and wriggled onto the seat opposite him. He glanced round once or twice, but saw only dull, respectable minor traders and clerks; no one he knew.
“Steak and kidney pudding?” Pitt offered unnecessarily.
“Wotcher want orf of me first?” the Stoat said suspiciously, but his nostrils were wide, sucking in the delicious aroma of fresh, sweet food. It was almost as if the steam itself fed him. “ ’Oo’re yer after?”
“Someone who robbed a house in Hanover Close three years ago,” Pitt replied, nodding over the Stoat’s head to the landlord.
The Stoat swiveled round furiously, his face suddenly creasing with outrage. “ ’Oo’re yer signin’ at?” he snarled. “ ’Oozat?”
“The landlord.” Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you want to eat?”
The Stoat subsided, vaguely pink under the gray of his skin.
“A robbery three years ago in Hanover Close,” Pitt repeated.
The Stoat sneered. “Free years ago? Bit slow, incher? Runnin’ be’ind vese days, are we? Wot was took?”
Pitt described the articles in some detail.
The Stoat’s lip curled. “ Yer in’t after vem fings! Ye’re after ’oo croaked ve geezer wot caught ’em at it!”
“I’d be interested,” Pitt conceded. “But primarily I’m concerned to prove someone innocent.”
“Vat’s a turnup!” the Stoat said cynically. “Friend o’ yours?”
“Hungry?” Pitt smiled. The landlord appeared with two steaming dishes piled high with meat, gravy, and feather-light suet crust. A few green vegetables decorated the side, and a maid stood by with an earthenware jug of cider sweet as ripe apples.
The Stoat’s eyes glazed a little.
“Murder’s not good for business,” Pitt said very quietiy. “Gives robbery a bad name.”
“Bring on the scran!” the little man snapped, then licked his lips and smiled. “Yer right-it’s clumsy and it in’t necessary.” He watched with rapture as his plate was set in front of him, inhaling the delicate steam and sucking his teeth as the cider was poured, eyeing it right to the brim of the tankard.
“What do you know about it, Stoat?” Pitt asked before he took the first mournful.
The Stoat’s eyes opened very wide. They were a clear gray; the redeeming feature of a cramped face, they must once have been handsome. He filled his mouth with food and chewed slowly, rolling it round his tongue.
“Nuffin’,” he said at last. “And that in’t nuffin’, if yer sees wot I mean. Usual yer ’ears a word, if not straight orf, men in a munf er two. Or if ’e’s in lavender ’cos it turned a bit nasty, men a year, mebbe. But vis ’un clean mizzled!”
“If he was in lavender in some nethersken, you’d know?” Pitt pressed. “In lavender” meant in a hiding place from the police, but the Stoat was indicating that this particular thief had vanished.
The Stoat filled his mouth again and spoke round the food with difficulty. “ ’Course I’d know!” he said contemptuously. “Know every slapbang, lurk, nethersken, flash ’ouse, and paddyken fer miles.”
Pitt understood him. He was referring to cheap eating houses, hiding places, low lodging houses, criminal pubs, and taprooms.
“An’ I tell yer vis,” the Stoat went on, sipping his cider appreciatively. “ ’E weren’t no professional. From wot I ’ear ’e got no crow, no snakesman, and ’oo but a fool’d go in the front like ’e did in a place like ’anover Close? Yer gotta know the crushers’d be rahnd every bleedin’ twenty minutes!”
A snakesman was a thin or underdeveloped child who could creep through the bars of a window and, once inside, open the doors for the real thief. A crow was a lookout, frequently a woman, to warn of police or strangers approaching. Pitt already knew the thief was no professional from P.C. Lowther, but it was interesting that the Stoat knew this also. “So he was an amateur,” he said. “Has he done anything else, anything since?”
The Stoat shook his head, his mouth full. He swallowed. “Told yer-mizzled. Never done nuffink afore ner since. ’E in’t on our patch, Mr. Pitt. I never ’eard o’ ven fings fenced, ner no one in lavender ’cos o’ the feller topped-an’ vey would be. It’s no stretch in Coldbath, ner even takin’ ve boat like it used ter be: murder’s croppin’ business, no cockchafers ner scroby, just Newgate, and a long drop early one mornin’ wiv a rope collar. A long drop and only the devil ter catch yer.”
“Cockchafer” was the graphic term for the treadmill used in prisons, a device to keep a man perpetually in motion; “scroby” meant the prison sentence of the lash.
The Stoat sat back and patted his belly. “Vat was a fair tightener, Mr. Pitt,” he said, gazing at his empty plate. “I’d ’elp yer if I could. Ve best I can tell yer is ter look fer some toff wot fought as thievin’ was simple and tried ’is ’and at it an’ fahnd it weren’t.” He pulled over the plate of spotted dick pudding, thick with fruit, and dipped his spoon in it, then looked up with a sudden idea. “Or mebbe the lady o’ ve ’ouse ’ad a lover, an’ ’e did away wiv ’er ’usband, an’ it weren’t nuffink ter do wiv thievin’ at all. ’Ad yer fought o’ vat, Mr. Pitt? It ain’t one of ve family, vat I know.”
“Yes Stoat, I had thought of it,” Pitt said, pushing the cream across to him.
The Stoat grinned, showing sharp, gappy teeth, and poured the cream generously. “Y’in’t daft, fer a crusher, is yer!” he said with grudging respect.
Pitt believed the Stoat, but even so he felt compelled to pursue any other contacts he had right up until Christmas Eve. He found nothing but a blank ignorance and a total absence of fear, which was in itself a kind of evidence. He tramped miles through dingy alleys behind the grand facades of the great streets; he questioned pimps, fences, footpads, and keepers of bawdy houses, but no one told him anything of a thief who had broken into Hanover Close and tried to sell or dispose of the missing property, or who was hiding from a murder charge. The whole underworld turned a dirty, conniving, but quite innocent face to his inquiries.
It was a fine, sharp evening, dark by half past four after a pale green sunset. Gas lamps burned yellow, carriages rattled back and forth over a shining film of ice on the cobbles. People called out greetings, drivers shouted abuse, and street sellers cried their wares: hot chestnuts, matches, bootlaces, old lavender, fresh pies, penny whistles, toy soldiers. Here and there little knots of youths sang carols, their voices thin and a little sharp in the frosty air.
Pitt felt a slow, blessed cleanliness wash over him as the smell of despair receded and the grayness was infused with the beginnings of color. The excitement around him drove out memory and buoyed him up, even expunging the pity and guilt he usually felt when leaving the rookeries and returning to his comfortable home. Today he cast off those feelings like a soiled coat and was left with only gratitude. He flung open the front door and shouted out, “Hello!”
There was an instant’s silence, then he heard Jemima jump from her stool and the clatter of shoes on linoleum as she ran up the hall to meet him.
“Papa! Papa, is it Christmas Eve yet? It is, isn’t it!”
He threw his arms round her and lifted her high into the air. “Yes, my sweetheart, it is! It is Christmas Eve, right now!” He kissed her and held her on his arm, striding into the kitchen. All the lights were blazing. Charlotte and Emily sat at the table, putting the finishing touches on the icing of a great cake, and Gracie was stuffing the goose. Emily had arrived an hour earlier with a footman in tow, laden with colored paper, boxes, and ribbons. Edward, Daniel, and Jemima had clustered round him, speechless with excitement, Edward hopping up and down from one foot to the other, his blond hair flopping on his head like a silver-gold lid. Daniel was doing a little dance on the floor, round and round in circles until he fell over.
Pitt put Jemima down, kissed Charlotte, welcomed Emily, and acknowledged Gracie’s presence. He took his
