“I'd been giving some thought to retirement anyway. Copperwaite can have the damned dead man's shoes. You know that's what Boulte feared most about me, that I'd run for his job. Well, now Copperwaite or some other fool can just wait to inherit it when Boulte kicks off.”
“Crumpet-getting any crumpet?” said a man lying in a vagrant's pose in a doorway to a vacant shop.
“Watch your vile tongue, rogue!” shouted Sharpe, just itching to thrash the man. Instead, he pulled Jessica past the hobo, saying, “Just a brainless come-day, go-day, that one. I pay him for information on the street from time to time, which explains his being so familiar.”
“Why would he take me for your whore, Richard?” she said and jabbed him in the ribs. “Lighten up, please,” she teased. “At least you are getting some crumpet.”
This made him laugh and kiss her there on the street.
Jessica felt the traffic in the small back lanes here lighter and more willing to give way to pedestrians. Something about London, its small streets and compact alleyways, made her feel comfortable and at home, made her feel like an oversized Alice in this wonderland, and even made her feel important, large, and of consequence. Jessica held on to Richard's arm as the traffic halted for them to cross.
“There's the pub. The one I think you'll find both quite colorful and authentic,” he said, pointing, but an entire array of pub signs stared back at Jessica from across the tiny street. They read: lion head, the silver cross, the roundtable INN, THE CAPTAIN'S GALLEY, and THE BOAR'S HEAD PUB. “I had thought Stuart a smart fellow, you know, and it's a shock to learn that a man you called friend turns out to be dim as a Toc-H lamp, which he is, but worse yet, he's betrayed our partnership.”
At the end of the street Jessica saw a flashing road sign which read in bold letters: DIVERSION, meaning detour. For some reason both sign and meaning stamped themselves on
BUND INSTINCT her brain with the force of a psychic vision, but she quickly dismissed the thought.
The unclean man who'd been lying in the street moments before suddenly limped up alongside them. “I got my leg banged up the other day, Inspector. Need some attention given it, but I got no green. I 'ave information for you. Can we do business? I got word on that Crucifier thing.”
This made Sharpe stop, and with him Jessica, who truly looked at the man for the first time.
“Dot'n Carry's what they call me, mum… Steve's the true name, Steve Savile. Family migrated here from Sweden. Made of me a Londoner without they give me a choice, what.”
“Whyever do they call you Dot and Carry?”
“Mostly on account-a-this game leg. When I walk, the wooden one goes dot, the other carries me. Got it in the war's what. It's why Sharpe and me can have some common ground, right, Colonel?”
Sharpe ground his teeth. “What've you got on the Crucifier, D.C.?”
But Dot'n Carry, or D.C., addressed Jessica instead, asking, “You must be that lady FBI woman Sharpe hired on for the case. Read about you in the papers. Think I can't read? I read good when I can find a paper left behind by somebody.”
Sharpe grabbed him up by the lapels, and he dropped a walking stick which had so become a part of the man that Jessica hadn't noticed it until it bounced on the sidewalk, making two distinct pings.
“Word is, the Crucifier's really a good guy, Sharpe. What they call a benign killer. Only kills people who are in suffering, kinna like Robinson Hood and Sherwood's Forest, you see. Only he don't rob from the rich and give to the poor, but takes troubled lives and frees 'em.”
“If that's so, then why hasn't he done a damned thing for your sorry ass, D.C.?”
“Must figure I don't 'ave it so bad. Still got my sense of humor. Ain't suicidal or depressed, Inspector.”
“Get outta here, D.C.”
“But Sharpe, Colonel, I need something. Please, man.” Sharpe tossed several bills down, grabbed Jessica's arm, and led her toward the Boar's Head, apologizing to her.
“What did he mean, Sharpe?”
“D.C.? He's full of it half the time and a no-opinion the other half. The man's double Dutch in his tongue and double-gaited elsewhere! Forget it. If you let him, D.C. will tell you everything opens that shuts and everything shuts that opens.”
Jessica guessed that Sharpe meant the other man spoke with “forked” tongue.
“Filth!” D.C. called out from across the street.
“Common term for cops in England,” explained Richard. “I think he knows I'm trying to get him on charges as a fire-raiser-an arsonist-even as I use him. Interesting past, the man has, actually. Just after returning from the service with his gimp leg, he tried white-collar crime. Was put away for his trouble.”
“Arrested for what exactly?”
“Got 'im for fluffing the books, accounts.”
She and Richard moved on, going right past the Boar's Head. They located a place called the Clockwork Arms, which Richard pointed out had been renovated from a building housing a clockworks and separately an armory. Now an eatery, the place made the most of the brick exterior and solid oak beams. “The weather this time of year? Is it always so balmy and beautiful?” she asked.“Luke's little summer,” he replied, smiling, helping with her chair.
“Luke's what?” the noise of the crowd and the music from a live flutist in one comer whose melodic Celtic music touched something in Jessica's core, running along her spine, made it difficult to focus on Richard's words.
“St. Luke's summer. I suspect you call it Indian summer where you're from,” he explained. “Look, if you don't mind, I have to see to the geography of the house,” he said, and promptly left the table, leaving Jessica to wonder whatever he meant. Then she remembered an earlier comment and realized that he was going to the men's room.
While alone, Jessica took in the sights and sounds of the pub. She caught snatches of conversation and found herself matching oddly strange Briticisms with the word or phrase that might be its counterpart in America. British English and American English proved two entirely different animals.
She overheard people in the pub referring to such things as “between whiles” at Billingsgate Market-a fish market, as famous for its foul language as its fish. She heard some men talking about her at the bar: one called her “an attractive bit of goods.” She heard multiple requests for what appeared the national drink-bitter beers. She heard one woman complaining she hadn't been to Blackpool in decades and wanted to go there to ride the switchback-the roller coaster.
Jessica found something fascinating in every small word and thing and person, and in all the quaint places and place names everywhere she went in London. Even what she'd learned from hanging about Scotland Yard fascinated her. Fingerprints were dabs, handcuffs darbies, police cars- which were blue and white in color had become jam sandwiches or panda cars, while extortion was demanding money with menaces, and rape or criminal assault was euphemistically called being interfered with. A police beat or patch in America here became a manor. To catch a packet meant to stop a bullet. Ever the stiff upper lip people, the British didn't get their walking papers, but rather their marching papers. While American cops were cited for bravery, British cops were mentioned in dispatches.
Gin was mother's ruin, and denatured alcohol in Britain became methylated spirits, and meths were the unappealing derelicts who drank it. While the Mets in America meant baseball in New York City, Mets in London referred to the London police. And a pedestrian walk equaled a pelican crossing. A speed bump posed in London as a sleeping policeman or rumble strip.
In fact the British, aside from being a nation of shopkeepers and the “pudding nation,” had come to be world renowned as the most euphemistic race on the planet. When speaking of being taxed, they put it as suffering an assessment. It appeared they would say anything to keep from cursing, even to abbreviating “God blind me” to blimey… and “God's truth” to 'struth! They much preferred a phrase such as “the best of British luck” said with irony. Even “bloody fool” was abbreviated to b.f. so as to avoid the cursing. She thought it rather hilarious. As a result of the euphemisms, many a word that passed British lips, while not a curse, stood in for one just as well. They had literally hundreds of words that kept them coming up short of calling God's name out in vain.
He's up for the high jump now formed a grim echo of the hanging days, and a mortician in London became a funeral furnisher.
Meanwhile, a penny dreadful, often called a shilling shocker stood in for a dime novel. The false issue of a red herring, ubiquitous and obligatory in any mystery story, here became a Norfolk capon. A literary hack such as the
