The Circle

ONE

Murphy’s Rooming House, Gray’s Lane, Philadelphia

At first, he didn’t want to go near the window. Then, he couldn’t stay away. He waited in the shadows as the clouds of evening boiled up over the city and he didn’t light the lamp. He had always gone armed, for as long as he could remember, but now his gun never left his side. There was a knife under his pillow too, and another one next to the door. No one was going to catch him napping, not that bastard from Steubenville, nor any of them. Allan Pinkerton claimed his boys never slept; well, neither did he.

There was a solitary cab parked across the street, the horse dozing in the traces, the driver muffled against the night airs. The street began to glow as the lamplighter came along, tapping his way along the sidewalk, bringing his eerie, green light to the city.

He saw the couple walking towards him, the girl leaning into the boy, laughing and joking. So young, so much to live for. He dodged back into the darkness of the room, his scalp crawling. Were they all they seemed; just a young couple in love out for the evening? Nothing was that simple, not any more.

His heart jumped at the sudden rap on the door. He didn’t move, except to cock the pistol in his pocket. Another rap. And a third, in quick succession. That was the signal, the one he’d worked out with his people months before. Even so … He crossed the room, careful not to make a target of himself against the window and listened at the doorframe. He heard muttering outside. ‘It’s me, for Christ’s sake. Let me in, will you?’

The gun was in his hand, his arm rigid, his finger on the hair trigger. With his left hand he turned the key and let the door swing inwards. His visitor froze, both hands in the air, a Navy Colt muzzle resting on his forehead, cold and deadly.

‘You alone?’

‘Of course I am.’ The visitor let himself be hauled into the room and stood there. How long, he asked himself, could this nonsense go on? ‘I brought your beer. Look.’ He held up the flagon. ‘Laff,’ he said softly, looking at the man in the green light from the street, ‘are you all right?’

‘I will be,’ Laff said, and eased the hammer forward, lowering the gun.

‘Do you want a drink, Laff?’ The visitor saw the glass on the cabinet and uncorked the flagon, pouring the amber liquid that frothed and bubbled. Laff closed the door and locked it. Then he reached for the glass and drank deeply, sighing as he drained it.

‘You’re a good man, Wally,’ he said, wiping his mouth. It had been dry all day. Now everything tasted bitter, strange. Wally’s eyes flickered to the door. He had done this once too often and after all this time he had nothing to say. Laff was afraid of his own shadow. The rest of his friends, if he had ever had any, had long gone.

‘I should be going,’ Wally said.

‘Of course. Yes, of course.’ He unlocked the door and stood behind it as Wally left, glad to be out of there, away from that peculiar smell. It was dark on the stairs now and he couldn’t make out the figure waiting at the bottom. He could make out the bag, however, and he knew the sound of gold coin when he heard it.

‘I can’t do this any more,’ he said to the man in the shadows.

‘Don’t worry,’ came the answer. ‘After tonight you won’t need to. You’re a good man, Wally.’

Wally grunted and gestured back up the stairs with his head. ‘That’s what he said.’ He reached out and took the bag, feeling its weight before stashing it under his coat. ‘My thirty pieces of silver,’ he said solemnly.

‘Now, don’t go all Biblical on me, Wally, not now. We’re doing this great country of ours a favour – you know that.’

Wally did. With every step he took as he crossed to his waiting cab, he kept telling himself he was doing everybody a favour.

Offices of the Telegraph, Fleet Street, London

It was the nose you saw first, bulbous and defiant above the walrus moustache. Then you saw the little eyes, mischievous and twinkling, darting here and there, never missing a thing. Only then did you notice the clothes, elegantly cut, expensively tailored in a Savile Row way. And the gardenia, clipped to the lapel just so.

With his trained journalist’s eye, James Batchelor saw all that. But then, he had seen this man before, many times, and he had gone in awe of him on every single occasion. He was George Sala, doyen of the London reporters, friend of kings and frequenter of brothels. He knew everything about everybody. And what he did not know, he made up. The Telegraph didn’t ask too many questions; The Times asked even less. Men in high places were afraid of George Sala. So, most of the time, and certainly this morning, was James Batchelor.

‘Well, George?’ The younger man could bear the silence no longer. The last thing he wanted was to hurry his old mentor, but he had sat in the great man’s office now for the best part of half an hour, listening to Sala sucking his teeth, sighing, tapping his cigar stub on the ashtray. Batchelor would not have minded, but Sala had had his opus now for nearly six months. Perhaps he should have sent it to Mr Dickens after all.

Sala looked at him over his rimless pince-nez. ‘Well, James,’ he said.

‘Is it … any good?’ All James Batchelor’s powers of language had deserted him this morning. This was no time for flowery prose; he had a living to earn.

‘I don’t think good is the word,’ Sala said.

Batchelor looked at him. Was the great man being cryptic? Was he about to explode into a rapture of effusive praise? Offer to serialize Batchelor’s first fumblings himself?

‘I’ll be blunt, James,’ Sala said. ‘It needs work.’

‘Ah.’

‘Why did you bring it to me?’

Batchelor spread his arms as though the question needed no answer. ‘You used to write this stuff,’ he said. ‘Further …’ Batchelor was choosing his words carefully. He knew that George Sala was the vainest man in London and perhaps, even now … ‘You were the master of the art.’

‘Penny bloods?’ Sala sneered. ‘Yes, I was rather good, wasn’t I?’ He smiled at the memories. ‘Charles and I …’ Suddenly, his face straightened. ‘Then I became a serious journalist; put the bloods behind me.’

‘They’re called penny dreadfuls now,’ Batchelor could at least prove that he moved with the times.

‘Yes,’ Sala sighed, reaching for his cigar again. ‘And, in view of this,’ he tapped Batchelor’s sheaf of papers, ‘that’s rather unfortunately apt, isn’t it?’ He looked down at the title page in Batchelor’s immaculate copperplate. ‘Lady Costigan’s Revenge,’ he read aloud.

‘Too racy?’ Batchelor was trying to read the great critic’s mind. ‘Too bland?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the title, James,’ Sala said. ‘It’s the rest of it that’s woeful.’

Batchelor’s heart sank. For a long, ghastly moment, he felt himself shrinking, sliding to the floor until he was a speck of dust on Sala’s carpet.

‘But I thought you were sleuthing these days,’ the journalist said. ‘You and that American fellow … what’s his name? Grunt?’

‘Grand.’

‘Yes. Consulting detectives, aren’t you?’

‘We prefer enquiry agents.’

‘Of course you do. Not going well?’

Batchelor sighed. ‘Divorce cases. Dog stealing. We did have a goat murder last month.’

‘Riveting,’ nodded Sala.

Had it not been for the tick of Sala’s clock, the silence would have been deafening.

‘Why don’t you go to the hanging?’

‘Hanging?’ Batchelor repeated.

‘Barrett, the Fenian. You know, the Clerkenwell outrage?’

‘Of course.’ Batchelor may not have been a journalist any more, but he could still read the papers. Irish prisoners had been set free from the Clerkenwell House of Detention last November. Their rescuers had overdone the dynamite and a wall had collapsed, killing innocent passers-by. Michael Barrett had claimed he was in Glasgow at the time; but then he would, wouldn’t he?

‘It’ll give you a feel for the thing,’ Sala went on, remembering his own experiences. ‘I’ve been to more than a few. Dickens. Thackeray. All the greats. Believe me, there’s nothing like a turning off to catch the horror of the crime. It’ll help your writing.’

‘If you say so.’ Batchelor slid the manuscript towards him.

‘Besides,’ Sala leaned back, puffing his cheroot to give it new life, ‘it’s a chance to witness history. You know they’re going to take hangings indoors from now on? Turn them into sneaky, hole-in-corner affairs.’ The great journalist shook his head. ‘It’s a terrible indictment of our times, James. So,’ he brightened, ‘you will have one last chance to see that old idiot Calcraft at work, making yet another pig’s ear of some poor bastard’s last moments on earth.’

They had hanged men outside Newgate for decades. And, for most of that time, the job had been done by William Calcraft, a white-bearded old man who styled himself ‘Executioner to Her Majesty’ and bred rabbits. He was also an incompetent and many was the poor wretch who slowly strangled to death at the end of one of Calcraft’s wrongly measured ropes. This was one reason he drew the crowds, so that they could roar their delight as the old rabbit-breeder jumped up to grab the twitching legs and haul the poor bastard down to snap his spine.

Increasingly, these days, William Calcraft travelled by night, clutching his leather bag with its ropes and pinions. He was at Newgate long before dawn, watching as the first of the crowds began to assemble. This would be an Irish hanging, and it was well known that the Irish looked after their own and always gave the hangman short shrift. Calcraft would have to watch his back, even if the drop went well.

‘Good day for a hanging!’ Somebody slapped James Batchelor on the back as the crowd carried them both forward. It was. The spring sun shone bright, flashing on the helmets of the Metropolitan Police that ringed the perimeter. The commissioner was taking no chances. Twice in the past two years, Sir Richard Mayne had offered his resignation. He had been commissioner longer than James Batchelor had been alive, and the years were beginning to take their toll. As white-haired and cranky as Calcraft, Richard Mayne was an exhausted and bitter man. But it was not his idea to have the cavalry on standby. That was the brainchild of Gathorne Hardy, the Home Secretary. And a move more calculated to enrage the Irish could not be imagined.

‘What are they doing here?’ Batchelor murmured, as he saw the sun glancing off the helmets of the Life Guards waiting patiently in Limeburner Lane.

‘Waiting for a chance to blow our feckin’ heads off,’ an Irish voice grunted nearby. Batchelor looked around him. Along with the costers in their fustian jackets and caps were dotted dark-haired men with cold fire in their eyes. He noted that several of them held their arms close to their sides, as though they cradled something precious up their sleeves. There was a ripple of laughter and Batchelor saw a knot of ladies of the night, unusually up before noon, intent on making a holiday of the occasion. Toddlers were whimpering and grizzling, tired already after the long walk from their homes and frightened by the sheer numbers of the crowd.

The lemonade sellers were out early and the chestnut vendors and the toffee-apple men. Two sharply dressed bucks were accosting the arriving crowd, offering the last confession of Michael Barrett, neatly printed. Somebody else was calling his wares, giving the great British public a once-in-a-lifetime chance to own a brick of the very wall from Clerkenwell, blown down by the Fenian monster himself.

George Sala had been right. The ground outside Newgate was solid with people. Both sexes, all ages, all social classes. A Rechabite in silk sash and tall hat was trying to get a hymn going, but the Catholics had other ideas and made religious noises of their own. That was all right, Batchelor reasoned. Just so long as no Fenian airs struck up or things could get ugly. Such was the press of people that Batchelor could not reach his notebook to jot anything down; he would have to trust to memory. Anyway, his right hand was firmly on his wallet.

There was a sudden roar from the direction of the prison and the black flags lifted in a gust of wind. The white-robed chaplain was leading the way out of the dark doorway to the left, looking down, with a Bible in his hand. Behind him, the gaudier priest of Rome, who had spent the night with the condemned man, stared straight ahead at the sea of faces, his fingers twitching at his rosary, his lips moving in prayer.

In the crowds, the cheers of the Protestants were drowned out by the boos of the Catholics and vice versa until the noise around the rooftop platform was deafening. Michael Barrett himself was a small man, perhaps five foot three – although no doubt Calcraft would have argued with that – and he may have been in his mid-twenties. He was pale and sad-eyed, but he walked unaided, and there were those who swore he had a spring in his step. To each side of him, burly prison officers kept pace and, three abreast, they climbed the scaffold steps.

To Batchelor, the whole scene looked like a play; some weird open-air amusement for the children. Whatever anyone was saying on the platform, no sound carried to the crowd, which had a life and a roar of its own.

‘God bless you, Mickeleen!’ a woman shouted.

‘Feck you, body snatcher!’ a man bellowed at Calcraft.

‘Calcraft! Calcraft!’ The cry was taken up, swirling in its deadly, rhythmic cacophony, bouncing off the brickwork around the prison. The white-haired hangman took centre stage now in Batchelor’s view of it, partly obscured by raised arms, flying hats and clenched fists. He stood behind Barrett, pinioning his wrists; then he bent and snapped the shackles around his ankles. The condemned man ignored him, looking steadily into the face of his priest, looking already for his God.

The police line of dark blue braced itself around Newgate’s entrance. High on the rooftop, Calcraft and the others were safe from the mob – unless, that was, some Irish lunatic had a gun or a bomb. But the unarmed crowd would instinctively surge forward, especially if Calcraft was bungling his work. They would go for the blue line, for the men the older crowd still knew as Peel’s Raw Lobsters, and they would take out their vengeance on them. By the time the cavalry arrived, God alone knew how many heads would be broken.

Batchelor felt his heart pounding, louder surely than the roar around him. He glanced to right and to left. Had no one else heard it? Had no one else heard the scream rising in his throat? Above him and far ahead, Her Majesty’s Executioner slipped a white linen hood over Michael Barrett’s head. He could just hear the Irishman still intoning the prayers with the priest, but they knew, all of them on that platform, that the choral speaking would soon stop and that one voice would carry on alone.

For years to come, James Batchelor swore he heard it – the dry rattle as Calcraft slid the bolt, the thud as the trapdoor crashed back, the snap as Michael Barrett’s spine broke at the third vertebra. He heard it because the crowd was suddenly, terribly silent. Anyone still wearing a hat tugged it off now and all eyes were on the rope, creaking taut on its housings. The body of Michael Barrett hung there, his head on one side, as though he were listening to some distant choir. His feet had not twitched once. Astonishingly, for this, his public swansong, William Calcraft had got it right.

Now they all heard the priest. ‘And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.’

Like a riptide roaring along a shore, like the first kick and hiss of a paddle steamer, an eerie sound rose from the crowd, three thousand throats giving vent at once to the horror of the moment. Batchelor was too numb to take in the reactions of those around him. He only saw the prison governor shaking the hangman’s hand and saw the old man toddle off to get his brandy and his blood money. The usual perks would come the rabbit-breeder’s way. He would cut up Barrett’s rope and sell it at ten bob per three-inch piece. The dead man’s clothes weren’t worth much, but Calcraft could probably get a bob or two at Spitalfields Market; he wasn’t proud. It was a shame that Barrett wasn’t a notorious killer – a poisoner, or something to catch the public’s imagination. Madame Tussauds paid much better than the rag merchants for the clothes then, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. And there was no blood either, that was a shame. A lot of the Irish would have paid good money to dabble their handkerchiefs and scarves in Michael Barrett’s life essence, martyr to the cause as he was. Calcraft smiled to himself. Still and all, it had been a good day for a hanging.

For the life of him, James Batchelor could not see how he could work any of this into Lady Costigan’s Revenge. Best to start again, perhaps, with a brand-new story. He was still working out a rough plot in his head when he realized he had taken a wrong turning. The crowds had thinned now, except those who had stayed to hurl abuse at Calcraft when he came back after an hour to cut Barrett down. The police were still in place, but mugs of hot tea were being passed along their line and around the corner; the cavalry had dismounted to check their girths and stirrup leathers and ease their horses’ backs.

Damn. Batchelor didn’t know where he was. It was an alley, certainly, with tall buildings that blotted out the sun. Mangy cats prowled near him, skulking low down on their haunches, bellies close to the ground. He turned to go back the way he had come. Then he saw them. Four men. No, five. They were silhouettes at first, with rough caps at jaunty angles on their heads.

‘That’s him,’ one of them said, his accent pure Leinster. ‘He was in the crowd, chanting.’

‘So he was,’ another said, as bog-Irish as the first.

‘Come to see our boy turned off, did you?’ a third man asked.

‘I came to see a hanging, yes,’ Batchelor said. He weighed up his options. Any of the men facing him was bigger than he was and they outnumbered him five to one.

‘You know what this is, Englishman?’ The first thug raised a club, gnarled and knotted. ‘It’s a shillelagh. An Irishman’s right arm.’

‘You know what this is?’ Another voice rang out from behind the men.

They turned as one. A tall man stood there, in a wideawake hat and duster coat, a pistol gleaming in his right hand. ‘It’s a .32 calibre Colt, known as a vest pocket. It carries six bullets. That means, for those of you with limited arithmetical skills, I can kill all five of you and still have a slug left over for if I miss. But – believe me – I don’t miss.’

The Irishmen hesitated, caught between two fires. James Batchelor thrust a hand into his jacket pocket and pointed it forward. ‘I’ll concede,’ he said, ‘I’m not as good a shot as my friend here, and I’ve only got three bullets in my pistol. Even so, that’s nine bullets to your none. Happy with the odds, sheep-shagger?’

The Irishmen still hesitated. Then they turned, dashing past Batchelor, who wisely stepped aside to let them pass.

‘The thing about you, Matthew Grand,’ he said, walking up to the bigger man, ‘is that you keep turning up like a bad cent. No coincidence, I suppose?’

Grand shook his head. ‘Going to a hanging is never a good idea,’ he said. ‘Oh, I’ll grant you, it’s a good ol’ American pastime, but it’s never a good idea.’

‘I thought Inspector Tanner had told you to get rid of that.’ Batchelor pointed to the gun that Grand twirled three times on his trigger finger and slid deftly into his shoulder-holster.

‘Oh, ye of little gratitude.’ Grand shook his head. ‘I just saved your life, James Batchelor.’

Batchelor paused, looking the man in the face. ‘Yes, Matthew,’ he said, seriously, ‘you did. And I am grateful, really.’ He patted Grand’s shoulder and walked on, back along the alley.

‘Anyway,’ Grand said, ‘I kind of followed Tanner’s instructions.’ He patted his pocket. ‘There are no bullets in this thing.’

TWO

Alsatia was wide awake long before Matthew Grand peered over the coverlet. Below the offices of Grand and Batchelor, Enquiry Agents, the street hawkers were already pattering, crying their wares along the Strand, rolling their carts into position. The pigeons deposited their calling cards on the stone hat of Lord Nelson, perched as he was on his column, and they perched on him. Trafalgar Square was loud with the rattle of hansoms and landaus, barouches and gigs, as the huge civil service that ran an empire got themselves to work along Whitehall.

Grand sat up in bed. He could hear Mrs Manciple down below in the kitchen, rattling pans and talking to someone in a crooning, singsong tone. He and Batchelor had learned to deal with her frustrated maternal instinct and, indeed, often to take advantage of it. No boot could be too muddy, no hat nap too muddled for her to take it immediately to her ample bosom and buff it till you could eat your dinner off it. But that she was a little unusual could not be ignored. He listened more carefully to see if he could discern a pattern to her crooning. Sometimes she thought Batchelor was looking thin and decided to feed him up, usually with rather upsetting marrow sandwiches, but even she normally left those for later in the day. Grand shook his head and swung his feet round on to the floor. Time would tell whether she had gone that little touch madder, so they could incarcerate her somewhere, or whether today would just be another of those days. He hoped they could keep her a while longer. Although she talked to herself and wouldn’t open the door on any account, she did cook like an angel, so leeway could be given. Wrapping himself in his dressing gown, he ventured out on to the landing. Batchelor poked his head out of his room.

‘Matthew,’ he said, surprised. ‘What are you doing here? I assumed Mrs Manciple was talking to you.’

‘Same here,’ Grand said. He gestured to his dressing gown. ‘I don’t like to go down dressed like this if she has someone in the kitchen.’ Somehow, they had never got used to eating anywhere but in the kitchen, and it was by far the best place to be when Mrs Manciple was doling out treats.

‘It is our house,’ Batchelor said, on his dignity, and then, without a pause, ‘your house, after all.’

‘True. Let’s go down.’

And they marched down the stairs to beard – almost literally, poor woman – Mrs Manciple in her lair.

She looked up as they came in, but from a rather unfamiliar position; she was crouching in the corner of the room, in the warm spot by the range.

‘Mr Grand!’ she exclaimed. ‘Mr Batchelor. Come and see.’

They approached with trepidation. Whatever it was, it was for the landlord to sort out. They peered over her shoulder and immediately recoiled. There was a mess of fur and blood and wriggling worm-like things. It was clearly Mrs Manciple’s cat, but equally clearly she wasn’t well.

‘What in God’s name has happened?’