Chapter Six
Around Covent Garden was a thriving industry of prostitution.
The streets beyond, especially toward Seven Dials, were riddled with crime of all kinds.
Constance had grown up in these neighborhoods and was still familiar with them.
But before she went looking for anyone who was acquainted with Nevvy, she called on the woman who was all too often the fount of all knowledge on disreputable matters: her mother.
Juliet, one-time whore and fence of stolen goods, was just opening her shop when Constance called in.
Gerry, who had been her mother’s assistant since he was boy, in both the nefarious and the respectable, was putting out a tasteful little display of pretty knickknacks on a small table by the door. He paused to grin at her.
“Morning, Miss Connie! She’s inside, polishing her treasures.”
Juliet was sitting behind the main counter, and she was indeed polishing a rather fine set of engraved silver cutlery.
“Morning, love,” Juliet said, her accent surely exaggerated. “Come to buy? Or to pick my brains?”
“The latter. For now. Do you know the local vagrants?”
Juliet blinked. “I don’t invite them in here. In fact, I had to chase one out yesterday.”
“This one seems to have been known to the local peelers, though not a troublemaker. Probably begged in the streets. His name was Gareth Neville, but he was known as Nevvy.”
“Nevvy,” she repeated, frowning. “I have heard that name. What did he look like?”
“Rough. He’d been on the streets for years.
In his forties or fifties, probably, receding hair.
Unexpectedly gentle-looking face, though I’ve no idea if that was a reflection of his character.
Apparently he owned a folding pocketknife with a mother-of-pearl handle. And he suffered from consumption.”
“Ah! Nevvy,” Juliet said with some satisfaction. “Yes, I’ve seen him around. Amiable cove. I slip him a sixpence every so often when I’m feeling flush. Or a cup of tea from Les’s stall.”
“You won’t anymore,” Constance said. “He died on my doorstep a couple of nights ago.”
Juliet blinked. “What the devil was he doing there?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Horrible disease, consumption,” Juliet said bleakly.
“It is. Do you know anything else about him?”
“Nah, he was polite enough but never chatty.”
“Do you know where he slept?”
“I know where I saw him most often, huddled under the nastiest blanket you ever saw.” She looked Constance up and down, noticing for the first time that her dress was old and dull and not remotely fashionable. She scowled. “I suppose you’re going there. Poking your nose in.”
“I am,” Constance said. “You could save my having to ask directions in the street.”
Juliet sighed and tore a sheet of paper from her account book. With her pencil, she drew a rough map from the corner nearest the shop, marking Les’s tea stall, and an alley opposite. “It ain’t pleasant.”
“Neither am I,” said Constance, “as you have so often pointed out.”
“Are the police not looking into this? I suppose they’re not bothered because he’s a tramp.”
“They’re more concerned about the body discovered with his. A Mayfair gentleman called Terrence St. John. Ever heard of him?”
“Course not. Unless he’s old enough to have been a former customer. Sounds more like one of yours.”
“But he never was. He seems to have been a virtuous family man.”
“They all seem like that, dear.”
“Old cynic.” Constance turned to go.
“Be careful,” Juliet called after her. “Take Gerry with you.”
Genuinely touched, Constance threw a smile over her shoulder. “Thanks. I won’t need him.”
Her mother was right that the area wasn’t pleasant, though.
Through a maze of narrow, ever-filthier streets, she found a small courtyard at the back of a baker’s shop, and an alcove with a vent where a vile blanket lay abandoned and disconsolate.
Glad of her gloves, she picked it up and shook it out. Nothing fell out of it.
“’Ere! What you doing with that? Spot’s taken, ain’t it? And that’s private property!”
A pile of hair and rags charged at her from a nearby doorway and snatched the blanket from her hold. The suddenness startled Constance, but although the man within the rags was clearly angry, she judged he wasn’t violent.
She held up both hands placatingly. “I wasn’t stealing. I’m just looking for Nevvy’s friends.”
“What for?” he demanded with natural suspicion.
“Do you know he died?”
The blanket fell to the ground. “No. I didn’t know. Did he go to the hospital? I told him to go.”
“No, he doesn’t seem to have quite got there. He died on a doorstep during the night.”
The man grunted, then bent slowly to pick up the blanket. “Suppose it’s mine now.”
“I suppose it is,” Constance said.
“He said I could,” the vagrant said defensively.
“Well, he would do, since you were friends.”
The man nodded curtly, clearly about to shamble back off to his own doorway.
“It was my step he died on,” she said quickly. “I’m trying to find out a bit about him and how he came to be there.”
“Why?”
For a moment, there seemed no answer to that would impress Nevvy’s friend enough to give her any information. Eventually, with inspiration, she said, “Respect.”
He seemed struck by that, gazing at her seriously before giving another of his decided nods.
“Shall we have a cup of tea and you can tell me about your friend?”
“Very well.”
She walked across the road to the movable stall and ordered two cups of tea and two pies from the man who was, presumably, Les. Then she went back to the yard and found her new acquaintance ensconced in Nevvy’s spot, with two blankets and a ragged bag of what must have been his own possessions.
She gave him one of the mugs, and both pies, before crouching down beside him. “What’s your name? Mine is Constance.”
He looked suspicious for a moment, then growled, “Harry.”
“Did you know Nevvy a long time, then?” she asked.
“Near fifteen years, off and on.” There was a pause while he bit into his pie and chewed, and seemed to come to a decision, because he blurted the next words in a rush.
“I showed him the ropes, so to speak, when he first had nowhere to go. Then we tramped into the country together. I couldn’t take it there.
He did some farm laboring for a time—backbreaking work, and I couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t take the silence, neither, and then they tried to shut me up in the workhouse, so I bolted, made my way back to London.
By myself. But he came back in the end, a few years later.
Maybe he shouldn’t have, ’cause he got ill.
Went soft sleeping in barns, I reckon, and couldn’t take having no roof.
Older, too, I suppose.” He sniffed, though whether with grief or because his nose was running wasn’t clear.
“Never thought he’d go so soon, though. He said he liked going to St. Peter’s ’cause they gave him a bath. Funny old bugger, was Nevvy.”
“What did he do before he lived on the streets?” Constance asked.
Harry shrugged. “Dunno.” There was no interest in his face or voice. His existence was too immediate to dwell on history. He put the pies carefully away in his unspeakable pocket, presumably for later, and slurped his tea. “Think he come from the country. He liked it there.”
“Why did he come back to Town, then?”
“Missed his friends, he said.”
“Who were his friends?”
Harry raised both hands expansively, and some of his tea slopped over his knees. He didn’t seem to notice. “Everyone. People like Nevvy. Good fellow.”
“Did anyone come looking for him?”
He eyed her. “Like who?”
“Like someone who doesn’t live rough like you. Someone with money, perhaps. People from the hospital, or reformers, other charities…”
Harry returned to his tea, as though losing interest in her conversation. “Don’t know.”
She tried another tack. “Did people make him gifts?”
“He got his share of coins. Better share’n me, but he’d never let me go short, old Nevvy.” He sniffed again, gazing into his tea.
“Did someone give him a pocketknife with a mother-of-pearl handle?”
“It were his,” Harry said aggressively. “Told the rozzers that. He never stole it.”
“Then a rich man must have given him it.”
“If you say so, lady.”
“What do you say?” she said swiftly.
“He always had it. Before he went to the country and after. Used it to cut food up to share. Never hurt no one with it. Only time I saw him angry was when Jimmie Gantry tried to take it off him. Knocked him out cold.”
“Where would I find Jimmie Gantry?” Constance asked.
Harry pointed upward. “God rest the old sinner.”
“Did Nevvy often go to Mayfair?”
Harry cast her a scornful glance. “No point. Get moved on there.” It was clearly a wisdom he had lived by and accepted as gospel. He scratched his head through his tattered, filthy hat. “Nevvy got a cup of tea there once or twice, though. Didn’t go often.”
“Tea on the doorstep,” Constance murmured. “Is that where he went the last night you saw him?”
Harry shook his head. “Peelers said so. He couldn’t walk that far. Could barely shuffle. I’d brought him food and drink the last two days and he scarce moved. Gave him my blanket that night, but then I found it over me when I woke, and Nevvy’d gone. I was happy. Thought he’d perked.”
Constance gazed at him. “Did someone help, then? Take him away from here?”
“Dunno. Had a nice bottle some nob set down and forgot. Gave Nevvy a slug—must have done him some good—gave him half for tomorrow, and had the rest meself. Slept till it was light.” He scowled.
“Then the peelers came, said a lot of lies, like he stuck some nob with his knife. Nevvy’d never do that.
Good man, was Nevvy.” He stared at Constance, his red-rimmed eyes suddenly angry.
“Tell you what’s more! He’d never have left that knife anywhere, let alone in someone’s back! ”
*