Mostly the Fair consists of honest street sellers, trading in all manner of things but chiefly secondhand clothes, some on barrows, some without. The Fair spreads into the side streets off Rosemary Lane, too, where those who aren’t so bothered about the honest bit tend to trade. Mrs. Guggins is one of them; her dollyshop is hidden in Blue Anchor Yard, where she trades from the ground floor of her house.
Mr. Guggins was only in evidence as a familiar figure weaving his way back to the dollyshop after a good session at the Paddy Goose or some other hostelry in London’s dockland. He was an evil-looking man, hunched and bent, with a way of studying the ground until you passed by. Then his head would shoot up, glaring malevolently, as though he’d like to meet you by night down by the docks with a knife in his hand and no questions asked.
“Tomorrow we take that book back, Ned,” I said firmly. “No use having a Good Book if it’s got by evil means. You’d be foolish to keep it.”
Ned looked torn. He knows from his Sunday school that Our Lord has his eye on those that steal, but on the other hand he always hopes it’s temporarily shut.
Next morning we set off for the Fair on our way to our first job. It was early yet and only the oyster and hot chestnut sellers were plying their trade in Rag Fair. Another few hours and you wouldn’t be able to move for old petticoats, shawls, and broken-down boots. Mind you, chimney sweeps such as I, Tom Wasp, can always move onwards owing to our smell. The folks we pass are only too anxious for us to be on our way, and the Red Sea parts like it did for Moses.
Even Moses would have been taken aback at what we found today, though. Two solid policemen were guarding the door into Mrs. Guggins’s dollyshop, which was strange since they usually give this place a wide berth. Our eyes were fixed not on them, however, but on Mrs. Guggins. It would be hard not to, because of her howl. It filled the street, it chilled our bones with its stridency. We could see her standing in the doorway. Her sturdy body rocked and the greasy curls under the dirty white bonnet she always wore shook as she wailed. Time and time again came the cry:
“Guggins ‘as gawn.”
Mrs. Guggins could never have been a pretty woman, nor a dainty one, but I respect grief, so I wondered what was amiss. Then out of the shop came another policeman, one I recognised. It was Sergeant Peters, who owes me a favour or two, as I’ve obliged him in the past when he needed help with villains.
“Where’s Guggins gone?” I asked him with interest.
“Hell, most like,” answered Peters soberly. “There he is. Dead for an hour or two.”
He pointed to the dim interior of the shop, made all the darker by the mass of clothing stacked from floor to ceiling. No more Paddy Goose for Mr. Guggins. There lay his dead body, hunched on the floor. I took off my stove hat in respect, as we went in, though the look the sergeant gave me suggested there was no need.
He’d been knifed, had Mr. Guggins. I could see the congealed blood on his clothes, and particularly round the wound in his chest. I sent Ned outside, not because he’s squeamish over dead bodies, but because I needed a quiet word without flapping ears.
“Knife left in the wound, was it?” I asked the sergeant.
“No.”
“Body like that when it was found, was it?”
“So she says.” Sergeant Peters indicated Mrs. Guggins, now weeping noisily onto a constable’s shoulder. I might seem unsympathetic when I mention Mrs. Guggins, but she shows no milk of human kindness to the poor folk who can’t afford to redeem their possessions. Not a penny less, not a penny late, is her motto. All the same, Our Lord reminded me, Mr. Guggins was her husband, and two villains can love as truly as two angels.
“That’s a puzzle,” I remarked, lowering my voice in case Mrs. Guggins heard. “When the knife was pulled out, there would have been blood everywhere, yet there’s precious little to be seen on the floor here.” I’d seen a matelot stabbed before my eyes down by the docks and knew what I was talking about.
We both stared at the filthy floor and I noticed an interesting fact, just as the van arrived to take the body to the police mortuary and we had to break off. After it left, I could hear Mrs. Guggins’s mournful voice outside, relating her sad tale yet again.
“Not killed in this spot then?” I said casually to the sergeant, looking pointedly at the blobs of dried blood at intervals on the floor.
I knew he wasn’t, but it gave the sergeant a chance to shine.
“It’s my belief, Mr. Wasp,” he said loudly, “that he was killed elsewhere and his body dragged here. But where from?”
We followed the blobs of dried blood just discernible in the general grime, but then we had to stop. We and the blobs had ended at a stack of clothes piled almost to ceiling height and stacked against a wall.
“I wonder,” said I, “what’s behind that wall?” I made it sound innocent, but I knew for sure then why no one had ever seen much of Mr. Guggins, save at public houses. Sergeant Peters took my meaning at once.
“Here,” he roared to Mrs. Guggins, whose hand flew to her breast as if she was Cleopatra. “What’s behind this wall?”
Mrs. Guggins seemed fully restored to health as she threw herself towards us, having seen the sergeant rummaging in the pile of clothes. He pulled a covering curtain back triumphantly to reveal a trolley under the heap, so that the whole pile could be wheeled aside. I put myself between her and Sergeant Peters, who had now heaved the trolley aside to reveal a door.
“Get out,” she howled. “It ain’t respectful. That’s Guggins’s room and Guggins ‘as gawn.”
Even as she spoke, however, the door was thrust open in our faces from the far side and we had to leap back. Mr. Guggins’s room had a guard, it seemed, for we were face to face with Big George, who seemed equally horrified to see us. Everyone round here knows about Big George. The biggest villain and biggest man in London (over six foot five inches high and several solid feet wide). One look at a lock from him and it springs open.
“What are you doing here, George?” asked the sergeant, squaring up to him, despite the fist produced in his face. He is, of course, most familiar with the gentleman, as I am myself, though I keep my distance.
“Only after what’s mine by right,” he snarled.
Big George, having removed the fist once he realised it was the law he was addressing, then tried to make a run for it through the rear door. With the help of Mrs. Guggins he was first floored, then struggled up again to have the cuffs put on him. I hobbled over to have a look at this door — I’ve hobbled since childhood owing to my trade. It opened into a tiny yard with the usual stinking privy and pile of coal, but interestingly there was a gate. The dollyshop is on the corner where Blue Anchor Yard leads through to Glasshouse Street, thus providing a most useful second entrance for the Gugginses.
“I want what’s mine by right,” Big George growled sadly from his lofty heights, as I went back inside.
“It’s only wrong I see here,” Sergeant Peters replied wittily.
What I then saw made me speechless. So this was where Guggins had worked. He’d been a fence, receiving stolen goods, and that was the real trade of the dollyshop, although Mrs. Guggins sold a few bits and bobs outside to look respectable. Here Mr. Guggins, in-between trips to the Paddy Goose (where he could meet customers and do business without suspicion), had reigned over a palace. Fancy silks, posh china, silver, snuffboxes, jewellery everywhere we looked. Her Majesty herself would be proud to entertain here. The only thing she would not have liked was the dried blood on the desk and floor.
“What made you suspect this, Mr. Wasp?” asked the sergeant, who is young enough to be respectful to me.
“A book,” I told him, “with the Duke of Wessex’s crest, had not been christened, so it struck me there must be other swag and the book got dropped by mistake.” I began to look at some of the articles in the late Mr. Guggins’s possession, but to my surprise could see none with the crest of the Duke of Wessex. Christening fine ware takes time, and in this case, I supposed, it was so hot that Guggins would have been anxious to be rid of it.