‘Like I told you before, I want to find out who killed her husband.’
‘Why you care who killed her husband? He was a fat, ugly old dog. No one liked him, not even Mrs Mottram. Sure he wasn’t no friend of yours.’
‘Because the same man tried to kill me and is still likely trying to kill me.’
‘Ah,’ the cross-eyed man leered. ‘Self-preservation, isn’t it? That I can believe. Keen to find Mrs Mottram, then. Well, I’ll tell you. There’s no one round here who don’t know where she lives, but few will talk to you. So you give me six pennies and I’ll tell you now, save you time.’ He smiled disconcertingly.
I reached into my pockets without hesitation and gave the man his money. I had had enough of people like this. I waited expectantly, daring him to withhold the information.
‘Follow your nose down the road, Harry Lytle. Follow it left down the hill, pass four houses, you want the fifth. May God bless you and watch over you.’ The man leered again before closing the door in my face. I turned and looked in the direction that he had given me, into the grey wall of rain, at the pools of thick, stinking mud. Despite the short distance I decided to remount. Each one of the four houses I passed looked sodden and fragile, ready to sink into the soggy quagmire. I dismounted and sunk up to my ankles.
‘Mrs Mottram!’ I knocked on the door.
‘Good morning, sir.’ The door opened, and a small, thin shadow of a woman stood there, shoulders drooped, chin dropped and head bowed.
‘Good morning, Mrs Mottram.’ I took off my hat, baring my head to the heavens. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you at this time.’
‘Oh, I’m always up at this hour,’ she answered in a little voice, eyes glazed.
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ I looked at her carefully. It had sounded like it might have been a joke. ‘I know your husband was killed. It’s what I’ve come to talk to you about.’ I held my hat in both hands and edged forward into the dry.
‘Oh, I see. Come in.’ She turned and walked into the house and sat on a chair behind a wooden bucket. The bucket sat under a hole in the roof through which the rain fell straight without touching the sides. There were two other chairs, and I sat on the one closest to her. She sat with her hands clasped on her lap.
‘Mrs Mottram, I’m sorry about your husband. You must be upset.’
‘Aye, upset is the word alright,’ she said very quietly, head still bowed like a little mouse.
‘You must miss him.’
‘No, I don’t miss him. He was a useless lump of lard. He was always getting himself into trouble. Whatever money he made, he spent it. Then he came home and snored like a fat pig. God, I hated that man.’ She looked up, pale and expressionless. ‘Hated him with passion. Glad to be rid of him, delighted to be rid of him. Sometimes felt like cutting his head off me self.’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘But he was the one what put food on the table. Now I will have to see how I’m to feed myself.’ She smiled faintly.
‘Well that’s good, I suppose.’
‘Oh aye.’
I leant forward, playing with my hat. ‘Mrs Mottram, I would find out who killed your husband. Not because I especially care that he’s dead, but because the same man tried to kill me, and killed others besides.’
She didn’t reply, just sat still with her head cocked, waiting for me to say more.
‘Your husband and friend Wilson attacked me in my own home. They took me to a butcher’s shop for the afternoon, and then when night fell they took me onto the river. Lucky for me I woke up and managed to escape.’
‘Aye, lucky for you. Not so lucky for old Mottram.’
‘No. Listen, Mrs Mottram, I know that your husband wasn’t a murderer, he was a cutpurse, a thief.’
‘How do you know that, then?’ she asked.
‘Because a man called Davy Dowling told me. He’s the man who came to see you before. You told him about Wilson, the weasel.’
‘Another silly, stupid man. Thought he was so clever.’
‘Who were they working for, Mrs Mottram? Who told them what to do, paid their wages?’ I leant forward a little too eagerly. She noticed, and her eyes narrowed. She licked her lips like a fox outside a henhouse.
‘I don’t know who they worked for. They didn’t tell me their business.’
‘He must have talked about the people he worked for, when he was drunk, perhaps. Names …’
‘Maybe.’ She nodded brightly. She looked at the hole in the roof. It was the size of a man’s fist.
‘Would sixpence help?’ I reached into my pocket.
‘Five pounds.’
I fell backwards against the seat of the chair and stared at this strange little woman. Another five pounds? I was already more than fifteen pounds out of pocket. Had word spread as far as Shoreditch that I was such an easy touch? Anyway, I didn’t have five pounds with me. I should refuse her.
‘I can write you a promissory note.’
‘I’ll wait. You go and come back.’
Godamercy. ‘Mrs Mottram, I don’t have time. The men who cut off your husband’s head are still after me, and I don’t have time to be running to and fro from London this morning. I’ll give you the note but only if you give me names now.’
She wrinkled her nose and put her finger to her cheek. ‘Very well,’ she nodded. She put her hand out.
‘Names first.’ I closed my jacket decisively. I wasn’t paying five pounds without knowing what I was paying for.
‘Very well, mister. Old Mottram didn’t use to work for nobody, you see. He was well known amongst the weasels of this world. They used to ask him to come on their jobs. Just stand there like a big bear. He used to scare the customers. “Customers” is what he called them. He wasn’t very bright, old Mottram, not that you could tell him so, but the others didn’t pay him full share. They’d give him some money, take him for a drink, get him drunk, and by next day he’d forgotten. He wouldn’t be told. He’d just threaten to take his belt to me if I even mentioned it. So I left the stupid brute to the mercy of his friends and sat here while the rain poured in through the roof. You understand?’ She pulled her big skirts straight and pulled down her apron tidy.
‘Yes, I do understand. That’s more or less what Dowling told me,’ I replied impatiently.
‘Aye. Well, last week he came home all excited. Said the weasel had put them onto more money than we’d ever seen. Must have been taking you out onto the river.’ Rubbing her eyes, she stretched her arms and yawned. ‘Friday night he went off into London, went to meet Wilson. Old Mottram came back before nightfall, sober as a magistrate. Said he had been told to stay sober, not to drink. Never took no notice when I told him not to drink. Stupid sod.’
‘Told by who?’
‘Told by this gentleman they went to meet Friday afternoon. Met him at Cornhill.’
‘Where on Cornhill?’
‘I don’t know where. I just know it wasn’t a tavern or an inn, which is where they usually did their business. The gentleman didn’t want to be seen with them in public.’
It made sense given what it was he asked them to do. ‘What was the man’s name?’
‘Pargetter,’ Mrs Mottram smiled brightly. ‘Least that’s what old Mottram called him. Referred to him several times in fact. Called him Pargetter.’
‘Any other names, descriptions, address?’
‘No, mister. I don’t know what he looked like, and old Mottram never said. Took great delight in not telling me any of the details. His big secret, it was; excited, he was. But he called him by name. Pargetter.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Mottram.’ I could think of nothing else to ask, and I was only too aware of the time slipping away. I stood up, had a final look around at the bare wooden hovel, and the poor furniture that was in it. There was a small table by one wall covered in vegetable peelings. Mrs Mottram watched me from her chair in the middle of the room, her hands still on her knees, as I made a space to write out the promissory note. She took it from my outstretched hand and hid it somewhere inside her clothing. Then she smiled, slightly, and I left.