Alien Stars: A Harry Stubbs Adventure Read online

  “I see.” Skinner turned to the younger of the servants. “You run along now, sonny, and fetch us a couple of pairs of thick gloves—one medium-sized, the other the biggest you’ve got—at least two lengths of decent rope, and a canvas bag big enough to put over his head. Quick as you can, now! We’ll see he doesn’t get out while you’re gone.”

  The boy stood his fork against a greenhouse and hurried off while Skinner and I removed our jackets.

  “What would you like us to do with him once he’s restrained?” asked Skinner.

  “We’ll clear a room for him in the house until I can arrange a suitable asylum.” Stafford was less agitated by then. A confident NCO can calm the jitters of the most anxious officer. “Pierce is a good man when he’s in his right mind.”

  “He ain’t in his right mind now,” said the old gardener.

  “Is he frothing at the mouth?” I asked.

  “No, no,” said Stafford. “It’s not rabies.”

  “Still, you can’t be too careful,” said Skinner. “I’m not planning on letting him bite me. I do know also that madmen can be extremely strong; it can take six men to hold one down… but the five of us will be enough since we have Mr Stubbs here.”

  The small greenhouse next to the potting shed looked new and was empty except for a single tray of earth from which green shoots poked upwards. Perhaps the gardeners had been interrupted while working on it.

  The young footman came back, arms full with the items Skinner had requested.

  “Rope’s not the problem. Getting him tied up’s the problem,” grumbled the old gardener.

  “Just hit him over the head with a spade,” said the footman, looking at me.

  “Head injuries are dangerous,” I said. “And if he’s fighting mad, then it’s a fine balance between stunning him and crushing his skull. Pinioning him would be greatly preferable, in my view.”

  “Yes, absolutely,” said Stafford.

  “As the professional, I look to you in the matter of close-quarter tactics, Mr Stubbs,” Skinner said. “How do you recommend we proceed with this here operation?”

  The four of them looked at me expectantly. Any protest that the current situation was nothing like boxing would be in vain. I’d been involved in numerous ructions in my capacity as a doorkeeper, though, and had also had occasion to apprehend individuals with regard to discussing their financial obligations. Though hardly a professional, I had a wide informal experience in this field. My lack of formal training made me feel like a pretender, but I tried to emulate Skinner’s air of confidence.

  “You stand over there,” I said to the boy. “Your job is opening the door but not until I give the signal. Skinner, you position yourself here next to me, ready for him. And sir, if you can stand well back, you can provide covering fire if need be.”

  My plan was for Skinner and me to burst in, seize the man, and drag him out into the open. The head gardener would be ready with the ropes and canvas so we could make him fast as soon as possible while Stafford covered us with the shotgun. He and the boy would provide extra support in the struggle as needed.

  “Nice day for it,” said Skinner, matter-of-factly unfolding the blade of his pocketknife and tucking it in his waistband at the small of his back. I flexed my fingers; the gloves were a tight fit, but they were stout leather. If being bitten was a hazard—and it might well be in a struggle with a madman—then my hands would be well protected. The gloves also provided padding, so I could hit him with decent force without so much fear of damaging either him or me.

  There was a slight smile about Skinner’s face. His cheerful demeanour was not, I saw, because he was careless of danger but because he welcomed it.

  For my part, I was inclined to caution. I rolled my shoulders and dropped to my haunches a few times, loosening up. Then I moved into a fighting stance.

  A bumblebee rose from a bright tulip, which swayed to and fro. It was indeed a nice day for it.

  “Everyone ready?” I asked. “Open the door—now!”

  The footman threw back the door and leaped well clear, revealing a shadowy interior. Wooden shelving filled both sides of the shed, leaving a narrow space between. A man crouched low against the far wall. He was a small fellow in a white shirt and dark trousers. The way he was hunched suggested a hunted animal.

  “Come on out, Pierce,” Stafford ordered. “There’s a sensible fellow. Nobody means you any harm.”

  We waited several seconds, but the fugitive did not move. I nodded to Skinner and stepped forward. As I did so, Pierce bolted. He moved faster than I would have thought possible but not so fast that I could not shoot out a hand to grab his shoulder as he passed.

  “Stop there, you,” I said.

  An ashen face looked up into mine. His complexion was completely bloodless. I might have been looking at a corpse except for those wild, terrified eyes. The whites were visible all the way around, and his pupils were oddly colourless. For a moment, Pierce did not resist, then he pulled away suddenly. The awkwardness of the heavy gloves betrayed me, and Pierce twisted and slipped out of my hands before I could get a proper grip on him.

  As Pierce passed, Skinner tried to lay hands on him but was thrown off. None of the others was ready to grab him, and Pierce had broken through the cordon. The barrel of Stafford’s shotgun veered wildly, first high and then low as if to shoot the fleeing man in the legs; luckily he did not risk a shot. Pierce dashed down the path with the rest of us in pursuit. I was in the lead, cursing myself for letting him go and determined that he would not escape again. He was faster than most.

  Pierce took a sharp turn past a shed and then another towards a door in the garden wall, but he veered away when he saw it was padlocked. The whole place had been secured.

  I was gaining on Pierce when he ducked through a row of tall, bushy trees—the leylandii variety if I am not mistaken. I plunged through after him into a small, paved court with a fountain, but there was no sign of which way he had gone. There were several possible exits.

  Skinner was with me two seconds later. “Let’s just go very easy here. The grounds are secure, so we don’t need to be hasty. Let’s spread ourselves out a bit but stay so we can see each other. Anyone sees or hears anything, shout out.”

  “Understood,” I said to show support, and the others murmured assent.

  “Let’s try the far corner,” said Stafford, and we set out abreast with Skinner and me slightly in the lead.

  As we passed the house, I saw pale faces looking down at us from the upper windows. Stafford’s wife and daughter peered out of one while at another window stood a little group of servants, anxious spectators of our little drama, hands clutched in front of them. Skinner gave the audience a half-ironic salute when Stafford’s back was turned.

  “That little housemaid is a cracker,” Skinner said in a low voice, and the footman shot him a black look. Matters can get intense with people working in the same house together, day in and day out.

  Pigeons started into the air as we rounded a neatly trimmed hedge. On the other side was a lawn as smooth as a billiard table. The birds’ wings clattered as they cleared the garden wall. Stafford gripped his gun and scanned left and right.

  “There he is!” shouted the old gardener.

  A woodshed leaned against the wall, and our quarry was trying to get onto the roof by climbing the pile of chopped firewood stacked by it. The footman rushed in, ignoring Skinner’s shout to stay back and, in two leaps, was up by the madman, grappling with him.

  “Bloody young fool,” Skinner muttered, and we dashed after him.

  A second later, the footman was thrown down and sprawled at full length of the ground.

  Pierce took an axe from the woodpile and was waving it at us, two-handed. “I didn’t do anything!” he shouted. “Leave me be!”

  “Calm down, Pierce,” Stafford said. “You’re sick.”

  Skinner and I advanced on him. Pierce was at the top of the woodpile, perhaps four feet off the ground. If I
came forward, I could grab his ankles, but that would mean taking a blow to the head from the axe.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Pierce,” said Skinner, sidling closer. “Your master here has a shotgun. You make a nice big target for him up there. Do the clever thing and come down.”

  “I won’t do it!” he wailed and swung the axe at Skinner, who nimbly stepped back out of the way.

  I judged the moment and stepped in to grab the axe on the follow-through, catching the haft close to the head with both hands. Instead of letting go, Pierce held on. I gave a smart tug, and he overbalanced and fell off his perch. Skinner and I were on top of him in a trice, rolling him face downwards and forcing his arms behind his back. Pierce struggled, but madman or not, he was no match for the two of us. It concluded with me holding him down with a knee on his back. Pierce stopped struggling when he realised the futility of it.

  “Give me that cord!” Skinner ordered. The old gardener was helping the fallen boy, but Skinner found the rope, and we made the prisoner fast. My partner’s skill with knots was impressive. “There you are, sir,” he said when the job was done.

  I hauled Pierce to his feet. The piles of wood for chopping up included some old timber frames, part of a greenhouse or similar, with long, rusty nails protruding. The servant boy had put his hand down so that one of the nails went clear through his palm and out the other side. The old gardener helped pull him free, but the boy whimpered in pain, and blood was spurting from his hand as from a garden hose. The old gardener staunched it with a neckerchief, and Stafford ordered him to take the boy to a doctor while the rest of us went to the house.

  We delivered the prisoner to a cellar and lashed him to a chair. He was subdued by then, mumbling words to himself I could not hear. It sounded like an incantation, repeated over and over. Once he was safely secured, two of the female servants tended to him.

  “I’m sorry your man injured himself,” said Skinner. “I tried to stop him, but –young men get carried away.”

  “Not your fault,” said Stafford complacently. “He had some previous history with Pierce.”

  Our patron was well satisfied with the outcome. He was a kindly, well-meaning man. His authority had been re-established, and everything was in its place, the errant under-gardener stowed safely away where his ravings would not disturb the peace.

  Freshly raked gravel crunched underfoot as we walked back to the open gates. Someone would need to rake it over again to erase our footprints and preserve the look. I asked Skinner if he could make out what Pierce had been mumbling.

  “It was that old saying,” said Skinner. “‘First a man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.’”

  “He didn’t look drunk to me; he looked ill.”

  Skinner shrugged. His view was that it was better not to ask questions, and he did not seem curious. But I had reminded him of something, and he passed me a handful of coins. “I touched his Lordship for a gratuity. Expenses, wear and tear caused by the operation, and such like.”

  We passed through the gates, and Skinner paused to light up a cigarette.

  “It’s a bad business,” I said. “I hope the footman recovers from that wound—he could lose his hand if there’s an infection. I don’t like to profit from it.”

  “I certainly don’t intend to lose by it,” said Skinner.

  Chapter Three: At the Sign of the Knyght’s Head

  While I finished writing up the report, Skinner kept reading and rereading the letter he had taken from the rooming house. “Maybe whoever wrote this letter could tell us what a beetle is—and what this is all about.”

  “There’s no name and no return address on it.”

  “Maybe there isn’t, and maybe there is,” Skinner said, scrutinising it with a magnifying glass. “She did not write her address on this one, but she did write it on the sheet of notepaper above. And we might just be able to get an impression.”

  Skinner took a soft pencil and moved it quickly across the paper, up and down, shading in one corner. He triumphantly slid it over to me. Sure enough, the ghostly negative image of writing could be made out.

  “It’s the Knyght’s Head in Norwood New Town,” I said. “If the woman who wrote this lives there, I suppose she must be the landlady.”

  “That’s a low establishment,” said Skinner, whose knowledge of local pubs was encyclopaedic. “We’d better pay her a visit this evening before our assignation. I’ll stop by the Hollybush first and see if anyone can put a name to her.”

  “Assignation, did you say? What assignation?”

  “His nibs wants to meet us in Norwood Park after dark.” Skinner raised his hands. “Don’t ask me why. Orders is orders.”

  Norwood New Town had always had a reputation as a tough neighbourhood. The six streets of back-to-back terraced houses had been intended for the workmen brought in to construct the Crystal Palace back in the last century. To protect the established residents, a high wall surrounded the New Town, preventing the inmates from mingling too freely with their betters.

  The wall told every man inside the New Town that he was a rough fellow. Some of them were pleased to live up to that reputation and embellish it. The wall stayed up and had two gates, one of which was usually shut. The police did not go in there without a purpose, and on those occasions when they did show up, they moved in force, stifling any possible disturbance.

  Arthur Renville had contacts and business dealings with everyone in the Norwood area and beyond, but he said the New Town was a blank space on the map. In those few streets, it was every man for himself, and the essential trust for joint enterprises like Arthur’s was lacking. Poverty had corroded the machinery of cooperation. Arthur said the New Town was cannibal territory, not quite in a literal sense but metaphorically: men feasted on each other when they got the chance.

  Skinner insisted that we should dress for our visit to Norwood in our shabbiest clothes. I wore an old cap instead of my usual bowler. There was no sense in drawing attention.

  I had never visited any pub in the New Town before, but the place offered few surprises beyond being spelled “Knyght’s Head” on the faded sign, a peculiar olde-worlde affectation for a modern establishment. It was a shabby, raw place that, unlike more affluent drinking locations, did not make the pretence of being a gilded palace or a gentleman’s club. Or even a halfway comfortable lounge. Everything in the pub was functional, and there was a notable lack of breakable decorations such as mirrors or large windows. Even the ashtrays were tin. It was simply a place where men came to drink beer, together or alone.

  Hard lives had sculpted the regulars at the Knights Head. They were shorter than most, stunted by lack of food in early life but made broad and hard by long years of physical labour. Their faces had a windswept, blasted look from exposure to all weathers. They were not the “honest English yeomen” that our politicians romanticised but men with dirt under their nails and mouths full of the foulest abuse who couldn’t even talk about the weather without spitting and swearing. They expected nothing out of life and carried with them a sullen pride that, despite all of the world’s attempts to grind, hammer, and wear them down, they were still stubbornly there.

  They were the most fundamental of labouring classes: the unskilled workmen. They were despised, but they’d built London brick by brick, mended the roads, dug up streets, laid water and sewage mains, and torn up everything to make room for bigger and newer buildings. To them, anyone who did not work with his hands was soft, contemptible, and overprivileged. They gave skilled workmen grudging respect. Shopkeepers like those in my family were viewed with suspicion as idlers loafing behind a counter who overcharged workingmen and deprived them of money for beer.

  As individuals, they might be good men and a sight more honest than their social betters on the average. There was no mealy-mouthed manoeuvring or fast-talking with these types, and in their circles, your word really was your bond. A debt was never forgotten, and you could almost always get t
hem to pay up eventually.

  But when you got a few of them together and under the influence of drink, it was another story. An ugly side came out then, especially when there were outsiders to confront.

  Skinner breezed in, nodding to an imaginary acquaintance and sidling up to the bar as though he was a regular. He ignored the sullen, silent gazes that followed us from all sides. I slunk behind him, as much as someone of my build could slink.

  There were two people conversing behind the bar—an older man in a stained shirt, unshaven, with the blurry look of a habitual drinker, and a young woman in a dress that left her shoulders and much of her chest bare. The older man had barely registered our presence before the woman was leaning towards us attentively, and he went back to staring into the distance.

  “Two pints for a couple of thirsty men, my angel,” Skinner said to the barmaid.

  “Do I know you?” she asked, taking down two glasses. Her hair was blond, and a quantity of gold jewellery glittered on her arms and chest, making her look like a Christmas decoration. This would be the letter writer, whose name Skinner had discovered to be Elsie.

  Skinner clutched his chest. “Such cruel, cruel beauty. Your indifference pierces my heart. Have you forgotten me already?”

  “Yes,” she said, well used to the way of men with barmaids.

  Skinner passed the first pint my way. The head was not promising, and the beer was watery and sour.

  “As a matter of fact, I visited a mutual friend this morning,” said Skinner casually. “In West Norwood.”

  The barmaid gave Skinner a sharp look before turning her attention back to the handpump. “I’m not playing guessing games.”

  “I don’t know if I should mention her name,” he said. “We’re not police. I don’t want to get anybody into trouble.”

  “You can mention any name you like.”

  “Mabel Brown,” Skinner said softly.

  “Never heard of her,” said the barmaid without a flicker. “That’s eight pence.”