The Hangman's Child by Francis Selwyn Read Free Book Online Page A

Family and Complimentary Mourning Tailors, plate-glass framed by black marble, divided by corrugated brass pillars. But Mr Trent's funeral tailoring was as much part of Pandy's master-plan as the vaults themselves.
    Rann jumped off at Aldgate pump, where the classical pillar under an iron-framed gas-lamp spouted water into a shallow trough for a poorer district of the city. Here the shops and houses were stained by weather and neglect, windows dusty and empty, the road almost deserted. With nothing in the world but the shirt and trousers that he wore, he slipped down as the cart slowed at the crossing.
    His destination was a slum courtyard off Rosemary Lane, along the drab length of the Ratcliff Highway. Narrower streets faded into the distance of a noon haze. Provision merchants and gin-shops traded behind the plain shop-fronts, families lodging two or three to a room on the floors above. The long canyon of the street was crowded at this hour by labourers from the nearby docks, in round, wide-brimmed hats, canvas trousers and shirt-sleeves. Bells that might have tolled for a funeral were sounding from Wapping to the Isle of Dogs to call the gangs back to work from their dinner break.
    Boys with trays of glazed cakes slung about their necks, and girls offering fried fish, mingled with the crowd. A thinly clad woman with a child on her back bought a piece of fish for a halfpenny. She walked in front of Rann, tearing at it hungrily with her teeth, eating the warm flesh covered in breadcrumbs and sucking at the bone before she threw it away.
    From Rosemary Lane, he turned into a low archway, no wider than a house door. It led into the slum court known as Preedy's Rents.
    Beyond this narrow tunnel, which lay under the upper floors of the building that fronted the street, rose a turmoil of voices. A crowd was packed into a courtyard, a hundred feet long but not twenty feet wide. Men and women shouted and jumped at the far end. Every window of the upper floors was filled with faces, watching a quarrel between two neighbours as it turned into a fight.
    Even at noon, the yard was in deep shadow, wooden tenements rising like cliffs above it. Projections had been built out at random on the higher levels. Preedy's Rents had the air of a slum that might crumple at any moment in a cascade of rubble and timber upon the crowd in the courtyard.
    Inside the tenements, a narrow hallway and wooden stairs were almost in darkness. He climbed slowly and with care. The unlit stairway creaked and trembled under the gentlest footstep. He came to an unpainted door at the top and listened. There was movement but no voices. Rann knocked sharply.
    'At?' The reply sounded brisk and confident.
    'You there, Lord Tomnoddy? That you, Short-Armed Tom?'
    A chair-leg scraped. Whoever had been sitting down said something to himself as he got up. A bolt was drawn and the door opened by a thickset man with a florid face and dark hair, arms conspicuously long for his height. He was any age between fifty and seventy, his face lightly wrinkled like fruit dried on the branch. Lord Tomnoddy, or Short-Armed Tom, was a tosher or sewer-hunter. His trade gave him the only names by which he was known.
    Before the sewerman could speak, Rann said quietly, "s all right, Lord Tomnoddy. It's me, Jack Rann. And I ain't a ghost, 'cos I ain't been hung. Nor mean to be! Not if you'll help me now.'
    'Christ Aw-mighty!' Tomnoddy stood back and opened the door wider to let out more light. 'You never been respited?'
    Rann shook his head and stepped into a plainly furnished garret-room. Tomnoddy had been at dinner.
    'If you ain't been respited, Jack
    Rann put his hand against the wall.
    'I'm that famished ...' he said, and fell silent.
    Tomnoddy helped him to a chair, as if caring for an invalid.
    'Famished? You look like the Cock Lane Ghost, my son. 'Course I'll help you. What else would I do?'
    On the bare table was a half-eaten plate of cold boiled beef, a saucer of red pickled cabbage