Free A Very Unusual Pursuit by Catherine Jinks Page A

drawstring bag.
    ‘I expect you’re acquainted with Mr Froggett,’ Sarah remarked, as she waddled over to Birdie’s stool. Alfred politely inclined his head, though he didn’t get up. Birdie, who was taken aback, offered the caffler an uncertain smile. She hadn’t known that Sarah Pickles and Elijah Froggett were friends.
    ‘Show ’em what you found, m’dear. Just lay it all out,’ Sarah told the caffler, who grunted. While he was emptying his bag onto the table, she addressed Alfred in her harsh, flat voice. ‘Mr Froggett knows every one o’ me boys – by sight, if not by name. Ain’t that so, Mr Froggett?’
    Elijah grunted again.
    ‘Which is why, when he bought a bundle o’ rags off a muck snipe and reckonised every article, he were downy enough to get more particulars afore he came to me.’ Watching the caffler as he carefully spread the remains of a striped shirt across the tabletop, Sarah explained, ‘That shirt belonged to Sam. So did the weskit. The coat were Nolly’s, and the wipe didn’t once leave Abel’s neck. Them boys might still be missing, but their clothes is found.’
    ‘Who found ’em?’ Birdie couldn’t help asking, in a hushed tone.
    Sarah hadn’t taken her eyes off the striped shirt. There was a sour look on her lumpy face. ‘A muck snipe, like I told you. A tramp. A moocher. He said as how he found ’em at the back of a big house, on a rubbish heap. Near a privy.’
    ‘In Clerkenwell,’ Elijah interposed. His voice was creaky and breathless.
    ‘Take a look at ’em, Fred, and tell me what you think,’ Sarah went on. ‘Then I’ll tell you what I think, which ain’t pretty, I warn you.’
    Alfred approached the display of rags, with Birdie close on his heels. Together they inspected thirteen items, all child-sized, all smudged, and all covered in a thick layer of greenish slime.
    ‘It’s likely them black marks is where someone tried to burn the clothes, but couldn’t,’ Sarah observed.
    ‘What’s this?’ Alfred gingerly touched the gooey green stuff, which clung to his finger like glue. Then he sniffed it and winced. ‘It don’t smell too good.’
    He was right. It didn’t. Though faint, the smell had an ominous quality – like a whiff of corruption carried on a light breeze.
    Birdie stepped away from the table, suddenly feeling sick.
    ‘Well now, Fred, I’m sorry to hear you say that. For I were a-hoping you might know what happens when a bogle eats a boy.’ As Alfred and Birdie gazed at Sarah with horrified expressions, she said, ‘See that weskit? I washed that, this morning, in soap and water. You’d never know to look at it, would you?’
    Birdie turned her attention to the vest, which had once been quite a handsome garment, made of plum-coloured silk. Like the rest of the clothes, it was stained black and coated with slime.
    ‘Whatever that stuff is, it won’t be cleaned off. Or burned up. Which is why I’ve come to think it might be the devil’s work.’ Sarah leaned forward, fixing her eyes on Alfred’s face. ‘If a bogle ate them boys,’ she said, ‘and coughed up their dunnage like we’d cough up a nutshell, would its spit be rank and green?’
    ‘That I can’t tell you,’ Alfred gravely replied.
    ‘But you’re a bogler!’ Sarah snapped. ‘You must know!’
    ‘I only once lost a child to a bogle,’ Alfred retorted, ‘and that bogle didn’t live long enough to cough up nowt . I killed it straight after.’
    Birdie swallowed. She didn’t like to hear Alfred talk about his third apprentice, whose name had been Henry. Jack had gone to sea, Patrick had returned to Ireland, Tom was working on the railways, and Adolphus had been gaoled for theft. But Henry had fallen to a bogle – and Alfred preferred not to discuss it.
    Sarah narrowed her eyes. ‘Well, well,’ she murmured. ‘Now that ain’t summat I ever knowed.’ And she glanced at Birdie.
    ‘One thing I can tell you is this,’ Alfred continued. ‘If a bogle coughed up