Free Death at Hungerford Stairs by J C Briggs

up a cauldron of dog meat, and her two visitors might have added a new piquancy to the stew. With that harrowing thought, Dickens stepped smartly off the pavement and crossed the road, Zeb hurrying after him. The cab driver evinced no surprise at being asked to wait. It was all one to him, moving or waiting would mean payment.
    Dickens and Zeb stepped inside – safe, they thought – but there was someone there. Rogers.
    ‘’Eard it all, sir, I was waitin’ in that doorway – followed you in the alleys. Thought you was in danger – some great, hulking feller was following you, but ’e went off. Got the cab, sir, so we can make a quick exit if need be. Slipped away while Mrs there was talkin’.’
    ‘Thank you, Rogers. We did feel a bit uncomfortable out there, but we were not about to go in.’
    Rogers settled himself in the corner furthest away from the road, and Dickens and Zeb made sure they could be seen if Mrs Georgie came over. They watched and waited. Mrs Georgie stood on her step, her huge arms folded. From time to time, someone would come with a sack, and go in, but no Georgie came. It seemed a very long half hour.
    He came at last, little, cocky Georgie in his fancy jacket and waistcoat, like a little spry terrier whose bite was almost certainly worse than his bark. His nose might be purple but he was cleaner by far than his wife, and with good-natured, twinkling eyes that could turn cold in a moment – if he were crossed. Oh, Georgie would find the grandchild’s dog. Little girl, was it? Missin’ ’er doggie, was she? Well, Georgie would find the dog if ’e could. Only it’d cost – Georgie ’ad ’is livin’ ter make, dint ’e? Way o’ the world, weren’t it? Couldn’t do it fer nothing. The wheedling voice went on until the price was fixed – three sovereigns – cheap as ’e could do it. Finder’s fee of two sovereigns and one more when the dog would be brought to – where?
    Zeb gave his address. Poll was described. Georgie would do what ’e could, o’ course. No guarantees, mind. He twinkled at them again. All heart was Georgie, in this wicked world, an’ as for Mrs G, well, yer might not guess it, but she woz a lamb, really, a lamb wiv daughters of ’er own. Dickens glanced over at the scowling lamb – daughters forsooth, he thought – harpies, probably.
    The two sovereigns paid, the cab took them back to Bow Street.
    ‘Daylight robbery,’ said Rogers, indignantly. ‘Well, bloomin’ midnight robbery, if you like.’
    Dickens and Zeb laughed – from relief, perhaps, rather than Rogers’s wit.

    Not many streets away, in another twist of alleys, huddled behind the broken door of an abandoned garden, Scrap waited for the house across the narrow alley to fall silent. By day, his eye was fixed to a hole in the door. He could see across the alley a closed door which gave access to the yard of a house. He knew Poll was there. He had heard her bark, and the yelping and snapping of other dogs. Several times, he had scuttled across and peered through a crack in the wood, and he had seen the cages. He had been round to the front of the house and had watched the men, and boys, arrive with their sacks in which live things wriggled and whimpered. He heard the clink of coins as money changed hands. Once, a little man in a fancy jacket and waistcoat came and took away a spaniel which he tucked under his arm. Scrap watched when further down the road the little man put the dog down and walked off as if he were a respectable householder, taking his dog for a walk. Scrap had watched in the back alley when the hulk of a man they called Nat Boney took sacks away; sometimes the sacks moved and writhed, but sometimes, he heaved them over his shoulder where they hung, limp with something bulging at the bottom.
    Scrap had seen strange things in the alley. Last night he had seen a giant, a great, stinking bundle of rags which had shuffled along by his door. It grunted and muttered, shaking its huge