The Adventure of the Deverill Diamonds

The streets were teeming with lots of people. Sellers plying their wares, businessmen on the way to their important City jobs, all classes of people heading to the factory or the office. I ran past them all as fast as I could in the restrictive dress ; past the one-legged song pedlar at the end of our road, down long avenues where elegant ladies walking with parasols could not help but gape as I streaked past them. Every morning, when not on a case, Sam was always to be found sweeping his crossing on Beak Street in Soho and I pelted there as fast as I could.

I am not the most athletic person and, I must say, by the time I reached Soho I was out of breath and panting like an ancient, but still eager, spaniel who had seen happier days. As I ran into Beak Street I stopped running, spying Sam in the distance with his friends - Peter Simpson (a tiny boy with a high-pitched voice and more breathing problems than I was currently having) and Noah Cartwright (a slightly older boy and, in my opinion, something of a bully).

They were playing a game which seemed to involve kicking a sizeable stone to one another. Walking towards them, struggling to catch my breath, I could see that Noah was not just kicking the stone to poor little Peter, but at him. Boys, I thought to myself, are strange. This kind of game, which would occupy a girl for all of five seconds, had probably been underway for at least half an hour judging from their complexions and intense looks of concentration!

It was Sam’s turn to kick the stone to Noah. He backed up and was about to take his kick when his eyes found me. He stopped immediately, looking bewildered. I looked down at my shocking pink dress, felt my cheeks flushing from the run, saw the drab surroundings I was in for the first time and thought I must have looked like an asthmatic and bashful pig in the middle of a field of mud. I really was a ridiculous sight. Sam’s sudden halt made the other boys follow his gaze to where I was walking. For a moment there was silence and then Noah Cartwright burst into fits of, what I considered to be fake, laughter.

His laughter set off Peter (who copied anything Noah did). Noah’s heartless cackle stopped me in my tracks. He really was milking it, slapping his legs and holding his stomach in a way rarely seen outside of a second-rate Pantomime.

Sam walked over to me, confusion and embarrassment on his face.

“What you doin’ ’ere?” was his charming opening sentence.

“I came to see you.”

“Oh. Right. Why ?” he asked, awkwardly.

“Because we’re friends,” I responded, still gasping for breath.

“Are we?” he asked.

Now, something you should know about Sam is that he does not really do emotion. Not that he is a cold, mechanical thinking machine, just that he hides his emotions very deeply. Growing up on the streets he has learnt that showing emotion means showing weakness is my theory. Where Sam lives if you get hit, you don’t cry. You take it and you get on with it. Sam keeps himself isolated from other people, other than his close family, and he never shows affection to anyone. And certainly not to me. During the whole of our time together he had spent very little of it smiling. Although I knew that I had said things that had amused him the most it would receive would be a faint half-smile. Even when the worst of outcomes happened in our last case he had only lost composure for the briefest of moments (when he had smashed a window in rage and frustration). So his flat response was not a great surprise.

Nevertheless, we had just solved a mystery together weeks before! Through the whole of the Body in the Alley mystery we had worked side-by-side, solving puzzles, piecing clues together and, ultimately, arresting the villain with the help of Inspector Wakefield. This was all that I had left the house for, what I had risked the whack for, to come and spend time in the open air with Sam, to chance upon another case, to pit our wits against a villain! It was impossible to me that he was not thinking the same thing ; that he was not pleased to see me, however ridiculously I was dressed.

“Aren’t we friends?” I asked, between gulps of air.

By now, Noah had stopped guffawing like a zany donkey and walked over to us, with Peter in tow.

“Wass your girlfriend doin’ ’ere, Wigs?” he laughed.

“She ain’t my girlfriend,” Sam answered, matter-of-factly. “And I don’t know what she’s doin’ ’ere.”

“What you doin’ ’ere, Sam’s girlfriend?” asked Noah, ignoring Sam completely.

“I came to see Sam,” I answered, adding “not you” for good measure.

“Oooh! Tetchy ain’t ya?” came Noah’s sing-song reply.

“Sam,” I said, ignoring Noah completely, “I have come to solve a crime with you.”

“What crime?” asked Noah.

“Whatever crime there is,” I said, tentatively, still looking at Sam.

Again Noah erupted into fits of artificial giggles and Peter joined him, but an octave higher. Sam stared at me in silence for what felt like an age. He looked to Noah and Peter laughing, and his cheeks flushed slightly. Then, suddenly, he spoke.

“That was just for one case.”

“What?”

“It was just for one case. Working togevver,” said Sam, as if this was an obvious fact and I had been dimwitted not to grasp it.

“What do you mean, just one case ? There was no case until I arrived!” I argued.

Noah had stopped laughing by this point and stuck his oar back into our conversation.

“We don’t want no soppy girls ‘angin’ around, little Princess,” he sneered, “so run back ’ome to Mummy!”

“Yeah, run back ’ome to Mummy!” piped Peter in his thin, wheezy voice.

Without thinking I pulled back my right hand in a fist, ready to launch it straight at Noah. Sam read my action and grabbed my arm just in time, pulling me away from them and further up the street. I fought his hand off me, furious with him for letting Noah and Peter talk to me like that. He knew almost nothing about my home life (because it was easier not to tell him), but he knew at the very least that my “Mummy” was dead and gone. Having wrenched myself free from his grip, I stood, sullen, my arms folded, waiting to see what he had to say. I had a tear in my eye and I was angry with myself for letting it form there. The whole morning I had taken what Aunt Cordelia had thrown at me and I had not wept. I hated to weep in front of her as it made her feel more powerful so I had stood straight and strong, keeping my emotions down. But Noah’s mention of my Mother had made my heart leap immediately into my throat and moisture welled in the corner of my eye. Cross with this apparent sign of weakness, I wiped it away from my face.

“Esther,” he said, softly, “why are you upset?”

“I’m upset, Sam Wiggins, because I came down here to join you, to go on another adventure, to find another crime for us to solve ! I even stole….” I stopped talking and let my voice trail away.

“Stole what?” he enquired.

“It doesn’t matter!” I snapped. “That is besides the point ! The point is that you have no spine Sam Wiggins ! You’re worse than Peter!”

He thought for a moment, then said “Who’s Peter?”

“Him !” I said, pointing at Peter, dumbfounded.

“Oh… Simpson!” he said, understanding. They only call each other by their surnames. Typical pathetic boy behaviour. I suppose it makes them feel tougher or something. It certainly makes them tougher to understand, I don’t know about anything else.

“Yes, him!” I shouted. “It’s pathetic ! Yes, Noah, no, Noah, three bags full, Noah!” pretending to fawn over Noah as I had seen Peter do on several occasions. This was followed by a short pause.

“Who’s Noah?” he asked, furrowing his brow in confusion.

“Cartwright!!” I bellowed. “For goodness’ sake! You spend all your days with the pair of them and you don’t even know their n…”

I stopped bellowing. He was very faintly half-smiling. The faintest of flickers but, for someone who rarely smiled, this was practically gurning. Evidently, this ‘not knowing his friends’ names’ nonsense was his feeble attempt at a joke. He looked back over to Noah and Peter who could clearly hear everything that had just been said and were giggling to themselves. I was not in the mood and my anger was rising.

“You do whatever Noa…Cartwright tells you and it is pathetic! You are spineless, Sam Wiggins !”

“Is that right ?” he asked, the tiny smile disappearing.

“The point is,” I said hastily, “I thought we were a team! I thought we were in this together!”

“In what together?” asked Sam, puzzled.

“Crime,” I responded.

“What crime?”

“Crime in general!” I shouted, exasperated. “We solved the Body in the Alley together. You couldn’t have solved it without me!”

“And you couldn’ta solved it without me.” he retorted, calmly.

“Exactly!” I yelled. “A team!”

I let this sink in over the silence that followed. Sam was so hard to fathom. Was he realising in his heart of hearts that we had made a great team ? Was he thinking about all the trials we had endured together ? Thinking what a capable partner I had made ? Or was he merely examining the brickwork behind me and thinking what a nice colour red was?

“I got a team,”was his eventual reply.

“Noah and Peter?”

“Cartwright and Simpson, yeah. They’re me mates. And we been through much more together than you and me have.”

“Like what?” I snorted.

“Stuff you wouldn’t believe. Stuff you wouldn’t wanna know about.”

“You’re right,” I said, curtly. “I don’t.”

A stalemate. Another silence. He stared at me, placidly. I stared at him, exasperated. I scratched around in my brain for something to say, something that would make everything alright between us.

“I thought we were friends,” I said. As soon as the words had left my mouth, I wanted to bite my tongue off for saying them. I felt like a dog, begging desperately for attention. Worse than that, I felt like the younger me begging for attention from my cold and distant Father.

“I got lots of friends,” Sam said.

That was it. Without hesitation I turned around and walked quickly back up the street, away from him.

“Where ya goin’?” he shouted after me.

I did not answer. I was too hurt to speak, too wounded to form my mouth into shapes. Was that really all he could think of to say ! To brag about how many friends he possessed and how he did not need more ? He did not just have a heart deeply buried. He had none.

“Esther! Come back!”

I ignored him, blocking out the sound of his voice, the sound of his walking back to his idiotic friends and, most hateful of all, the sound of the stone once again being kicked. I wiped tears from my eyes, furious that tears had appeared at all, as I stormed away.

I walked without aim for at least twenty minutes. Past the butchers’ shops, the fruiterers’, down long-forgotten streets, down the banks of the river, too blinded by anger to take note of anything I saw in any detail. All I could think of was the conversation passed. I kept replaying it in my head, playing out scenarios in which I had been more witty, more cutting, more angry ; scenarios in which I had been more calm, less angry, less cutting. Would either way have made a blind bit of difference? No. He had made up his mind with Cartwright (for so he would be called - not deserving of being referred to by his Christian name) and Simpson (likewise). “No girls in the gang!”. It did not matter that I was worth ten of Cartwright. That I had more brains in a blob of my earwax than Cartwright had in his entire skull. Sam wanted his little boy’s club. “No girls in pink dresses allowed.” And certainly not ones who could accurately pronounce the Queen’s English. He was heartless and he was gutless. He was not the person I thought he was. He wanted nothing more than to kick a stone around all day like a semi-athletic caveman. To waste his intelligence with fools who wouldn’t know a crime if it came and set fire to their bottoms!

Let him ! I did not need him! I could do it all myself! Inspector Bucket had no assistant when he solved the murder of Mr Tulkinghorn (yes, this is Dickens, sorry). If he could act alone then so could I. To blazes with Sam Wiggins! All I needed was a crime to solve!

All of this time I had been aimlessly walking. As I arrived at the conclusion of my going it alone I was stopped in my walk by the cry of a newspaper seller on the street corner.

“Gangland Boss freed!”

I crossed the busy street and walked over to the corner where the vendor stood. I looked down at the table and glanced down at the bundle of newspapers the man was selling. Reading discreetly so the man could not see me I saw the following :

’Eddie Holloway, leader of the notorious Red Razor gang, has been released from Wandsworth Prison, where he had been serving time for manslaughter. Holloway’s release was extraordinarily early, a full 15 years before it was due.

Rumour has it that Holloway and his gang have put pressure on the legal system, through their usual violence and scare tactics, to secure an early release for this violent

criminal.

Holloway, whose gang peddles drugs, drink and violence on the streets of London, looked thrilled on the day of his release. He smiled, despite the large scar running up the left hand side of his face (a result of a fight inside the prison with a knife-wielding lunatic so I am informed) telling this reporter that he would soon “be back in the fold” of his “family”. By his ‘family’ we can only assume he meant the Red

Razor gang.

So once again, the streets of the East End are open to corruption from this dangerous man and his equally dangerous partners in crime. Inspector Wakefield, of Scotland Yard, told this reporter “the law has taken its course. We shall be keeping a watchful eye on Mr Holloway and his comings and goings, worry not.

I should not be in the least bit surprised if Mr Holloway were to end up back in prison very soon”…’

A master criminal released from prison! And Inspector Wakefield on his trail, watching and waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. This was a case that I could sink my teeth into. Something I could tackle without Sam’s help. The problem was I had never even heard of Eddie Holloway or the Red Razor gang until this moment. Sam, of course, would have known who he was in an instant. I had to talk to Inspector Wakefield, but there was no chance of that… Who then, could I turn to for help ?

And then it struck me! P.C. Ned Burdon! He was close to the Inspector. He would be visiting Mr Deverill at 9.30am - ten minutes from now according to the clock above the nearby jewellers. I could meet him at my house and then we could go and discuss the case at his house, or I could follow him on his beat. If I ran I would make it in time to see him. I would have to avoid Mrs Gritton of course, but I was an expert at that! I ran!

I was filled with a new hope! An idea that I would get in on a case from the start! That I would prove Sam and his stupid friends wrong! I would get on Holloway’s trail, in disguise, and I would be the one to bring him to justice and put an end to his horrid gang!

I charged full pelt into my road, keeping a watchful eye out for Mrs Gritton. She seemed to be nowhere in sight ; not to be seen in any of the windows. My absence had not been noted. I was in the clear. It was all plain-sailing. I would get to Mr Burdon and I would be on my way to becoming a proper solo detective.

But all hope vanished from me as I neared my house. I could hear loud banging from inside and a male voice shouting. Something in the tone of the voice told me all was not well. A shiver pulsed through my veins. My heart, pumping fast, seemed to sink in my chest. Something was wrong behind my front door. Something was badly wrong.