The Avenging Finger Of An Offended Deity

It is not my purpose dear reader, to describe in any amount of detail Inspector Depta’s sly progress up the carpeted staircase and along the gallery that led round to the back of the house. Nor do I intend to recount in any detail his journey from room to room or the criminal scenes he encountered within, scenes of such infernal wickedness that he might have effected a dozen successful arrests . Suffice it to say that eventually, he lit upon the chamber in which the unfortunate Lyca McKillen slept her drugged sleep. Her innocent blonde head lay upon a brace of sparkling white pillows, and though she lay unmolested she lay not in that chamber alone! For another was there, a bearded man whose greying brow furrowed deeply as he slept, one who clutching pen and paper in his fist lay curled up upon the hearth rug snoring like a swaddled babe.

The sight of him caused Inspector Depta to reflect most morosely on the ever diminishing likelihood of his early retirement. Looking upon the prone (and therefore vulnerable) miscreant a while longer however, the Inspector thought he espied an opportunity to kick Lyca’s inconvenient abduction under the Bow Street Detective Police carpet. Garbed as he was in crumpled evening wear, highly suggestive of a night actively spent midst the flesh pots of 5 Gulliver Place, and in the arms of an under-aged woman, Inspector bethought himself that this intrepid reporter’s fate was sealed. “A more naive cove I ain’t never seen in my life! Get up! Go on! Get up!” he roared administering a hefty kick to the prone journalist lying at his feet. He glanced at the extravagantly garbed figure of this ‘intrepid reporter’ little doubting that he’d have him ensconsed within the four walls of Newgate Prison before the sun was down.

“Get up God damn ye!”

The intrepid reporter groaned and rolled to and fro clutching his bruised shin, he rubbed his shin some more, rubbed his forehead, and abruptly sitting up found himself at once greeted by a sight which though confusing to him, was most fortuitous given the rapidly unveiling circumstances.

“So, it is you Inspectah Deptaa!” exclaims he his  bleary eyes alight with sudden perspicacity, “The prodigious enabler of the deflowering of our British maidenhood’s maidenhood! Servant to the satanic slaving hordes of London! You sir are a disgrace to your office! You are a disgrace to the uniform you wear sir! A disgrace!”

Adminstering another kick (this time to the reporter’s backside) causing him to sprawl on the rug, the inspector chuckled, “I ave no uniform as such, and you sir and your big mouth ave been found in the wrong place at the wrong time! Nah! Lets be ‘avin yeah! GET UP!!! I said get up!! I am arresting you in the name of all—”

Now, dear reader, let us contemplate this delightful moment in which both prone victim and bullish victor contemplate each other. Watch with bated breath as the intrepid reporter thrills responsive  to the compromising position in which Inspector Depta has unwittingly put himself. To have coincidentally presented oneself, in the bedchamber of a drugged yet untainted maid on the brink of being forever ruined by a predicatorial degenerate! For it is certain that Mrs Ada did not herself call for his services! Why, here is a headline in the making! And as if lit up in blazing red letters above the inspector’s head the intrepid reporter see’s it now,’Rabidly Licentious Detective of Bow Street, Succumbs To Brothel Fuelled Depredations!’.

“Better to be bald as a Dutch cheese than to come to this!” declares the intrepid reporter a fervid gleam of triumph entering his eyes,”D’you what?!” exclaims the inspector for he has not yet grasped how precarious is his position. “Bald as a Dutch cheese! Bereft of position, reputation , of money ,than to be discovered! And in the grip of a vice such as this!” the intrepid reporter declares once more, pen gripped in hand and writing, upon that crumpled sheath of papers clasped in his ink stained hand.

“Vice?” declares the inspector looking puzzled,”Vice? Why gentlemens of eminent standing has been enjoying they-selves in the homes of  licentious bawds for countless centuries!”

“With children?” asks the intrepid reporter his eyes raised momentarily from the page on which he is writing, “With what?!” bellows the indignant Inspector Depta, “With children” continues the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette calmly,”Purloined from the Spitalsfield’s Workhouse and Dispensary and sold, enslaved, to white slavers operating dens of ill-repute, such as this one. Many have recoiled in shuddering horror from places such as this! A den whose minions feast lustfully upon the flesh of our helpless maidens! And you Inspector! You uphold their dissipated depravities by failing to arrest them!”.

“Arrest them?” the Inspector is bemused,

“Arrest them! Here dwells a foul enchantress!”

“What? Mrs Fard?!”

“Arrest her! And in the scarlet room and the violet room lie two who, bestial, brutal and ferocious, would call themselves eminent  politicians! Arrest them sir! Arrest them!”

If ever the inspector were to aim a blow at this imbecilic creature’s head, now would be the time. Arrest the cream of England? And merely because they had carelessly strayed from the corridors of power into Mrs Fard’s brothel? T’is beyond all contemplating so far as he is concerned. He eyes the fervent reporter (crumpled evening dress and all ), the way he would a starved rodent. Arrest a member of parliament? A member of the aristocracy come to that!

“abominable, unutterable, and worse than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived” continues the intrepid reporter his pen moving feverishly across the page, “But it is true, and the publication of these evil deeds is necessary , for here is a den of infantile iniquity and here is an inspector who supports it. In fact the more I think about it, the more I believe that your interests would be best served if you were to take me into your confidence”.

“Your confwidence?!”

“Yes, when first did you happen upon this Minotaur’s den of iniquitous depravities ,and decide to do nothing about it?”

“Do naahthink abowt it? I’ll bloody well do something about you!” and with a bellicose roar of rage the Inspector raises his billy-club, but as he prepares to bring it down upon the head of the half prone journalist two things occur at once. The scream of an awakened child terrified by the near- spectacle of an attempted murder. And worse yet the sound of a thunderous northern voice jubilant in it’s triumph,”So! Inspectah Depta! We have you at the rattle!”,the Inspector knows and loathes that voice once it had been the voice of a potential victim, now it is the voice of an eminent politician. Pocketing his billy-club and adjusting the tilt of his heart the inspector turns on his heel and attempts to smile,”Well and if it ain’t the Union Rep!”

 

 

 

Delectatio Morosa

“Is his Mibs doing the rounds tonite?”

“Just turned down Cobblers Row get a move on girl! You’ll catch him yet!”

Skittles plucks up her already too short skirts till her crisp white bloomers show almost to the knee and streaks down Bell End Rd turning into Cobblers Row. Hobbling along on his walking stick his Lordship has paused midway on his journey, to have congress with a drunken street walker and two little girls. Another eye rolling situation so far as Skittles is concerned, for his Lordship has an unnerving habit of taking up causes that he would do better not to trifle with, and this is such a one.

A drunken whore wending her way down an infamous street in the dead of night? And with two young silk mill workers? There can be little guessing what she has in mind for them! And has iz Mibs checked the darkened alleyways for lurking pimps? Az e eck! Blowing shrilly through her fingers so that his Lordship twitches and his back stiffens she shrieks “Oi! Oi! Lord Gladstone! Iz Lordship oi!”

There are many back roads to be found from the gates of the Houses of Parliament to Soho and this is his favourite. The Turkey Twizzlers are a delight to smell and taste, and the countless conversations he has had with bloater sellers, market stall holders, cabmen and road sweepers have proved highly informative. Particularly when formulating policy in the Palace of Westminster. The only poison tainting his unbridled joy at the highways and by-roads of London is that overflow of unbridled misery, prostitution. And tonight is no exception,”You would sell these children? And for what purpose?” he poses this question (with his hands softly clasped upon his cane) as gently as if he were talking to a fellow member of the house.

“Would you buy them? I can’t feed them no more, they’ve been laid off orf the mill, I needs must eat”. A cunning look passes over her raddled features as she says this for it is clear that she has not eaten in some time, gin being her staple diet. “Why you could live like a prince off their earnings…once they’ve been fed,will you take em?” asks the child-seller, her words afloat on a vaporous sea of cheap gin, “Thruppence for each of em!There’s plenty of work in em you won’t be disappointed!”. The Right Honourable William Gladstone, Member of Parliament for Newark shudders inwardly and, rummaging in his trouser pocket soon comes up with the ‘two sets of thruppence’ requested. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, the two children are his. Sold to him with less warmth than an African slave upon an auction block.

“A distressing occurence!” he mutters to himself, “And what to do about it? They are too young to be taken to the House of St Barnabas and I don’t see how I can welcome them into my home with out inviting scandal, what to do, what to do, what to do…”

Skittles observing his dilemma thanks god for a cove as soft in the head as this one, she espies a large meal and a warm bed in the offin, if she’s congenial enough.

“How old is they? They looks to be about ten to me” asks she, staring intently at the drugged countenances of the newly purchased children. “Is the age of relevance?” inquires the naif-like politician as much out of irritation as ignorance. “Younger than ten and they’ll arrest you” she states matter of factly, “you may do as you wish if they’s older”.

“How old?”

“Twelve”

“Dear God!Thrust by the tidal wave of degeneracy, into the ocean of depravity, at so young an age? We must save them! Quick! Take them down Bottle Alley and up Bell End Road, I have a hansom cab waiting”.

“For ow much?” she replies, “Creepin roun them back roads with them two they’ll be wonderin’ what I’m a doin thin! There’s risk in it” and she that has spent many a night down in the police cells as punishment for iniquitous wanderings should know.

“Two shillings, a good meal and a lengthy talk against the dangers of prostitution once we arrive home”

“Done!”

It had been a warm summer’s night when first he had strolled out of the Palace of Westminster and headed in the direction of Soho. And yet it feels to him, as if all possible joy and warmth had leeched out of that part of the world that is Soho. “To be reduced to selling one’s children, how terrible!”

Skittles shakes her head angrily,”Hark at you! Sellin one’s children! What makes you think them kids is ‘ers? What makes you think this life is so terrible? I’ve known more Gonophs transported fore they was twelve, than I have Blowens imprisoned for plying their trade. T’is not nearly so bad as you’d make out!”.

“But why must the choice always be thieving or whoring? There are positions a-plenty in London why must the choice always be so morally bleak!”

“I goes to confession every Sunday morn at St-Tobias-in-the-North! I ain’t so morally bleak as you think!”

They walk on in silence tugging the two young girls along behind them down squalid streets awash with sewage; past half dressed women tugging drunken men in through half-open doors. The dark streets are lit up by open pub doorways in which affable customers lounge, they sparkle with the strewn shards of smashed beer glasses. Skittles and Mr Gladstone hurry on, stepping carefully around stinking puddles of gin and the various cross-eyed brutes immersed in beating rogue ‘customers’.

They walk quickly through the dark averting their eyes whenever it is expedient to do so, for there are only so many sin steeped souls a man can redeem on any given night. Striding quickly down Bell End Road they are soon safely esconsed within the Hackney Carriage that will ferry them to a neighbourhood of clean, well-lit streets and respectable homes full of vast well-stocked pantries. Mr Gladstone is elated, that is till he catches himself gazing a little too long at the laced up bows on Skittles begrimed ankle boots, there will he thinks guiltily, be more than one confession to make in his diary tonight.