OF A WATERSIDE PUBLIC-HOUSE, AT CHISWICK, AND TWO MEN IN ITS BACK
GARDEN. HOW THE RIVER POLICE TOOK AN INTEREST IN THEM. A
TROUBLESOME LANDING AND A BAD SPILL. HOW FOUR MEN WENT UNDER WATER,
AND TWO WERE NOT DROWNED. OF THE INQUEST ONE OF THE OTHERS TOOK THE
STAR PART IN. A MODEL WITNESS, AND HIS GREAT-AUNT
Just off the Lower Mall at Hammersmith there still remains a scrap of
the waterside neighbourhood that, fifty years ago, believed itself
eternal; that still clung to the belief forty years ago; that had
misgivings thirty years ago; and that has suffered such inroads from
eligible residences, during the last quarter of a century, that its
residuum, in spite of a superficial appearance of duration, is really
only awaiting the expiration of leases to be given over to
housebreakers, to make way for flats.
Fifty years ago this corner of the world was so self-reliant that it was
content--more than content--to be unpatrolled by police; in fact, felt
rather resentful when an occasional officer passed through, as was
inevitable from time to time. It would have been happier if its
law-abiding tendencies had always been taken for granted. Then you could
have drunk your half a pint, your quart, or your measurable fraction of
a hogshead, in peace and quiet at the bar of the microscopic pub called
The Pigeons, without fear of one of those enemies of Society--_your_
Society--coming spying and prying round after you or any chance
acquaintance you might pick up, to help you towards making that fraction
a respectable one. If it was summer-time, and you sat in the little
back-garden that had a ladder down to the river, you might feel a
moment's uneasiness when the river-police rowed by, as sometimes
happened; only, on the other hand, you might feel soothed by their
appearance of unconcern in riparian matters, almost amounting to
affectation. If any human beings took no interest in your antecedents,
surely it would be these two leisurely rowers and the superior person in
the stern, with the oilskin cape?
It was not summer-time--far from it--on the day that concerns this
story, when two men in the garden of The Pigeons looked out over the
river, and one said to the other:--"Right away over yonder it lies,
halfway to Barn Elms." They were so busy over the locating of it,
whatever it was, that they did not notice the police-wherry, oarless in
the swift-running tide, as it slipped down close inshore, and was
abreast of them before they knew it. Perhaps it was the fact that it was
not summer, and that these men must have left a warm fire in the parlour
of The Pigeons, to come out into a driving north-east wind bringing with
it needle-pricks of microscopic snow, hard and cold and dry, that made
the rowers drop their oars and hold back against the stream, to look at
them.
Or was it that the man in the stern had an interest in one of them. An
abrupt exclamation that he uttered at this moment seemed, to the man
rowing stroke, who heard more than his mate, to apply to the thicker and
taller man of the two. This one, who seemed to treat his pal as an
inferior or subordinate, met his gaze, not flinching. His companion
seemed less at his ease, and to him the big man said, scarcely moving
his lips to say it:--"Steady, fool!--if you shy, we're done." On which
the other remained motionless. What they said was heard by a boy close
at hand; but for whose version, given afterwards, this story would have
been in the dark about it.
The two rowers kept the boat stationary, backing water. The steersman's
left hand played with the tiller-rope, and the boat edged slowly to the
shore. There was a grating thrown out over the water from the parapet of
the river-wall, to the side of which was attached a boat-ladder, now
slung up, for no boat's crew ever stopped here at this season. The boat
was nearing this--all but close--when the bigger man spoke, on a sudden.
But he only said it was a rough night, sergeant!
It was a rough night, or meant to be one in an hour or so. But it was
impossible for an Official to accept another person's opinion without
loss of dignity. Therefore the sergeant, always working the boat
edgewise towards the ladder, only responded, "Roughish!" qualifying the
night, and implying a wider experience of rough nights than his
hearer's. If impressions derived from appearance are to be relied on,
his experience must have been a wide one. For one thing, he himself
seemed a dozen years at least the younger of the two. He added, as the
boat touched the ladder, bringing each in full view of the other, and
making speech easy between them:--"A man don't make the voyage out to
Sydney without seeing some rough weather."
A very attentive observer might have said that he watched the man he
addressed more closely than the talk warranted, and certainly would
have seen that the latter started. He half began "Who the Hell ...?" but
flagged on the last word--just stopped short of Sheol--and the growl
that accompanied it turned into "I've never been in those parts,
master."
"Never said you had. _I_ have though." One might have thought, by his
tone, that this officer chuckled secretly over something. He was
pleased, at least. But he gave no clue to his thoughts. He seemed
disconcerted at the height above the water of the projecting grating and
slung-up ladder. An active man, unencumbered, might easily enough have
landed himself on it from the boat. Yet a boy might have made it
impossible, standing on the grating. A resolute kick on the first
hand-grip, or in the face of the climber, would have met the case, and
given him a back-fall into the boat or the water. A chilly thought that,
on a day like this. But why should such a thought cross the mind of this
man, now? It did, probably, and he gave up the idea of landing.
Instead, he felt in his pocket, and drew out a spirit-flask. "Maybe,"
said he, "your mate would oblige so far as to ask the young lady at the
bar to fill this up with Kinahan's LL? _She_ won't make any bones about
it if he says it's for me, Sergeant Ibbetson--_she'll_ know." He
inverted it to see that it was empty, and the man who had not spoken
accepted the mission at a nod from his companion, whose social headship
the speech of the policeman seemed somehow to have taken for granted.
The sergeant watched him out of sight; then, the moment he had vanished,
said:--"Now I come to think of it, Cissy Tuttle that was here has
married a postman, and the young lady that's took it over may not know
my name." His speech had not the appearance of a sudden thought, and the
less so that he began to get rid of his oilskin incumbrance almost
before he had uttered it.
The understanding of what then happened needs a clear picture of the
exact position of things at this moment. The boat, held back by the
dipped oars, but steadied now and again by the hand of the sergeant on
the grating or ladder, lay uneasily between the wind and the current.
The man on the grating showed some unwillingness to lend the hand-up
that was asked for; and took exception, it seemed, to the safety of the
landing on any terms. "Maybe you want a dip in the river, master?" said
he. "It's no concern of mine. Only I don't care to take your weight on
this greasy bit of old iron. I'm best out of the water."
The sergeant paused, looked at the grating, which certainly sloped
outwards, then at the boat and at the ladder. "Catch hold!" said he.
But the other held back. "Why can't your mate there hand me the end of
that painter, and slue her round? That's easy! Won't take above a half a
minute, and save somebody a wet shirt. Tie her nose to the ring
yonder!--just bring you up oppo_site_ to where I'm standing! Think it
out, master."
The sergeant, however, seemed to have made up his mind in spite of the
reasonableness of this suggestion. For when the man rowing bow stooped
back and reached out for the painter--the course seemed the obvious and
natural one--he was stopped by his chief, who said rather tartly:--"You
take your orders from me, Cookson!" and then held out his hand as
before, saying:--"You're a tidy weight, my lad. _I_ shan't pull you
overboard."
He did, nevertheless, and it came about thus. The two men at the oars
saw the whole thing, and were clear in their account of it after.
Ibbetson, their sergeant, did _not_ take the hand that was proffered
him, but seized its wrist. It seemed to them that he made no attempt to
lift himself up from the boat; and the nearer one, pulling stroke, would
have it that Ibbetson even hooked the seat with his foot, as though to
get a purchase on the man's wrist that he held. Anyhow, the result was
the same. The man lost his footing under the strain, and pitched sheer
forward on his assailant; for the aggressive intention of the latter may
be taken as established beyond a doubt. As he fell, he struck out with
his left hand, landing on Ibbetson's mouth, and cutting off his last
words, an order, shouted to the rowers:--"Sheer off, and row for the
bridge ... I can ..." Both of them believed he would have said:--"I can
manage him by myself."
But nothing further passed. For the boat, not built to keep an even keel
with two strong men struggling together in the stern, lurched over,
shipping water the whole length of the counter. The rowers tried to obey
orders, the more readily--so they said after--that their chief seemed
quite a match for his man. There was a worse danger ahead, a barge
moored in the path, and they had to clear, one side or the other. The
best chance was outside, and they would have succeeded but for the cable
that held her. It just caught the bow oar, and the boat swung round, the
stroke being knocked down between the seats in his effort to back water
and keep her clear. Half-crippled already and at least one-third full of
water, she was in no trim to dodge the underdraw of the sloping bows of
an empty barge, at the worst hour of ebb-tide. The boy in the garden,
next door to The Pigeons, whom curiosity had kept on the watch, saw the
swerve off-shore; the men struggling in the stern; the collision with
the moorings; and the final wreck of the boat. Then she vanished behind
the barge, and was next seen, bottom-up, by children on the bridge over
the little creek three minutes lower down the stream, whose cries roused
those in hearing and brought help. When the man came back with the
whisky-flask, his mate had vanished, and the boat with its crew. If he
guessed what had passed, it was from the running and shouting on the
bank, and the boats that were putting off in haste; and then, well over
towards Hammersmith Bridge, that they reached their quarry and were
trying to right her on the water, possibly thinking to find some former
occupant shut in beneath. He did not wait to see the upshot; but,
pocketing the flask, got away unnoticed by anyone, all eyes being intent
upon the incident on the river.
The sergeant, Ibbetson, was drowned, and the facts narrated are taken
literally, or inferred, from what came out at the inquest. The theory
that recommended itself to account for his conduct was that he had
recognised a culprit whom he had known formerly, for whose apprehension
a reward had been offered, and had, without hesitation, formed a plan of
separating him from his companion--or companions, for who could say they
were alone?--and securing him in the boat, when no escape would have
been possible, as they could have made straight for the floating station
at Westminster. It was a daring idea, and might have succeeded but for
that mooring-cable.
The body of the sergeant showed marks of the severity of the struggle in
which he had been engaged. The two upper front teeth were loosened,
probably by the blow he received at the outset, and there were
finger-nail dents on the throat as from the grasp of a strangling hand.
That his opponent should have disengaged himself from his clutch was
matter of extreme surprise to all who had experienced submersion, and
knew its meaning. Even to those who have never been under water against
their will, the phrase "the grip of a drowning man" has a terribly
convincing sound. That this opponent rose to the surface alive, and
escaped, was barely entertained as a surmise, only to be dismissed as
incredible; and this improbability became even greater when his
companion was captured alone, a month later, in the commission of a
burglary at Castelnau, which--so it was supposed--the two had been
discussing just before the police-boat appeared. The two rowers were
rescued, one, a powerful swimmer, having kept the other afloat till the
arrival of help. At the inquest neither of these men seemed as much
concerned at Ibbetson's death as might have been expected, and both
condemned afterwards that officer's treacherous grip of the hand
extended to help him. Whatever he knew to his proposed prisoner's
disadvantage, there are niceties of honour in these matters--little
chivalries all should observe.
The only evidence towards establishing the identity of the man who had
disappeared was that of the stroke-oar, Simeon Rowe, the rescuer of his
companion. This man's version of Ibbetson's exclamation was "Thorney
Davenant!--I know you, my man!" At the time of the inquest, no
identification was made with any name whose owner was being sought by
the Police, so no one caught the clue it furnished. There may have been
slowness or laxity of investigation, but a sufficient excuse may lie in
the fact that Ibbetson certainly spoke the name wrong, or that his
hearer caught it wrong. The name was not Davenant, but Daverill. He was
the son of old Mrs. Prichard, of Sapps Court, called after his father,
and inheriting all his worst qualities. If Sergeant Ibbetson spoke truly
when he said "I know you!" to him, he was certainly entitled to a
suspension of opinion by those who condemned his ruse for this man's
capture.
Still, a code of honour is always respectable, and these two policemen
may have supposed that their mate knew no worse of this convict than
that he had redistributed some property--was what the first holder of
that property would have called a thief. One prefers to think that
Ibbetson knew of some less equivocal wickedness.
* * * * *
Perhaps this man, supposed to be drowned, would not have reappeared in
this story had it not been for one of the witnesses at the inquest, the
boy who overheard the conversation between him and his mate, before the
arrival of the police-boat.
"This boy," said the Coroner's clerk, who seemed to have an impression
that this was a State Prosecution, and that he represented the Crown,
"can give evidence as to a conversation between the"--he wanted to say
"the accused"; it would have sounded so well, but he stopped himself in
time--"between the man whose body has not been found, and"--here he
would have liked to say "an accomplice"--"and another person who has
eluded the ... that is to say, whom the police have, so far, failed to
identify ..."
"That's all right," said the Coroner. "That'll do. Boy's got something
he can tell us. What's your name, my man?"
"Wot use are you a-going to make of it?" said the boy. He did not appear
to be over twelve years old, but his assurance could not have been
greater had he been twelve score. A reporter put a dot on his paper,
which meant "Laughter, in which the Coroner joined, in a parenthesis."
An old woman who had accompanied the boy, as tutelary genius, held up a
warning finger at him. "Now, you Micky," said she, "you speak civil to
the gentleman and answer his questions accordin'." She then said to the
Coroner, as one qualified to explain the position:--"It's only his
manners, sir, and the boy has not a rebellious spirit being my
grandnephew." She utilised a lax structure of speech to introduce her
relationship to the witness. She was evidently proud of being related to
one, having probably met with few opportunities of distinction hitherto.
The witness, under the pressure at once of family influence and
constituted authority, appeared to give up the point. "'Ave it your own
way!" said he. "Michael Ragstroar."
"How am I to spell it?" said the clerk, without taking his pen out of
the ink, as though it would dry in the air.
"This ain't school!" said our young friend from Sapps Court, whom you
probably remember. Michael had absconded from his home, and sought that
of his great-aunt; the only person, said contemporary opinion, that had
a hounce of influence with him. It was not clear why such a confirmed
reprobate should quail before the moral force of a small old woman in a
mysteriously clean print-dress, and tortoise-shell spectacles she would
gladly have kept on while charing, only they always come off in the
pail. But he did, and when reproached by her for his needlessly defiant
attitude, took up a more conciliatory tone. "Carn't recollect, or
p'r'aps I'd tell yer," said he.
"Never mind the spelling!" said the Coroner, who had to preside at
another inquest at Kew very shortly. "Let's get the young man's
evidence." But Michael objected to giving evidence. Whereupon the
Coroner, perceiving his mistake, said: "Well, then, suppose we let it
alone for to-day. You may go home, Micky, and find out how your name's
spelt, against next time it's wanted. Where's the other boy that heard
what the men were saying? Call him."
"There warn't any other boy within half a mile," exclaimed Michael
indignantly. "I should have seen him. Think I've got no eyes? There
warn't another blooming bloke in sight."
"Didn't the other boy see several other men in the back-garden of the
ale-house?" said the Coroner. And the Inspector of Police had the
effrontery to reply: "Oh yes, three or four!" And then both of them
looked at Michael, and waited.
Michael's indignation passed all bounds, and betrayed him into the use
of language of which his great-aunt would have deemed him incapable. She
was that shocked, she never! The expressions were not Michael's own
vocabulary at all, but corruptions that had crept into his phraseology
from associations with other boys, chance acquaintances, who had evolved
them among themselves, nourishing them from the corruption of their own
hearts. As soon as Michael--deceived by the mendacious dialogue of the
Coroner and the Inspector, and under the impression that the particulars
he was giving, whether true or false, were not evidence--had told with
some colouring about the two men in the garden and what they said, the
old lady made a powerful effort to detain the Coroner to give him
particulars of Michael's parentage and education, and to exculpate
herself from any possible charge of neglecting her grandnephew, to whom
she was a second parent. In fact, had her niece Ann never married Daniel
Rackstraw, she and her--Ann, that is--would have done much better by
Michael and his sisters. Which left a false impression on her hearers'
minds, that Michael was an illegitimate son; whereas really she was only
dealing with his existence as rooted in the nature of things, and
certain to have come about without the intrusion of a male parent in the
family.
As for the details of his testimony, surrendered unconsciously as mere
facts, not evidence, there was little in them that has not been already
told. The conversation of the two men, as given in the text, was taken
from Michael's version, and he was the only hearer. But he only saw
their backs, except that when the struggle came off he caught sight of
the ex-convict's face for a moment. He would know him again if he saw
him any day of the week. Some days, he seemed to imply, were worse for
his powers of identification than others. It was unimportant, as both
the survivors of the accident had noted the man's face carefully enough,
considering that he was to them at first nothing beyond a chance
bystander. He wasn't a bad-looking man; that was clear. But he was
possibly not in very good drawing, as they agreed that he had a
peculiarity--his two halves didn't square. This no doubt referred to the
same thing Michael described by calling him "a sideways beggar."
The Coroner's Jury had some trouble to agree upon a verdict. "Death by
Misadventure" seemed wrong somehow. How could drowning with the
finger-nails of an adversary in his throat be accounted misadventure? No
doubt Abel died by misadventure, in a sense. But no other verdict seemed
possible, except Manslaughter by the person whom Ibbetson supposed this
man to be when he laid hands on him. And how if he was mistaken?
"Manslaughter against some person unknown" sounded well. Only if the
person was unknown, why Manslaughter? If Brown is ever so much justified
in dragging Smith under water by the honest belief that he is Jones, is
Smith guilty of anything but self-defence when he does his best to get
out of Brown's clutches? Moreover, the annals of life-saving from
drowning show that the only chance of success for the rescuer often
depends on whether the drowning man can be made insensible or
overpowered. Otherwise, death for both. If this unknown man was _not_
the object of Police interest he was supposed to have been taken for, he
might only have been doing his best to save the lives of both. In that
case, had the inquest been on both, the verdict must have been one that
would ascribe Justifiable Homicide to him and Manslaughter to Ibbetson.
For surely if the police-sergeant had been the survivor, and the other
man's body had been found to be that of some inoffensive citizen,
Ibbetson would have been tried for manslaughter. In the end a verdict
was agreed upon of Death by Drowning, which everybody knew as soon as it
was certain that Life was extinct.
Somewhat later Ibbetson was supposed to have taken him for a returned
convict, whose name was variously given, but who had been advertised for
as Thornton, one of his aliases; and in consequence of this discovery
the vigilance of the Police for the apprehension of the missing man,
under this name, was increased and the reward doubled. And this, in
spite of a universal inference that he was dead, and that his body was
flavouring whitebait below bridge. This did not interfere with a belief
on the part of the crew of the patrolling boat--known to Michael--owing
to a popular chant of boys of his own age--as "two blackbeetles and one
water-rat," that his corpse would float up one day near the place of his
disappearance. But their eyes looked for it in vain; and though the
companion with whom he was discussing the burglary to be executed at
Barn Elms was caught _in flagrante delicto_ and sent to Portland Island,
nothing was heard of him or known of his whereabouts.
Michael ended his stay with his great-aunt shortly afterwards, returning
home with a budget of legends founded on his waterside experience. As he
had a reputation for audacious falsehood without foundation, it is no
matter of surprise that the whole story of the water-rat's death and the
inquest were looked upon as exaggerations too outrageous for belief even
by the most credulous. Probably his version of the incidents, owing to
its rich substratum of the marvellous yet true, was much more accurate
than was usual with him when the marvellous depended on his ingenuity to
provide it. It was, however, roundly discredited in his own circle, and
nothing in it could have evoked recognition in Sapps Court even if the
name of the convict had reached the ears that knew it. For it was not
only wrongly reported but was still further distorted by Michael for
purposes of astonishment.