The Elf Service, Episode 15

In which Maddie Sharp and the Newsies join the hunt for Irving Jefferson

All over the city children post letters to Santa Claus and they go undelivered and unanswered. Until Irving Jefferson founds the Elf Service, that is. The Elf Service is the story of charity, journalism and mayhem, the extraordinary story of an extraordinary young man, his extraordinary plan to make Christmas happen for the children of his city and all the extraordinary ways in which that plan goes extraordinarily wrong.

Maddie Sharp had come to the Elf Service headquarters in The Metropolitan to look for Miss Saltadora, but it was when she saw Tin Lizzie there that she realised why it had really been a good idea to go.

She had hoping that Miss Saltadora, being the burbling fount of knowledge that she was, would be able to bring her up to date with all the charity events in the city that evening, which she had, even if Maddie had had to pan the ever-flowing stream of her conversation for the nuggets she wanted.

The newsies, however, presented an even more promising possibility.

“You three find people, right?” said Maddie, “The letter writers?”

“Not just the writers,” said Lizzie, “Anybody. We could find you.”

“I’m right here, talking to you,” said Maddie.

“But if you weren’t,” said Lizzie, “We could find you anywhere. Even down in the docks.”

“Up in the New Town,” said Captain Blood.

“Post Office,” said Wilson.

“Been following me all day, have you?” said Maddie, “What for? It wasn’t even much fun for me, can’t have been any for you.”

“Not following, we don’t have to follow,” said Lizzie, “There are newsies all over this city. What they know, I know. I have eyes and ears all over.”

“That would explain the way you walk,” said Maddie. “So, if I needed some people found, you could find them?”

“Try us,” said Lizzie.

“Alright then,” said Maddie, “I will.”

She squinted at the list she had taken down from Miss Saltadora’s appointment book.

“I’ll start here at the Metropolitan,” she said, “That’s the Movement for Municipal Modernisation this afternoon. You three, I want the Reverend Jeffrey Earwig of the Society for the Support of Distressed Gentlewomen, General Irwin Jerving of The Friends of Truncated Military Men and Doctor Ira Van Jaafs of the Exhausted Horse Hospital.”

Captain Blood was writing the names on his cuff with a stub of pencil.

“How’d you spell Jaafs?” he said.

“Personally,” said Maddie, “I don’t. You do it however you like, just find them.”

“What’s in it for us?” said Lizzie.

“Fortune and glory, kid,” said Maddie.

“Fortune’ll do,” said Lizzie, and they were gone.

The Movement for Municipal Modernisation was meeting in the library of the Metropolitan hotel for an illustrated lecture on butresses to be introduced by Mr Ivor Jenkins, the founder and, she assumed, prime mover of the movement.

There were no hats in evidence in this meeting. The ladies in attendance were far too modern for such frivolities and so level headed that they probably couldn’t have kept a hat on anyway. The room was hushed and Mr Jenkins was speaking as Maddie sidled in.

Jenkins was a tall, skinny man with a large straight beard and hair so aggressively slicked down that it made his head almost entirely square. He stood before a projector screen at one end of the room, next to a severe elderly gentlemen witha sheaf of papers tucked under his arm.

“To be modern,” Jenkins was saying, “Is not merely to advance beyond the past, it is to encroach upon the future, to haul it back into the present, to banish the has been from the now and make the to be, be.”

He caught sight of Maddie at the back and, as he did so, paused. Maddie sucked in breath involuntarily. Every head in the room turned to look at her.

“Without further ado,” said Jenkins, suddenly, “Doctor Caligari! Lights!”

A young lady leapt up and stabbed at a light switch and the room was plunged into darkness.

“Oh,” said an elderly voice, “The projector.”

A sudden sliver of light appeared at the far end of the room. A door opened, was momentarily obscured by a passing figure and then was closed again.

Maddie groped behind her for the knob of the door she had come in through and opened it just as someone started up the projector and the elderly voice said:

“Ah, good. Buttresses.”

Maddie ran out through the lounge and into the lobby. No sign of Jenkins. No, wait. Down there are the far end of the arcade that led through the length of the hotel, a thin figure was running.

By the time Maddie arrived out on the pavement he was gone. There was a newsie there, though, hawking late editions.

“Hey, you see a skinny guy with a big beard?” said Maddie.

“Nope,” said the kid, “Not even a big guy with a skinny beard.”

“Some eyes and ears you turned out to be.”

“Tin Lizzie says you got to go to the Oddfellow’s Hall.”

“Apparently also all her mouths,” said Maddie, “Right then.”

The talk in the function room at the Oddfellow’s Hall was on flower arranging, as a fund raiser for the Truncated Military Men. Lizzie found Maddie at the front desk as she was arguing about what was a minimum donation to give to be allowed in.

“He just got here,” said Lizzie, “The General. Come on, there’s a way in round the back.”

There were considerably more hats in attendance here, all grouped around tables where example arrangements were being put together. Hats and flowers all nodding together and in between them slid the tall, skinny figure of General Jerving, his bushy grey moustache curled up at the ends to meet the pulled down peak of his cap.

He seemed perfectly calm and serene, stopping and talking at each table as he passed, but he snapped round adroitly at the sound of the side door and caught sight of Maddie across the tops of the hats as she and Lizzie came in.

Maddie grabbed Lizzie and lifted her up to see.

“Quick!” she said, “Who does that look like?”

The General suddenly bent in a stiff formal bow to the ladies and then turned and legged it, his long legs scissoring as he raced between the groups, flowers bending to his passing, and out of the main doors.

“Oh my word,” said Lizzie and, “Put me down. Get after him.”

Maddie did but it didn’t help. The massed hats, all a twitter at the General’s sudden departure milled and recoiled and by the time Maddie and Lizzie got back to the front doors the street was empty.

“What now?” said Lizzie.

“Any word from the Captain?” said Maddie.

“He went to Gallery Dez Boss Arts,” said Lizzie.

“Galerie Des Beaux Arts,” said Maddie, “Although, knowing him, you’re probably right.”

The Society for the Support of Distressed Gentlewomen was apparently having a little art show and auction to raise funds. Perhaps the pictures had been done by the gentlewomen themselves, they were certainly distressing enough.

The Galerie des Beaux Arts had once been the drawing and sitting room of a New Town house and was certainly not a large enough space into which to fit all the ladies and all their hats. Particularly since their numbers were now supplemented by a large number of very nervous gallery staff who kept having to sweep them away from delicate sculptures and and re-straighten pictures knocked skewhiff by a brim.

Coming up the stairs to the front door, Maddie could just see, through the chattering throng, a tall, skinny man in a broad brimmed black hat under which she could just about make out a pair of thick black glasses and a dog collar.

“Excuse me,” she edged her way in, “No, thank you, I don’t want to buy that picture, it’s ghastly. Did the Reverend…? No thank you, that’s also ghastly. Did the Reverend…? No, it’s all ghastly, all the pictures are ghastly. Is that the Reverend Earwig there? Did he come through? Earwig?”

Someone tugged at her sleeve. It was Tin Lizzie worming her way back through the crowd.

“He’s gone out the back,” she said, “Follow me.”

She pulled Maddie through the crowd, jostling pediments and upsetting hats until with a “No, all still ghastly. In fact that one’s the worst,” they popped out into the dark alley that ran behind the gallery.

There was a fresh - in the sense of new, rather than clean - Newsie waiting for them.

“Captain’s after him - he’s gone north.”

“Come on,” said Lizzie and set off up the alley.

“Captain said it was…” said the boy, not wanting to finish the sentence.

“I’m very much afraid so,” said Maddie, “Sorry. And thank you.”

Maddie caught up with Lizzie at the corner, where another Newsie was waiting.

“Down Young Street,” she yelled at them as they passed.

Lizzie could move surprisingly quickly in a crowd. You might have thought her smaller legs would put her at a disadvantage against Maddie, but they just made her faster. She seemed to have a preternatural sense of the movement of pedestrians, jinking and swerving between them, as they passed unnoticing, slipping through the smallest gaps, sliding through the wake of wandering groups.

“Castle Street,” said another newsie as they passed and then, “North,” and “East.”

Maddie began to see the city as Lizzie must see it. A place whose working were both mysterious and plain. She wondered if the little girl had any idea what all this lumbering adults were at, even as they blundered unseeing through this intricate world of short cuts and rat runs that spidered all around them.

Finally Lizzie ducked down a narrow, greasy alley and skidded to a stop at the end, where Captain Blood was squatting at the base of some railings.

“Reverend went round there and down into the area,” he said, indicating an gap in the railings a couple of doors down, “Are you sure about this Lizzie?”

“I want to know,” said Lizzie.

“That’s Harry’s Bar,” said Maddie, “They won’t let you in.”

She was right. Wilson was sitting on the steps that led down towards the door to the bar. The doorman of the bar was watching him carefully. He lifted a quizzical eye at Maddie, who he knew of old.

“Private function,” he said, “Closed for an hour, Miss Sharp.”

“That’s alright, Davey,” said Maddie, “I’m not here on business, this is work. The Reverend come down here?” she said to Wilson.

“Reverend?” said Wilson.

“You know, little white collar?” said Captain Blood, “Big black hat?”

“No,” said Wilson, “Just the doctor.”

“Doctor?”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Behind him was a little yellow window through which they could just make out, wavily, the inside of the bar. A little crowd had gathered, but they could see, over their heads, at the far end of the room, a tall, skinny man in pince-nez and white hair, with a stethoscope round his neck.

“Oh yes,” said Maddie, “That’s a Doctor. And who do you think this doctor looks like, children?”

“Don’t you children me,” said Lizzie, not wanting to answer, “What are we going to do now?”

“Well, I,” said Maddie, “Am going to show you how its done. You lot might be able to find anyone anywhere, but I can find someone before they’re even there. Follow me.”

An hour later, the door to the Elf Service headquarters opened and the light came on. The place was empty and whoever it was didn’t switch all the lights on, just the bulb on the stair and then the lights behind what had once been the bar, so that he wasn’t until he reached the head of the table, pulled out a seat and fell heavily into it, that it became evident that it was the Doctor from Harry’s Bar.

“You look like you need a drink, Doctor,” said Maddie, stepping out of the shadows.

The Doctor leapt up, knocking his chair over and, as he did so, his hair bounced, producing a great white cloud of talc that hung about him, settling back down on his shoulders like snow.

“It is Doctor Ira Van Jaafs, isn’t it?” said Maddie, “Or is it Reverend Jeffrey Earwig? Professor Jasper Ewing? General Irwin Jerving? Captain Jeavons Irker? Reverend Iverson Jonke? Mr Ivor Jenkins? Or shall we just settle for Mr Irving Jefferson?”

The man had been about the speak, to protest, but then he stopped. His shoulders sagged. He held up his hands in defeat.

“You rotter!” Tin Lizzie catapulted out of the darkness and knocked Jefferson to the floor, the pair of them disappearing in a cloud of talcum powder.