Murder at the Manchester Museum

by Jim Eldridge

  Bottomley looked back at Bulstrode and swallowed nervously again. ‘I’ll need something in writing,’ he said. ‘Because there’ll be questions asked.’

  Bulstrode nodded. ‘I’ll be back with a letter of authority on official headed notepaper,’ he said. ‘And I’ll have a lot of men at my back. So that letter had better work.’

  ‘There’s no need for you to bring any men back with you,’ said Bottomley urgently.

  ‘They’ll be my insurance,’ said Bulstrode. ‘Just in case you change your mind.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Bottomley assured him hastily.

  ‘One more thing,’ said Bulstrode. ‘Sam Adams.’

  ‘He’s not in the military,’ said Bottomley.

  ‘He used to be,’ said Bulstrode.

  ‘But now he’s a police constable,’ said Bottomley.

  ‘And in my book you should be ashamed of yourself for locking up one of your own,’ said Bulstrode curtly. ‘He ought to be let go on bail at least.’

  ‘Bail hasn’t been fixed,’ said Bottomley.

  ‘Then fix it,’ snapped Bulstrode. ‘The regiment will pay. I’ll collect him at the same time I collect my men.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Daniel waited for some hours before heading for Newton Street. He wanted to give Grimley time to question the men who’d been arrested. He guessed the army would try and interfere with proceedings, so the arrest of the police constable, Sam Adams, had been a bonus.

  No one was at the police station reception desk when he arrived, so he walked along the corridor to Grimley’s office and rapped on the door.

  ‘Come!’ barked the inspector.

  Daniel walked in and saw Grimley scowl when he saw who his visitor was.

  ‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ said Daniel.

  Grimley groaned. ‘Not you again!’

  ‘I thought I’d come and see what information you got out of the men who were arrested after attacking me in Hulme.’

  ‘We didn’t get any information,’ said Grimley.

  Daniel stared at him. ‘Did you see them?’ he asked. ‘Question them? Ask them who’d put them up to it?’

  ‘No,’ said Grimley. ‘I had a report to say these men had been arrested on the say-so of one Daniel Wilson, a former detective inspector at Scotland Yard.’ And here he glared at Daniel. ‘And a short while later I had a second note to tell me the men had been released.’

  ‘Who by?’ exploded Daniel. ‘On whose orders? Yours?’

  Grimley shook his head. ‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said. ‘The army stepped in. A letter of authority from the barracks saying the soldiers are the responsibility of the military and the army will be conducting their own investigation.’

  ‘This letter signed by RSM Bulstrode, I assume.’

  ‘I’ve no idea who it was signed by,’ said Grimley. ‘Anyway, the fact remains the army have got first call on any action against them.’

  ‘What about the other man? Police Constable Sam Adams. He’s not under the jurisdiction of the army.’

  ‘He was bailed,’ said Grimley. ‘He was released while his case is being looked into.’

  ‘Looked into!’ repeated Daniel incredulously. ‘And why was he bailed? Bail has to be set by a magistrate …’

  ‘I don’t know the ins and outs of it,’ snapped Grimley. ‘All I know is what I got in the reports from Hulme, and as far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it.’

  ‘But the case … the murder of the two women …’ said Daniel, almost beside himself with anger.

  ‘The case has been solved,’ continued Grimley, interrupting Daniel. ‘Which means you and that so-called woman detective friend of yours can leave Manchester. And good riddance.’

  ‘So-called …!’ exploded Daniel angrily.

  ‘We know who killed them. A young thug called Davis Peach. He’s part of a local gang called the Scuttlers. They carry all sorts of weapons, including knives. Well, yesterday this Davis Peach stabbed a man to death in exactly the same way the first woman was killed: in the back, right through the heart and out the front.’

  ‘Who was the man who died?’

  ‘Peter Perks, a young thug from a rival gang. They were always at war with one another.’

  ‘But why would he want to kill Kathleen Donlan and Eileen O’Donnell?’

  ‘We’ll find that out when we catch him. Right now, he’s gone on the run. But the fact remains one of the killings was exactly the same. Knife in the back and right through the body.’

  ‘This is nonsense!’ raged Daniel.

  ‘No, this is police work! Proper police work!’ snarled Grimley.

  The sound of a loud disturbance outside in the corridor, shouts of alarm and people banging into walls, made both men swing round. The next second the door burst open and the figure of Bickerstaff crashed into the room. In his hand was a pistol, which he aimed at Grimley, then at Daniel, then back to Grimley. He kicked the door shut with his heel and turned the key in the lock.

  Outside, the shouting continued, cries of ‘He’s got a gun!’ and ‘He’s locked it!’ as someone tried to open the door.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ demanded Grimley angrily, stepping towards Bickerstaff. He stopped as the former reporter jerked the barrel of the gun at him.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ ordered Bickerstaff.

  ‘This isn’t the way, William …’ urged Daniel quietly.

  ‘Oh, it’s William now, is it?’ snarled Bickerstaff. ‘Now you’ve had me sacked.’

  ‘I never had you sacked,’ said Daniel.

  ‘No? Your name was in the letter that Steggles wrote to the editor, complaining about me.’

  ‘What you did was wrong,’ said Daniel. ‘It was unfair and dishonest, but shooting me …’

  ‘Shoot you?’ said Bickerstaff and gave a snort of disbelief. ‘I’m not here to shoot you. I’m here to shoot him.’

  ‘Me?’ said Grimley, bewildered. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of everything you stand for,’ said Bickerstaff. ‘The whole corrupt way you let the system destroy ordinary people.’

  ‘Corrupt?’ snapped Grimley angrily. ‘I’ve never taken a penny …!’

  ‘No?’ sneered Bickerstaff.

  ‘No!’ barked Grimley. ‘You may not like what we do, but someone has to stop this city turning into an anarchic battleground, where it’s not safe for respectable people to walk the street.’

  ‘You’re in the pocket of the mill owners and all those others who grow fat on other people’s misery!’ said Bickerstaff.

  ‘Then why not shoot them?’ ventured Daniel.

  ‘Because most ordinary people in the streets don’t know who they are, but they know who the police are, and who they work for.’

  ‘And you’re prepared to hang for that?’ asked Daniel, who now had both hands on the back of a wooden chair as he leant forward to emphasise his words. ‘Because you won’t get out of here. As soon as that gun goes off, that door will be broken down.’

  ‘And I’ll stand trial!’ Bickerstaff smirked. ‘And it will be glorious! I’ll use it to make sure that everyone knows what goes on. People being worked to death in the mills, including children, for a pittance. The way the police and the army protect the moneyed people. It’ll all come out, and there’ll be changes!’

  ‘You don’t have to kill someone to get the changes,’ said Daniel quietly.

  ‘Yes, we do! People have tried public meetings and petitions, appeals to parliament, but they’re as bad.’ He levelled the pistol at Grimley. ‘This will be the bullet that changes the world!’

  Suddenly, in one swift movement, Daniel swung the chair up and hurled it at Bickerstaff, just as the gun went off. The bullet tore into the top of the wall. Before Bickerstaff could recover and bring the gun to bear on Grimley again, Daniel was on him, crashing him back against the door, one hand gripping the wrist of the arm that held the gun, the other digging into Bickerstaff’s throat. Daniel brought his knee up into Bickerstaff’
s groin, and then smashed his forehead hard in a headbutt to the man’s face.

  Daniel snatched the pistol from Bickerstaff’s fingers as the former reporter fell to the floor, clutching himself, his eyes blinded by tears of pain.

  Daniel stepped back and unloaded the bullets from the gun and put them, along with the empty pistol, on the inspector’s desk.

  Roughly, Grimley hauled Bickerstaff’s body away from the door and turned the key. The corridor was filled with uniformed police officers with anxious looks on their faces.

  ‘Take him to the cells,’ snapped Grimley, pointing at the fallen Bickerstaff. ‘And take away his tie and shoelaces. I don’t want him pulling any suicide stunt.’

  As Bickerstaff was bundled out of the office, Grimley shut the door, then turned to Daniel, his face showing a mixture of conflicting emotions: relief, but also anger and guilt.

  ‘I was wrong about you. I thought you were some southern softie,’ he muttered.

  ‘A failed police detective,’ Daniel reminded him.

  Grimley looked uncomfortable. ‘Yes. I said I was wrong.’ He fell silent, then said, ‘Maybe he wasn’t really going to shoot. It was all just bluff to get his day in court, so he could make his speeches.’

  ‘He was going to shoot,’ said Daniel. ‘I recognised the signs. The eyes. The grip on the gun.’

  ‘You’ve seen it before?’

  Daniel nodded.

  ‘Have you ever been shot?’ asked Grimley.

  Again, Daniel nodded. ‘And stabbed. And beaten badly.’ He smiled. ‘It’s what happens to we coppers in the soft south.’

  ‘We don’t usually get guns up here,’ said Grimley. ‘Knives. Coshes. Chains. Where did he get it?’

  ‘From someone in the army, I expect. It wouldn’t surprise me to find it’s a service revolver.’

  ‘Why would a soldier let him have a gun?’

  Daniel shrugged. ‘For money; that’s the usual reason. Someone in the quartermaster’s stores who’s responsible for disposing of faulty weapons. Only they may not all be faulty.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ said Grimley.

  ‘We have barracks and arsenals in London as well,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Like I said, we don’t get many guns on the streets up here,’ muttered Grimley. He gave Daniel a challenging look. ‘It’s true what I said to Bickerstaff. I’ve never taken a penny off anyone. I keep the law, regardless of who it is.’

  ‘Except for those soldiers and constable who attacked me,’ said Daniel accusingly.

  Grimley hesitated, then he mumbled awkwardly, ‘The soldiers were the way I said; the military stepped in. They have first call on them.’

  ‘And the constable?’

  Grimley lowered his head. ‘All right, I’m guessing it was his station sergeant looking after him.’

  ‘Or someone else. All right, we can’t question the soldiers, but I need to know who put Constable Adams up to it, because it’s quite likely that whoever was behind it was behind the killing of the two women.’ As Grimley was about to reply, Daniel interrupted, ‘And don’t tell me again this knife-wielding thug, this Scuttler, did it. That’s hogwash.’

  Grimley looked shamefaced. ‘I’ll have a word with him,’ he muttered. ‘With Constable Adams.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Daniel.

  As he made for the door, Grimley suddenly called out, ‘Wait!’

  Something in Grimley’s voice, an awkwardness, struck Daniel as he turned and looked inquisitively at the inspector.

  ‘You were right about why Terry Brady was killed,’ muttered Grimley, unable to make eye contact with Daniel.

  ‘Oh?’ said Daniel.

  ‘My men picked up this blacksmith in Hulme, name of Pigeon. Lying in the street, drunk as a lord and crying his eyes out. “I did it!” he said. They asked him what it was he’d done, and he told them he’d killed Terry Brady. Or, to be exact, he’d killed “that murdering bastard Terry Brady”. It seems this blacksmith had been in love with Eve Preston for years, but never told her. The big, strong, silent, bashful type. When he learnt that she’d been stabbed he went mad. He found out it was Brady who’d done it because Brady boasted about sticking her for trying to drop him into trouble with the law over the dead girl. So the blacksmith went after Brady with an axe.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘It was exactly as you said. Eve Preston came to you with that tale about him killing the Irish girl because he’d dumped her for someone else. Then the stupid woman went and told him what she’d done. She was proud of it, she told him, and she hoped he’d hang for being wicked and cruel to her.

  ‘Next thing Brady loses his temper and pulls out his knife. Whether he meant to kill her or not, we’ll never know, but he stabbed her, just the once, but it was in her heart. So now he starts bragging about it, how he’d shut her up, and he’d do the same to anyone else who tried to mess with him.’

  ‘And the blacksmith hears about it, and kills Brady,’ reasoned Daniel.

  ‘Exactly as you said,’ said Grimley. ‘My men found his axe covered with blood in his smithy.’ He looked quizzically at Daniel. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I worked it out,’ said Daniel. ‘That’s what Abberline taught me. Look at what you’ve got and try and make it make sense.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Abigail stared at Daniel, horrified, as he related what had happened at the police station.

  ‘He was going to kill Inspector Grimley!’ said Abigail, horrified.

  ‘He was,’ confirmed Daniel.

  They were back in their room at the Mayflower, and this latest news from Daniel had left Abigail stunned.

  ‘I think we need to tell the inspector what we know about Bickerstaff with relation to Kathleen,’ said Daniel.

  ‘You think it was Bickerstaff who killed her?’ asked Abigail, surprised. ‘You said before …’

  ‘I know,’ said Daniel, ‘and I still feel that the murder is in some way connected with the army, through RSM Bulstrode, and that Bickerstaff had nothing to do with it. But what happened today with Bickerstaff trying to kill Grimley has changed things between us. The inspector has become more … amenable to us.’

  ‘Only because you saved his life.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what the reason is, the fact is that we have the chance to get the local police on our side, and we’re going to need that cooperation if we’re going to get to the bottom of this. So far we’ve hit obstacle after obstacle, and one of the biggest has been Inspector Grimley.’

  ‘The biggest obstacle has been this RSM Bulstrode,’ pointed out Abigail.

  ‘Which is why we need Grimley. He has the law on his side, and we’re going to need that if we’re going to break down the resistance from Bulstrode and whoever he’s protecting.’

  ‘You’re sure he’s protecting someone?’

  ‘I am, and I’m sure it’s linked to what happened at Peterloo, which means it’s someone who was involved in the killings there.’

  ‘Eighty years ago!’

  ‘It’s connected,’ insisted Daniel. ‘We need to find out who the senior officers are at the barracks, and if any of them have links back to Peterloo. The army won’t give us that information, but Grimley can get it. And while the inspector’s feeling friendly towards me for saving his life, I suggest we call on him and tell him about William Bickerstaff and Kathleen.’

  ‘There’s no connection between them except that someone impersonating him called looking for Kathleen,’ said Abigail.

  ‘But there may be something there, although we don’t know what yet,’ insisted Daniel. ‘Who was the man who pretended to be Bickerstaff? And why?’

  Grimley sat behind his desk, stony-faced, as Abigail related what she’d been told about Bickerstaff and Kathleen. When she finished, Grimley shot a tight-lipped glare towards Daniel, who just nodded in confirmation.

  ‘Let me make sure I’ve got this right,’ he said. ‘Some bloke pretending to be Bickerstaff followed Kathleen Donlan back to whe
re she was lodging. On the day she’s murdered, Bickerstaff was in the reading room at the museum before she was stabbed.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Abigail.

  ‘Like I said to you before, he’s got a reputation for stalking women from poor backgrounds and getting obsessed with them. And we also now know he’s got a tendency to violence.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Abigail again.

  Grimley scowled hard, anger burning from his eyes as he hissed between clenched teeth. ‘And you knew all this and you never came to me with it before! It was the same with this Eve Preston business! Hiding things that were relevant to the case!’

  ‘You weren’t very receptive to us before, Inspector,’ said Daniel.

  ‘In fact, you were dismissive of anything we came to you with,’ added Abigail, her tone curt.

  ‘But this was still vital information!’ shouted the inspector. He looked accusingly at Daniel, then demanded, ‘And despite all this, you still don’t think that Bickerstaff was the one who killed her?’

  ‘No,’ said Daniel. ‘I think he’s a very disturbed and confused man with a lot of anger and potential violence inside him, but in this case, I don’t think he did it. I still believe it’s to do with the army, and Miss Fenton believes the crime may have its roots in Ireland. Which is why we intend to look into the Irish angle next.’ Quickly, he added, ‘And we promise to keep you fully informed with anything we find.’