Last Nocturne

by M. J. Trow

  Batchelor didn’t know John Meiklejohn, but he knew the type. A tall, upright Scotsman with a heavy beard and a lived-in face, he had a kid brother in H Division, a beat copper who must have been highly embarrassed by his big brother’s fall from grace. The ‘Turf Frauds’ the papers called it, ‘The Trial of the Detectives’ and four of them – Meiklejohn, Druscovitch, Palmer and Clarke – had fallen for the lure of quick cash from conmen and a titled lady. Scotland Yard had fallen apart and an unknown busybody called Howard Vincent had set up the new Criminal Investigation Department to shore it up. And now, Meiklejohn had lost none of his arrogance. To him, everybody, even an honest enquiry agent, was little more than the shit on his shoe.

  ‘What’s in this for me?’ the jailbird asked, his arrowed grey jacket a sorry replacement for the fancy duds he used to wear at the Yard.

  ‘A chance to do some good,’ Batchelor told him, ‘to redeem yourself.’

  Meiklejohn chuckled. ‘I’m not one of your tambourine brigade, Mr Batchelor,’ he said. ‘If General Booth himself had been on my patch back in the day, I’d have felt his Methodist collar. What else?’

  Batchelor looked from side to side. The walls were green, running with damp, and Meiklejohn’s blanket was wriggling with bugs. Behind him, the green door was locked steel, a small grille at the top kept open or closed at the whim of the turnkey. Today, it was closed. ‘I wouldn’t insult you by offering you a bribe,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be insulted, Mr Batchelor,’ he said. ‘Contrary to what Superintendent Dolly Williamson would have you believe, folding stuff is what oils the wheels at Scotland Yard. My former associates and I were the ones unlucky enough to be caught, that’s all. But we are, believe me, the tip of the iceberg.’

  ‘So’ – Batchelor rummaged for his wallet – ‘a pound note …?’

  ‘… would be missing the other four,’ Meiklejohn said.

  ‘You don’t come cheap, sir,’ Batchelor said.

  ‘No,’ Meiklejohn leaned back, his head against the trickling wall. ‘No, I don’t. Mabel Glossop’ll cost you five pounds. But not here. And not now. Give it to my sister Margaret – I’ll give you her address before you leave.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Batchelor said. ‘Mabel Glossop.’

  Meiklejohn looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘I don’t want to deprive my Maggie of five quid,’ he said, ‘but why don’t you just go to the Yard? They wouldn’t have the nerve to charge you for the information up front – after all, you might go to the papers.’

  ‘Times have changed, Mr Meiklejohn,’ Batchelor said. ‘Even in the short time you’ve been here, the Yard has closed ranks.’

  ‘You astonish me,’ Meiklejohn said flatly.

  ‘I didn’t see much point in wasting my time with monkeys when I have the organ-grinder right here at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.’

  ‘Colourfully put, Mr Batchelor,’ the ex-inspector said, ‘but true enough. What’s your interest in Mabel Glossop?’

  ‘None, specifically,’ Batchelor shrugged, ‘although even ladies of the night are God’s creatures, aren’t they?’

  ‘There are people who wouldn’t agree with you on that one,’ Meiklejohn nodded, ‘and you haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘Mabel Glossop is one of at least two,’ Batchelor told him. ‘Another girl, of the same calling, was found in the Cremorne a few nights ago. Her method of dispatch is similar, if not identical.’

  ‘Cyanide,’ Meiklejohn remembered, ‘artfully administered, I seem to remember. Tell me, was there a book with the body?’

  ‘There was,’ Batchelor said. ‘The Fruits of Philosophy. Yours?’

  ‘Moby Dick. Strange.’

  ‘Moby Dick?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Meiklejohn shrugged. ‘Never read it. The Fruits of Philosophy?’

  ‘Advice to married couples,’ Batchelor said, ‘and I haven’t read that.’

  ‘Filth,’ Meiklejohn said. ‘The sort of thing they sell under the Adelphi arches. No, the strange thing is the books at all. Tarts out on the game don’t go in for reading much, not in my experience.’

  ‘Tell me about the cyanide.’ Batchelor was making notes.

  ‘Tricky stuff, apparently.’ Meiklejohn was getting into his stride. ‘Old Doc Holliday was sure that was what killed Glossop. He could smell it on her. Bitter almonds. His post mortem found traces of cake in her stomach.’

  ‘The poison was in the cake?’

  ‘Or the marzipan thereof.’

  ‘Which is made from almonds, isn’t it?’

  ‘Precisely,’ Meiklejohn smiled. ‘That’s where the killer was so clever. I couldn’t smell a damned thing, by the way, and I was standing alongside Holliday and the girl in the mortuary.’

  ‘Could you trace any of her clients?’ Batchelor asked.

  ‘Do me a favour!’ Meiklejohn chuckled. ‘The park coppers reckon there are, on average, forty to fifty men in the Cremorne every night, paying good money to play the beast with two backs or various other parts of their anatomy at any given time. Not one of these came forward and the three we know were there were monkeys made of brass, if you catch my drift.’

  ‘Did she work alone or was she part of an establishment?’ was Batchelor’s next question.

  ‘On and off with Mrs Arbuthnot, Turks Row.’

  ‘Any joy there?’

  ‘Not a dickie bird. Old school, Mrs Arbuthnot. Rather cut her own throat than talk to a copper. You might do better. Undercover, maybe. That is, if you haven’t got a problem with the Contagious Diseases Act 1864 and the Amendments thereto. We closed the old besom down for a while, but it didn’t last. There’ll always be a demand for finishing schools in the West End.’

  ‘And you got nowhere near a suspect?’

  Meiklejohn sighed. ‘No, not really. There was an old clergyman, said he was carrying out research for a forthcoming book.’

  ‘And was he?’

  ‘I couldn’t see how having his flies unbuttoned was helping him with his enquiries. He did, however, help us with ours.’

  ‘Did you get anywhere with the Moby Dick?’

  ‘Well, I did start it, to be frank. Load of tosh, as it turns out.’

  ‘No, I mean, why Mabel Glossop should have had it with her.’

  ‘Nah. Mrs Arbuthnot had never seen it before, although she did have a copy of The Lustful Turk, if I was interested. None of the other girls knew anything about it either.’

  There was a thud and a rattle and the steel door swung open. ‘Right, Meiklejohn, back to work. Sorry, sir, but I’m going to have to end this interview.’

  The turnkey, a solid, brick-privy of a man, looked as though he meant business, so Batchelor took his leave.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Meiklejohn,’ he said. ‘It’s been.’

  ‘It certainly has,’ the prisoner agreed. ‘That’s Margaret Meiklejohn, Twenty-five, Eastern Court, Islington. You will give her my regards?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ Batchelor promised.

  ‘When I get out,’ Meiklejohn said, ‘I might turn my hand to your line of work. Bit like being a copper, really, only getting paid for it.’

  THREE

  Matthew Grand had made the short journey from the Whistler ménage to the London home of his fiancée on foot. He liked exercise anyway, but he needed to get the whiff of domesticity gone bad out of his nostrils before meeting his intended. With luck, her parents would have gone back to their country place; he didn’t dislike them, but he always had the feeling that they were watching for some social gaffe, such as using an imaginary spittoon in the corner, or drinking whisky from the bottle and wiping his nose on his sleeve. He was too well brought up to tell them that some of the behaviour he had witnessed in their houses would give his mother the vapours; it wasn’t for him to come between an old English family and their preconceived bigotry. He bounced up the steps to the front door and rapped on the knocker. The door was flung open almost immediately by a girl with a cloth round her head and a duster apro
n swathing her dress.

  ‘Hello, Eleanor,’ he said, brightly, doffing his hat. His policy was to be polite to the servants and they would always know when to turn a blind eye when he and Caroline wanted some privacy. It was a policy which had not let him down yet.

  ‘Mr Grand,’ the maid said, stepping aside. ‘I’m afraid the master and mistress have gone back to the country.’ She gave him a broad wink.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ he pulled a clown’s sad face. ‘But Lady Caroline is here, I assume?’

  ‘She’s still in her boudoir,’ the maid said, shutting the door. ‘I would go up and tell her you’re here, but … I am rather busy.’ Another wink.

  ‘What say I go up for you?’ Grand said, as if it was a new and original idea.

  ‘That would be helpful, sir,’ the girl said, smothering a giggle. ‘Shall I tell Cook to put the kettle on for some tea?’

  Grand consulted his pocket watch. ‘Give me half an hour?’ he suggested and bounded up the stairs.

  Lady Caroline Wentworth was at her toilette when he stuck his head around her bedroom door and she met his eyes in the mirror. She didn’t flinch or bridle that her fiancé had invaded her boudoir in this unseemly manner. In fact, her lazy smile said something that she didn’t have the words for. ‘Matthew,’ she murmured. ‘I’m afraid Mama and Papa are not At Home.’

  He went up behind her and laid his hands lightly on her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry to have missed them.’ He bent down and nibbled her ear. ‘Are they expected back shortly?’

  ‘Not for about six weeks,’ she said, reaching up and caressing his cheek.

  He straightened up. ‘Six weeks is a feat I fear may be beyond me,’ he said, budging her along the stool in front of the mirror and perching on the edge. ‘Especially as I am in fact here to ask a favour rather than to …’

  She pouted. ‘Rather than to? Matthew, you disappoint me.’

  ‘When we have run the little errand I have in mind, I would be at your disposal, of course,’ he told her.

  ‘In that case,’ she flapped at him with her powder puff, ‘off you go and annoy Eleanor and Cook. I need to get dressed.’

  ‘I’ll help,’ he said, smiling brightly.

  ‘Go.’ She smiled as she said it and stood up, her silk nightgown skimming her body seductively. ‘A lady must keep some secrets.’

  He pulled down a shoulder strap. ‘You have secrets under there?’ he asked, doubtfully.

  ‘A few, dear. A few,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Give me ten minutes. Oh, Matthew?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘The Grosvenor Gallery.’

  She looked amazed, one elegant eyebrow lifted in a perfect arc. ‘Again? Don’t tell me that you have decided you like art after all, Mr Grand?’

  ‘Indeed I have not, Lady Caroline,’ he assured her with a bow. ‘It’s work.’

  ‘Ooh!’ She clapped her hands. ‘You’re taking me sleuthing with you? Shall I wear a disguise?’ She lifted a swathe of silk and held it over the lower half of her face, her eyes dancing.

  He glanced down at what the lifted nightgown had revealed. ‘If you like,’ he said, with a straight face. ‘But perhaps not that one. Not at the Grosvenor, in any event.’

  She dropped the nightgown hem and pointed at the door. ‘Out. Ten minutes.’

  Eleanor was still polishing in the hall. Though not quite in Maisie’s league, she did find Matthew Grand rather appealing, if a touch old for her. She had eyes on the grocer’s boy, a lad of keen enthusiasm for both herself and business. She was convinced he would go far and, as she polished, she dreamed of a little shop somewhere affluent, with a queue down the street and counters stretching back as far as the eye could see. But for now, she turned a beaming smile on Grand.

  ‘Are you ready for your tea, now, sir?’ she asked. If she thought he hadn’t been up there long, she kept the thought to herself.

  ‘Don’t worry about that now, Eleanor,’ he said. ‘Lady Caroline said she would be ten minutes.’

  This time, Eleanor’s smile was the sort one gave to a child, or an idiot. ‘Ten minutes?’ she said. ‘I think perhaps Cook ought to put the kettle on. You’ll have plenty of time for a cuppa.’ Eleanor had been helping Lady Caroline get dressed for a year or more now and she knew the woman could no more dress in ten minutes than fly.

  Grand cast his mind back to other occasions where he had waited for Lady Caroline and nodded.

  ‘I’ll wait in the drawing room, shall I?’ he said, pushing open a door.

  ‘A good idea, sir,’ Eleanor agreed. ‘I’ll bring the tea when it’s ready.’

  After a while, Matthew Grand slept.

  An elegant sign swung in the May sunshine outside the columns of 138, Turks Row. The house looked just like all the others in the street, with a basement, steps leading up to the glossy front door and two storeys reaching up to an attic above them. The sign was painted with two entwined capital As and all the windows were shuttered.

  A knife grinder was trudging away from the premises, muttering darkly. He looked for all the world as if he had been rebuffed by the downstairs maid. As it turned out, the downstairs maid was rather pretty, as she opened the door to James Batchelor’s ringing of the doorbell.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he tipped his hat to her. ‘Is Mrs Arbuthnot at home?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ The voice, out of such pretty lips, sounded not unlike something Batchelor had occasionally heard at Billingsgate Fish Market.

  A large, matronly woman batted the girl aside. ‘Thank you, Dorcas,’ she purred. ‘Aunt Alice will handle this.’ The girl with the unlikely name scowled at her and flounced away. ‘She’s new.’ Aunt Alice smiled at Batchelor. ‘How may I help you, sir?’

  ‘I was hoping to talk to Mrs Arbuthnot,’ Batchelor said.

  ‘Every man lives in hope, I hope,’ she beamed. ‘I am Alice Arbuthnot. And you are …?’

  Nearly out my depth, thought Batchelor. He had visited bordellos before, always in the line of enquiry, of course, and each time he never knew what to expect: fluttering fingers over his folderols or a stiletto slightly higher up. He fished out his card.

  Alice Arbuthnot raised an eyebrow. ‘“Enquiry agent”,’ she read aloud, as most people did. ‘And which of these enquiry agents are you, Mr Grand or Mr Batchelor?’

  ‘James Batchelor, madam.’ He took off his hat. Grovelling, he had found, was a sure way of getting across a threshold. He had, after all, business to discuss that he was fairly sure Alice Arbuthnot would not want bellowed all the way down Turks Row.

  ‘Come in, Mr Batchelor,’ she smiled. ‘To your right,’ she ushered him in. ‘The parlour.’

  Batchelor was glad that Mrs Arbuthnot had explained the room’s function because it looked to him like a tart’s boudoir. The shutters cut out the daylight and the oil lamps were fringed and shaded. Aspidistrae gleamed in every corner and there were rather risqué paintings on every wall.

  ‘I see you’re admiring my art,’ she said, looking proudly at the oils. ‘Gifts from admirers.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The Rape of the Sabine Women,’ she pointed at a huge canvas over the fireplace. ‘Not so much rape as everyone having a jolly good time, wouldn’t you agree?’

  Judging by the rapturous glee on the Sabine women’s faces, Batchelor would. The Romans seemed to be enjoying themselves, too.

  ‘When Antony met Cleopatra,’ she pointed to another one.

  ‘Ah.’ Batchelor knew a thing or two about classical history, though probably not as much as Gan Martin. ‘I thought she turned up in a barge,’ he said. ‘At Ephesus, wasn’t it? Everybody else dashed off to gawp at the queen in the harbour, leaving Antony all by himself in the marketplace. They seem to be a little … adjacent … for that.’

  The famous ancient lovers were naked, rolling on a gilded bed.

  ‘This was a few minutes later,’ Mrs Arbuthnot explained, ‘allowing for artistic licence. But you hav
en’t come to admire my gallery, Mr Batchelor. If you know of Ephesus, you will know that there was an establishment rather like mine behind the library. The oldest profession. Nothing like a good book, eh? Would you take tea?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She rang a little silver bell on the table beside her and ushered Batchelor to a chair. It was wider than most, covered in plush crimson velvet, and he sank into it. From nowhere, a maid appeared, not the foghorn-mouthed Dorcas but an equally lovely girl with dark hair and eyes. She was wearing an apron and a dolly cap and she was carrying a cake stand. Call Batchelor a suspicious git, but he found himself checking the stand for marzipan goodies; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to smell much, especially as the potpourri in the parlour was filling his nostrils as Mrs Arbuthnot spoke.

  ‘Thank you, Tilly,’ she trilled. The maid bobbed and left, causing Batchelor to jump out of his skin. From the front, the girl looked as demure as any other West London maid. From the back, she was completely naked, except for the apron tie around her waist. Mrs Arbuthnot said nothing until the girl had pulled the door shut behind her.

  ‘Langue du chat, Mr Batchelor?’ she purred. ‘Some of our guests love those.’

  Gingerly, the enquiry agent took one and, before it reached his lips, the girl was back.

  ‘Ah, Tilly,’ Mrs Arbuthnot said. ‘Speed of light, eh?’ She was carrying a silver teapot and two cups on a tray. ‘Tea, Mr Batchelor?’

  ‘Thank you.’ He waited until the girl had poured and added the milk and desperately tried not to let his eyes wander as she left the room again.

  ‘Do you like that?’ Mrs Arbuthnot asked.

  ‘Delicious,’ he mumbled through the crumbs.

  ‘Not the cake, Mr Batchelor,’ she tutted patronizingly, ‘the girl, Tilly. Is she to your taste? Or perhaps Priscilla? She is of the Chinese persuasion. Skin like a peach. I could ring for her.’