by Howard Engel
Upon arriving at Lime Street, we made our way on foot to the North-Western Hotel, where Lambert had passed his last night of freedom in Britain. The plain Englishness of English faces startled me more here in Liverpool than in London. They were whey-coloured, joyless, drab-eyed, even those that were cleaner than those I encountered daily in the Infirmary waiting-room at home. The walk from the station thoroughly illustrated the comparative meanness of the buildings running down to the busy harbour. In Edinburgh we lived among the ruins of great buildings; here people lived as squalidly, but without the stamp of vanished glory.
Bell procured a double room and we had our supper in a high-ceilinged, spacious restaurant attached to the hotel, where we both fell to with a will after our long journey.
After a meal that satisfied our hunger but left the palate unelevated, we strolled together down to the docks with their high wooden gates, iron cranes, steel yards and masts for loading goods. We were about to turn around, when we were accosted by a caped policeman who enquired what we were doing wandering near Her Majesty’s Docks at that hour. I explained that we were visitors from Scotland taking the air before returning to our hotel.
“And which hotel might that be, sir?” asked the policeman. When I told him, he pulled his cape more securely around him and repeated the name.
“The North-Western! Ha! That’s where that young villain from Edinburgh stayed on his escape to America, the one that’s for the chop in a few weeks. We’ll send old Marwood north to do the job on him. No extra charge.”
“Constable, you seem to know a good deal of the affair. I suppose the Edinburgh police sent down a number of officers to look into the matter?” The face of the policeman was as rosy and as shiny as an apple and, with the exception of his moustache, as smooth.
“Aye, they sent their number-one man, Detective-Lieutenant Bryce. I talked to him at the station and report him as fine a man as ever I met.”
“I’ve heard that he is a most conscientious officer,” said Dr Bell.
“Queen’s Medallist in reward for meritorious services. You may have read about him after the Wilkhaven ferry murder case. It was five, six years ago if I recollect aright.”
“It was in 1875,” Bell corrected, adding for my sake: “He gave evidence in that trial that disproved the testimony of several so-called ‘eye witnesses.’ They were out to collect the reward offered by the police. Some of these people will sell their grandams for a mess o’potage.”
“As fine an officer as ever you’d care to meet, I say,” repeated the constable.
“I dare say, I dare say,” mused Bell. “John Ormiston Bryce is all that you say, Constable. That he is makes our work here in Liverpool all the harder.”
We took our leave of the policeman, who saluted us smartly. He watched us as we moved away from him and the strong scent of the bay rum he used on his hair. Liverpudlians took their docks seriously. Goodness knows what would have happened to us had he found us in possession of a camera and tripod.
When we arrived back at the hotel, after walking through a light rain, the reception counter was almost deserted. The northern English know their minds, it would seem: those who meant to stop the night had arrived, those who intended to depart were long gone. An assistant manager was at the desk when we approached his suspicious-looking countenance. He busied himself in fastening down the hotel register, whose errant pages were blowing about in the wind which accompanied the sudden shower.
“Mr Arbuthnot,” Bell began, reading the name on the empty desk behind the counter, “how are you enjoying your new home in Liverpool? Though you’ve been here but a short time, I observe that you are getting on well.” A shadow came over the man’s face as though a fortune-teller in whom he didn’t believe had told him of great things to come. He looked about to summon the police.
“Sir?” said he with a hint of incivility. “Am I acquainted with you?”
“You’ll find us registered in Room 308. If you are wondering at my knowing your name and former residence, pray allow me to explain: your name is on your desk for all to see. Your suit was made by a tailor in The Lawn-market in Edinburgh. Nowhere is a lapel cut like that except in Milan, and you, my friend, are no traveller. Arbuthnot is a Scottish name. There are physicians, divines, admirals and famous wits of that name, as you may know. Your tailoring is from Edinburgh, but your linen and necktie are English. From that, I see that you have not been at this work above six months.”
“Five and a half, sir. Are you one of the detectives, sir? I was told that I would not be called at the trial, so I wasn’t expecting to hear from you again. I see that you got the fellow. A length of rope will give him what he deserves. What a waste he made in cutting off the life of that opera singer, Hermione Clery.”
“Aye, a long drop on a short rope will teach him the lesson he deserves. I hope he will profit by it.”
“Is it the case that brings you here, sir? I had thought it was over and done with.”
“Just checking up on a few things, Mr Arbuthnot. Loose ends, you might say. For instance, do you still have the register where the culprit signed his name?”
“Of course, it’s right here.” He went to his own desk and produced a ledger identical to the one we had signed upon registering. He quickly thumbed the pages and turned it around for us to see. “There it is, sir. Big as life.”
Indeed, there it was:
Alan Lambert, 1 Howe St., Edinburgh
Forward post c/o Cunard Steamships,
New York City, New York, U.S.A.
“Excellent!” said Bell, shutting the book with a loud report. “Tell me, Mr Arbuthnot, didn’t Detective-Lieutenant Bryce tell you that the register might be taken and used in evidence?”
“Indeed he did,” responded the assistant manager, “but the other policeman—you know, Mr Webb—said that it would not be needed, but to keep it under lock and key all the same. As you see, I am keeping it safe. There’s no telling what newspaper reporters and such would do with it. I discussed the matter with Mr Crombie, of the Cunard company, who intimated that he had been given the same warning by Mr Webb. Mr Crombie told me that Detective Bryce was quite put out when he saw that Lambert had signed his own name on the register at their office too. Now, why would that be, sir?”
“It’s a question of trying to be cleverer than the police, Mr Arbuthnot. Some villains are that sharp they sign their own names to bad cheques.”
“I see, sir.”
Bell had raised an eyebrow for me to see when Arbuthnot mentioned Inspector Webb. I remembered his dark presence in the corridor outside the courtroom, as he kept the witnesses together. It was a sombre thought.
A few pleasantries about the weather in Liverpool and the inconvenience of living away from home closed the conversation with the assistant manager of the hotel, who wished us good night after directing us to the saloon bar. Once installed there, I was at last able to speak my mind and unburden the weight of our recent findings. First, we each ordered a local Liverpool ale that the assistant manager had recommended. A few moments after tasting it, I felt calmer and able to put my thoughts into some order.
“Out with it, Doyle. I can see your thoughts are like greyhounds ready to slip their leads. Tell me what you have observed.”
“My dear Dr Bell—”
“For God’s sake call me by my name when we have the froth of beer on our faces, man! Is it ‘Conor’ they call you?”
“Conan, if it please you, Joseph.”
“As for me, ‘Joe’ will do the job nicely, Conan. Ah, yes, your godfather was a Conan, wasn’t he? And your family includes the cleverest sketch artist in Britain, the famous Dicky Doyle of Punch. Now, let us return to the libretto. You were saying?”
“In just a few hours in Liverpool, we have learned that Alan Lambert, the fleeing assassin, signed his own name to the hotel register, gave his true Edinburgh address and booked a trans-Atlantic ticket in his own name.”
“He also aided his pursuers further
: he left a trail that led from the hotel to the Cunard booking office. There, tomorrow morning, if Mr Crombie proves as accommodating as Arbuthnot, we will finish in time to catch the afternoon train north.”
“But, Joe, this is not the picture of a man escaping from the law!” Bell looked at me curiously, as though I might have answered a question foolishly in the lecture hall.
“Did you expect to find it otherwise?” asked my friend, with a wide grin.
EIGHT
As Bell had guessed, Mr Crombie told us, quite without guile on our parts, that Lambert had purchased the steamer ticket in his own name, had given Howe Street, Edinburgh, as his last address, and asked the company to hold his post until he had established an address in New York. More surprising than this, Crombie said that Lambert’s passage had been ordered by post with a deposit of ten pounds three weeks before the murders of Mlle Clery and her friend.
In the train on the way back to Edinburgh, Bell was deep in thought. His head thrown back against the seat, he was lost to interruptions less serious than a general derailment. I wanted to review with him the possibilities and implications of the information we had uncovered, but Bell had put himself out of reach. I was, however, able to settle several things for myself without reference to my colleague.
First of all it had become plain that what we had learned, the police could also have learned and had in all probability done so. Yet this information was not presented in evidence at the trial. If the police knew about it, they were obliged to pass that information along to Sir William Burnham, the Procurator-Fiscal, by way of the Chief Constable of Edinburgh. How else would the counsel for the accused find out that the story of the flight from Edinburgh to America was an invention? I made a note to examine upon our return the circumstances of the manner in which our man left Edinburgh. We knew that M’Leod had been approached by Lambert to purchase his pawn-ticket. There was a touch of panic in the picture that conjured up. But there were other things: his chattels, his lease on the Howe Street flat, the closing of bank accounts and so on.
For a moment, I imagined Lambert as some sort of master criminal, such as one reads about in the stories of Poe and Gaboriau. Such a criminal might have provided these clues for us to find. To a man of this sort, nothing is left to chance. Every act is premeditated. With this premise, I reviewed what we knew. Lambert couldn’t have known at the time of the murders that his departure from Scotland would be interpreted as flight by the police. Nor could he have guessed that what appeared to be innocent acts would be taken to be anything else. My hypothesis dissolved.
Another matter, also involving the police, was the impression I had been given that there was a dichotomy in the police investigation. Bryce was the first-footer in the case, but Webb came running after him and contradicting what he had said. In fact, Webb, the dark-haired man I had seen with the witnesses at the trial, appears to have bottled up evidence that might have been—nay, would have been!—of use to the defence. Both Arbuthnot and Crombie had been warned by Webb to keep Lambert’s openness and candour regarding his travelling arrangements as quiet as possible. I noted in my book that I must find out more about both of these law officers and their curiously overlapping investigations. The police will have to be seen through the same microscope as Lambert. If the methods of the police are not to be investigated, the enquiry is futile.
Upon leaving Waverley Station, with the nearly forgotten stench of Auld Reekie in my nose again, Bell dropped me within an easy walk of my home, and continued to the university, where he had classes to meet. Bridget, the maid, handed me a note which said that my mother would be from home for the remainder of the day. She was no doubt visiting my father, who had been taken to a nursing hospital shortly after term began. After bathing and putting on fresh linen, I returned to the university, where I spent the rest of the day making excuses for my absence and preparing slides for a pathology demonstration the following day. But however engrossing the tissues and sera on my microscope slides, my mind kept wandering back to my nonmedical studies under my remarkable friend.
I thought of the place of the law among us, of what Dr Johnson had said on his visit to this city about the law and our courts:
… A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie: he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of evidence… A lawyer is to do for his client all that his client might fairly do for himself, if he could… If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim…
These musings were terminated by the explosion of my friend Budd into the laboratory. George Budd never knocked or tiptoed into view, he burst upon the scene like Macbeth into the company of the witches.
“Doyle, you reprobate! Where have you been? I have been searching high and low for you!” Here he clapped me on the back and sat down on the edge of the table, ignoring my slides and notes. George Turnavine Budd was the son of a distinguished Bristol physician noted for his pioneering efforts in the control of typhoid and scarlet fever. George was noted for nothing whatever except his gigantic girth, his boundless energy and his sudden enthusiasms. He was like an astronomer who could see no planet but the one he had discovered; a composer whose latest song was the greatest that had ever been written. One night I was awakened by his knock and when admitted he begged me to review with him the texts for an examination we were to sit the next day. He insisted on doing the half of the material I had already gone over rather than the portion I had planned to look at in the morning after a good night’s sleep. He never apologized for this invasion, nor did he, to my best recollection, ever refer to it. Budd was a huge man, who had missed getting the Rugby International cap because of his accursed contempt for rules. Let rules rule all the world, George Budd would have none of them. He marched to his own drum and could never understand that many of his problems were of his own making.
“I have been in Liverpool, if it is of any interest.”
“Liverpool! Seeking out the vice, old man, when there’s so much of it under these very eaves. I tell you I’ll swear off drink and adopt the prim countenance of the Primate of Scotland if you can demonstrate where Liverpool excels Auld Reekie in vice. Tell me, man!”
“I was in Liverpool on business,” I explained, but recognized with regret that I had once more taken on that cool, limp courtesy that marked all of my dealings with Budd. The plain fact was, I didn’t trust him. He was too unpredictable. My reserve in his company came from trying to keep clear of the whirling sails of his personality. In full career he took no prisoners. He had wounded more by inadvertence than by intent. In fact, his disposition was of the sweetest. Still, like Cassius for Caesar, he was dangerous.
“What brings you to the laboratory, Budd? Are you getting down at last to do some work?” You see what a puritan he transformed me into? I couldn’t help myself.
“Nothing so banal, old chap. I came to introduce you to my bride.”
“Your what!”
“Yes, in spite of all my talk about vice, I have settled all of my accounts around town and am about to subscribe to the narrow confines of matrimony.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“Doubting Thomas that you are, you shall meet the girl at once. Her name is Mary Maberley. Isn’t that perfect: the perfect girl with the perfect name? She is still under age and a Ward in Chancery. But, when it is all settled, she’ll have over six hundred a year!”
“But, Budd, how do you intend to marry a Ward in Chancery? There are laws in this country even if you tend to overlook them.”
“I’d rather overlook them than look them over, old man. I’ll leave that to you. The Act of Union left many inequities behind it for reformers to correct. Blast all laws that put fetters on love! The fact is, Doyle, we are eloping. Yes, we’re off on the trai
n to King’s Cross tonight. That’s why my finding you couldn’t wait.”
“I begin to see.”
“You couldn’t help me out, could you, dear fellow? I intend to set up a practice in Plymouth, where my uncle lives. I’ll have my brass plaque screwed to a house on a good street before the Lords in Chancery know that Mary is missing. Give us a helping hand, old chap. You know that I am working on a cure for asthma. I’ll have hundreds of patients looking to be helped by my elixir, once I’ve fixed on it. I’ll have the loan back to you in no time. Or, better still, when you have your degree, come down to Plymouth and put up your shingle next to mine. We’ll have a marvellous time. You’ll see. What about it? I’d do the same for you.”
I began to give him an argument, the gist of what was running through my head as he spoke: the education of my younger sisters and brother, my tuition next term and my own not inconsiderable debts. But immediately, Budd’s face began to darken. I had seen these squalls before. He would not brook cattle crossing his track when his horse was at a full gallop. Before he could give utterance to the unflattering things he was composing in his mind to say to me, denunciations, threats, reproaches—he was capable of all or any of these—I reached into my pocket and brought out my wallet. Inside I found exactly what I remembered putting there. Perhaps I had been looking for miracles. I gave Budd what I could, and before I could season it with a homily on thrift, he was away out the door and, perhaps, out of my life. No, the loan was not big enough for that. I was not finished with George Budd. I walked to the door and saw him sailing down the corridor with a slim young woman clinging to his arm. Just like Budd to forget to introduce us.