I could see that Viney was angry, and growing angrier still. But I gave all my attention to the work at the fouled hawser. The man in the boat, working patiently with a boat-hook, succeeded suddenly and without warning, so that he almost pitched headlong into the river. The rope came up from its entanglement with a spring and a splash, flinging some amazing great object up with it, half out of water; and the men gave a cry as this thing lapsed heavily to the surface.
The man in the boat snatched his hook again and reached for the thing as it floated. Somebody threw him a length of line, and with this he made it fast to his boat, and began pulling toward the stairs, towing it. I was puzzled to guess what the object might be. It was no part of the lighter’s rudder, for it lay in, rather than on, the water, and it rolled and wallowed, and seemed to tug heavily, so that the boatman had to pull his best. I wondered if he had caught some curious water-creature—a porpoise perhaps, or a seal, such as had been flung ashore in a winter storm at Blackwall a year before.
Viney and Grandfather Nat had turned their steps toward the stairs, and as they neared, my grandfather, lifting his eyes, saw the boatman and his prize, and saw the watermen leaving their boats for the foreshore. With a quick word to Viney he hastened down the stairs; and Viney himself, less interested, followed half way down, and waited.
The boatman brought up alongside the foreshore, and he and another hauled at the tow-rope. The thing in the water came in, rolling and bobbing, growing more hideously distinct as it came; it checked at the mud and stones, turned over, and with another pull lay ashore, staring and grey and streaming: a dead man.
The lips were pulled tight over the teeth, and, the hair being fair, it was the plainer to see that one side of the head and forehead was black and open with a great wound. The limbs lay limp and tumbled, all; but one leg fell aside with so loose a twist that plainly it was broken, and I heard, afterwards, that it was the leg that had caused the difficulty with the hawser.
Grandfather Nat, down at the waterside, had no sooner caught sight of the dead face than with wide eyes he turned to Viney, and shouted the one word “Look!” Then he went and took another view, longer and closer; and straightway came back in six strides to the stairs, whereon Viney was no longer standing, but sitting, his face tallowy and his grin faded.
“See him?” cried Grandfather Nat in a hushed voice. “See him! It’s Marr himself, if I know him at all! Come—come and see!”
Viney pulled his arm from the old man’s grasp, turned, and crawled up a stair or two. “No,” he said faintly, “I—I won’t, now—I—they’d know me p’raps, some of them.” His breath was short, and he gulped. “Good God,” he said presently, “it’s him—it’s him sure enough. And the clothes he had on.… But…Cap’en—Cap’en Nat; go an’ try his pockets.—Go on. There’s a pocket-book—leather pocket-book.… Go on!”
“What’s the good?” asked Captain Nat, with a lift of the eyebrows, and the same low voice. “What’s the good? I can’t fetch it away, with all them witnesses. Go yourself, an’ say you’re his pardner; you’d have a chance then.”
“No—no. I—it ain’t good enough. You know ’em; I don’t. I’ll stand in with you—give you a hundred if it’s all there! Square ’em—you know ’em!”
“If they’re to be squared you can do it as well as me. There’ll be an inquest on this, an’ evidence. I ain’t going to be asked what I did with the man’s pocket-book. No. I don’t meddle in this, Mr. Viney. If it ain’t good enough for you to get it for yourself, it ain’t good enough for me to get it for you.”
“Kemp, I’ll go you halves—there! Get it, an’ there’s four hundred for you. Eight hundred an’ odd quid, in a pocket-book. Come, that’s worth it, ain’t it? Eight hundred an’ odd quid—in a leather pocket-book! An’ I’ll go you halves.”
Captain Nat started at the words, and stood for a moment, staring. “Eight hundred!” he repeated under his breath. “Eight hundred an’ odd quid. In a leather pocket-book. Ah!” And the stare persisted, and grew thoughtful.
“Yes,” replied Viney, now a little more himself. “Now you know; and it’s worth it, ain’t it? Don’t waste time—they’re turning him over themselves. You can manage all these chaps. Go on!”
“I’ll see if anything’s there,” answered Captain Nat. “More I can’t; an’ if there’s nothing that’s an end of it.”
He went down to where the men were bending over the body, to disengage the tow-line. He looked again at the drawn face under the gaping forehead, and said something to the men; then he bent and patted the soddened clothes, now here, now there; and at last felt in the breast-pocket.
Meantime Viney stood feverishly on the stairs, watching; fidgeting nervously down a step, and then down another, and then down two more. And so till Captain Nat returned.
The old man shook his head. “Cleaned out,” he reported. “Cleaned out, o’ course. Hit on the head an’ cleaned out, like many a score better men before him, down these parts. Not a thing in the pockets anywhere. Flimped clean.”
Viney’s eyes were wild. “Nothing at all left?” he said. “Nothing of his own? Not a watch, nor anything?”
“No, not a watch, nor anything.”
Viney stood staring at space for some moments, murmuring many oaths. Then he asked suddenly, “Where’s this blind chap? Where can I find Blind George?”
Grandfather Nat shook his head. “He’s all over the neighbourhood,” he answered. “Try the Highway; I can’t give you nearer than that.”
And with no more counsel to help him, Mr. Viney was fain to depart. He went grinning and cursing up the passage and so toward the bridge, without another word or look. And when I turned to my grandfather I saw him staring fixedly at me, lost in thought, and rubbing his hand up in his hair behind, through the grey and out at the brown on top.
Chapter 12
In the Club-Room
By the side of the bills stuck at the corner of Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs—the bills that had so fascinated Stephen—a new one appeared, with the heading “Body Found.” It particularised the personal marks and description of the unhappy Marr; his “fresh complexion,” his brown hair, his serge suit and his anklejacks. The bill might have stood on every wall in London till it rotted, and never have given a soul who knew him a hint to guess the body his: except Viney, who knew the fact already. And the body might have been buried unidentified ere Viney would have shown himself in the business, were it not for the interference of Mr. Cripps. For industry of an unprofitable kind was a piece of Mr. Cripps’s nature; and, moreover, he was so regular a visitor at the mortuary as to have grown an old friend of the keeper. His persistent prying among the ghastly liers-in-state, at first on plea of identifying a friend—a contingency likely enough, since his long-shore acquaintance was wide—and later under the name of friendly calls, was an indulgence that had helped him to consideration as a news-monger, and twice had raised him to the elevation of witness at an inquest; a distinction very gratifying to his simple vanity. He entertained high hopes of being called witness in the case of the man stabbed at the side door of the Hole in the Wall; and was scarce seen at Captain Nat’s all the next day, preferring to frequent the mortuary. So it happened that he saw the other corpse that was carried thence from Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs.
“There y’are,” said the mortuary-keeper. “There’s a fresh ’un, just in from the river, unknown. You dunno ’im either, I expect.”
But Mr. Cripps was quite sure that he did. Curious and eager, he walked up between the two dead men, his grimy little body being all that divided them in this their grisly reunion. “I do know ’im,” he insisted, thoughtfully. “Leastways I’ve seen ’im somewheres, I’m sure.” The little man gazed at the dreadful head, and then at the rafters: then shut his eyes with a squeeze that drove his nose into amazing lumps and wrinkles; then looked at the head again, and squeezed his eyelids together once more; and at last s
tarted back, his eyes rivalling his very nose itself for prominence. “Why!” he gasped, “it is! It is, s’elp me!…It’s Mr. Marr, as is pardners with Mr. Viney! I on’y see ’im once in my life, but I’ll swear it’s ’im!…Lord, what a phenomenal go!”
And with that Mr. Cripps rushed off incontinent to spread the news wherever anybody would listen. He told the police, he told the loafers, he told Captain Nat and everybody in his bar; he told the watermen at the stairs, he shouted it to the purlmen in their boats, and he wriggled into conversation with perfect strangers to tell them too. So that it came to pass that Viney, being called upon by the coroner’s officer, was fain to swallow his reluctance and come forward at the inquest.
That was held at the Hole in the Wall twenty-four hours after the body had been hauled ashore. The two inquests were held together, in fact, Marr’s and that of the broken-nosed man, stabbed in the passage. Two inquests, or even three, in a day, made no uncommon event in those parts, where perhaps a dozen might be held in a week, mostly ending with the same doubtful verdict—Found Drowned. But here one of the inquiries related to an open and witnessed murder, and that fact gave some touch of added interest to the proceedings.
Accordingly a drifting group hung about the doors of the Hole in the Wall at the appointed time—just such an idle, changing group as had hung there all the evening after the man had been stabbed; and in the midst stood Blind George with his fiddle, his vacant white eye rolling upward, his mouth full of noisy ribaldry, and his fiddle playing punctuation and chorus to all he said or sang. He turned his ear at the sound of many footsteps leaving the door near him.
“There they go!” he sang out; “there they go, twelve on ’em!” And indeed it was the jury going off to view the bodies. “There they go, twelve good men an’ true, an’ bloomin’ proud they are to fancy it! Got a copper for Blind George, gentlemen? Not a brown for pore George?…Not them; not a brass farden among the ’ole dam good an’ lawful lot.… Ahoy! ain’t Gubbins there—the good an’ lawful pork-butcher as ’ad to pay forty bob for shovin’ a lump o’ fat under the scales? Tell the crowner to mind ’is pockets!”
The idlers laughed, and one flung a copper, which Blind George snatched almost before it had fallen. “Ha! ha!” he cried, “there’s a toff somewhere near, I can tell by the sound of his money! Here goes for a stave!” And straightway be broke into:—
O they call me Hanging Johnny,
With my hang, boys, hang!
The mortuary stood at no great distance and soon the jury were back in the club-room over the bar, and at work on the first case. The police had had some difficulty as to identification of the stabbed man. The difficulty arose not only because there were no relations in the neighbourhood to feel the loss, but as much because the persons able to make the identification kept the most distant possible terms with the police, and withheld information from them as a matter of principle. Albeit a reluctant ruffian was laid hold of who was induced sulkily to admit that he had known the deceased to speak to, and lodged near him in Blue Gate; that the deceased was called Bob Kipps; that he was quite lately come into the neighbourhood; and that he had no particular occupation, as far as witness knew. It needed some pressure to extract the information that Kipps, during the short time he was in Blue Gate, chiefly consorted with one Dan Ogle, and that witness had seen nothing of Ogle that day, nor the day before.
There was also a woman called to identify—a woman more reluctant than the man; a woman of coarse features, dull eyes, tousled hair, and thick voice, sluttish with rusty finery. Name, Margaret Flynn; though at the back of the little crowd that had squeezed into the court she was called Musky Mag. It was said there, too, that Mag, in no degree one of the fainting sort, had nevertheless swooned when taken into the mortuary—gone clean off with a flop; true, she explained it, afterward, by saying that she had only expected to see one body, but found herself brought face to face with two; and of course there was the other there—Marr’s. But it was held no such odds between one corpse and two that an outer-and-outer like Mag should go on the faint over it. This was reasonable enough, for the crowd. But not for a woman who had sat to drink with three men, and in a short hour or so had fallen over the battered corpse of one of them, in the dark of her room; who had been forced, now, to view the rent body of a second, and in doing it to meet once again the other, resurrected, bruised, sodden and horrible; and who knew that all was the work of the last of the three, and that man in peril of the rope: the man, too, of all the world, in her eye.…
Her evidence, given with plain anxiety and a nervous unsteadiness of the mouth, added nothing to the tale. The man was Bob Kipps; he was a stranger till lately—came, she had heard tell, from Shoreditch or Hoxton; saw him last a day or two ago: knew nothing of his death beyond what she had heard; did not know where Dan Ogle was (this very vehemently, with much shaking of the head); had not seen him with deceased—but here the police inspector handed the coroner a scribbled note, and the coroner having read it and passed it back, said no more. Musky Mag stood aside; while the inspector tore the note into small pieces and put the pieces in his pocket.
Nathaniel Kemp, landlord of the house, told the story of the murder as he saw it, and of his chase of the murderer. Did not know deceased, and should be unable to identify the murderer if he met him again, having seen no more than his figure in the dark.
All this time Mr. Cripps had been standing, in eager trepidation, foremost among the little crowd, nodding and lifting his hand anxiously, strenuous to catch the coroner’s officer’s attention at the dismissal of each witness, and fearful lest his offer of evidence, made a dozen times before the coroner came, should be forgotten. Now at last the coroner’s officer condescended to notice him, and being beckoned, Mr. Cripps swaggered forward, his greasy widewake crushed under his arm, and his face radiant with delighted importance. He bowed to the coroner, kissed the book with a flourish, and glanced round the court to judge how much of the due impression was yet visible.
The coroner signified that he was ready to hear whatever Mr. Cripps knew of this matter.
Mr. Cripps “threw a chest,” stuck an arm akimbo, and raised the other with an oratorical sweep so large that his small voice, when it came, seemed all the smaller. “Hi was in the bar, sir,” he piped, “the bar, sir, of this ’ouse, bein’ long acquainted with an’ much respectin’ Cap’en Kemp, an’ in the ’abit of visitin’ ’ere in the intervals of the pursoot of my hart. Hem! Hi was in the bar, sir, when my attention was attracted by a sudden noise be’hind, or as I may say, in the rear of, the bar-parlour. Hi was able to distinguish, gentlemen of the jury, what might be called, in a common way o’ speakin’, a bump or a bang, sich as would be occasioned by an unknown murderer criminally shoving his un’appy victim’s ’ed agin the back-door of a public-’ouse. Hi was able to distinguish it, sir, from a ’uman cry which follered: a ’uman cry, or as it might be, a holler, sich as would be occasioned by the un’appy victim ’avin’ ’is ’ed shoved agin the back-door aforesaid. Genelmen, I ’esitated not a moment. I rushed forward.”
Mr. Cripps paused so long to give the statement effect that the coroner lost patience. “Yes,” he said, “you rushed forward. Do you mean you jumped over the bar?”
For a moment Mr. Cripps’s countenance fell; truly it would have been more imposing to have jumped over the bar. But he was on his oath, and he must do his best with the facts. “No, sir,” he explained, a little tamely, “not over the bar, but reether the opposite way, so to speak, towards the door. I rushed forward, genelmen, in a sort of rearwards direction, through the door, an’ round into the alley. Immediate as I turned the corner, genelmen, I be’eld with my own eyes the unknown murderer; I see ’im a-risin’ from over ’is un’appy victim, an’ I see as the criminal tragedy had transpired. I—I rushed forward.”
The sensation he looked for being slow in coming, another rush seemed expedient; but it fell flat as the first, and Mr. Cripps stru
ggled on, desperately conscious that he had nothing else to say.
“I rushed forward, sir; seein’ which the miscreant absconded—absconded, no doubt with—with the proceeds; an’ seein’ Cap’en Kemp abscondin’ after him, I turned an’ be’eld the un’appy victim—the corpse now in custody, sir—a-layin’ in the bar-parlour, ’elpless an’—an’ decimated.… I—rushed forward.”
It was sad to see how little the coroner was impressed; there was even something in his face not unlike a smile; and Mr. Cripps was at the end of his resources. But if he could have seen the face of Musky Mag, in the little crowd behind him, he might have been consoled. She alone, of all who heard, had followed his rhetoric with an agony of attention, word by word: even as she had followed the earlier evidence. Now her strained face was the easier merely by contrast with itself when Mr. Cripps was in full cry; and a moment later it was tenser than ever.
“Yes, yes, Mr. Cripps,” the coroner said; “no doubt you were very active, but we don’t seem to have increased the evidence. You say you saw the man who stabbed the deceased in the passage. Did you know him at all? Ever see him before?”
Here, mayhap, was some chance of an effect after all. Mr. Cripps could scarce have distinguished the murderer from one of the posts in the alley; but he said, with all the significance he could give the words: “Well, sir, I won’t go so far as to swear to ’is name, sir; no, sir, not to ’is name, certainly not.” And therewith he made his sensation at last, bringing upon himself the twenty-four eyes of the jury all together.
The coroner looked up sharply. “Oh,” he said, “you know him by sight then? Does he belong to the neighbourhood?”
Now it was not Mr. Cripps who had said he knew the murderer by sight, but the coroner. Far be it from him, thought the aspirant for fame, to contradict the coroner, and so baulk himself of the credit thus thrust upon him. So he answered with the same cautious significance and a succession of portentous nods. “Your judgment, sir, is correct; quite correct.”
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 214