The Ring

by M. J. Trow

  It was difficult to tell in the dim light, with the water lapping around their necks, but Grand’s swimming companion had clearly once been a woman. Her dark hair was plastered to her head and weed, slimy and green, was woven into it, as if the canal had tried to make her corpse more beautiful, by the standards of the water. Her mouth hung open, unable to cope with swallowing any more and her eyes rolled white and sightless back into her head. For one startling moment as he bobbed there, almost nose to nose with the horror, Grand wanted to scream, but he checked himself. People had been finding body parts along the Thames now for days. He had merely had the misfortune to find a whole one and he was in the water with it. Well, not quite whole, as it turned out. As he steadied the bobbing body and tried to lift it to the stairs, he realized that it had no hands.

  ‘And no feet.’

  There had been a time when Dr Felix Kempster would have come running to the finding of a body. That was when he had been a young police surgeon, new to V Division and he sought, like every other medical man, to make a difference. Now, with age and experience, he doubted whether he even made a dent. The river gave up its dead when it chose to, without rhyme or reason. Kempster didn’t understand tides and currents like Daddy Bliss, but he understood bodies. He could tell the careless lighterman who’d lost his footing on a slippery deck; an angler who’d slithered down the banks upstream; a suicide, pockets full of stones, who had simply had enough and had leapt from Waterloo Bridge in one last moment of despair. Or a murder, like this one.

  The woman was lying on Kempster’s slab the morning after Grand had found her. Rigor mortis had come and gone and it was likely that she had been in the river for about two days. There were stumps, once bloody, where her hands had been and the same at her ankles. A dark red line around her neck showed that she had been strangled with a ligature. Other than that, she had seemed in good health. His best guess was that she was about thirty, was no stranger to sex but had never given birth. The abrasions on her arms and across her back, Kempster attributed to the ropes and anchor-chains she had collided with as the river took her body, now this way, now that, upstream and down. There were no obvious signs of sexual assault, but again, the water had that annoying habit of disguising such things.

  Kempster crossed his little mortuary to where the other body lay, the one that had arrived in pieces like a demented jigsaw. He was glad to have the space to check them, side by side. Most of the London mortuaries were tiny, single rooms little more than sheds annexed to police stations or workhouses. Here, an investigator into sudden death had, unlike his subjects, room to breathe.

  He had been wondering for days now about the cause of death of the disarticulated woman. The only abrasions he could find were on top of the scalp, under what was left of the hair. He was fairly certain that the cause of death was a blow or blows to the top of the cranium which would have resulted in immediate concussion and insensibility. ‘Grand’s woman’, as Kempster mentally called the other one, took longer to die. Depending on the relative strengths of victim and killer, strangulation by ligature, Kempster knew, could take up to four minutes, eternity for them both. Most telling of all, however, were the amputations. Neither corpse had feet or hands, but the disarticulated woman’s had been removed with precision and speed; Grand’s woman had met a butcher.

  Kempster crossed the room again and dipped his pen into the inkwell. ‘Death,’ he wrote, ‘by a different hand.’

  ‘How you feeling now, Mr Grand?’ Constable Brandon had given the man some soothing cocoa and towels when he’d first arrived, handcuffed to Gosling and Crossland. Then he’d given him a change of clothes, albeit itchy and threadbare Metropolitan cardigans and oil-cloth breeches. After all that, Brandon’s question was a little pointless.

  ‘I’ll live,’ the American growled. In the last twelve hours, he had been toyed with by an ancient crone, clouted by a bargee’s oar, half drowned in a freezing canal and had come face to face with a corpse. Then he’d been dragged out of said canal and fitted with bracelets by two large boys in blue who must have been absent when God gave out gentleness. To cap it all, he was still in custody in the cramped hold of what the Underworld and Fleet Street called the Abode of Bliss.

  ‘That’s enough of that fraternization, Brandon.’ Bliss had clattered down the steps from the halfway comfortable mess rooms upstairs and was hanging a dripping oilskin on its peg on the wall. As cells went, the Royalist was, to say the least, different. It had wooden walls, not stone and there were no bars on the windows. In fact, at this depth, there were no windows; just the relentless thud of the river nudging the Royalist’s hull, merely to remind her who was boss.

  ‘Get up top and relieve Gosling. The others’ll be back presently.’

  Grand was doing his mental arithmetic. If Brandon was relieving Gosling, the chances were that there were only the two of them on the boat. Two, now that his arm had at least partly recovered and he was no longer treading water, he could probably handle. On the other hand, his first obstacle was Daddy Bliss and the man could blot out the sun with his bulk.

  The inspector sat down across the table from his prisoner and pulled out a pistol from the pocket of his frock coat.

  ‘This is nice,’ he said. He spun it on his finger, cocked it and pointed the muzzle at Grand.

  ‘It is,’ Grand nodded. ‘But it isn’t loaded and it’s mine.’

  ‘Always carry it, do you,’ Bliss asked, ‘in the pursuance of your enquiries?’

  ‘Only when I feel I might be roughed up by the law,’ Grand said.

  ‘All right,’ Bliss uncocked the Colt and laid it down. ‘Let’s get that little matter straight from the start, shall we? What were you doing on the Windsong?’

  ‘Pursuing my enquiries,’ Grand shrugged as best he could with one arm still shackled to the Royalist’s woodwork.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Bliss said. ‘But I think it’s time for a little more precision, don’t you?’

  ‘As you wish,’ Grand said. ‘You know that Batchelor and I are investigating the disappearance of the wife of a client.’

  ‘I do,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Seeing as how the body parts of a woman have been turning up in your neck of the woods, as it were, we naturally ask questions along the Thames.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bliss narrowed his eyes and leaned back. ‘So you were just collecting tales of the riverbank when my boys and me turned up.’

  ‘That’s right. Now it’s your turn to answer my question. What brought you to the Windsong?’

  ‘Routine,’ Bliss said.

  ‘I believe the word you Limeys have for that is “bollocks”,’ Grand said with a smile.

  ‘Well, well,’ Bliss raised both eyebrows. ‘Regular little cock sparrer, aintchya?’

  ‘What bothers me, Inspector, is that the proprietors of the Windsong assumed, if I remember the brief conversation, that I was part of your routine operation, a sort of advance guard, if you will.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, that’s not a reputation I want to have.’

  Bliss laughed. ‘I wouldn’t worry what Queenie and Jem think about you, Mr Grand,’ he said. ‘The old girl’s got a mouth on her like a gin trap and we’re not likely to get much out of her. Jem however is made of less stern stuff. He’s at the Wapping Headquarters now, singing like a canary.’

  ‘What tune?’ Grand asked.

  Bliss laughed again. ‘Come off it, Mr Grand. You know I cannot divulge.’

  ‘Has it occurred to you, Inspector, that you and I might just be on the same side?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Bliss said. ‘But, for the record, we occasionally deal, as I am sure you do, with tip-offs, anonymous leads that usually go nowhere but we can’t afford to ignore. Catch my drift?’

  ‘I do,’ Grand said.

  ‘One such tip-off suggested that the murder of the cut-up woman might have happened on a barge. After all, pretty much every other sort of crime does.’

  ‘So we are working together,’ Gran
d chuckled.

  ‘Not if our lives depended on it.’ Bliss’s smile had vanished. ‘Now that you’re fully rested and recovered after your unfortunate ordeal, Mr Grand, you are at liberty to leave. You’ll find your clothes aired and pressed upstairs, courtesy of Constable Brandon. I’m not really at all sure about that boy – I have a strong feeling he is in the wrong profession.’

  Bliss reached over and deftly unlocked Grand’s shackles. Grand let his arm drop, rubbing his chafed wrist. ‘And my gun?’ he asked, standing up.

  ‘I don’t approve,’ the inspector said, ‘but as it’s your property, I can hardly stand in your way.’

  Grand picked up the pistol and edged round the table. As he reached the stairs, Bliss turned to face him. ‘But if I find you or that snot-nosed partner of yours interfering in the work of the River Police again, I’m going to shove that up your arse. Catch my drift?’

  ELEVEN

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Abel Beer.’

  ‘Domicile?’

  ‘Do what?’

  This morning was not going well for Daddy Bliss. George Crossland had come down with something; Bliss could hardly expose the public to Constable Brandon. So, here he was, having to do his own paperwork. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Uplyne,’ Beer told him.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Dorset.’

  The inspector leaned back in his chair. He’d lost count of the ghouls who had crept out of their hidey-holes since women’s parts had begun turning up along the Thames. He had predicted all this, of course, but that didn’t do much for his temper. ‘Suppose you tell me the reason for your visit,’ he said.

  ‘My sister Mary has gone missing,’ Beer said. ‘I haven’t seen her since early August.’

  ‘This was in Uplyne?’

  ‘No, here in London.’

  ‘Where, precisely?’ Bliss needed to know.

  ‘I left her lodging with Mrs Christian in South Street, Battersea.’

  ‘And what does your sister do for a living, Mr Beer?’ Bliss was still going through the motions.

  ‘Nothing,’ Beer said. ‘She’s in London to settle her affairs.’

  ‘Affairs?’ That was a word that could easily be misconstrued in Daddy Bliss’s world.

  ‘To see her solicitor. She’s about to come into some money.’

  ‘And did she see said solicitor?’

  ‘No. That’s the first place I checked. He hasn’t seen her.’

  ‘So, you last saw her in early August …’

  ‘And I sent her a telegram – four, in fact – and never got a reply.’

  Bliss was trying to place Beer’s circumstances. A man’s dress, the cut of his jib, told a lot about his status. So did his manner of speaking, but Beer’s West Country burr all but destroyed that. He was sharply dressed enough, but did he have the air of a man whose sister was about to inherit? He wasn’t sure. ‘So, you came to find her?’ he checked.

  ‘Yes. Mrs Christian hadn’t seen her. But … and this worried me, Inspector; she told Mrs Christian that she had been assaulted by four men near Victoria Bridge one night.’

  ‘Did she report it to the police?’

  ‘Mrs Christian didn’t know.’

  ‘Right,’ Bliss sighed. ‘Well, then, we’d better have a look.’ He scraped back his chair. ‘I have to warn you, Mr Beer, that the corpse … er, the subject … is not a pretty sight. The doctor has tried to reconstruct the head.’

  ‘Reconstruct?’ Beer wasn’t sure he had heard right.

  ‘The skull itself hasn’t turned up,’ Bliss said. ‘Only the skin.’ The inspector was a little unnerved to see Abel Beer cross himself. That’s all he needed, a bereft Papist under his feet. ‘This way.’

  He led the Dorset man through the labyrinthine passageways that linked Dr Kempster’s laboratory to the mortuary. It was nearly eleven by this time and he hoped that Mrs Kempster wouldn’t be much longer with his morning coffee, two lumps, please.

  Bliss had done this so often that he had lost all sense of reverence. The disarticulated woman, turning less human every day, was beginning to annoy him now, if only because she wasn’t providing any answers. He whipped away the shroud and Beer gasped. He wasn’t looking at the head at all. ‘It’s her,’ he gulped. ‘It’s Mary.’

  Bliss frowned at him. This was not the first Eureka moment he had experienced over the last few days, but none had been as certain as this. ‘May I ask how you know, sir?’

  ‘The scald mark on her stomach,’ Beer pointed. ‘I was there in the kitchen when she did that. Tipped a boiling pan over herself. She’d have been eight or so at the time. I must have been ten.’

  Bliss didn’t like peering closely at a dead woman’s stomach with said dead woman’s brother standing there, but it was all in the line of duty. He couldn’t actually see anything, but the light wasn’t of the best in the bowels of the mortuary and the water and time had distorted the skin. It was an acid green now, with purple edges.

  ‘May I … may I take her away?’ Beer asked, ‘for a proper burial? Take her home?’

  ‘Not just yet, sir,’ Bliss said. ‘There are formalities, I’m afraid. Paperwork. If you could call to the Royalist, the floating police station on the Thames, say, Thursday, we can talk further.’

  ‘Thank you, Inspector.’ Beer seemed reluctant to leave the body, but Bliss’s bulk nudged him towards the door and he saw him out.

  ‘Your coffee, Inspector.’ Fanny Kempster emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray, complete with Garibaldis.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Bliss took it gratefully.

  ‘You’ll forgive me for saying this, Inspector,’ she said, as she turned to go, ‘and Felix will remonstrate with me, I feel sure, but you didn’t tell that poor man how sorry you were for his loss.’

  ‘That’s because, m’m,’ Bliss scowled at her, ‘he hasn’t had any loss. Catch my drift?’

  They didn’t need to toss a coin this time. It was Matthew Grand’s call. He it was also who had struck a chord with Constable Brandon of the River Police and so the American half of the firm of Grand and Batchelor found himself sitting below decks on board the Royalist two days later, sipping tea from a tin cup.

  ‘Strong enough for you, Mr Grand?’ the boy asked. He prided himself on his tea-making skills.

  ‘Delicious, Mr Brandon, thank you.’

  ‘You can call me Lloyd,’ Brandon said. After all, he had rinsed out and ironed his visitor’s smalls. They could have been brothers under the skin.

  ‘Fine … Lloyd,’ Grand smiled. ‘How’s the case coming?’

  ‘The case?’ Nobody had ever accused the champion tea-maker of being very bright.

  ‘The torsos in the Thames.’

  ‘Well,’ Brandon put his own cup down and became confidential. ‘Oh, but no.’ He clamped his lips shut, opening them a little to add, ‘The inspector wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘The inspector’s not going to get it, Lloyd,’ Grand assured him. ‘This is strictly between us.’

  Brandon hesitated. He’d never met an American before and the experience had rather gone to his head. ‘Oh, all right,’ he said. ‘The body’s been identified. Not the one you found – the other one.’

  ‘Really? Who is she?’

  ‘A Mary Cailey, née Beer, from Dorset, apparently.’

  ‘Apparently?’

  Brandon checked to right and left, then peered up the stairs that led to the deck. ‘Well, Mr Bliss has his doubts. A bloke called Abel Beer turned up and recognized the corpse as his sister, gone missing from South Street, Battersea six weeks ago.’

  ‘Six weeks?’

  ‘That was when she was last seen by the brother and the landlady.’

  ‘The landlady?’ Grand was losing the thread of this conversation and he sincerely hoped that Constable Brandon would never be called upon to present evidence in court.

  ‘Oh, silly me. You don’t know, do you?’

  Grand smiled at the boy.

/>   ‘She’s a Mrs Christian, of 15 South Street.’

  ‘Has the inspector interviewed her?’

  ‘Said there was no point. He doesn’t believe Beer’s story. Says he’s just a ghoul who likes looking at dead bodies. I ask you – what is the matter with people? Beer can have my job if he likes. He’d have plenty of dead bodies then.’

  ‘Find a lot, do you?’ Grand asked, ‘on the river?’

  ‘Ooh, no, not me personally; but the lads, you know. No, the inspector never lets me out.’

  Grand laughed. ‘With someone who makes tea like you do, Lloyd, I can’t say I blame him.’

  They didn’t toss a coin for the next job, either. It wasn’t like Grand or Batchelor to resort to subterfuge, let alone impersonate a police officer, but needs must when the devil drives and, all in all, James Batchelor would pass muster as a Metropolitan officer better than Matthew Grand.

  ‘I was wondering when somebody would call.’ Mary Christian was a prim lady, corseted in bombazine and quick and sure in her movements. The lodger’s room at 15, South Street, Battersea, was neat without being gaudy and looked out onto the park, looking a little sorry for itself now that autumn was blowing away the tree’s leaves. ‘Who did you say you were, again?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Spinster,’ Batchelor beamed. ‘Thames Division.’

  ‘I didn’t know they had detectives with Thames Division.’ Mary Christian frowned.

  Damn. Just Batchelor’s luck to find the only well-informed landlady in London. ‘New directive,’ he lied. ‘From the Home Office only the other day. Still finding my water-feet, as it were. So, this was Mrs Cailey’s room?’

  ‘It was. Still is, for all I know. And she owes me four weeks’ rent.’

  Batchelor tutted and shook his head. ‘Tell me about her,’ he said.

  Mary Christian had been brooding about the missing woman for a while and she felt her blood pressure rising every time. ‘Well,’ she said, the steam all but hissing from her ears. ‘Well, she turned up on August the second, I believe it was, with a Mr Beer.’