‘But he kept his mouth shut about it,’ said the Viscount. ‘An’ damn right, too. When servants start to forget who they owe their loyalty to, it’ll be the end of civilization as we know it.’
Earl Montcliffe nodded his agreement. So the daughter was expected to tell the family what her brother was up to, Blackstone thought, but his valet was not. What a bizarre universe it was that these people seemed to inhabit.
‘So if you could just give me your permission—’ the Inspector said.
‘Certainly not,’ the Earl interrupted. ‘Allow ‘em to gossip to an outsider once, and they’ll think they’ve got carte blanche to chat about family affairs to all an’ sundry.’
‘It might seriously impede the Inspector’s inquiries if he’s not allowed to talk to them,’ said Lord Dalton, speaking for the first time.
‘Can’t help that,’ the Earl replied. ‘Any servant of mine who can’t be discreet is out on the street before he knows what’s happenin’. A firm hand. That’s what the lower orders need. And—by God—I see they get it.’
‘You are, of course, quite right,’ Lord Dalton agreed. ‘But don’t you think that in this particular case, you should make an exception to your rule? We are, after all, talking about an investigation into the death of your youngest son.’
The hostile glance which the Earl bestowed on his future son-in-law was only there for a second, but Blackstone did not miss it. Nor had he missed the fact that behind Dalton’s apparently mild words, there was the slightest, wispiest hint of a threat.
It was a very strange situation indeed, the Inspector thought. By rights, as a newcomer to the family, Dalton should be at the bottom of the pecking order, yet here he was, asserting his will as if he were the man in charge.
The Earl was examining the glowing end of his cigarette with an intensity it did not merit. His left eye had started to twitch, and his normally arrogant jaw had gone slack. The seconds ticked by agonizingly slowly, yet it seemed that no one in the room was prepared to break the silence.
Finally, the Earl spoke. ‘It could set a very dangerous precedent,’ he said weakly.
‘Suppose I were to be present when the Inspector carried out his interviews?’ Dalton suggested. ‘I could make sure that the servants didn’t go beyond the bounds of what you would consider proper.’
‘Want to play the detective now, William?’ chortled the Viscount. ‘Joinin’ the ranks of the workin’ men? You’re gettin’ to be as bad as Charles was.’
Lord Dalton gave him a look cold enough to chill the blood, then turned his attention back to the Earl.
‘Do you think that would be a satisfactory compromise?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ the Earl replied, without much conviction.
‘And that would also be satisfactory to you, Inspector?’ Dalton enquired.
No, of course it wouldn’t be satisfactory, Blackstone thought. Having one of the aristocrats sitting in at the interviews would make his job harder—if not impossible. But he had heard enough in the last few minutes to realize it was the best deal he was going to get.
‘That would be perfectly satisfactory, my Lord,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘In that case, Blackstone, you may go now,’ the Earl said dismissively.
The Inspector bowed, and took his leave.
Oh, I’d really like it to be the Earl, Blackstone thought as he followed the butler back down the corridor. I’d really like to be able to prove that he was responsible for culling one of the weaker members of his stock.
But the prospect of the silken rope ending up around the Earl’s neck was as remote as the possibility that Blackstone would somehow end up inheriting his title.
Six
The two young owners of the Empire Living Picture Company were carrying out a final check on their equipment when they heard an imperious rapping on their office door.
Their automatic reaction was to exchange the worried glances that had become almost second nature over the previous few months. Then the taller, skinnier of the two, whose name was Martin Wottle, grinned and said, ‘Well, it can’t be our creditors, because we don’t owe anybody anything any more.’
‘Don’t owe anybody anything!’ said Alfred Dobkins sourly. ‘No, we don’t owe our old creditors anything, but now that convict bastard from Australia owns us body and soul!’
‘Not everybody from Australia is a convict,’ Wottle said, in a placatory tone. ‘Mr Seymour is a respectable businessman, and he’s our partner, Alfred, not our creditor.’
There was more knocking, even louder this time.
‘You’d better go and answer it,’ Dobkins said.
Wottle crossed the room and opened the door to the street to reveal the visitor. It was a man dressed—very respectably—in a top hat and frock coat. Yet, though the clothes were of good quality and had been made by a bespoke tailor, they didn’t look quite right on him. Nor did he seem particularly comfortable in them. In fact, he gave the impression that he’d be much happier wearing an open-necked shirt and a bushman’s broad-rimmed hat.
‘G’day, Mr Wottle,’ said the visitor.
‘Mr Seymour!’ Wottle replied. ‘We didn’t expect to see you here at this time of night.’
‘If there’s one thing I learned back home, it’s that when you’ve made an investment, it’s a bloody good idea to keep an eye on it,’ the other man told him. Wottle felt a small shiver run through him. Though he constantly reassured his partner that it had been a good idea to go into business with the Australian—and still believed that to be true himself—there was definitely something unsettling about Seymour.
‘Well, are you goin’ to invite me in or not?’ the visitor asked.
‘Y-yes...yes...of course,’ Wottle stammered. ‘You’re always welcome at the office, Mr Seymour. You know that.’
The visitor stepped inside, and looked around him. The office in no way lived up to the grand title the company had given itself. Paint was peeling from the walls, and the faded linoleum was cracked. On the battered desk stood a Remington typewriting machine that looked at least twenty years old—and was probably more valuable as an antique than as a piece of working equipment. Two overstuffed armchairs faced each other across a cheap coffee table in the centre of the room. The only aspect of the whole place that was at all likely to generate any confidence was the workbench that ran along the back wall and held the two moving picture cameras.
Alfred Dobkins was still standing over the bench, with a screwdriver in his hand.
‘It’s Mr Seymour,’ Wottle said unnecessarily. ‘Come to check on his investments.’
Dobkins scowled. ‘That’s really not necessary, you know,’ he said to Seymour. ‘Your money’s in good hands. Better than good. We’re going to make you rich.’
Wottle raised his hand to his mouth and chewed nervously at one of his fingernails.
Why couldn’t Alfred be pleasanter to Seymour? he asked himself. Didn’t his partner sense the menace that lurked inside the Australian’s bosom like a coiled serpent?
No, of course he didn’t sense it! Dobkins had always been too bull-headed and self-absorbed to ever really notice what was going on with other people.
‘I hope your partner’s right,’ Seymour said to Wottle. ‘I do hope, for your sakes, that you are going to make me money.’
‘The...the business can’t fail,’ Wottle said, realizing that he was starting to babble, yet not being able to do anything to prevent it. ‘Living pictures are going to be the next big thing. Why, I must have told you that a couple of years ago, when the Lumière brothers showed their living pictures of a train entering a station—’
‘You did tell me.’
‘—when they showed the pictures of the train, some of the audience were so convinced it was a real train coming towards them that they ran out of the theatre in absolute terror.’
The visitor nodded curtly to indicate that he had heard enough, then turned his attention to Dobkins. ‘What about
the other side of the business?’ he asked. ‘Have you got all the necessary permits?’
‘We’ve applied for them,’ Dobkins said offhandedly.
The visitor frowned. ‘That isn’t what I asked you, now is it?’
For God’s sake, be nice to him! Wottle prayed silently. For God’s sake, tell him what he wants to hear!
‘It’s just a matter of time before the permits come through,’ Dobkins said. ‘The clerk who issues them assured me there’ll be absolutely no problem.’ An expression came into his eyes that indicated he probably considered what he was about to say cunning—though to the other two, it was merely obvious. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘if we were to give that clerk in charge a gift, it might make him work just that little bit harder for us.’
‘Work harder! You English don’t know the meaning of hard work,’ the visitor said. ‘Back home in Australia, none of you would last five minutes in any kind of business.’ But he reached for his wallet anyway. ‘How much will it take to make this clerk do the job he’s already been paid to do?’
‘Five pounds would probably cover it,’ Dobkins said. He licked his lips. ‘Although, if you want to be certain, ten pounds would probably be better.’
The visitor handed over the money. ‘I’ll be pretty crook if the arrangements are not in place in time,’ he said. ‘And you wouldn’t like that, you know. You really wouldn’t.’
‘We want things to work out just as much as you do, Mr Seymour,’ said Wottle, babbling again. ‘It’s a really big chance for us. We could be famous. We could be—’
‘You could be in a great deal of trouble—if you let me down!’ the visitor cut in. He walked over to the door. ‘By the way,’ he said, as he reached for the handle, ‘do you remember that journalist who was bothering you?’
‘Smith?’ Wottle asked. ‘Charles Smith?’
‘That’s right,’ Seymour agreed. ‘Well, he won’t be bothering you any more.’
Wottle felt his mouth go dry and his heart start to beat a little faster. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘I mean what I say. That he won’t be bothering you any more.’
‘You don’t mean to say you’ve...you haven’t...’
The Australian laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. ‘What an imagination you have, Mr Wottle. You think that something really terrible’s happened to him, don’t you?’
‘Well I...I mean...the way you said it...’ Wottle stammered.
‘I’ve simply had a word with his Editor, and his Editor has had a word with him. It has been made perfectly plain to him that Empire Living Pictures are involved in an important undertaking, and have no time to answer pointless questions. But...’ Seymour paused and raised a warning finger, ‘...but I would strongly advise you not to discuss this Charles Smith with anyone else. As far as both of you are concerned, it would be much better to forget that he ever existed. Have I made myself clear?’
Wottle looked down at the floor. ‘Yes, Mr Seymour.’
‘Mr Dobkins?’ the Australian asked.
Alfred Dobkins banged his screwdriver exasperatedly down on the bench. ‘Oh, all right, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘If that’ll make you happy.’
‘You shouldn’t be concerned about what will make me happy,’ the visitor said. ‘It’s what will make me unhappy which should bother you.’ He tipped his hat. ‘Well, g’day to the pair of youse.’
He stepped through the door and was gone.
Wottle placed his hand over his heart, and confirmed that it was galloping as fast as he’d suspected it was.
‘When you think about it, Charles Smith didn’t really bother us, did he?’ he asked.
‘He bothered me. I’ve got better things to do with my time than to waste it answering his damn-fool questions about political exiles,’ Dobkins said curtly.
‘So have I,’ Wottle agreed. ‘But it would have wasted a lot more of our time than Smith took up to have gone to his Editor to complain about him, wouldn’t it? Yet that’s what Seymour says he’s done.’
‘Nice to see that the Aussie bastard is finally starting to earn his share of the profits,’ Dobkins said. ‘It’s about time he helped out.’
‘But I don’t think Seymour did it to help us,’ said Wottle thoughtfully.
‘Then what would have been the point of his going to see the Editor?’
‘I think he did it because—in some way we don’t understand—the person Smith was really bothering was him.’
Seven
The morning sun smiled down benevolently on Blackstone as he made his way towards Southwark Coroner’s Court.
He would have preferred cloud, he thought. And possibly one of those bone-chilling winds that had blown down from the Hindu Kush during his Afghanistan days—because that kind of weather would have been much more in keeping with the gloomy mood he had woken up in—and was still not able to shrug off.
Four days! he told himself.
It had been four days since the Honourable Charles Montcliffe had been fished out of the Thames—and he knew no more now than he had when the River Police’s Sergeant Roberts had first unrolled the body from its tarpaulin shroud.
He entered the court and took a seat towards the back of the room. The stink of chemicals—which was so powerful in the adjoining morgue—was no more than a hint of a smell in the courtroom itself. Yet even so, the feeling of death was everywhere. It was etched on the faces of the jurors, who had been compelled to examine all the bodies lying in the morgue before the inquests began. It was reflected in the wild, fascinated eyes of the spectators—a motley collection of men and women who licked their lips with anticipation when each case was announced. It was embodied in the grave bearing of the coroner, seated behind his raised desk and master of all he surveyed.
Blackstone scrutinized the jury. There were twenty-three of them—although only twelve would actually be called upon to produce a verdict—all ratepayers and voters, and all of them solid citizens. They must have heard at least half a dozen other cases before they finally arrived at the one he had come to listen to—and they were starting to look punch-drunk.
The clerk of the court stood up, and announced that the next case concerned an unidentified body of a man that had been fished out of the Thames.
The police surgeon, an elderly man with a shock of white hair, took the stand first, and testified that he had examined the corpse, and determined that life had been extinct for several hours.
What exactly was the cause of death? the coroner asked.
The man’s throat had been slit, the doctor replied, and he had been stabbed more than a dozen times. In his professional opinion, the stab wounds had been inflicted when the victim was already dead.
The second and last witness was Sergeant Roberts of the Thames River Police. In carefully measured words he explained how he and his partner had retrieved the corpse from the river.
‘Have you ever seen a murder of this nature before, Sergeant?’ the coroner asked.
Roberts pondered over the question. ‘Not quite like this,’ he admitted finally. ‘But I’ve seen some pretty nasty ones in my time.’
‘And do you have any theories of your own about this particular case, Sergeant?’
Again, Roberts hesitated before speaking. ‘It looks to me like it might ’ave been a cult murder, sir,’ he said. ‘What they call a ritual killin’.’
Could he be right? Blackstone wondered. Might Montcliffe, the would-be journalist, the perhaps-thrill-seeker, have got himself involved with one of the many cults that had been imported from all corners of the Empire? It was possible. But then, with this case, anything was possible.
The sergeant stepped down, and it took the jury less than five minutes to decide that the unidentified dead man had been murdered by person or persons unknown. The coroner thanked the jury for its work, and the business of the day was over.
The audience rose to their feet, and Blackstone, all speculative thoughts banished from his mind, looked keenly arou
nd the court. This was the moment he had been waiting for—the moment when, as in so many cases before this one, he might get his first real lead.
He recognized a number of the faces that passed him. Some of these people had been coming to inquests for years, and would continue to come until one day, perhaps, they would themselves be the star attractions. But there was one face among the sea of others that was not only new to him—but also seemed completely out of place!
The face in question belonged to a young man of about twenty-three. Though his features were clearly working class, his hair was neatly cut, he looked well-fed, and his eyes did not show any of the tiredness that comes with working fourteen-hour days in a lead works or a tannery. He had, Blackstone noted automatically, a small strawberry birthmark on his forehead.
The young man’s clothes also marked him out from the rest of the spectators. They were obviously not new—but then who, in this area, ever wore anything other than second-hand?—yet they were certainly very good quality, and unlikely, therefore, to have been bought off a barrow down at the local market in the New Cut.
The young man noticed the attention he was getting from the Inspector, and the slightly mournful expression on his face was replaced by a look of pure panic. Then he was on the move—pushing and elbowing his way through the crowd, and heading for the door.
Blackstone was on his feet in a second, forcing his own way through the mob. For an instant he was so close to his man that he could almost have touched him. Then he hit a tight knot of people—already cursing at having been pushed aside once—and he was brought to a halt. Over the heads of the others he saw the young man reach the street and break into a run. By the time Blackstone managed to get out on to the pavement, there was no sign of his quarry.
You should have thought to post a couple of constables outside the door of the courtroom, the Inspector chided himself.
But he hadn’t thought, and now it was too late. It might be days before he caught up with the young man—if he ever caught up with him at all. And the man was important to the case. Blackstone knew he was. He could feel it deep in his gut.
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