The Inspector stamped his foot in frustration.
‘Damn and blast!’ he said, so loudly that people some distance away turned around to see who was causing the disturbance.
*
Blackstone ambled slowly along Southwark Bridge Road, stopping occasionally to observe a small segment of its life. An orderly boy was dodging in and out of the heavy traffic—risking his life in order to scoop up horse dung—and the Inspector remembered that in the Montcliffe household there were servants whose job it was to wait on servants. He nodded to an old woman selling camphor from a tray slung around her neck, and wondered if her idea of heaven even came close to the life the Montcliffes took for granted. He flung a coin at the feet of a blind clog dancer—and might have speculated about him, too, had it not been for the cry of the newspaper vendor who was standing on the corner of Lant Street.
‘’Orrible murder near the docks,’ the man was shouting. ‘Is the Ripper on the loose again? Read all abhart it!’
The Ripper! Just the sound of the name made Blackstone shiver. He’d only been a young copper at the time Jack had struck, and therefore no more than on the fringe of that investigation, but he’d never forget the fear that had settled like a thick, choking fog over the whole of the East End. Yet despite their fear—despite knowing the risk they were running—there had still been women willing to work the streets, driven there either by grinding poverty or the desperate need for a drink.
‘Sensational murder!’ the vendor chanted. ‘’As Jack returned?’
Blackstone bought a paper and turned hurriedly to the article. A prostitute, identified by other prostitutes as Mary Atkins, aged 37, had been found buried under a pile of rubbish on Burr Street. Her throat had been cut, and the police surgeon estimated that she had been dead for at least four days. A spokesman for Scotland Yard was doing his best to play down the Ripper connection by pointing out that the prostitute had not been killed in Jack’s old hunting ground, that she had not been strangled before being slashed, and that there had been no disembowelling after death.
Yes, it all sounded very logical when put like that, Blackstone thought, but it would do little to quell the sense of alarm that must already have been growing in the poorer parts of the city.
He had reached the river when an idea—which was too vague yet to be even called a theory—hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.
‘She could have seen him!’ he said aloud. ‘She could have seen Charles Montcliffe!’
Because, given the tides on the night Montcliffe was thrown into the river, it was perfectly conceivable that his point of entry into the water had been Aldermans Stairs. And those stairs were conveniently close to Burr Street.
So was it possible that Mary Atkins’ death was purely the result of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Had she been killed not for something she’d done, but simply because of what she’d accidentally witnessed? And if that were the case, would it lead him anywhere?
*
Blackstone gazed down at the body of Mary Atkins. Her skin had the sallow, veined look of a woman who ate unhealthily and drank too much. The paper had said that she was thirty-seven, but she could easily have passed for sixty. Not that that would have mattered to most of her customers—she had the right equipment between her legs, and that was all they required for their brief, joyless encounters in some back alley. There were even some men who got an extra thrill out of the fact that the whore they were with was so raddled.
Blackstone reached down and picked up the prostitute’s right hand. The skin was rough, which suggested that before she’d taken to the streets she’d been involved in hard domestic work—perhaps as a servant or a washerwoman. The nails were either broken or chewed down. The whole hand was covered with a layer of dirt that could only have built up over years.
‘’Ave to ‘ave been a really dark night before I’d pay ’er for ’er services,’ said the coroner’s officer, who was standing on the other side of the slab.
Blackstone nodded absently. ‘Any idea who’s investigating this case?’ he asked.
‘Inspector Todd,’ the other man replied. ‘’E was in ’ere earlier, givin’ ’er the once-over.’
But not a very careful once-over, Blackstone thought, noticing the tiny thread of material caught under one of the dirty nails.
Taking a match out of the box he carried in his pocket, he inserted the stick under the nail, and carefully extracted the piece of evidence.
‘What d’ you reckon this is, George?’ he asked.
The coroner’s assistant took the sliver of material from the Inspector, gazed at it for a second, then brushed it gently against his cheek.
‘I fort it was wool at first sight,’ he said. ‘But it ain’t. If yer asked me ter give a definite opinion, I’d ’ave to say it was fur.’
So would I, Blackstone thought. But it wasn’t the cheap rabbit fur that lined the collars of coats worn by women in the East End. There was a silkiness about it that said it had come from a much more expensive source.
An aristocratic connection again?
It was possible. Assuming, of course, that Mary Atkins’ murder really did have something to do with the death of the Honourable Charles Montcliffe.
Blackstone put the piece of fur in an envelope, and slid it into his pocket. He examined the dead woman’s other hand, and found nothing. He studied the rest of her body—the slack breasts, the wrinkled stomach, the veined legs—without coming across any additional clues. He turned the corpse over, but to no avail. So the fur was the only lead he had. Still, he supposed, that was better than nothing.
Eight
The moment he entered his office, Blackstone noticed the smile on his sergeant’s face. It spread almost from ear to ear, and proclaimed to the whole world that Patterson was very pleased with himself.
‘Who did it then?’ the Inspector asked, as he made his way over to his own desk.
Patterson gave the big man with the arched eyebrows a puzzled look. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
Blackstone sighed. ‘You’re grinning like the cat who’s got the cream, from which I infer that at the very least you can tell me who killed Charles Montcliffe and why.’
Patterson’s smile acquired a slightly sheepish edge. ‘Well, no, I can’t quite do that, sir,’ he admitted, ‘but I have come up with some interesting stuff on the people you asked me to make inquiries about.’
Blackstone lowered himself into his chair, and swung his feet up on to the desk—thinking as he did so that it was a great thing to have a desk to put your feet on.
‘Let’s hear all about it, then,’ he said.
The sergeant consulted his carefully written notes. ‘The Montcliffes have a large estate somewhere up in Staffordshire,’ he said. ‘It’s been in the family for I don’t know how long.’
‘Probably since 1066—ever since one of the Earl’s ancestors helped William the Conqueror to steal the country from the people who were already living here,’ Blackstone said gruffly. ‘Sorry, I interrupted you. Go on, son.’
‘Anyway, I know this bloke in the Staffordshire police, so I rang him up.’ The sergeant smiled again. ‘Just like that. Picked up a telephone and there I was talking to him. Isn’t it a wonderful invention?’
‘Wonderful,’ agreed Blackstone, who never ceased to be amazed by his assistant’s fascination with the latest gadgets. If they ever got flying machines to work, he thought dryly, Sergeant Patterson would be one of the first reckless people to go up in the air.
‘So you rang this bloke on the wonderful telephone,’ he continued. ‘And did he have anything interesting to tell you?’
‘Quite a lot,’ Patterson replied. ‘Like I said, it’s a large estate they’ve got up there—but it isn’t nearly as big as it used to be.’
‘And why is that?’ Blackstone asked, feeling a slight prick of interest.
‘A few years ago, the Earl began selling off some of his land. Nobody thought much about it at the time, bu
t when he kept on selling it, well, then people started to sit up and take notice—especially when he went and sold the part that the river ran through.’
‘Why should that be significant?’
Patterson shook his head, almost pityingly.
‘It means he lost his fishing rights,’ he explained. ‘And fishing’s very important to your aristocrats. Now when he goes out with his rod, it’s to fish on somebody else’s land—and he has to have permission from the owner.’
Yes, that must gall him, Blackstone thought. And there could only be one reason why Earl Montcliffe would have put himself in that position—he didn’t have any choice.
‘Got any pals in Australia?’ he asked.
‘I have, as a matter of fact,’ Patterson said. ‘A bloke I joined the Force with went out to work for the New South Wales police three or four years ago. Why exactly are you interested, sir?’
‘When I was talking to the family, Viscount Montcliffe let it slip out that he’d been to Australia.’
‘I’m afraid I still don’t see the point.’
‘A lot of fortunes have been made in Australia. And a lot of fortunes have been lost there, as well. Maybe that’s where some of the family money went—down the shaft of a gold mine that didn’t actually have any gold in it.’ Blackstone paused for a second. ‘How long would it take your Aussie pal to find out just what young Montcliffe was up to in the colonies?’
Patterson shrugged. ‘Not long. If I send him the telegram today, he can be on the case tomorrow. And from what I’ve heard about Australia, it’s like a village—everybody knows everybody else’s business.’
‘What about your inquiries into Lord William Dalton’s background? Did you manage to dig up anything interesting on him?’
‘I did. And it’s a completely different story there. I talked to a couple of blokes I know in the City about him, and—’
‘Is there anywhere in the whole bloody Empire where you don’t know “a bloke”?’ Blackstone interrupted.
He’d meant it as a joke, but Patterson gave the matter serious thought before saying, ‘No, I don’t think so. Not really.’
Blackstone shook his head in wonder. Patterson was a good detective in his own right, but it was his contacts that made him truly invaluable.
‘So what did your City friends have to say about Lord Dalton?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Nothing bad. I think they rather admire him, if the truth be told.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Because however much money most businessmen have made, a lot of the aristocracy still look down on them. Lord Dalton’s not like that. In fact, he’s a businessman himself.’
‘Yes, I think he mentioned something about that. What particular business is he in?’
‘All sorts. He owns part of a shipyard on Tyneside for a start. Then he’s got a couple of cotton mills in Lancashire, an iron works in Shropshire, three or four coal mines in South Wales, shares in railways and banks—’
‘So he’s rich, is he?’
‘Very.’
Dalton was rich, and for all its arrogance, the Montcliffe family was not. That would certainly explain the influence Lord Dalton seemed to have over Earl Montcliffe—even though it was plain that the latter obviously disliked the former. And it also explained Dalton’s willingness to play such an active part in the case of the unfortunate young man who would have been his brother-in-law. In marrying Emily, he was also marrying the family—and because he had the money, he was assuming the role of the head of that family, and protecting it as best he could.
For a moment, Blackstone almost felt sorry for Earl Montcliffe. The man had been brought up to believe that he answered only to God, and now, in late middle age, he had been forced to accept that was no longer true.
How he must hate having to swallow the bitter pill, the Inspector thought. And how he must loathe the man who was administering it. If it had been Dalton who’d been found floating in the Thames, Blackstone didn’t think he would have had to look far to find the murderer.
A noise that had sounded like distant thunder only seconds earlier grew louder and louder until it broke into Blackstone’s consciousness and destroyed his thought process completely.
Horses! Dozens of them by the sound of it. And all of them moving at the same pace.
With a sigh, the Inspector got up from his desk and walked over to the window. A troop of Indian cavalry, their heads turbaned, their leather webbing shining in the sunlight, were making their way along the Embankment.
A rehearsal for the Jubilee, no doubt. Watching them, Blackstone felt a pang of nostalgia. Life had been so simple when he’d been in the Army. Of course, there had been dangerous moments, but even then—even when your heart had been pounding in your chest and your mouth was suddenly dry—you at least had the advantage of knowing who your enemy was.
Not like now! Now he was groping in the dark, never sure when he was going to put a foot wrong. He was glad that he had Lord William Dalton on his side. But how long would that situation continue? Suppose the investigation did implicate one of the Montcliffes. Whom did he think Lord Dalton would choose to sacrifice—a member of his new family or a humble detective inspector?
Blackstone took out his pocket watch. It was half past twelve. In three hours, after the Montcliffe family had finished their luncheon and would no doubt be taking a well-earned afternoon nap, he was to be allowed his one and only opportunity to question all the staff who worked in Earl Montcliffe’s London home. He wondered whether the interviews would yield anything—and, if they didn’t, where he would look next.
Perhaps he should take a more relaxed attitude to this case, he thought. After all, no one else seemed particularly eager to have it cleared up, and the safest course might simply be to let it drift until it was nothing more than a memory. But even as these ideas passed through his mind, he knew he would eventually dismiss them—because he simply wasn’t that kind of copper.
Nine
The seats around the large scrubbed table in the servants’ hall were all filled. Blackstone ran his eyes from the top to the bottom. At the head of the table, furthest away from him, sat the butler and the housekeeper. Flanking them were footmen. Next came the ladies’ maids and valets. Then the coachmen and ordinary maids. Finally there were the tweenies and boot boys, who were so close to him that he had only to reach out to touch them.
He turned his attention back to the butler. Mr Hoskins was around forty-five. He had pale grey eyes that looked as if they would miss nothing, a tight mouth and a square jaw. This man would know some secrets about the house, the Inspector thought—but wild horses wouldn’t drag them out of him.
Blackstone leant slightly forward. ‘Are all the servants here?’ he asked the butler.
‘All the ones who could be spared from essential duties,’ Mr Hoskins replied coldly.
Ah yes, essential duties had to go on whatever else was happening, Blackstone thought. After all, if Earl Montcliffe were suddenly to develop an itchy arse, it was only right that there should be some minion hovering around to scratch it for him.
‘As you’re probably aware, the Honourable Charles Montcliffe has disappeared,’ Lord Dalton said. ‘There is absolutely no cause for alarm, but naturally your master and mistress are eager to find him as soon as possible, and so have called in the police. This is Inspector Blackstone. I want you to answer his questions as truthfully as you can.’ He turned to Blackstone. ‘Inspector?’
‘I would be interested to learn if any of you, especially those who work above stairs, have noticed anything unusual in Charles Montcliffe’s behaviour recently,’ Blackstone said. ‘For instance—’
‘The staff are trained to do their jobs, and to notice nothing beyond the scope of those tasks,’ Mr Hoskins interrupted.
‘That might be theoretically true—’ Blackstone said.
‘In this house, it is not theoretical in the slightest,’ the other man countered. ‘We may be in the room at the
same time as the Family, but we are certainly not of the room.’
‘I appear to have left my cigarette case in the grand parlour, Hoskins,’ Lord Dalton said to the butler. ‘Could you go and get it for me, please?’
The butler gave a slight bow. ‘I will send one of the maids to retrieve it immediately, my Lord.’
‘No, you will not,’ Dalton told him. ‘It is an expensive case, and I would prefer it to be handled only by a man of taste who knows how to look after valuable things. A man such as you, Hoskins.’
‘But, my Lord—’ the butler protested.
‘Thank you, Hoskins,’ Lord Dalton said firmly.
The butler stood up. ‘As you wish, my Lord,’ he said.
‘And Hoskins...’
‘Yes, my Lord.’
‘Please do not return to this room until you’ve found the case. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, my Lord,’ Hoskins said, giving Dalton a full bow and heading towards the exit.
As the butler closed the door behind him, Lord Dalton unconsciously tapped his jacket pocket where—Blackstone was almost sure—the cigarette case had been all along.
‘Mr Hoskins is a fine, upstanding man whose only desire is to protect the Family,’ Dalton told the remaining staff. ‘You could all take a lesson from him on the nature of duty. However—’ his voice softened and became somehow more persuasive—‘I feel that on this one occasion he has failed to grasp the point, which is that the Family does not need—indeed does not want—to be protected. On the contrary, they would be very grateful for any information you could provide. And let me assure you of this: no one who speaks now will be punished, but anyone who reports what has been said to Mr Hoskins in his absence will be instantly dismissed.’
To speak like that, Dalton must be the one who was paying their wages, Blackstone realized—and if he could work that out, then the servants probably could too.
One of the maids raised a timorous hand.
‘Yes?’ Dalton said encouragingly.
Blackstone and the Rendezvous With Death (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 1 Page 6