Death in the East

by Abir Mukherjee

  Bessie Drummond … Bessie May … was dead, and it was as though I’d struck the first blow myself.

  I felt hollowed out: an emptiness in my breast; a clawing realisation that, on some level, I still cared for her and that now it was too late and I’d lost her. There could be no amends. If I’d been more of a man, if I’d stayed with her two nights earlier, questioned her more thoroughly, maybe she’d still be alive. Suddenly the guilt, the grief, the bite of self-loathing and the red heat of anger coalesced and I doubled over and heaved into the gutter.

  Behind me I heard Whitelaw’s voice, then felt his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘You all right, lad?’

  I turned to find a look of paternal concern on his face.

  I merely nodded, unwilling to speak lest my voice betray me.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Being a copper ain’t for the faint-hearted. You’re going to need to toughen up. Still, you’re young. You’ll learn.’

  ‘What now?’ I asked.

  ‘Now? Now it’s a murder investigation. Scotland Yard are sending a detective inspector. We’ll need to brief him.’

  ‘What do we tell him?’

  The question seemed to surprise him.

  ‘We tell him everything we know: that we saw a commotion outside the house, went in to investigate and found a woman with her head staved in. We tell him that the husband was probably the last person to see her alive; that he came home with a mate, went up to their room, probably to scrounge some drinking money; that he left, and an hour later a couple of Jewesses break down the door and find Bessie with her head cracked open like an egg.’

  ‘You think Drummond killed her?’

  Whitelaw moved aside to allow a couple of constables to exit the station.

  ‘I don’t think he meant to kill her. I think he went up to ask for cash. She refused and Drummond lost his temper, didn’t want to lose face in front of his mate, and lashed out and hit her on the head with something heavy. Now she’s dead, they’ll hang him for sure.’

  It all made sense, except for one thing.

  ‘The door,’ I said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It was locked from the inside.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  I pulled the handkerchief from my pocket and carefully unwrapped the key. ‘I found it on the floor at the foot of the bed. I think it was dislodged when the two women broke down the door.’

  Whitelaw realised the significance immediately.

  ‘That’s not good.’

  ‘What if someone entered the room, attacked Bessie, then locked the door and left through the window?’

  With a meaty hand, Whitelaw rubbed the mutton chop on his left cheek. His face didn’t seem convinced.

  ‘We should go back there and check the window.’

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, lad,’ he said, raising a palm. ‘The room’s secured. We should wait for the detective inspector to get here.’

  I felt the bile rising. Bessie was dead and Whitelaw was suggesting that we sit around waiting for some bigwig from Scotland Yard to show up while the trail went cold.

  I punched the rail, hard and almost oblivious to the pain that ran up my fist. The bar reverberated with a hollow, metallic ring.

  ‘We have to do something.’

  Whitelaw gave me a weary look that encompassed a lifetime of disappointments.

  ‘What would you suggest, lad?’

  ‘I suggest we find Tom Drummond.’

  We headed out and up bustling Commercial Street.

  In some ways London was like Calcutta, only less honest. If Calcutta was split between White Town and Black, London was no less bifurcated: between west and east, rich and poor. Here, too, the bare facts were laid out in black and white, or rather in shades of red and blue, by Charles Booth in his map of London’s poor. Affluent areas were coloured blue and poorer ones in hues of red, with the most wretched streets painted a deep crimson. There wasn’t much blue within a mile of Whitechapel, and the reddest areas were packed to the rafters with foreigners, these days mainly the Jews: a hundred thousand of them escaping the bloody terror of the pogroms that always seemed to be occurring somewhere in the Russias.

  Penniless and persecuted, they had come to England, which is to say they’d come to London, and in particular to the East End. Why Whitechapel? Because this is where they got off the boats, and because no one with any other choice wanted to live there.

  It had always been this way. Before the Jews had come the Irish, fleeing famine, and before them the Huguenots, running from religious wars. Always someone escaping something, and coming here with nothing because they had no choice, and because a life of nothing was better than no life at all.

  Tom and Bessie Drummond were just about the only native English folk in Fashion Street, and throughout the whole of Whitechapel things were little different. Thousands of immigrants crammed into a space fit for hundreds, often five or six to a room and sleeping in shifts. The Jews even had a saying: ‘Sleep quickly. We need the pillows.’

  Whitechapel was a different England, and while it wasn’t quite a foreign country, it was still a world away from anywhere else in the land, its incomers viewed with a mix of hostility and fear by more than a few.

  ‘Round ’em up and put ’em on a steamer back to wherever it is they came from,’ Sergeant Whitelaw had opined more than once as we’d walked our beat, and whatever my opinions, I couldn’t deny the man’s consistency. He advocated similar treatment for the Chinese in Limehouse, the Irish in Millwall, and the Catholics in general, though I was never clear on exactly where he expected them to be shipped back to.

  Yet he and others seemed to harbour a special distaste for the Jews. It couldn’t just be because of their foreign tongue and worship of an alien god – the Chinese, after all, did both too – but Jews committed the additional sin of looking like us. The Chinese looked and acted so differently that they were dismissed as a law unto themselves. Yet a Jew, dressed in a suit and clean shirt, could pass for an Englishman, and maybe that’s what people found unforgivable.

  As if to emphasise the point, Whitelaw shook his head. ‘Listen to that,’ he said as we passed a group of men who stood engaged in animated discussion outside a bakery.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard anyone speak a single word of English since we left the station?’

  ‘I wasn’t listening. I was still thinking about Bessie Drummond.’

  ‘Well, you ain’t missed much. You can walk from Bishopsgate to Stepney on a Sunday and I’ll wager you’ll be lucky to hear a full sentence in English. It’s all Hebrew, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yiddish.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Their language. It’s called Yiddish.’

  ‘You’re an expert on foreign languages as well now?’ He paused, then continued. ‘Conspiracy, is what it is. The way things are going, you won’t be able to recognise this country in fifty years. There’s already Jews in Parliament. Next thing you know, we’ll have a Jew prime minister.’

  ‘Haven’t we already had one?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Benjamin Disraeli. Wasn’t he a Jew?’

  He mulled it over for a moment. His response, when it came, was enigmatic.

  ‘Well, there you go, then,’ he said. ‘See? You can’t trust ’em.’

  The Bleeding Hart public house was little more than a hundred square feet of long bar and short tables on a sawdust-covered floor, nestled between a grocer’s and an ironmonger’s on the Bethnal Green Road. Its diminutive size, however, belied its significance to a certain strand of the East End’s criminal fraternity, acting, as it did, not only as a watering hole, but also as the centre of operations for the multitude of enterprises controlled or connected to the Spiller brothers. It was where ne’er-do-wells went to discuss business, plan operations and hire an assortment of talents including lock-pickers, forgers and just plain muscle. As such, the Bleeding Hart was part social club, part business headq
uarters and part labour exchange. And the Bleeding Hart was famous.

  For a while, the good souls of the Salvation Army had mounted a noisy, placard-waving vigil on the pavement outside, urging the sinners within to turn away from the Devil, but in the end, it was the Sally Army stalwarts who’d been forced to change direction. Word had it the Spillers had mounted a protest of their own, at the house of a senior officer of the Salvation Army. Whether it was Martin’s threats or Wesley’s fists which proved more persuasive wasn’t clear, but the message had got through and the preachers and their placards had melted away.

  Despite it being a mile or so from Fashion Street, the Bleeding Hart was Tom Drummond’s regular, partly because a man of his dubious skills could often find work there, and partly because the Bethnal Green Road and the rail tracks nearby formed an informal border between the ‘foreign’ areas to the south and the more English streets to the north. In its fifty-two years of operation, I doubted a single non-Englishman had ever been through the doors of the Bleeding Hart other than by mistake or because of a summons from the Spiller brothers, and the reception was unlikely to have been warm either way.

  Its exterior was unremarkable. Peeling black paint framed a dun-coloured door and windows opaque with dirt. Above the entrance swung a faded board emblazoned with the picture of the creature that gave the place its name: a white stag with a crown around its neck and an arrow stuck in its side. Blood dripped from the creature’s flank, and while the expression on its face wasn’t quite one of pain, it did suggest the animal wasn’t particularly thrilled by the whole experience of being used for target practice.

  Whitelaw pushed open the door and I followed him into the fog beyond. Trade was brisk, despite the early hour. Several bodies propped up the counter, old men with yellowing hair and sallow, capillary-pinched cheeks poring over copies of the Pink ’Un or nursing stale beer between cracked fingers, and resembling nothing so much as the jetsam that washed up on the black banks of the Thames at low tide.

  To offer some privacy to those who wanted it, a set of booths, separated by wood-and-glass partitions lined one wall. In plush West End boozers, the fashion was for the glass to be frosted and decorated with acid-etched cornucopia. Here in the east, the same effect was achieved with dust and grime and crude drawings made with one finger.

  Hunched over the table in one of these was Drummond, the pint glass in his rough, calloused hand empty save for the dregs of foam and discoloured liquid that clung like shipwreck victims to the sides. Across from him sat a thin man with grey skin, receding black hair, and a nose like a parish pickaxe. Neither man looked up as we entered, and neither seemed to be doing much talking. Drummond in particular seemed to stare unfocused at the table in front of him, with, for the longest of seconds, not even the stimulus of Whitelaw calling out his name, eliciting a nod.

  Finally he looked over.

  Whitelaw removed his helmet. ‘Tom,’ he said. ‘You need to come with us.’

  Drummond said nothing. It was his drinking partner who piped up.

  ‘What’s this all about?’

  The sergeant fixed him with a stare.

  ‘And who might you be, sonny?’

  If the look was meant to intimidate, I doubted its efficacy. The man seemed about as cowed as Fred Karno putting on his act at the Hippodrome. A hint of a smirk played at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Finlay,’ he said. ‘Archibald Finlay.’

  ‘Well, Mr Finlay, I’ll thank you to keep your mouth shut.’

  Drummond fiddled nervously with the glass between his fingers, then made to slide out of the booth. Opposite him, Finlay mirrored his actions and tried to rise till Whitelaw put a heavy hand on his shoulder and shoved him back down.

  ‘Maybe, Mr Finlay,’ said Whitelaw, ‘you should stay here with my colleague while I have a quick word with your friend.’

  Tom Drummond rose from his seat and I took his place on the bench opposite Finlay as Sergeant Whitelaw led him back towards the front door. I didn’t envy him. Tom Drummond was hardly an angel, but informing him of his wife’s murder wasn’t something I’d have wanted to do.

  I watched them exit and waited for the door to swing shut once more, then turned to Finlay. He was swilling the remnants of his pint around the bottom of his glass.

  ‘So what line of work you in, Mr Finlay?’

  ‘Me?’ he said, looking up. ‘I’m a handyman, you might say. Odd jobs. A bit of this an’ that really. Whatever comes my way.’

  ‘You and Drummond good friends?’

  He stopped swilling his drink. ‘Good enough.’

  ‘How long you known him?’

  Finlay stared upwards as though the answer might be written on the ceiling. ‘Six months? Maybe longer.’

  ‘How’d you come to meet him?’

  ‘We were introduced. In here as it happens.’

  ‘By whom?’

  Finlay took a sip of his beer. ‘A mutual acquaintance. I forget his name.’

  ‘You been to his lodgings?’

  For the first time, he eyed me suspiciously.

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Just answer the question.’

  ‘Yeah, I been to his gaff. Was there not three hours ago.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  Finlay shrugged. ‘Nothing, really. Bumped into him down the docks this morning. We was both lookin’ for work but there was none goin’ so we decided we might come ’ere to pass the time, so to speak. We stopped off at Tommy’s place while ’e had his breakfast.’

  The sound of raised voices filtered in from outside. Through the haze of the windows, I could make out the shapes of Whitelaw and Drummond: the sergeant with his helmet under his arm; and Drummond, larger, taller, facing him. I watched as the bigger man seemed to slump to one side. The door opened once more, and Sergeant Whitelaw stood at the threshold.

  ‘Come on, Wyndham. Time to go.’

  I nodded, then turned back to Finlay, and from my breast pocket, extracted my notebook and pencil.

  ‘I’m going to need your address.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I so enjoy your sparkling conversation.’

  He rattled off a location on Durant Street.

  ‘Right,’ I said, rising from the banquette. ‘One last thing, Mr Finlay. Don’t plan on going anywhere.’

  TWELVE

  With Drummond between us, Whitelaw and I started out for Leman Street under a sky the colour of cast lead. As the first spots of rain began to fall, we hailed a hackney carriage and began the journey back to the station house. Whitelaw sat beside Drummond, with me across from them. For now, we were treating him as a bereaved husband rather than a suspect in his wife’s murder, and given his demeanour, it seemed an apt decision. He sat there as though struck dumb, robbed of the cloak of confident aggression which he usually and so casually wore.

  As we drove, a thought occurred to me.

  ‘Do you have your keys?’ I asked him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The keys. To your lodgings?’

  I watched the confusion pass across his face.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I see them, please?’

  He fished through the pockets of his coat before drawing out a small bunch of three keys on a ring. One was large and heavy, the other two, smaller, flatter and made of a lighter metal.

  ‘What’s each of them for?’ I asked.

  Drummond picked out the largest. ‘This is me front-door key. An’ these two are for padlocks.’

  ‘Padlocks on what?’

  ‘One’s for the chest what contains me valuables. The other’s for me suitcase.’

  ‘And the key to your room?’

  Drummond’s face reddened. ‘Ain’t got one.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Whitelaw.

  ‘Bessie never got round to makin’ me a copy.’

  ‘What if you were both going out?’ I asked.

  Drummond shrugged. ‘When Bessie went
out, she’d lock up and leave it with the Rosen woman downstairs.’

  Back at Leman Street, we deposited Drummond into the hands of the desk sergeant while Whitelaw and I sought out our new boss who, we were informed, was waiting for us in the spare office.

  Whitelaw knocked on the open door. Across the room, the besuited figure of Detective Inspector Robert Gooch stood staring out of the window amid a fog of blue cigarette smoke. He was something of a celebrity, among both police and public, thanks to his involvement in a case the previous year involving the murder of the maid of a prominent banker in Holland Park. Gooch had a reputation for incorruptibility in pursuit of the truth. He’d been the subject of acres of newsprint and was now known to the masses as Old Upright or simply, Gooch of the Yard.

  The first thing that struck me was his height, or rather his lack of it. He couldn’t have been more than five feet five inches in his heels, and given that the minimum height requirement for a member of the Metropolitan Police was five feet seven, it raised the question of how he came to be a policeman in the first place.

  He turned, and with his cigarette clamped between two fingers, gestured for us to enter. He must have been in his fifties, greying, and with the sort of thick, gentle features one associated more with the local parish priest than a detective. Yet if the rumours were to be believed, the man had steel in his veins.

  ‘You must be Whitelaw,’ he said to the sergeant.

  ‘Yes, sir, and this is Constable Wyndham.’

  ‘Sir,’ I said, and received a nod of acknowledgement in return.

  ‘I understand that you two gentlemen were first on the scene this morning.’

  ‘Correct, sir,’ said Whitelaw, standing to attention as though he’d just joined the army.

  ‘Good,’ said Gooch. ‘Tell me what I need to know.’

  He took a seat behind the desk as Whitelaw recounted the facts: not just the details of this morning’s incident, but also the attack on Bessie Drummond two nights earlier, and ending with our return from the Bleeding Hart with Tom Drummond. I, of course, said nothing. It wasn’t my place to add to or contradict anything, especially as Whitelaw glossed over the part where I’d failed to apprehend either of the men I’d chased from Grey Eagle Street.