Death in the East

by Abir Mukherjee

  I heard Shankar’s voice behind me. ‘What is it?’

  I hesitated. What could I tell him? That the man had mud on his trousers and a scratch on his leg? That I suspected the possibility of foul play?

  There was also the larger issue. Could I trust him? I shook my head. This was madness. Opium was known to cause heightened paranoia. The withdrawal symptoms must be clouding my judgement.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  Only Deakin, the driver and the moon-faced monk continued with Le Corbeau’s corpse on to Haflong. I had wanted to accompany the body, but Shankar, seeing the sweat on my face, had decided I wasn’t fit for the trip. I was in no state to protest. Instead he promised I’d be the first to hear what the doctor had to report.

  I agreed, and with a glance back at the stream, I turned and followed him back up the hill towards the path to the ashram.

  SIXTEEN

  February 1905

  East London

  Vogel’s bed was low and narrow and propped against one wall opposite the window. Whitelaw was on his knees, peering under it, resurfacing as Gooch and I walked over.

  ‘Give me a hand, Constable.’

  We each took one side of the bed frame and together lifted and moved it out from the wall. A thick film of dust lay over the space beneath and covered an assortment of items: a battered suitcase, a stock of half-finished canes with their handles carved but unvarnished, and more wood shavings. There was another object too: a thick, wood-handled hammer, which unlike the other items, was encrusted not with dust, but sticky, crimson blood.

  Whitelaw let out a whistle of satisfaction.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ said Gooch. He turned to Drummond.

  ‘Do you recognise that object?’

  Drummond looked to be in a state of shock. ‘It’s a hammer.’

  ‘But does it belong to you? Have you seen it before?’

  Drummond shook his head. ‘Never seen it before in me life.’

  Gooch looked to me. ‘Constable, get back to the station. I want two men down here to conduct an inch-by-inch search. Make sure they bring evidence bags.’

  An hour later, with the search of Vogel’s attic room under way two floors above, Gooch, Whitelaw and I reconvened in the scullery. The inspector was seated at the pitted wooden table in the centre of the room where, less than nine months earlier, I’d broken up with Bessie.

  Drummond, for his part, had been taken back to the station for a formal statement, after which he’d be at liberty to go where he pleased, which would probably be back to the Bleeding Hart, or if that proved too far, one of umpteen other boozers along the way. To be fair to him, the room he’d shared with Bessie was now the scene of a crime and off-limits, at least till we’d finished with it, and I doubted he had anywhere else to go. In such circumstances, I could hardly begrudge him if he decided the best course of action was to climb inside a bottle for as long as was practicable.

  Gooch lit a cigarette.

  ‘What do we know about Vogel?’

  ‘Not much, sir,’ I said. ‘The girl who lives on the ground floor said he was from somewhere in Russia. He’s been renting here for about six months, but where he was before that is a mystery. It’s possible he was fresh off the boat, or he might have been here some time longer. His English is poor.’

  ‘Not that that’s much of a problem in Whitechapel,’ said Whitelaw.

  ‘This girl,’ said Gooch, exhaling a stream of grey smoke, ‘the one who told you about Vogel, where is she?’

  ‘I imagine she’s gone to work. She’s a seamstress – works for a number of the tailors round here.’

  ‘See if you can find her. I want to learn more about our Mr Vogel. Now what else do we know about him?’

  ‘Just what Drummond told us,’ I said, ‘about him losing his job and setting up in business making canes and shafts for umbrellas, his fascination with Bessie, and her unwillingness to lend him money.’

  Gooch tapped his cigarette and a flurry of ash fell to the floor. ‘That’s two grounds for murder right there. Now what do we have in terms of potential timeline?’

  Whitelaw recounted the probable course of events.

  ‘Sometime after eight o’clock, when Tom Drummond leaves for the second time, Vogel comes down the stairs from his room to the first-floor landing. He knocks on Bessie’s door with the intention of either threatening her for money or … something worse. She refuses to give him whatever he wants, and in a fit of anger, he attacks her with the hammer. He then locks the door from the inside and flees, out of the window and up the drainpipe to his own room, where he hides the weapon under his bed.’

  ‘You’re forgetting one thing, Sergeant,’ said Gooch. ‘Assuming it was Vogel’s hammer, he would have had to have brought it with him, either to simply threaten her with, or because he knew he was going to attack her – which would suggest a degree of premeditation.’ He took another pull of his cigarette and exhaled. ‘He’ll hang for this.’

  I ran through the theory in my head.

  ‘I have a question, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The strongbox in which she kept the rent she collected,’ I said. ‘It was still in her room. That’s where we retrieved the key for Vogel’s door earlier. There were a few shillings left in it.’

  Gooch stared. ‘What’s your point, Constable?’

  ‘I’m wondering why a man who was desperate enough to murder a woman for money would then leave without bothering to find the strongbox. Maybe his motive wasn’t money.’

  ‘Or maybe he panicked,’ said Whitelaw.

  ‘It’s possible,’ I said, ‘but if it was premeditated and he’d brought the hammer, why would he panic? And if he had the forethought to lock the door with himself inside and then escape out of the window, wouldn’t he have spared a few minutes to search for what he’d come for?’

  Gooch folded his arms across his chest. ‘Well, there’s one way to find out what his motives were,’ he said. ‘We’ll just have to bloody well find him.’

  SEVENTEEN

  The light was fading by the time Gooch and Whitelaw left Fashion Street. They were headed back to the station, Gooch to supervise the cataloguing of evidence gleaned from the scene and Whitelaw to coordinate the search for Vogel.

  As for me, I’d been tasked with speaking to the residents of the house and finding out what else I could about our fugitive. But the Feldmans, who occupied the room beside Bessie’s, and the Kravitzes – Rebecca’s parents – had added little. Her father, Carl Kravitz, who’d left for work at six and returned at 4 p.m., had only ever passed Vogel a handful of times in the hallway, and his wife seemed to have spent a lot of her time ensuring their daughter had nothing to do with him. Only Mrs Rosen, on the ground floor, appeared willing to talk about Vogel, though what she added, through polyglot sentences in cracked English and Yiddish, quickly degenerated into reminiscences of shtetls and synagogues and life in the Pale of Settlement.

  Still, from her I learned that Vogel hailed from Warsaw, then still part of the Russian Empire. At the age of eighteen, to avoid conscription into the tsar’s army, he’d fled, smuggled first into Germany, which treated its Jews better than the Russians, but still hardly well, and thence to England.

  It seemed the only one who’d spoken regularly to him was Rebecca. Her mother informed me that Rebecca was employed by a tailor on Brick Lane called Shmuel Eckstein. She usually worked a twelve-hour shift and wasn’t expected home before seven or eight at the earliest. Today, of course, with everything that had happened, she hadn’t left till the afternoon and it was anyone’s guess when she’d be back.

  After a word with the constable stationed at the front door, I adjusted my collar against the cold and headed out towards Brick Lane. There was a raw, biting chill in the air, an east wind that felt like it blew straight in from the Urals and froze you to the marrow.

  The streets rang to the sound of carts on the cobblestones. Beside stalls, men gathered around braziers, their heads be
nt against the cold, warming their hands while waiting for passing trade.

  A lamp shone out between two bare and headless mannequins in the front window of Eckstein’s shop. A bell rang as I pushed open the door and entered a room not much warmer than the street outside. Behind a wood-and-glass counter stood a man of about fifty in a thin cardigan, with round, steel-rimmed spectacles and a skullcap on his head. He looked nervous, but so did most of the men in Whitechapel when confronted by an officer in uniform.

  ‘May I help you?’ he said, his voice heavily accented.

  A row of shelves covered the length of the wall behind him, each further split into a lattice of squares by wooden dividers, so that the whole wall looked like a series of giant pigeonholes, with each square containing a different bolt of cloth.

  ‘Mr Eckstein?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘I’m looking for Rebecca Kravitz.’

  The wariness intensified. I suspected Rebecca hadn’t mentioned the reason for her tardiness this morning. A murder, even one she had nothing to do with, tended to spell trouble, especially for people already used to it. Suddenly I regretted barging in. If Eckstein thought Rebecca was somehow in trouble with the police, he might think it safer to simply sack her than take the risk that she might bring down the evil eye of the authorities upon him and his business. But there was little I could do about it now.

  ‘She’s not in any trouble,’ I clarified. ‘I simply need to speak to her.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Excuse me, please. You wait here. I fetch her.’

  Eckstein headed for a door which I assumed led to the rear of the shop and to stairs down to the basement where his seamstresses probably worked. Silence descended. I walked over to the counter and examined a couple of bolts of grey cloth which had been left out. The material was cheap and coarse, but that’s what sold in this part of town.

  I heard footsteps on wooden stairs. The door opened and in stepped Eckstein with Rebecca a few paces behind. The girl walked over while the tailor lurked in the doorway.

  ‘How can I help you, Constable?’

  Her voice was polite but her expression suggested my presence here was about as welcome as a poke in the eye.

  ‘I need to ask you a few more questions.’

  ‘I am at work. I don’t have time to talk now. Besides, I’ve already told you everything.’

  I looked to Eckstein, who seemed little more than a smudge among the shadows. ‘Your assistance would be invaluable to us,’ I said. ‘And I’m sure the Metropolitan Police will be most grateful to your employer for allowing you some time to aid us.’

  Eckstein looked confused.

  ‘Maybe you should translate that for him,’ I said.

  The girl did just that, and soon the old tailor was nodding profusely. He gave me an ingratiating smile.

  ‘Please, go. Talk. Rivkah is good girl.’

  ‘It seems Mr Eckstein is keen for you to help me,’ I said. ‘Have you got a coat? It’s cold outside.’

  Fifteen minutes later, we were seated in the bay window of a tea room on Hanbury Street. Rebecca had wanted to speak in the street, but the cold and the promise of a hot cuppa helped change her mind.

  The tea was Russian, served sweet and black from a silver-coloured samovar. The waitress poured out two glasses and placed them on the table in front of us, then set the pot down beside a small bowl of jam.

  Rebecca watched the steam rise from her cup.

  ‘Tell me about Israel Vogel,’ I said.

  She looked up, surprise playing on her face. ‘Why do you want to know about him?’

  ‘Because those are my orders.’

  ‘He moved in about six months ago,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I think he’d arrived here from Warsaw a while before that.’ Her expression changed to one of irritation. ‘Why not just ask him your questions?’

  ‘He seems to have disappeared,’ I said. ‘We think he might be responsible for Bessie’s death.’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘Is it? We’ve been told Vogel was obsessed with Bessie.’

  The girl bridled. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Tom Drummond.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ she said, as though I’d made her argument for her. ‘You shouldn’t believe anything he tells you.’

  ‘He also said Vogel asked her for money and that she refused him.’

  She looked like she was about to say something, then bit her lip. A spark of anger played in her eyes.

  ‘It’s true,’ she said finally. ‘Bessie did lend money to people, either to pay the rent, or to help with business, but she was shrewd about who she lent to. I can understand it if she’d decided not to loan money to Israel. But then, if he needed cash, he wouldn’t have gone to her anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘Because he could have simply gone to the Board.’

  ‘The Board?’

  ‘The Board of Guardians of the Jewish Poor,’ she said. ‘They give loans, free of interest, to Jewish immigrants looking to set up in business. So you see he had no need of Bessie’s money.’

  ‘Maybe he’d already tried them?’ I said. ‘Maybe they turned him down?’

  ‘You could always ask them. Their offices are round the corner.’

  I took a sip of tea and made a mental note. When they opened tomorrow, I’d pay a visit to the Board of Guardians of the Jewish Poor and check whether they’d been approached for a loan by Israel Vogel.

  ‘Either way,’ I said, ‘that still leaves the matter of Vogel’s interest in Bessie. Was he keen on her? Did Bessie ever mention his attentions?’

  She gave me a sour glance, then clasped her hands tightly together.

  ‘I don’t know why you would think that.’

  I feigned surprise. ‘Really? Weren’t you and Bessie close? She never mentioned any untoward advances from Vogel? Her husband seems sure of it.’

  ‘I’ve already told you, you should take what Tom Drummond says with a large dose of salt. Maybe you should pay closer attention to him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Their marriage was hardly a bed of roses. He spent most of his time drinking and gambling away her money. He’d come home from the pub or the horses and take out his bad luck on her with his fists.’

  She had a point. Tom Drummond had a temper and past form. He’d been my first suspect too, only he had an alibi, and he hadn’t done a runner. And then of course, there was the hammer.

  ‘We think we’ve found the weapon used to attack Bessie,’ I said softly. ‘It was under Vogel’s bed.’

  ‘No!’ she said, shaking her head vigorously. ‘That can’t be. Israel would never harm Bessie!’ A tear ran down her cheek.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why wouldn’t he harm her?’ And then a thought struck me.

  ‘Is it possible your judgement of him is clouded?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You think I’m … in love with him?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then why?’ I asked again, this time with urgency. ‘Why wouldn’t he harm her? Were he and Bessie …?’

  I didn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t bring myself to utter the final word.

  She looked up, sensing my unease. ‘Were they lovers, you mean?’ Suddenly she seemed to relish my discomfort. ‘You find it distasteful that an Englishwoman should find solace in the arms of a Jew?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ I stammered, and my denial even had the benefit of being partly true.

  She lifted the glass between slender thumb and forefinger and took a sip.

  ‘I remember you,’ she said suddenly, almost in accusation. ‘It must be almost a year ago now, just after we moved into the house. Didn’t you used to call round for Bessie? Is that why you find it difficult to accept the idea that Bessie may have liked him?’

  I felt my ears burn. I didn’t remember ever seeing this girl when I’d called round for Bessie, but that did
n’t mean she hadn’t been there. Tenants came and went and the faces changed and blended into one. It had been a strange time, especially towards the end. I wondered if Mrs Rosen or the Feldmans also remembered me. As for Vogel, I didn’t know why I found it so hard to stomach the possibility that Bessie might have been involved with him, but in truth, it didn’t matter.

  ‘What I find difficult to accept is the fact that she’s been murdered,’ I said, ‘and the evidence points to her killer being Israel Vogel. So if Bessie truly was your friend, maybe you should offer me some cooperation.’

  She pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her blouse and dabbed at her cheeks. I felt a rush of guilt. The truth was, this girl was a far better friend to Bessie than I’d ever been and I’d no right to accuse her of being otherwise.

  I mumbled an apology, then tried a more conciliatory approach.

  ‘Let’s assume you’re right, and Vogel is innocent. Who else might have reason to kill Bessie?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘The last few weeks, she seemed different. As though she had some secret but couldn’t share it. I asked her if she was in the family way, but she laughed. She said chance would be a fine thing. Then, after she was attacked in the street two nights ago, there was another change. Yesterday she seemed positively terrified. She was too scared to leave the house. She even refused to go into work, which was unlike her. In the past, she’d gone in even when she had the flu and a high temperature. I thought she was in shock.’