‘You think the attack on her in Grey Eagle Street was more than just a random assault?’
‘I don’t know, but I had the impression yesterday that Bessie certainly thought so.’
‘Did you see Vogel that night?’
The girl thought back. ‘He came in late, about an hour after your sergeant had brought Bessie home. He was soaked to the skin. I remember thinking, what sort of an umbrella maker goes out in such weather without an umbrella?’
‘Describe him for me.’
‘Medium height. Slim. Dark hair.’
That could have described half the men in Whitechapel … including the Chinese.
‘When you saw him that night did it look like he’d injured his right arm?’
She looked at me in alarm. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘It’s important.’
Her forehead creased as she tried to recall. ‘I … I can’t be sure. You can’t think Vogel attacked Bessie in the street? That’s ridiculous! It doesn’t make any sense. If Vogel had attacked Bessie the other night, she’d have recognised him. And she’d have told me. As I said, she was in fear of her life the next day.’ She shook her head. ‘No, it couldn’t have been him.’
‘Either way,’ I said, ‘it still leaves us with the question of where he is now.’
‘If he has gone into hiding, you could try the soup kitchen, or the Jewish Temporary Shelter, though he’d be brave to go there.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s on Leman Street, down the road from your police station.’
‘Has he any friends he might stay with, people who’ll put him up?’
She gave a thin smile. ‘These are law-abiding people, Constable. And they talk – it’s a tight-knit community after all. Nevertheless, they look out for each other. If he’s being sheltered by friends, I’d suggest you speak to the elders of the community, the rabbis in the shuls or the leaders in the chevrot. They might be able to put pressure on people to give him up. If he really is involved though, he’s more likely to try his luck with the anarchists or one of the other radical groups. The chaverim are always looking for new recruits. If he’s gone to them, chances are you’ll never find him.’
EIGHTEEN
February 1922
Assam
Le Corbeau’s post-mortem report had come back … or rather it hadn’t. Instead it had gone to the district superintendent of police, whoever that was, in a place called Silchar, wherever that was. Still the gist of it had filtered through to the ashram, and during one of my more lucid moments, Brother Shankar had sat me down and given me the summary.
‘Philippe’s lungs were empty,’ he said, his hands steepled in front of his face like an Oxford don as he sat opposite. ‘Dr Deakin says he died instantly on hitting that rock. He wouldn’t have suffered.’
I nodded back numbly.
Shankar stared at me as though able to read my soul.
‘You are troubled by that?’
‘No.’ I shrugged. ‘If that’s how he went, then at least it was painless. It’s just …’
‘What?’
‘I’m wondering just how hard he would have needed to fall onto that rock for it to have killed him outright. I’d have thought the chances of a blow that severe were, I don’t know, a thousand to one? Surely the more likely scenario would have been for the blow to knock him out and into the water, leading to death by drowning.’
The monk’s expression changed. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I …’ I hesitated, scratched the back of my skull. Could I even trust this man? If Le Corbeau had been murdered, then how could I be sure Shankar wasn’t in on it? After all, I only had his word that the boy had actually gone missing from the ashram in the first place. For all I knew, he might have been murdered here, maybe in this very room, and then dragged out to the stream.
‘Sam?’
‘I …’
I tried to get a grip of myself. Told myself to stop being ridiculous. If Shankar was involved in whatever had befallen Le Corbeau, why would he have taken me down to see the body? He would only do that if he thought that I, as a policeman, might be able to shed some light on the circumstances. I decided to trust him.
‘It sounds ridiculous but maybe Le Corbeau died in a different fashion. Maybe he was hit on the head by someone. Maybe he was killed and then dragged to the river to make it look like an accident?’
The monk looked horrified. ‘But why would anyone want to kill him?’
‘Did he have any connections to the area?’ I asked.
Shankar shook his head. ‘He came to us directly from Antwerp. His family there have been contacted. As far as I’m aware, he knew no one here outside the ashram.’
‘Maybe a robbery gone wrong?’
‘I can’t believe that. He was dressed as you are. All the local tribespeople know that none of the initiates or other people under the ashram’s care carry money. I can’t see how this is anything but a very tragic accident.’
He was right, of course, at least in the sense that there was no rational reason why anyone around Jatinga would want to kill Le Corbeau. But sometimes people were killed for irrational reasons or no reason at all. I’d come across men murdered for simply looking the wrong way at a chap in the pub; for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; for having the wrong religion, the wrong accent or the wrong bloody surname; or because they were born in a year that made them the correct age to be conscripted and sent to wholesale slaughter. It might have been hard for a man like Shankar to fathom, but in my world, people died for irrational reasons all the time. Death was indiscriminate, as random as a lottery. And when your number came up, you’d no option but to shuffle off this mortal coil to whatever, if anything, came next.
I’d left him shortly afterwards, headed back to the dormitory and tried to put Le Corbeau out of my mind. Adler was lying on his bunk, his head buried in a Hebrew book, reading it from back to front.
On seeing me, he closed it, placed it on the cabinet beside him and sat up.
‘Wyndham, my friend. Something is troubling you?’
‘Le Corbeau,’ I said. ‘The doctor’s report confirms his death as an accident …’
‘But you don’t believe it?’
‘I’ve no reason not to … except a feeling in my gut.’
The Jew pondered, working his jaw in a circular motion while he ruminated.
‘Maybe Philippe’s passing, the randomness of it, reminds you of your own transience, your helplessness in the face of death.’
‘What?’
‘Come now, Captain. Is it really so great a stretch? Philippe shared your height, your build, even your hair colour. Could it be that you see yourself in him? And if he, a young man, could be taken in so senseless a fashion, then why not you?’
Something in his words hit home. Not the metaphysical mush about my own mortality, but the real, physical similarity between Le Corbeau and me. Shankar had said it was rare for a man to leave the monastery as far into the treatment as Le Corbeau was. And Adler had said that men were more prone to run off and try to find a hit of their poison during their first few days here. Could it be that someone had mistaken Le Corbeau for me?
I all but collapsed backwards onto my cot and feared for my sanity. There was something about this place, a malevolence that crackled in the air. Since stepping off the train in Lumding, reality had begun to spin out of control: the nightly hallucinations of the apparition at the station, the memories of Bessie Drummond, and now the death of Le Corbeau. I couldn’t help but feel they were all connected in some way, and yet, that was ridiculous.
I felt suddenly cold, chilled to the marrow. I closed my eyes and held the pillow over my face as a new and uncontrollable wave of shivering descended.
NINETEEN
February 1905
East London
There was no doubt about it. Vogel was on the run.
It was 8 a.m. and Gooch, Whitelaw and I were gathered aroun
d the chalk board in the cramped, airless room which Gooch had commandeered as his base of operations.
The inspector wiped his spectacles with the corner of his waistcoat.
‘So, what do we know?’
‘So far, sir,’ said Whitelaw, with the air of a man confident of his facts, ‘we’ve two confirmed sightings of Vogel yesterday morning, but none after midday. At around 10 a.m. he met with his old employer, a Mr Herzl. According to Herzl, our man Vogel was looking to supply him with finished canes. Nothing was agreed, but Herzl told him to come back with a sample. Then, about an hour later, he was seen by the assistant at an ironmonger’s, where he purchased a shilling’s worth of nitric acid.’
‘How much is that?’
‘A few ounces,’ said the sergeant. ‘The assistant says Vogel brought his own bottle, which he filled.’
‘What did he want with such a small amount of acid?’ asked Gooch. ‘It’s not enough to dispose of any evidence.’
‘It’s used in the varnishing process,’ said Whitelaw, ‘for the canes and umbrella stalks he was working on.’
‘Doesn’t that seem odd?’ I asked. ‘He kills a woman at around 9 a.m., and an hour later he’s negotiating a sale and buying nitric acid for his business?’
Whitelaw puffed out his cheeks. ‘Maybe he didn’t expect Bessie’s body to be discovered as quickly as it was. Maybe he was hoping to use the ironmonger as an alibi?’
That made no sense to me.
‘What about his room?’ I said. ‘He left his clothes and his suitcase and legged it. Why would he plan a meticulous alibi, but then flee with only the clothes on his back?’
‘Maybe,’ said Whitelaw, ‘he went to the ironmonger’s to establish his alibi but on seeing the crowd outside the door on his return, he panicked and made a run for it?’
Gooch wasn’t interested in our theories. ‘Did you enquire about Vogel’s demeanour?’ he asked the sergeant. ‘Did he seem agitated at all?’
‘Not so the assistant could tell.’
From his suit pocket, Gooch took out a box of matches and a packet of Navy Cut, extracted a cigarette and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. ‘There’s always another possibility,’ he said, striking a match. He held the flame close. ‘Our man Vogel may have had a pang of remorse. Maybe he bought the acid to kill himself?’
Whitelaw blinked. ‘You think he might already be lying dead somewhere?’
‘It’s possible,’ the inspector replied, ‘though we can’t put any store by it. Not yet. For now, we need to institute a manhunt: find out who his friends are, check out the dosshouses.’ He gestured to Whitelaw with a nod of the head. ‘I want you to take charge of that. He may also try to do a runner if he’s able. We need to make sure he doesn’t leave town. His description needs to be circulated and watch put on the stations and the ports. I’ll get on to Scotland Yard about that.’
‘Where’s he likely to head?’ asked Whitelaw. ‘I doubt he’s ever set foot anywhere outside the East End.’
‘There are immigrant Jews in Manchester and Birmingham,’ said Gooch. ‘He may have friends there, or he may try and pass himself off as a new arrival, straight off the boat. As for the ports, he might try his luck and find passage on a boat bound for New York.’ He blew a stream of cigarette smoke skyward. ‘Seems all the Jews want to go to America.
‘As for you, Wyndham, I want you to find out what you can about his financial circumstances. Had he borrowed money from anyone else? Was he behind on his rent? Then I want you to go and speak to Bessie Drummond’s employer. See what he knows of the fate of his housekeeper. More importantly, find out what you can about his visit to the house that morning. Find out what she did for him. Did she collect the rent at other properties or just number 42 Fashion Street?’
He pointed to the door.
‘Well? What are you waiting for? Make haste, gentlemen. We’ve a killer to find.’
The Board of Guardians of the Jewish Poor occupied a shabby brick building on Middlesex Street. Outside, a few bearded men stood leaning against the wall, guillotining their conversation as I walked past.
I asked the old man at the front desk the way to the loans office and was directed to an ill-lit stairwell and advised to make my way to the second floor. No other directions were needed, as a queue of bodies snaked from the stairs and along a corridor towards the light of an open door. Once more the general chatter faltered and died as I walked past.
A knot of men at the entrance to the loans office parted to let me through. Beyond was a room overflowing with paperwork, in the midst of which sat three large desks, one to either side of the door and the third placed between it and the window so that the three clerks who sat behind them all looked inwards at whoever entered.
Around them, every available inch of wall was taken up by shelves containing a mountain of brown and grey files, some bulging with papers, others sheet-thin, and each sealed with a knot of brown string. The clerks on either side wore the look of harassed bank tellers. Each was dressed in striped shirt, tie, waistcoat, spectacles and skullcap. The younger looked to be pushing seventy, and the elder, like he should be pushing up the daisies. On their desks were more files and loose papers, and facing each, a chair occupied by men who, I assumed, were there to seek financial assistance, but from their demeanour seemed more like supplicants at the court of a king than applicants for a loan.
It was the third clerk, the one at the desk directly in front, who creaked slowly up from his chair and addressed me.
‘Can I help you, Constable?’ His English was heavily accented, like Eckstein’s and a thin halo of grey hair framed a bald dome of a head, topped once more by a skullcap. I guessed he was the senior man in the room. There was no applicant before him and, instead of files, his desk was dominated by a large, gilt-edged ledger, open to a column-filled page somewhere near the middle. From his tired expression and frayed attire, though, it was clear that he was merely the first among equals, still just a functionary rather than plenipotentiary.
‘I need some information on a man who may have taken a loan from you.’
The man scratched his neck. ‘We don’t normally give out details of our borrowers. You’d need to speak to Mr Sebag.’
‘Where can I find him?’
He smiled. ‘This way please.’
I followed him out and back down the corridor. He stopped outside a door, knocked, then opened it a crack and stuck his head round.
‘Mr Sebag? There’s a constable here to see you.’
There was a muffled response, before the old man opened the door and bade me enter. The room was identical in dimensions to the one we’d just left, except this one had a sole desk and a sole occupant, a grey-haired chap in a dark suit with a salt-and-pepper beard and half-moon spectacles. Unlike the others, he wore no skullcap. He stood up and directed me to a chair.
‘How can I be of assistance, Constable?’ he said, dismissing the old man with a nod.
The door closed behind me and Sebag returned to his seat, removed his spectacles and placed them on top of a sheaf of papers on his desk.
‘Constable Wyndham,’ I said, ‘from Leman Street station. I’m here in connection with a murder inquiry.’
His face took on that look of horror peculiar to bankers whenever they encounter something that may be bad for business.
‘Murder?’
‘Of a local woman. We suspect a man called Israel Vogel may be responsible.’
Sebag stroked his beard. ‘I don’t believe there’s anyone by that name employed here.’
‘You misunderstand, sir,’ I said. ‘We believe that Vogel arrived in the country from Russia about six months ago and took up lodgings in Fashion Street. He was initially employed by a man named Herzl, making canes and umbrellas, but recently he’d gone into business for himself.’
‘And you think he might have taken a loan from us?’
‘Precisely.’
‘That would make sense.’ He picked up his spectacles and place
d them on his face. ‘We have a policy whereby we only provide loans to those who have been here for six months or more. We can certainly check our records.’
He walked over to the door and opened it.
‘Mr Shofer –’ he raised his voice so that it would be heard down the corridor – ‘can you come back in, please?’
He returned to his desk and sat down.
‘Would you care for some tea?’
The door opened just as I politely declined, and the old clerk entered.
‘Ah, Mr Shofer, bring me the new loans ledger for …’ He turned to me. ‘When did you say he started his business?’
‘Probably in the last month.’
Sebag turned back to the clerk. ‘The ledgers for the last two months please, Mr Shofer.’
The old man nodded and left the room.
‘This may take a few minutes,’ he said apologetically, then continued, almost as if to avert an uncomfortable silence. ‘The unfortunate lady, the victim,’ he said. ‘Was she Jewish?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘English.’
‘You mean she was a Christian,’ he corrected.
‘Pardon me?’
‘It’s possible to be both Jewish and English, Constable. I am myself.’
‘Of course,’ I said hastily. ‘I meant no … It’s just that in this part of town, most Jews are foreigners.’
‘That much is true,’ he said with a smile, ‘and the irony is, a lot of them would also question whether it’s possible to be both Jewish and English.’
He sensed my confusion.
‘Our Eastern brothers,’ he explained, ‘can be quite fervent in their maintenance of religious practices. If you asked half of the men in the queue outside, they’d probably tell you with disdain just how lax we British Jews have become in terms of observing our religion. It doesn’t stop them taking our funds though.’
There was a knock at the door. The clerk, Shofer, entered carrying a large black ledger and deposited it on Sebag’s desk with a solid thump, then left.
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