‘The name was Vogel, you say?’
‘That’s right. Israel Vogel.’
Sebag adjusted his spectacles before opening the ledger and flicking through a number of pages. His brow furrowed. ‘Vogel … Vogel … Vogel …’ He turned the page. ‘Ah, here we are: Vogel, Israel.’ He smiled, his face flush with the joy of administrative success. ‘You’re quite right, he did take out a loan. Just over three weeks ago.’
‘Can you tell me how much?’
‘Three pounds … not in cash but in kind.’
‘In kind?’
‘That’s right. We only lend cash as a last resort. We prefer to lend in assets which we can reclaim if the repayments aren’t met. A tailor might come to us and we might purchase for him a sewing machine, that sort of thing. In Vogel’s case, we purchased a series of wood-working tools, including a vice, a saw, a wooden mallet and a set of chisels.’
‘What about a hammer?’
Sebag scanned the notes on the page. ‘Not according to the inventory.’
That didn’t mean the hammer wasn’t Vogel’s. He may have purchased it separately.
‘What about repayments on the loan?’ I asked.
‘He was to repay us out of his income at the rate of one shilling and sixpence per week.’
‘And is he keeping up with his repayments?’
Sebag pored over the ledger once more, running a finger over a column of figures.
‘He has so far. His last repayment was on Thursday.’
‘What happens if he’s late?’
Sebag rubbed his chin. ‘That would depend on the circumstances. If he informed us of the reasons, we could try and work out a revised repayment schedule. If he simply absconded, we’d take things up with whoever has agreed to stand as his character witness when the loan was granted. It’s not a guarantor per se, generally just a reputable member of the community who can vouch for the man.’
‘And who was that in Vogel’s case?’
Sebag consulted the ledger, then lifted a hand to his mouth in consternation. ‘I say, that is odd.’
‘What?’
‘It seems that in Vogel’s case, the character witness was a woman, and a Gentile at that. A Mrs Elizabeth Drummond.’
TWENTY
February 1922
Assam
‘How do you feel?’
Brother Shankar sat across the wooden table from me and stirred his porridge. It was a simple enough question, but the answer was far from straightforward.
It had been six days since the discovery of Le Corbeau’s corpse, four days since the doctor’s finding of death by misadventure, and over a week since the course of my cure had begun. Each night Devraha Swami had poured out the potion and each night I’d drunk it, followed by a bucket-full of water and ended by retching my guts out. Each night I saw a little improvement, slept a little better, had fewer hallucinations of Bessie Drummond, of Israel Vogel, of the man at Lumding station, and of Philippe Le Corbeau.
I cradled a cup of warm Assamese tea between my hands.
‘Not too bad.’
‘Good,’ said the monk. ‘And last night? Did you get any sleep?’
‘More than expected.’ I tried to mask the surprise in my voice. Over the last few years, sleep, true sleep – induced without the aid of opiates or alcohol – had become but a distant memory, consigned as much to history as the cavalry charge or the Kaiser. But I had slept last night: a few hours, blissful and blessedly nightmare-free. Every now and then, though, generally when I was at a loose end, my body would spasm and my thoughts would turn to the O. The Devil on my shoulder would tell me I wanted a pipe … I needed a pipe. I’d fought back the urges of course, and in the ashram those urges were manageable. I worried though, that out there, in the real world, back in Calcutta where I could find a pipe as easily as I could a pint of milk, I might not be strong enough to resist temptation.
‘Sounds like you’re over the worst of it.’ He smiled. ‘The last of the poison is out of your system. It should be downhill from here. We can probably stop your evening treatment.’
‘You mean no more vomiting?’
The monk swallowed a spoonful of porridge. ‘Unless you wish to continue?’
‘No, you’re all right.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I think it’s worked its magic, don’t you?’
I fought the urge to cheer. I’d experienced too many false dawns, and like a dog who’s learned that a smile is too often followed by a boot to the ribs, I wasn’t about to believe that I was free of the O just yet.
I took a sip of tea and had the sensation of tasting it, almost for the first time, as though my senses were returning from exile. Suddenly I thought of Surrender-not.
‘There’s only one tea worth drinking, and that’s Darjeeling.’
When it came to matters of tea, he, like all Bengalis, was an insufferable snob. It was true that the hills of Darjeeling fell in Bengal, but that was more the fortuitous result of lines drawn on a map by colonial cartographers than any skill on the part of the plains-dwelling Bengalis. Still, the idea that the first cup of tea that I should actually be able to taste in India would be from Assam and not Darjeeling would have horrified the fellow, and I looked forward to seeing the look on his face when I got round to telling him.
‘So what now?’ I asked.
‘Now,’ said Brother Shankar, ‘you rest and regain your strength.’
That sounded good in theory, and it was true that I’d lost weight since arriving here – a vegetarian diet and a regime of vomiting will do that to a man – but I’d never been the type to rest. Indeed if you discounted my honeymoon and time spent in hospital, I hadn’t had a proper holiday since 1912.
The monk read my expression.
‘I’m afraid I must insist. We need to make sure you really are free of the drug … and that you’re strong enough to resist its influence. Remember, this is your one and only opportunity here. The swami-ji doesn’t believe in second chances.’
The problem was the swami-ji didn’t believe in alcohol either, and given I had no cigarettes, other than a few cheroots I’d managed to barter from one of the native inmates, I wasn’t sure that I could live much longer without any of the three, nor that there would be much point to life without them.
‘How long?’ I asked. ‘I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I’m keen to get back to civilisation … or Calcutta at least. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the native officers in Lal Bazar had resigned and joined the Congress Party since I left. At the rate we’ve been losing men, it won’t be long till the commissioner himself is forced to don a pair of gloves and turn out for traffic duty.’
The monk looked up at me.
‘Of course, you won’t have heard.’
‘Heard what?’
‘Gandhi’s called off the general strike.’
I almost fell off my chair.
‘Really?’
That little man had coordinated a year-long war of attrition against the authorities, turning the country on its head and bringing the government, if not to its knees, then at least to the negotiating table. And now, in the time I’d been cloistered away, vomiting up my guts, he’d decided to stop it all. It beggared belief.
‘Why?’
Shankar’s face darkened. ‘There was an incident … just over a week ago. Some place called Chauri Chaura in the United Provinces. A demonstration turned ugly and a mob attacked a police station. Burned it to the ground. The papers say something like twenty-five officers perished. The Mahatma’s called a halt to the whole non-cooperation campaign and started a fast in penance for what he sees as his role in fostering the violence.’
I still couldn’t believe it. After a year of mass marches, mass resignations and mass arrests, after asking his followers to endure the greatest hardships, that he would simply turn off a national campaign was hard to take in.
‘Just like that? He’s called off the whole thing because of an incident in some godforsaken vill
age in UP?’
The monk remained silent.
‘How d’you know all this anyway?’
‘We might be far from civilisation, Captain, but the papers still reach Jatinga. It’s been about the only story for the past week. The authorities have made sure of that.’
I watched as a small black beetle flew over and landed on the rim of Shankar’s bowl. For a moment it teetered on the edge, poised precariously between life and freedom and a fall to its death. Its antennae fluttered and then it toppled in.
Shankar put down his spoon and gently plucked the insect out. He placed it on the bench and delicately wiped the detritus from its shell.
‘So you see, Captain, I doubt your return to Calcutta is quite as urgent as you’d expected. Just as well really, because recovery requires patience. It’s not simply a case of overcoming your physical addiction. The mental scars need time to heal too.’
The beetle scuttled off towards the edge of the bench, gave a ponderous shake of its wing casings, then fluttered off in that improbable manner that some flying creatures have.
‘And what am I supposed to do during this period of rehabilitation?’ I asked.
‘Anything,’ said the monk. ‘You know the ashram routine by now. You could help out in the fields or the kitchens, or simply read. Whatever whets your whistle.’
The expression was unfortunate. I hadn’t had a proper drink since the bar at Duncan’s Hotel in Santahar. Fond memories.
‘I’ve never really had the time for books,’ I said.
‘Well, you do now,’ he replied. ‘And consider it a blessing. Reading broadens the mind.’
‘So does opium,’ I said. ‘Look where that got me.’
Shankar smiled. ‘It brought you here, Captain. I doubt that happened by chance.’
‘You think I’m here as part of some great celestial plan?’
‘Who knows what the gods have in store?’
I shook my head. I had enough trouble believing that I was part of a Christian god’s plan, let alone one concocted by Hindu deities. Granted, our chap’s reputation for competence had taken a knock recently, what with the unpleasantness of the Great War and everything, but at least there was only one of Him. That ought at least to mean a streamlined decision-making process. The Hindu gods by contrast were legion, capricious and often in conflict. If they had a plan for me, it was probably the result of a dozen committee meetings where deals were struck and compromises made, till the outcome was something none had envisaged and no one was happy with. I was about to mention that to Brother Shankar, when it struck me that, given the way my life was turning out, maybe that’s exactly what had happened. And all of a sudden I was in even more of a hurry to leave.
‘There’s nothing to stop me walking out the front door though, is there?’
Shankar sighed. ‘No. You’re free to go whenever you want. But I’ve a better idea if you’d care to hear it.’
I looked up at the smile on his face, the smile that suggested a deep, unfathomable certainty that a mere copper like me would never know.
‘I’d like you to go and stay for a few days with a friend of mine, down in Jatinga.’
In the distance, I caught a glimpse of Mrs Carter crossing the courtyard. She looked over and beamed a smile. And suddenly I was filled with the glow of irrational optimism. He surely couldn’t mean …
‘In fact you’ve already been introduced.’
Heavenly expectation welled up within me, my spirits took flight.
‘It’s that chap Charles Preston.’
And with that that they crashed back down to earth.
‘You remember? You met him the morning we found poor Philippe’s body.’
I nodded, then took out a consolatory cheroot and tapped it against the table.
‘May I?’
Shankar had no objections. Indeed I felt he sensed my disappointment.
‘Think of it as a halfway house. You get out of the ashram, but you’re still close enough for me to keep an eye on you.’
‘And Preston’s your spy, is he?’ I said, lighting the cigarette.
‘He’s helped out with others in your position in the past, if that’s what you mean.’
I sucked in a chest-full of smoke, then exhaled.
‘He seemed a rather nervous sort when we met him by the stream. You’re sure I won’t scare him?’
Shankar raised an eyebrow. ‘He’d just found a dead body, Captain. I should think most men would be rather unnerved by that.’
I guessed he was right. For me though, the sight of Le Corbeau’s corpse had hardly caused my pulse to flicker. It was just the latest addition to a roll call of death that went back to 1905. I wondered what that said about me.
‘Fair enough,’ I said.
‘So you’ll do it?’
‘As long as it’s all right with Mr Preston.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be fine with it. You might find him a rather eccentric egg, but I don’t think you’ll scare him.’
‘I suppose not,’ I said, ‘as long as no more dead bodies turn up.’
TWENTY-ONE
February 1905
East London
I’d thanked Sebag and traipsed back down to the street in a daze. Rebecca, it seemed, had been correct. Vogel and Bessie were more than just tenant and rent collector. Their relationship was deep enough that she was willing to stand as a character reference for him. I wondered if her husband knew.
Once again, the issue of Vogel’s motive was thrown into question. Far from asking Bessie for money and being refused, he’d actually requested her help in obtaining a loan from the Guardians and she’d agreed.
And he was up to date with his repayments.
And while Bessie’s cash box had been found close to empty, there were, in light of what Sebag had told me, other more likely explanations for what had happened to the cash: Tom Drummond may have forced Bessie to part with the money so that he could go drinking with his mate, Finlay, or maybe the landlord, Jeremiah Caine, had taken the cash when he’d visited Bessie earlier that morning. Whatever had happened to it, I doubted Vogel had taken it. Still, that didn’t mean he was innocent. Maybe Tom Drummond was right. Maybe Vogel had developed an unhealthy fascination with Bessie. I could vouch for how easily that could happen. Maybe he’d come clean and confessed his feelings, maybe they’d argued, and in a fit of rage, he’d attacked her.
But that too presented difficulties.
Even in the East End of London, people rarely came to profess undying love to a sweetheart armed with a hammer. Maybe the weapon had already been there? Maybe it was Drummond’s and Vogel had just picked it up and used it in the heat of the moment? Of course Tom Drummond claimed he’d never seen it before, but his word was hardly gospel.
Even if it was Drummond’s hammer, it would require Vogel to have argued with Bessie, find the hammer, hit Bessie, lock her door from the inside, scale the drainpipe back to his room, hide the bloodied weapon (without cleaning it) under his bed and then, cold as ice, go out to buy nitric acid as an alibi but take fright on the way back and make a run for it.
It just sounded wrong. For one thing, a man with the intelligence to plan his alibi and to lock Bessie’s door from the inside would almost certainly have come up with a better scheme for disposing of the murder weapon than hiding it under his own bed. Indeed, simply leaving it in Bessie’s room would have been a better option.
But if not Vogel, then who? The only other obvious candidate, Tom Drummond, had an alibi in his mate, Finlay, and claimed his wife was alive when the two men left the house. There was Jeremiah Caine, who’d been at the house that morning at around half past seven, but Drummond’s claim to have seen his wife alive at half past eight effectively put Caine in the clear.
Then there was the attack on Bessie in Grey Eagle Street two nights earlier, and the two men struggling with each other. Did they have something to do with her death? Why were they grappling with each other? Had there been a disagreement? A fal
ling-out between thieves? Had Vogel been one of them? Rebecca had said he’d come home that night soaking wet.
None of it made sense, at least not to me. Instead of pondering it further, I decided to get on with the task which Gooch had assigned me: that of questioning Bessie’s employer about her demise.
Jeremiah Caine lived on the far side of Bishopsgate in a handsome town house off Finsbury Circus. It was less than a mile from Brick Lane, but in terms of the character and quality of its residents, it might as well have been on another continent. Centred on the tree-lined oval park that gave the area its name, Finsbury Circus had once been the preserve of well-heeled merchants and respectable gentlemen, and while Jeremiah Caine was certainly well heeled, the view as to his respectability depended on who you asked. To many in the East End, he was something of a hero, a Whitechapel lad who’d pulled himself up by his proverbials, an unashamed man of the people who wore his humble roots like a badge of honour. To the good gentlemen of the City of London, however, for whom the tie around your neck mattered more than the money in your bank account, Caine would always be an outsider, the wrong sort of chap from the wrong part of town.
Caine had moved to Finsbury Circus just as the real gentlemen had begun to move out: to the west, where the streets were wider and the air was cleaner. Where others had left, Caine had stayed, buying their properties and subdividing them into spaces for solicitors, accountants and shipping agents.
The front door was opened by a maid who looked like she should still have been at school, her uniform starched, pristine and half a size too large. She seemed surprised to see a constable standing on the step.
‘Is Mr Caine at home?’ I asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Please tell him that Constable Wyndham from the Leman Street station would request a few minutes of his time.’
The maid ushered me into the hallway where I removed my helmet, then followed her along the chequerboard floor to the drawing room.
‘If you’ll kindly wait, sir. I’ll let Mr Caine know.’
The room was large, bigger than that occupied by whole families across the way in Whitechapel. Tastefully decorated though, with a chesterfield sofa and two wingback chairs situated around the grate of an empty fireplace. Above the mantelpiece hung an oil painting of a clipper making its way through what looked like a force nine gale. Violent brushstrokes of white-topped waves crashed against its hull under a blackening sky. As drawing-room artwork went, it seemed a curious choice, but the door opened before I’d a chance to consider it further and in walked Jeremiah Caine.
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