Scarper Jack and the Bloodstained Room

by Christopher Russell

  ‘No,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘One of them was left unlocked. It was locked after the murder. From the outside. Wasn’t it?’

  Again the attempted smile. ‘Who’s filled your head with this nonsense?’

  ‘No one’s filled my head. It’s what happened. I can prove it.’

  ‘What d’you mean, you can prove it?’ The smile was suddenly gone. ‘Are you in with the police?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then how d’you know so much?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is if it’s true!’

  Tony blew a long sigh, then shrugged.

  ‘All right. I left the window open. In the storeroom at the back. It was a mistake. Not doing my job properly. Forgetful. Careless. That’s all. I should have said. Told someone. But you know what it’s like. If you don’t tell the truth straight away, it gets more and more difficult…’

  Jack was already shaking his head miserably.

  ‘You’re still lying! Lying… I just heard that man saying you talk too much. Why would he say that if it was just a mistake? If you just forgot! I’m your son. Two nights ago you told me I was a man now. If you’re in trouble, I want to help you. But you have to tell me the truth!’

  Tony turned away. He slowly sat down and stared into the empty grate for a long time. At last he spoke, in a flat voice, not looking at Jack.

  ‘Yes, I left it open on purpose.’

  Jack said nothing. There was another silence.

  ‘The man who was here… He came up to me in the pub. On the day… on the day it happened. At lunchtime. I go to the pub at lunchtime. I didn’t know him. He said he’d followed me.’ Tony paused. ‘He offered me money to leave the back window open. A lot of money.’ Tony looked up. ‘I swear, Jack, I didn’t know it was for murder. I wanted the money for you. So we could set up properly together. Have a future. Don’t turn your back on me. Please!’

  But Jack had to look away. He stared at the door, thinking of the Cap and Cockerel and the pile of sovereigns on the bar. Behind him, his father’s voice gradually became a whine.

  ‘They’ve cheated me, Jack. Drawn me in, used me, and now they want me dead. The one who was here, he’s not working on his own, I’m sure of it. I’m a marked man, Jack. And if they don’t get me, the police will. There’ll be no mercy. If they find out about the window, I’ll hang. You don’t want your father to hang, do you? Son? Do you?’

  ‘A man is dead because of what you did for money.’ Jack’s voice was high and thick. He choked back tears.

  ‘No, Jack, no. I’ve told you. I never knew it was for murder. I was tricked. I’m as innocent as Featherstone himself!’ Tony sprang up from the chair, suddenly all restless energy. ‘Look, boy, look. I have to leave here and you must come too. We’ll start again, eh? Put this all behind us. Go north where no one knows us. There’s work there, in the cities. Money to be made, lots of it. Maybe even start our own business. You and me together.’ He put his hand on Jack’s arm. ‘Father and son.’

  Jack flung out his arm, shaking his father off. Tony raised his fist and for a split second seemed about to strike the boy. Then he lowered it again.

  ‘You’re not a man,’ he sniffed. ‘You’re just a boy.’ His voice rose higher. ‘Well, stay here then. I don’t care. Just promise you won’t betray me. Eh? Promise me!’

  Jack couldn’t speak. He could hardly breathe. He pressed his face into the wall.

  ‘Damn you to hell then!’ screamed his father.

  The wall shook against Jack’s wet face as the door slammed beside him.

  7

  Connections

  Jack woke with the daylight. He’d cried himself to sleep and his eyes felt crusted with salt. He raised himself on an elbow and looked towards the bed. It was empty. His father hadn’t come back. He flopped down again and stared at the ceiling. He wanted nothing but to curl up in a tight ball of misery. That was how he’d spent the night, trying to shut everything out. But nothing really changed when you did that. Nothing went away.

  He became aware of voices, down at the street door, then footsteps on the stairs. He sprang up from his blanket on the floor. The police? Had his father already been arrested? Or killed?

  There was a tap at the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Jack? Is that you?’ Rupert’s voice was cautious.

  Jack suddenly remembered where he was supposed to have been before dawn. He opened the door. April was there with Rupert. She looked warily in past Jack.

  ‘You on your own?’ she asked quietly.

  Jack nodded.

  April looked at him. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Jack turned away and sat down on the chair by the fireplace. April and Rupert glanced at each other and followed him into the room. Rupert closed the door.

  ‘We, uh, went to Nunwell Street,’ he said. ‘Did you forget?’ He could sense more than forgetfulness but didn’t know what else to ask.

  Finally, Jack spoke without looking up.

  ‘When I came home yesterday, a man was trying to kill my father. He was being strangled on that table.’

  Rupert started slightly and moved away from it. He regarded the shabby, ordinary piece of furniture and felt an unpleasant cold tingle. The reality of murder truly struck him for the first time.

  ‘The man ran away,’ said Jack. ‘And my father’s gone too.’ He looked up at April. ‘I told you he was a caretaker. I didn’t tell you where. He worked for Henry Featherstone at Nunwell Street. And he was paid money to leave the window open. It was him. He admitted it to me last night.’

  ‘Gosh…’ said Rupert. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. How awful for you.’

  There was a silence before April spoke.

  ‘So… who was it tried to kill him?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I think whoever paid my father has decided he’s a risk. He talks too much when he’s drunk.’ There was an empty bitterness in the last remark. ‘And drunk or sober, he lies all the time. Boasts one minute, denies everything the next.’ Jack sighed. ‘I’m really not sure if he knew why they wanted the window left open or not. But it makes no difference. If he’s caught, he’ll hang.’

  April crouched in front of Jack.

  ‘Never mind your pa for a minute,’ she said. ‘You can’t stay here, Jack. The man who came after your father might come back. And now you’ve seen him, he’ll certainly want to kill you as well.’

  Jack slowly looked up at her. April didn’t blink.

  ‘You have to leave, Jack. Now. It’s not safe here.’

  The three of them walked south, towards the river.

  After a while, Rupert spoke.

  ‘Would you like me to follow Erskine again? Find out more about the scaffolder? We don’t want to get your pa in trouble but we don’t want him murdered either.’

  ‘There’s no point,’ said Jack. ‘It wasn’t either of them who attacked my father.’

  Rupert fell silent again. Jack suddenly stopped walking.

  ‘I think I’d like to be on my own for a bit,’ he said, and turned away.

  Rupert made to follow but April stopped him.

  ‘Let him be,’ she said. But she called after Jack fiercely. ‘Don’t go home. Right?’ Then more gently: ‘And meet us at Rupert’s house this evening.’

  Jack made no response.

  Colonel Radcliffe carefully unfolded the piece of paper. Mrs Barlow’s fingerprints were still intact and unsmudged. He laid the paper on his desk and placed the bloodstained chair leg from Featherstone’s office next to it. The fingerprint in the blood wasn’t very clear, but clear enough. He examined it again closely, through his magnifying glass, and compared it to Mrs Barlow’s. But no matter how long he pored over the prints he couldn’t convince himself that there was a match. In fact, he was convinced that there wasn’t.

  He turned to the constables gathered uncomfortably in his office.

  ‘Gentlemen. I would like a second opinion.’ Without waitin
g for a volunteer, he handed the magnifying glass to Constable Adams and indicated for him to take a look. ‘Take your time.’

  Adams took the glass. Why me? he asked himself. He’d never held a magnifying glass before, and when he first peered through it, he started back a little: the bloody chair leg seemed to leap up at his face. He heard a couple of his colleagues stifle laughter.

  ‘What do you see, Adams?’ asked Colonel Radcliffe.

  ‘Lots of little lines, sir. Sort of loops and swirls.’ This sounded silly. Adams became convinced he’d been picked out to be made a fool of.

  ‘Do any of the patterns on the paper match the single pattern on the chair leg?’

  Adams moved the glass above the paper then back to the chair leg, studying both. He thought the correct answer was probably yes, but the loops and swirls didn’t match. When you looked hard they were quite different, or seemed so to him. He looked up helplessly.

  ‘Not that I can see, sir. Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Which almost certainly means,’ announced Colonel Radcliffe, glad to have his own observations confirmed, ‘that Mrs Barlow did not kill Featherstone.’

  Adams was relieved. He had some sympathy for Mrs Barlow. He was even more relieved when Colonel Radcliffe took back the magnifying glass.

  The Assistant Commissioner continued briskly.

  ‘The chair leg fingerprint does not belong to Mrs Barlow and it does not belong to Featherstone himself – I have been to the mortuary to compare it; so we must spread our net a little wider.’

  His thoughts had already returned to the window with the scratched locking bar. ‘Tell me: who are the best burglars that you know? If we were looking for a villain who is agile, who can climb like a cat, like a spider, who would you name?’

  Adams flinched then stared at his feet. Colonel Radcliffe noticed and, while the others came out with the names of known cat burglars and safe breakers, he was only half listening.

  ‘Yes, Adams?’ he enquired.

  Adams started and looked up guiltily. He had to come out with it this time. ‘Well, it’s nothing to do with burglars, sir, but there’s something else I perhaps should have reported before…’ He shrugged haplessly. ‘But at the time it didn’t seem…’

  ‘Say what you have to say, man.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Adams straightened up, trying to ignore the fact that all eyes in the room were on him. ‘On the afternoon of the murder I was approached on my beat by a sweep’s boy. He told me there was going to be a murder that night in Nunwell Street. He didn’t know what number, because, he said, the information had come to him in a dream.’

  There was an ominous silence. Adams gulped and looked straight ahead.

  ‘A sweep’s boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Did you take his name?’

  ‘No, sir. I just sent him on his way. At the time I assumed he was hoaxing me.’

  It must be the sack now, thought Adams. It must. But the explosion didn’t happen.

  ‘Well,’ said Colonel Radcliffe after a few seconds, ‘sweeps’ boys can certainly climb. Do we have anything else on sweeps or their boys?’

  The question was met with a uniform shaking of heads. Then Constable Downing suddenly snapped to attention and raised his arm.

  ‘Sir!’ he said excitedly. ‘The caretaker. Tolchard. His boy’s a sweep.’

  He was pleased with the effect of this revelation on those around him.

  ‘He is?’ The Assistant Commissioner tried to recall the boy he’d seen in Tony Tolchard’s room. ‘The one we saw? He wasn’t dressed like a sweep.’

  Downing nodded. ‘But he is, sir. When I picked him up drunk, he gave his name and address honestly enough. And his occupation as sweep’s boy. It’s in the station log.’

  A murmur of excitement rippled round the room. Hadn’t they said all along that Tolchard was the most likely suspect? A caretaker who may have failed to lock windows now proved to have a son who could climb like a cat. Simple.

  Only Adams seemed troubled. Colonel Radcliffe allowed him to ask the question.

  ‘But surely, sir, the lad who spoke to me can’t have been Tolchard’s boy. I mean, if he was involved, why would he try to warn us?’

  ‘Only one way to find out, mate.’ Downing grinned, then remembered himself and snapped smartly back into rank. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  Colonel Radcliffe regarded Downing coolly, then nodded and addressed the room.

  ‘Arrest Tony Tolchard,’ he ordered. ‘And his son.’

  The constables filed eagerly out. Adams kept his head down but didn’t escape unnoticed.

  ‘Thank you, Adams,’ said the Colonel mildly. ‘We’ll make a policeman of you yet.’

  Out in the public office, the constables’ excitement at their new task was overheard by Richard Featherstone as he arrived at the station. Seeing Colonel Radcliffe, he headed straight for him.

  ‘There’s a development?’ he asked.

  ‘Of a kind, sir. We need to speak again to your father’s caretaker and to the man’s son, who it seems may have had pre-knowledge of the crime.’

  Richard frowned. ‘Pre-knowledge?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A sweep’s boy spoke to one of my men before the event. Tolchard’s son is a sweep’s boy.’

  ‘I see. And on that basis they are guilty?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You imply it.’

  ‘No, sir. But they must be questioned further.’

  Richard indicated the policemen behind him. ‘So your pack is set to hounding them. Why do you not pursue your other suspects in such numbers?’

  ‘We have no other suspects,’ replied Colonel Radcliffe candidly.

  ‘Then it would appear to be as I’ve protested all along: the working class are blamed for everything.’

  ‘No, sir. I shall question them as fairly as I would your good self.’

  ‘Take care you do, Colonel,’ warned Richard. ‘Or I shall take steps to have you removed from this case.’

  Jack was sitting alone on the flat roof behind Jevons’ yard. The cart wasn’t there but he could hear Mrs Jevons doing the washing, her young children playing around her. Jack had kept himself out of their sight. Mrs Jevons would be kind and sympathetic and her kindness would be too much to bear. He didn’t want to cry again. He sat chewing his lip, going over and over the conversation with his father and desperately trying to decide what he should do next. Suddenly, he heard footsteps and the creaking open of the yard gate.

  ‘Are you there, missus? Police.’

  Jack flattened himself on the roof. Why were they here?

  ‘We knocked at the front door,’ said the policeman. ‘Can we come in?’

  Mrs Jevons had a quiet voice. Jack strained his ears.

  ‘Yes. Of course. What do you want? Is my husband all right?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, ma’am, but I hope so. We’re looking for a boy. A sweep’s boy, name of Jack Tolchard. D’you know him?’

  Jack’s heart began to beat very fast and his limbs tensed. He shifted slightly, ready to run.

  ‘Jack? Yes. He used to work for us. A good boy. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Used to work for you?’

  ‘Yes. He left us earlier this week.’

  ‘Any idea where we might find him?’

  ‘No, none at all. His father took him.’

  ‘Not doubting your word, you understand, ma’am, but d’you mind if we have a look around?’

  ‘No. No, of course. Do as you must.’

  The policemen began searching the yard. Jack silently climbed from his hiding place and stole away.

  It seemed he was safe nowhere.

  8

  Break-in

  Rupert and April had walked across London Bridge and back across the new Westminster Bridge, virtually in silence. They felt awkward in each other’s company.

  ‘We’re not helping Jack,’ said Rupert, suddenly impatient. ‘Let’s do something useful. Let’s have another look at the clue
s we’ve got.’

  They found a quiet churchyard and April sat watchfully beside a gravestone while Rupert squatted down, emptied the bills and receipts from their envelope again and divided them into piles. These were different piles, Rupert assured her, but they looked much the same as before to April. One pile was becoming much bigger than the rest, though. And the same bold print appeared at the top of all the receipts on it.

  ‘Paterson and Jenkins,’ said Rupert, pointing at the headed paper. ‘Paterson and Jenkins, Suppliers to the Arts. That means paint and stuff. I think we should pay them a visit.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Because this one…’ Rupert plucked up a particular Paterson and Jenkins receipt and held it meaningfully towards April,‘… is dated the ninth. Three days ago.’

  April didn’t immediately understand.

  ‘The day of the murder,’ said Rupert. ‘The day Jack heard the voices in Erskine’s room. Erskine was at the art shop the same day. Maybe, just maybe, the other voice Jack heard was with him. We could get a description!’

  Jack had found himself a new hiding place of a kind: a roofless, burnt-out building where there appeared to have been a chimney fire. The rats retreated from the basement when he crept in, and left him in peace. He crouched, listening to people passing by on the pavement above; the different footsteps. There seemed to be a lot of policemen.

  He slept a little and each time he awoke he felt swiftly inside his shirt to make sure the scrap of canvas was still there. He’d decided that all his hopes depended on it now. If he could find a fingerprint at Nunwell Street to match Erskine’s, then he would have solved the crime. He could show the police and they would talk to the judges. Judges were often sympathetic to criminals who helped the courts. Surely a judge would be lenient to a man whose son had caught the murderer. Maybe his father would be given a prison sentence instead of being hanged.

  Jack’s eagerness to obtain his proof made him impatient for the day to pass, despite the danger ahead. If he were caught, then that would be the end of everything. Nobody would believe his story. But he would not get caught. He felt a slight pang of guilt because April and Rupert would be waiting for him at Calborn Gardens and he had decided to act alone. But he didn’t change his mind. He touched the scrap of canvas for the hundredth time. No, he would not get caught.