A Necessary Murder

by M. J. Tjia

  I’m putting an extra teaspoon of sugar into my tea when Cosgrove returns. My hand pauses, the teaspoon mid-stir, when I see his face. “What is it?”

  “Meadowes found this slipped through the mail slot. A message from Hunt,” he says, showing me the slip of paper. “He wants to meet me.”

  “When?” I ask, glancing down at the note. As soon as possible, is written in neat copperplate. And, sure enough, it’s signed, J.D. Hunt.

  I look up at Cosgrove. “But you mustn’t go. It might be another trap.”

  He frowns down at the note. “By Hunt? I’ve known him many years now, and I cannot believe he’s responsible for these deaths. I cannot. He might be in danger himself.”

  “But it could be from someone else,” I say, following him into the hallway. “It might be the same person who murdered Pidgeon, tricking you into meeting him, by posing as Hunt. At least show it to Hatch first. Let him accompany you.”

  Cosgrove casts around for his hat, which he finds on a small escritoire. He shrugs into an overcoat. “It says to come now. I must go. You can wait here for me, if you like, or fetch your Hatch and tell him what is going on.”

  I hurry back into the sitting room and jam my bonnet onto my head. Taking up my coat, which lies on the floor where it was discarded, I pull it on. “I’m coming with you. But first, do you have a firearm we can bring? I’ve left mine at home, unfortunately.”

  It takes the cab driver nearly an hour to find the meeting place in the East End. Cosgrove curses, wonders why Hunt or “whoever the damned scoundrel is” who wrote the message chose such an out-of-the-way location to meet.

  “It must be a trap,” I repeat.

  But as we draw nearer to our destination, Cosgrove wrenches the cab window open, peers out at the dreary street. “My God,” he says. “I remember this place.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s where we found a group of those kungsi rascals living. Years ago. Tried to bribe Pidgeon, they did. Hunt too.”

  “The Chinese from Sarawak? Why would they try to bribe Pidgeon and Hunt?”

  He’s silent for a few moments. We bump against each other as the cab trundles across cobblestones. “I was never quite sure, Heloise. All I know is we rooted them out.” By the light of the street lamps outside, I watch his hands clench. “Hunt must’ve found something.”

  The cab halts at the corner of a narrow alley. “Far as I can go, sir,” calls the driver.

  Hopping down into the road after Cosgrove, I repeat my question. “But what on earth did they have on the likes of Pidgeon?”

  “I was never quite sure, Heloise,” he says again. “Pidgeon, Lovejoy and Hunt—and that fellow McBride—were very quiet about something to do with that riot in Sarawak. I’ve never been sure of what it was. I was newly arrived in Kuching, and although we have been great friends since…” he pauses. He’s probably thinking of how those friendships are in the past, now that the others have been murdered, “I was much younger than they, new to their expeditions. I have heard them talk about the wonders of antimony, though, which is mined in Sarawak. They had a good laugh about it, but didn’t explain the joke to me. Lately, since these murders, I’ve begun to wonder if they were hiding something.”

  “Like what?”

  He shakes his head, and lifts his hat to push his hair back from his forehead. “Maybe they knew the Chinese were going to attack. In fact, maybe it was arranged so. With Crookshank and Wilkins out of the way, a negotiator with good business acumen could arrange a tidy deal with the local kungsi for the antimony mines. Yes, but maybe the Chinese were double-crossed. Antimony has only increased in value, tenfold probably, in that time. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is why the kungsi keep sending men in to finish off those that tricked them. Maybe they hope to recover the mines.”

  “You can’t mean Pidgeon was a part of this? He would never!” I say. But then I remember that twice he’s tried to tell me of something that was troubling him. If not involved himself, he might have had information against the other men.

  We stare down the murky alleyway we must enter. There’s a strong whiff of ordure and river rot, and damp stains the walls of the hovels that line the road.

  “Damn. I should’ve brought a lantern,” Cosgrove says, glancing up at the sky. The night is cloudy, dimming the moon’s glow. “You should have stayed behind, Heloise.” His voice is rough and, for the first time, I think that maybe I should have.

  “Do we go down here?” I ask, taking the first step into the alley.

  “Yes.”

  I step over a pile of turnip ends and mouldy cabbage and God alone knows what else. I whip the lace from my hat and clamp it lightly against my nose with freezing fingers. Cosgrove grunts and curses as he steps in what I think is human shit and, by the slit of moonlight that finds its way past the ramshackle buildings, I momentarily mistake a decomposing cat for a discarded fur tippet.

  The further we walk, the more I can smell something gaslike.

  “What a peculiar place to have a pond,” I say, walking towards the body of water that marks the end of the alley. By the light of a single lantern hanging from the balcony of a shack on the corner, the water seems to be the shade and consistency of tea. Two rows of houses back onto the pond, while the alleyway snakes off to the right and left, forming the shape of a T. A very low archway leads the way into the lane to the left, its interior swamped in darkness. The lane to the right is a little wider, uncovered, with a long row of terraced shanties on each side of the dirt path.

  “He said to wait here.”

  I wander closer to the pond. It isn’t surrounded by any greenery—no grass, no shrubberies—and its banks have been trodden into mud that spreads its sludge onto the path’s flagstones. The reek of gas becomes overbearing and I realise what I’m looking at.

  “It’s some sort of cesspool,” Cosgrove says behind me.

  A faint light glows from one of the houses that backs onto the pool as a woman opens her back door and throws the contents of a bucket into the water. The slopping sound, the fresh, foul stench, leave no doubt as to the contents of the bucket. At the same time, a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old, sidles up to the edge of the pool. Keeping a wary eye on us, she bobs down and dips a tin cup into the water and then quickly turns about, returns to a house several doors down. I gag so strongly that tears form in my eyes.

  “Where is Hunt, blast him?” says Cosgrove, taking his pistol from his pocket. “Heloise, it’s best if you wait over there.” He points to the archway leading to the left. “Hide yourself. If anything is to happen to me, find your way out, alert Hatch.”

  I know from his voice that there will be no negotiation on this, so I take my place in the dark folds of the tunnel as quickly as I can. As I press myself and my wide skirts against the damp wall, I can just make out two figures walking towards us down the opposite lane. Each of them carries something over his shoulder—shovels, maybe, or rakes? They pause by a doorway, knock, and that’s when I see another shadow, taller, solitary, moving up the lane behind them. Cosgrove steps back, by the side of the pool, so that he’s out of sight.

  The lazy clip-clop of a horse’s hoofs draw near. I think the sound is coming from the alleyway we followed from the main thoroughfare. In the distance, a coster, selling some sort of fare, clangs metal together while calling out something indiscernible. The shadowy man in the opposite lane pauses for a moment. A crunching noise behind me. I swing around as a creature scuttles from sight; but not before I see the sheen of its bulbous eye. A rat. Fleeing from a carcase, pink and unrecognisable, that lies not two feet from me, left to desiccate in the open air. Even as I watch, though, two more rats creep close, inspect the mound. A hacking cough echoes down the tunnel, hacking and hacking as the person tries to expel the poison from within, catch their breath. I’m just turning away, pulling my veil across my mouth and nose, when something even darker than the gloom cuts through the air, knocks me into oblivion.

  C
HAPTER 30

  The first thing I notice when I open my eyes is the smoke billowing around my face. Someone puffing on a cigarette nearby. I turn my head, the uneven cobblestones bumping against my skull. I pull myself up onto my elbows. Not smoking, just my warm breath suffusing the chill air.

  The pong of filth and excrement rises around me and I remember where I am. The lane beside the cesspool. Sitting up, my fingers find the ache at the back of my head, carefully prod the swelling that’s as big as an egg.

  I want to stand, but for almost a minute all I can manage is resting forward on all fours. Trying to ignore the sludge that films my hands and gown, I have to squint against the terrible pain that slices through the right side of my head. I sway like that until I hear a voice cry out. Looking up, I can see that someone is crouched low near the cesspool. I struggle to my feet and lurch towards him, but stop short, my mind whirling, when I see by the feeble light thrown by his lantern that it’s not Cosgrove. He’s a young man, with beefy shoulders and a flat face and, as I stare at him, a boy steps out from behind him.

  The man puts his hands out. “Miss, you shouldn’t come any nearer.”

  “What do you mean?” I manage to croak, stumbling forward until I can see outstretched legs and well-shod feet in the shadows between him and the pond.

  “Miss, you really don’t want to see this,” the man repeats, but as I come closer he steps out of my way rather than touch me.

  I look down upon his body. Cosgrove’s body. I know it’s him, despite the dreadful absence of his head.

  “Where’s his…?” I whisper.

  “It rolled into the pond when we checked on him. Shook him, we did. Thought he was just passed out or something.”

  The banging in my head becomes unbearable and I fall forward onto my knees again and hack up onto the road, heaving until a line of spittle dangles to the mud. My fingernails scrape the dirt. I wipe my mouth down the side of my sleeve.

  The man tries to pull Cosgrove’s body away from the edge of the pond. I reach my hand over.

  “No, no. Don’t touch him,” I say. My nose is running and my eyes water from the cold and sorrow. “Fetch the police. Tell them to find Detective Hatch. Vine Street Station.”

  The man sends the boy, who scampers away down the main alleyway, unperturbed by the dark.

  “Did you see who did this?” I ask the man.

  He just shakes his head. “By the time me and Jimmy came out, the murdering bastard—excuse my language, Miss—was running down the lane.”

  “You didn’t see what he looked like?”

  “No…” The man lifts his cap for a moment, scratches his head. “It was like his head was big, you know? Like too large for his shoulders, if you know what I mean.”

  As though he had a turban on.

  A family of five come out from a nearby house and two men peer from a doorway before approaching. The man holds them all at bay. I hear him murmur the words “murder” and “fell in the pond”. A stout woman lets out a short squeal, cups her hands over her mouth, shrinks back into the arms of another woman.

  I stay huddled near Cosgrove’s body, but I can’t look again, not further than the bottom of his right shoe, which I can see out of the corner of my eye. A thin man limps by, lantern swinging, and, by its light, I see a piece of paper screwed up on the ground. I lean forward, pick it up. It’s the note from Hunt, but I can barely read it, I’m shivering so hard.

  “Here, Miss, take my coat.” The young man holds it towards me.

  “No, no, I couldn’t,” I say, my teeth chattering so violently I think I might bite my tongue.

  He shoves it towards me again. “Here, take it. Just until the police come.”

  Relenting, I pull the coat over my shoulders. Drawing it close, I bury my nose into the rough tweed and find comfort in its odour of sweat, ale and tobacco.

  By the time the first constable arrives on foot, a small crowd has formed. But by the time Hatch arrives, the lanes are quite clogged with onlookers. Four policemen hold them at bay, push them back from the vicinity of the body.

  Hatch draws me to my feet, leads me towards the alley.

  “Mrs Chancey, what happened here?”

  I open my hand, reveal the crumpled note.

  Hatch takes in a sharp breath as he reads. “From Hunt again.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think it could really be from him. I think this whole thing was trickery.” I look around for the young man, whose coat I have wrapped around me. “That man over there, the one in the grey shirt, he described the killer to me. Sounds like the man in the turban.”

  Hatch catches hold of a constable, tells him to escort the witness to the station.

  Turning back to me, he asks, “And why are you here, Mrs Chancey?”

  I peer hard at him to see if suspicion lights his eyes, but it’s too dark, and my eyes are dry and cold, making my vision hazy. I blink, trying to cast my mind back to earlier in the evening. Cosgrove’s port-coloured carpet, frayed at the edges. Bread and butter. His heavy body pressed against mine in front of the warm fireplace. “I think…” Pidgeon’s death. Head toppled off in his carriage. “I visited him to see if he’d heard about Pidgeon. And while I was there, he received that message.”

  The three detectives who arrived with Hatch gather by the side of the cesspool. They’re accompanied by an old man who holds a long rake of some kind.

  “Well, you’re right about the note not being from Hunt,” says Hatch, shoving it into his side pocket. “We’ve since found out that Hunt is safely away in Bernissart, Belgium. It looks like we are back to an Asiatic culprit. Chinaman or Indian, I still can’t place.”

  A cry of triumph by the side of the pond is accompanied by a hush from the others. The old man lays his pole down, next to a dark, muddy lump. I turn away, gripping my waist, dry retch against the side of a brick dwelling.

  Hatch’s hand falls onto my shoulder. It’s reassuring, but has weight too. “I think you’d better go home, Mrs Chancey. But I will need you to come in for an interview tomorrow. Is that all right?”

  I nod. As he escorts me to the main road, we pass Cosgrove’s body again. Circles of light from lanterns held high by the police and the many onlookers bob amongst the shadows. As the detectives roll Cosgrove’s body onto a stretcher, his gun clatters to the cobblestones from his lifeless hand. By the lanterns’ glow, his blue pin glints against the dark, dark stain that has leached into his collar.

  CHAPTER 31

  Taff reins the horses into the kerbside along East India Docks Road. Amah hops down from the carriage, ignoring his loud entreaties to just wait one moment, darn it, and he’ll escort her. She turns into the same street she has haunted over the last few days. Despite the late hour, quite a few people stroll up and down the road outside Kung’s shop. A group of sailors make their way in the direction of the docks, while a vendor offers sweet buns to others who pass by. A young couple—him Chinese, her white—are seated on the front steps of their home, dandling a thickly swaddled toddler between them.

  Amah’s heart lifts when she sees the shutters are finally up at Kung’s shop. She pushes the door open into a shallow front room. The walls and floors are bare of decoration and the only furnishing is a timber bench that once housed some sort of produce from far away. A bright, lacquered altar sits on the floor to the left. Smoke rises in a wisp from the joss sticks planted in sand next to a sad-looking orange, dimpled and shrunken.

  A door opens and a Chinese man steps through. He stares at Amah out of his one good eye; the other is swollen shut, and there’s a nasty graze above his brow, which she assumes is a result from his altercation with Sin Hok.

  He says something, but she can’t understand him. She shakes her head, says, “English?”

  “I say Ayah Hostel in Jewry Street. Men only here.”

  Amah tries to look over his shoulder. “I am looking for Jakub Chee.”

  He grunts and turns back through the doorway. She peers past him, into the ha
lf-darkness beyond. Divans and beds are crammed up against each other, arranged like a maze, with only just enough space to inch around. The man calls out something unintelligible, then, “Chee”. Several heads lift, crane around to see Amah, but only one figure, in the furthest corner, rises and makes his way to them. Jakub.

  She’d forgotten how tall he is, how fine. His shoulders are slender but strong, his waist trim. She always calls him a boy, thinks of him as a boy, but really he’s a man. A young man who doesn’t look as pleased to see her as she is to see him.

  Taking a seat on the bench, she indicates for him to sit next to her. Jakub hesitates, until he sees her lifted brow. She doesn’t like the petulant lift to his mouth, the frown in his eyes, but he must know that she can do testy far better than anyone.

  “Why have you been leading me on this merry dance, Jakub?” she says. “We’ve all been worried about you. Me, your mother, your father.”

  “Ha,” is all he says, staring across at the altar.

  “Why do you say this?”

  He just shakes his head.

  “And what do you have to do with this man, Sin Hok? I was told he’s a very bad man. A criminal, in fact. Just look what he did here.” With her chin, Amah indicates into the other room to where Kung is playing mah-jong with three other men.

  “Who’d you hear that from?”

  “A man at the Strangers’ Home told me. Cardigan, his name was.”

  “Cadogan. That weasel.” Jakub folds his arms. “He’s cross because Sin Hok won’t be converted. Sin Hok’s just a trader. He’s like Kung, in there, or…”

  “Or who?”

  “I was going to say Papa, but I mean Chee. Your uncle.”

  “But he is your papa. You must call him that. Disrespectful not to.”

  “Is he? I don’t know who anyone is anymore.” He clenches his teeth together so she can see the bulge of his jawline.

  “Of course he is. Why do you say these things?”

  “I know that Miriam is not my mother.”