Ghost of Whitechapel

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘Well, sometimes, yer know, Bridget, it’s safer for some of us when yer back’s turned,’ said Billy. ‘Oh, blimey.’ Out he darted. Bridget was after him again.

  In their house in Tanner Street, Mr and Mrs Pritchard were aghast. Mr Pritchard was facing the prospect of arrest and detention.

  ‘I put it to you again, Mr Pritchard,’ said Chief Inspector Dobbs, ‘that after the scene with Miss Flanagan, after she had gone back to her room following her complaint to your wife, you went up again much later. You went up after you’d returned from the pub, with drink inside you. You took a knife up with you and cut Miss Flanagan’s throat. I also put it to you again, Mrs Pritchard, that you knew this. Did you help your husband mop up the blood and to wash away all evidence?’

  ‘Oh, me dear gawd,’ gasped Mrs Pritchard, and tottered to the dresser and to her bottle of port. ‘I’m goin’ mad, I’m out of me mind already.’

  ‘Following the murder, Mr Pritchard, you carried the body out of the house at some time during the night and left it in Tooley Street,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘I think that’s what happened. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re up the bleedin’ pole,’ said Pritchard, pale and shaking, while his wife sank quivering into a chair with her port bottle clutched in both hands. ‘I ain’t the kind to murder a woman just because she doesn’t fancy me. Nor because I ’ad a pint of beer inside me. And ’ere, would me or anyone else ’ave done for Flanagan in ’er room when our other lodger was in at the time, rentin’ the rooms next to Maureen’s?’

  ‘Other lodger?’ said Dobbs, and Sergeant Ross blinked.

  ‘We’ve all got lodgers round these parts, ain’t we?’ said Mr Pritchard. ‘We ’ad two till Maureen run into a bloke with a nasty turn of mind that night. I’m tellin’ yer, I don’t ’ave nasty turns of mind about women, and nor ain’t I bloody daft enough to slice one up when there’s someone else close by. And on top of that, me missus said you searched Flanagan’s room. As coppers, you’d ’ave noticed something, wouldn’t yer? You’d ’ave noticed if the floor lino ’ad just been washed and cleaned, wouldn’t yer?’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Chief Inspector Dobbs in exasperation, ‘why didn’t you let us know there was another lodger?’

  ‘What for?’ asked Mrs Pritchard woundedly. ‘You didn’t do no askin’ about other lodgers, and I kept quiet about Mr Oxberry in case you started worrying ’im like you was worrying me. Mr Oxberry’s a respectable and quiet gent that’s a bit down on ’is luck. ’E was very grieved about Maureen Flanagan, like we all was, and besides, I didn’t know you was goin’ to come and accuse me ’usband of cuttin’ ’er throat in ’er own room. She was out, wasn’t she, and it was done when she was out, wasn’t it?’

  ‘We believe she didn’t go out,’ said Ross, ‘not in that pea-souper.’

  ‘But Ted did,’ said Mrs Pritchard.

  ‘Only down to the pub,’ said Ross. ‘If I remember right, you did tell us you didn’t hear Miss Flanagan go out.’

  ‘Well, I told yer me and Ted was ’aving a real up-and-downer, didn’t I?’ said Mrs Pritchard. ‘Listen, you got to believe me, he didn’t go up to Flanagan’s room after ’e come back from the pub that night. If she was done for in ’er room, it wasn’t Ted that was guilty.’

  ‘Mrs Pritchard,’ said Dobbs, ‘tell me about your other lodger, Mr Oxberry.’

  ‘Yes, ’e’s Mr Jarvis Oxberry,’ said Mrs Pritchard, holding on to her port for dear life after a needful intake. ‘We let the two rooms to ’im about a month ago. ’E’s a gentleman.’

  ‘A gentleman?’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Very distinguished, like,’ said Mr Pritchard, perspiring.

  ‘Lodging here?’ said Ross. Tanner Street was hardly salubrious.

  ‘Why shouldn’t ’e be?’ said Mrs Pritchard, cuddling her bottle of port as close to her bosom as a lifebelt. ‘Me and me ’usband is respectable, ain’t we? We ain’t robbed anyone’s safe, ’ave we? Mr Oxberry, bein’ down on ’is luck, is grateful we give ’im cheap lodgings.’

  ‘He’s an old gent, is he?’ said Ross. ‘Retired?’

  ‘He ain’t old, nor retired,’ said Mr Pritchard.

  ‘’E works for a gents’ outfitters in the Strand up to three in the afternoons, Saturdays as well,’ said Mrs Pritchard. ‘’E looks like ’e’s just turned forty.’

  Dobbs glanced at Ross.

  ‘A gent just turned forty who works at the outfitters in the Strand?’ said Ross. ‘I know the shop. Could you describe him, Mrs Pritchard?’

  ‘What for?’ asked the quivering lady.

  ‘We’d like to know,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Well, ’e’s tall, ’andsome, and like me ’usband said, distinguished.’

  Ross drew breath. Dobbs looked well and truly alive. Mrs Pritchard gulped another drop of port, and her lamplighter husband wiped a little perspiration from his brow with his hand.

  ‘What kind of clothes does he wear?’ asked Dobbs.

  ‘’Ere, what you gittin’ at now?’ asked Mr Pritchard.

  ‘Just what kind of clothes he wears,’ said the Chief Inspector.

  ‘I ain’t ’appy about this,’ said Mrs Pritchard, ‘but I can tell yer ’e wears a gentleman’s suits, with a nice-lookin’ overcoat and a smart bowler ’at.’

  ‘I see,’ said Dobbs. ‘Is he in his rooms now?’

  ‘No, ’e’s out,’ said Mr Pritchard, perspiring less. The penny was beginning to drop. These coppers had suspicions about Oxberry. Christ.

  ‘’E goes out most evenings,’ said Mrs Pritchard. ‘I think ’e said once ’e does a bit of part-time work in the evenings as well as ’is part-time day work to ’elp with ’is income. Well, ’e don’t usually get back till me and me ’usband is in bed. Mind, ’e don’t come in noisy, ’e’s very quiet and thoughtful, like. What you askin’ all these questions for? Ain’t you asked enough?’

  ‘Not yet, Mrs Pritchard.’ The Chief Inspector did some rapid thinking. ‘I’d like to have another look at Miss Flanagan’s room,’ he said.

  ‘Well, all right,’ said Mrs Pritchard, ‘but there ain’t no evidence up there that’ll show me ’usband done her in.’

  ‘And we ain’t touched it,’ said Mr Pritchard, ‘it’s like it was since she last used it. I give yer me oath on that.’

  ‘Noted, Mr Pritchard,’ said Dobbs, and went up to the room with his sergeant. He struck a match and applied the flame to the gas mantle. Light spread and glowed. He inspected the floor linoleum. ‘Would you say that looks as if it’s recently been washed, sergeant?’

  Sergeant Ross went down on his hands and knees, and crawled about.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say so, guv,’ he said, coming to his feet. ‘What I would say is that we’ve picked up a lead that beats all others.’

  ‘Picked it up?’ said Dobbs, scanning the linoleum. ‘More correctly, it jumped into our laps. Let a prayer said in church be a lesson to you, my lad.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Ross, looking around with eyes turned into gimlets.

  ‘I said one myself on Sunday. Pritchard was right. When we went all over this room the morning after the murder, we noticed nothing to make us think it had been committed here.’

  ‘On the other hand, guv, we weren’t looking for those kind of signs,’ said Ross.

  ‘No, we weren’t,’ said Dobbs, ‘but we did turn everything over. This gentleman lodger now, Jarvis Oxberry. Has he been in here? Did he try his luck with Maureen Flanagan, and did she turn him down too? Hold on, wait a minute, go down and ask the Pritchards if he was out that evening. If he wasn’t, he’ll be a prime case for investigation, since I’m sticking like glue now to the probability that Flanagan stayed in. I’ve got some serious thinking to do, and a feeling that when you get back we’ll need to inspect Oxberry’s rooms.’

  ‘Right, guv,’ said Ross, and down he went.

  Dobbs wandered around the room. He opened the wardrobe. The late Maureen Flanagan’s clothes were still there, on their hangers. And two hangers were sti
ll empty. He moved the clothes about, and noted that a blouse and a skirt were hung together.

  ‘Charlie Dobbs,’ he said, ‘I think something’s staring you in the face. The corpse now, that was staring you in the face to begin with, and so was the fact that there was no blood, just a faintly stained scarf, and a bit of a smudge on her blouse. That didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now.’

  The wheels of thought turned slowly. If the blouse and skirt Flanagan had been wearing when her body was found had occupied the same hanger, that would leave one hanger spare. Was it a spare, was it one hanger she hadn’t needed to use? Or had it been in use? If so, what had been on it? A dress? Another combination of blouse and tarty skirt?

  Balls of fire, was that it, was there a blouse and skirt missing, and were they missing because they related to the murder? A gashed throat. Spurting blood. And a blouse that was only marked by a faint pink smudge, and a skirt not marked at all. Nor the coat. Bloody impossible.

  If Flanagan had died under the knife in this room, there would have been a hell of a mess to be cleaned up. What with? Her towel, hanging over the washstand roller, could have been used to mop up blood, but it was clean. A small worn rug beside her bed, there to protect her bare feet from the cold lino when she rose each morning, could also have been used. But it obviously hadn’t been. Jesus, had her skirt, blouse, petticoat and drawers been ripped off to do the job?

  I’m going for that, and I’m going for the bugger dressing her in a spare blouse, skirt and petticoat after he’d cleaned her body up. And I’m also going for her coat being off when he sliced her.

  No, wait a moment, there’d be some signs, even if only small ones, if it had all taken place right here. We’d have noticed something when we searched the room. Further, it would have reeked of murder.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and applied himself to the mental strain of dredging up further suppositions and theories. Feet sounded on the stairs, and when Ross came in, he had Mr Pritchard with him.

  Looking haunted, the man said, ‘’Ave yer cottoned on to anything, guv? I ’ad to come up with yer sergeant and ask, I’m that worried. So’s me old lady.’

  ‘I’ve got my own problems,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Oxberry was in that evening, guv,’ said Ross. ‘Mrs Pritchard’s quite certain she heard him moving about.’

  ‘Yes, and she mentioned to me ’e was in for a change,’ said Mr Pritchard. ‘That was after our ding-dong, and she said she ’oped Mr Oxberry ’adn’t been listening. What’s more, I ’eard ’im meself when I come back from the pub. The fog didn’t usually bother ’im, ’e’d go out most evenings whatever, yer know. But ’e was in all right that evening.’

  ‘Well now, be a helpful bloke,’ said Dobbs, ‘and tell me what Miss Flanagan was wearing under her coat at the time you were up here trying your luck with her.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Mr Pritchard, ‘’er coat was done up.’

  ‘Was she wearing the scarf?’

  Mr Pritchard screwed his suffering forehead up in concentrated thought.

  ‘Yus, she was,’ he said, and Dobbs thought that perhaps at that stage she was still thinking about going out. Basil Gottfried had said she was expected in the West End.

  ‘So you couldn’t see the neck of her blouse?’ he asked.

  ‘Yus, I could,’ said Mr Pritchard. ‘’Er scarf was ’anging loose, she ’adn’t wound it round ’er neck yet. I remember seein’ a touch of yeller, or a sort of lemon colour.’

  ‘Sure?’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Yus, I remember that touch of colour,’ said Mr Pritchard.

  ‘Well, that’s some help,’ said Dobbs. The blouse on the body of Maureen Flanagan had been white.

  ‘Me old lady’s sufferin’ chronic, guv.’

  ‘Well, you can tell her I think you’ve finally put yourself in the clear,’ said Dobbs. ‘With your mention of a touch of colour.’

  ‘I dunno ’ow that counted in me favour,’ said Mr Pritchard.

  ‘All the same, it did,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Thank gawd for that,’ said Pritchard. ‘Listen, guv, might I ask yer if you got suspicions about Oxberry?’

  ‘I can tell you my enquiries are proceeding in every direction,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘As the saying is,’ said Ross.

  ‘I got yer,’ said Mr Pritchard, and went down to rejoin his old lady and to inform her he was as good as in the clear. Mrs Pritchard stopped palpitating on his behalf, poured herself a full glass of port, drank some of it, and then, because of new developments, began palpitating on behalf of her gentleman lodger, Mr Jarvis Oxberry.

  Upstairs, Dobbs said, ‘Well, Sergeant Ross, now what’ve we got?’

  ‘You tell me,’ said Ross.

  ‘I will,’ said Dobbs, and detailed the conclusions he’d drawn.

  ‘Stone my Aunt Beatie’s cockatoo,’ said Ross, ‘what an eye-opener. I’d say that makes Oxberry a highly promising suspect.’

  ‘But where did it happen, eh?’

  ‘Not in here,’ said Ross, ‘not in this room.’

  ‘Somewhere else, of course,’ said Dobbs, ‘and what we might find there could lead us to Whitechapel as well. He went out most evenings, never mind the fog. That’s it, he did for Maureen Flanagan somewhere close, and later that week for Poppy Simpson. I’ll lay my Sunday shirt on it. You realize, don’t you, he answers the description given by Constable Billings of the man who called himself a doctor?’

  ‘I did happen to recognize Mrs Pritchard’s description as being as good as one and the same,’ said Ross.

  ‘When you asked the Pritchards if Oxberry was in or out that evening, I suppose you also asked them if he owns a walking-stick and a Gladstone bag?’

  ‘Well, no, I—’

  ‘Dear oh dear,’ said Dobbs, and shook his head at his sergeant.

  ‘Come off it, guv,’ said Ross.

  ‘Do me a favour, go down and ask them now,’ said Dobbs.

  Ross went. He was back almost at once.

  ‘Yes, a black ebony walking-stick and a brown Gladstone bag,’ he said.

  Dobbs put his bowler on.

  ‘I think we’ll take a look at his rooms,’ he said, and led the way out. On the landing he called, ‘Mr Pritchard?’

  Out came Mr Pritchard from the kitchen.

  ‘I’m ’ere, guv.’ His mood now was almost respectful.

  ‘We’re going to take a look at Mr Oxberry’s rooms.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Any objections?’

  ‘Bloody ’ell, you got that far in yer suspicions?’ said Mr Pritchard hoarsely.

  ‘You could say it would help our enquiries if we examined the rooms. We’re going in now.’

  ‘No objections, guv,’ said Mr Pritchard, ‘but it’s goin’ to give me missus another bad turn.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Dobbs.

  Sergeant Ross tried the door of the front room. It was locked. He fished into his jacket pocket and took out a bunch of keys. He tried three. The fourth one turned the lock, and he opened the door. The room wasn’t in complete darkness. There were two gas mantles, one on each side of the wide chimney breast, and one was alight but turned low, offering a mere glimmer. Dobbs went in and turned it fully on. Light sprang. The room was warm. A cumbersome-looking gas fire stood in the hearth, its jets burning low. A sofa fronted the hearth, and a table stood under the curtained window. The furniture generally, old and unhandsome, was that of a living-room. A cupboard that could have been used as a larder was empty on inspection except for a packet of tea and a can containing a little milk. Additionally, on the cupboard floor, tucked back, were newspapers, several of them, and all neatly folded.

  Dobbs brought them out and took a look at them. They were all recent issues of the Daily Telegraph, the earlier issues containing reports on the murder of Maureen Flanagan, the later ones dealing with the Whitechapel murder and suggesting the one was possibly linked to the other. Comments implied that the Scotland Yard man l
eading the enquiry, Chief Inspector Dobbs, was baffled.

  ‘Who’s arguing?’ said Dobbs.

  Sergeant Ross, foraging around and turning things over, said, ‘Not me, guv, I haven’t said anything.’

  ‘These newspapers have,’ said Dobbs. ‘Now why is the Pritchards’ gentleman lodger hoarding papers that begin with the news of Flanagan’s murder? Is your pulse beginning to jump about?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Ross, ‘this place looks like anybody’s lodging.’

  ‘What about the floor?’ asked Dobbs, peering.

  ‘I’ve looked,’ said Ross, ‘and that’s anybody’s floor too.’

  ‘Well, let’s try the bedroom. There’s always more secrets in a bedroom than anywhere else.’

  The bedroom door was also locked. Sergeant Ross and his ring of skeleton keys made short work of that obstacle. The CID men entered. Darkness enveloped them. Dobbs struck a match, and Ross pointed out a gas mantle above the fireplace. He turned the tap and Dobbs lit the mantle. The light uncovered bed, chair, wardrobe, tallboy, washstand and bedside table.

  ‘This feels a bit more promising, wouldn’t you say, my son?’ said Dobbs.

  ‘I tell you, guv, all my feelings are in my stomach now,’ said Ross.

  ‘What you need is a hot meat pie,’ said Dobbs. ‘What’s that on the bed?’

  ‘It’s the walking-stick,’ said Ross, and picked it up. Made of solid ebony, with a silver handle shaped like a leaping leopard, it was heavy. There were marks on the silver, and also on the stick itself. Dobbs examined it.

  ‘Well, it’s handy, of course, but you couldn’t cut anyone’s throat with it,’ he said, his hat on, his overcoat unbuttoned. He opened the wardrobe, disclosing two suits, a mackintosh and a pair of shoes. In a drawer of the tallboy was underwear, male, together with socks. ‘Anything under the bed, sunshine?’ he asked, and Ross stooped.

  ‘This,’ he said, and brought out a Gladstone bag. He placed it on the bed and opened it. It contained small bottles of medicine, headache powders and a stethoscope.

  ‘I call that something to blind the innocent,’ said Dobbs, and examined the floor. Its old linoleum covering was cracked in places, but it seemed exceptionally clean. ‘Take a good look, sergeant.’