Chapter 27
Alderman James sat in the whisky cabin on Cook Street. He was alone at a table near the back, sipping from a tin tumbler. The tables closest to him were free; people recognised who he was and didn’t want him overhearing what they might say. He was a quarter way through his jug when Edwards finally arrived.
“I was surprised that you asked to meet me here,” Edwards said, looking about the room as he removed his cloak. “It’s not the kind of place I would associate with you, Alderman.”
“Sit down and have a drink,” James said, and Edwards looked at him oddly as he sat.
“You seem odd, gruff even, Alderman,” he said.
“That’s the least that these people have to worry about.”
“If you have asked me to come here to talk about our mutual friend, I am afraid I have no new information.” Edwards smirked.
“Is anything serious to you?” James said angrily. “How can you call a vicious killer ‘our mutual friend’!”
“No, Alderman. Nothing in this world is serious to me.” There was no smile this time.
James took another drink, and he felt the anger course in his blood. “What is it with your type, eh?” he said, staring at Edwards, who was pouring himself a big drink from the jug. “You meet without a care in the world. You worship the Devil: the very being that will do his best to destroy all mankind and condemn us to eternal fire.”
“You make the destruction of mankind sound like a bad thing,” Edwards said.
“Don’t be flippant, Mr. Edwards.”
“Something has definitely gotten into you tonight.”
“I’ve had enough of evil. Enough to fill me forever.”
“What evil do you mean?”
James took a sip from his tumbler again and was silent for a moment. “What does it mean to be decent?” he said finally, looking up at his drinking partner.
“It means nothing,” Edwards said.
“How can you say that? To be decent means you treat people well. You are fair. You do right even when it’s easier to do wrong.”
“So how many ‘decent’ people do you suppose there are?” Edwards asked scornfully.
“The point is not how many there are, but how many people there are that want to be or would be if they had the chance. People steal because they have nothing; they fight because they have nothing.”
“I know plenty of people who have more than I do who both steal and fight.”
“There are exceptions, of course, but just think if all these people who want to be decent could be decent?”
“You think that everything would be dandy, then, do you?”
“Why not?”
“Because that is not how people are. People do things because they are bored, because they want what others have, because they want to do them.”
“No, I won’t believe that. Evil is what makes people do things, and evil thrives where there is a lack of decency.”
“The evil is there, in the people. That’s where the indecency comes from.”
“You are not hearing me.”
“I think I am, but I’m afraid you are wrong.”
“I am not wrong. Have you ever seen evil?”
“Only my share.”
“No, you haven’t, but I have. A while after that weavers’ riot, one of the soldiers whose rifle I lowered tried to kill me. He couldn’t live with killing what he considered to be innocent people, and it drove him to try to kill me, who had made him do it. Do you know what happened to that man?” Edwards shook his head. “I had him hanged.”
“And rightly so.”
“And that’s when I saw evil. It was when I looked in the mirror, and I knew that man died because he couldn’t live with what he had done—with what I had done. He was right to try to kill me, and had I had my wits about me more fully when he tried, I should have let him succeed. I killed him to punish him for my crime; that is evil,” James said loudly.
“That is human,” Edwards said. “You should lower your voice, Alderman. I think you are not used to this poison they sell as whisky here.”
James knew he was drunk; he knew it as soon as he started to raise his voice. He finished his glass nonetheless and then stood up. “Come on,” he said to Edwards.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to look for ‘our mutual friend.’”
James felt the cold whoosh through his mouth and into his lungs, and he almost stumbled with the increased inebriation this shock caused him. Edwards grabbed him by the arm to steady him, but James shrugged him off. He was looking west along the road, and Edwards followed his gaze.
“Would you like to go to the scene of this evening’s crime?” he asked.
“Maybe,” James answered absently. “I don’t know.”
“I doubt there will be any sign of the killer again tonight now that he had satisfied himself.”
“I was just thinking about the blacksmith.”
“What about him?”
“He has been doing the same thing for years. Going to work, coming to the taverns and cabins, and then going home, all the while minding his own business. And now, because of a killer who has nothing to do with him, he has been questioned twice and hauled to the prison.”
“Yes, I saw him earlier being escorted by your soldiers.”
“His neighbours will be suspicious of him now even though he tried to help that poor girl who was killed tonight.”
“The people who live around here are ignorant and besides, they have short memories. Something else will pique their interest or suspicion soon enough, and they will forget all about him.”
They were silent for a moment, and James still looked in the same direction.
“Was there a letter about tonight?” Edwards asked.
“Letter?” James asked. Something was triggering in him as he tried to remember what he knew about a letter.
“A letter from the Dolocher?” Edwards said emphatically.
“Oh, that letter,” James mumbled. “No, that was no letter from the killer. My man found the boy who delivered it this morning.”
“So who wrote it?”
“The boy’s mother.”
“I don’t understand,” Edwards said.
“The letter was to warn about a gang fight that took place on Saturday afternoon. The woman didn’t want her husband to be hurt, as he had been corralled into fighting.”
“So she tried to let you know when the fight would be happening?”
“Yes.”
“But she underestimated the importance of a gang fight to everyone except herself.”
“And I thought it was about the killing.”
“Reasonable assumption. And he did kill again on that night.”
“Pure chance,” James said angrily as he remembered the crying woman when he went to visit her home. Her husband had been badly wounded in the fight and wouldn’t be able to use his left hand again.
James yawned and stretched his back, still looking in the direction where Mullins had walked when he left him earlier. “I suppose you are right about it being pointless to look for the killer tonight,” he said wearily. His bed seemed so inviting now.
“I think so, Alderman. Best to get to bed and start afresh tomorrow with a clear head.”
The Dolocher Page 27