Dead Image

by Joan Lock

  Best was a bit sick of pictures … and artists … and models and —

  ‘People he owed money to?’ he suggested.

  ‘Wouldn’t get the money at all then, would they?’

  Best shrugged. ‘But it would teach others a lesson?’

  ‘Mebbe, mebbe. But it’s a bit complicated coming all the way up here to do it, innit? Seems a bit out of proportion, don’t it? Can’t see our East End shysters coming out here in the country. They’d get lost ten minutes from Seven Dials. Stand out like sore thumbs an’ all. ‘Course we don’t know ‘ow much he owed, but I can’t see as it could be that much, d’you?’

  ‘To shift the blame for the murder onto him, then? The confession could be a forgery.’

  ‘She was pretty certain. No question in her mind.’

  Best decided to avoid any suggestion that the wonderful Mrs Minchin could be lying. ‘Could be a good forgery?’ he suggested instead. But then, when he thought about it, why, when it was she who had blown the whistle on the razor? He felt exhausted and totally confused.

  ‘Mebbe, but these blokes can scarcely write their names anyway. Can’t see them forging someone else’s script.’

  ‘If it was a boatman,’ said Best. ‘But you’re right, anyone else would stick out on the canals. I certainly did.’

  Cheadle grinned. ‘I hears they gave you a new handle.’

  Best had heard that too. ‘I know, Shiny Boots.’ He waited until Cheadle stopped guffawing, allowing himself a slight smile so as not to appear too thin-skinned. ‘What I can’t make out if it was murder, is how someone could overpower a strong, fit, wide-awake man and cut his wrists. Minchin wasn’t muscular but he was wiry and strong. They all are, doing that kind of work.’

  ‘More than one assailant?’ suggested Cheadle.

  ‘Possible, ‘ said Best, ‘But the scene wasn’t that trampled about.’

  ‘If it was murder,’ agreed his Chief Inspector. ‘By the way, Sayers has made an arrest.’

  ‘He’s solved the Thames murder!’ exclaimed Best excitedly.

  ‘No, not exactly. Found the Limehouse woman’s body in their garden. Her old man’s coughed up.’

  Best was having another go at the boatmen but was getting nowhere. No clues as to Minchin’s apparent intentions that night, or as to whom the strange razor belonged. All on board still had their own but then, they would, wouldn’t they, if they had any sense?

  ‘So there is nothing you can tell me that you think would be any help?’ he asked the gathered crew. ‘He was quite normal that night?’

  They all nodded.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said the skipper.

  ‘’Part from his gripes,’ said the lad.

  There was a short silence while Best absorbed this new idea. ‘His what?’

  ‘His gripes.’

  ‘His complaints, you mean?’

  ‘Na. Belly gripes.’

  ‘He was sick!’ exclaimed Best looking around angrily. ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me this before?’

  ‘Didn’t fink it mattered,’ muttered the lad, avoiding the policeman’s glare.

  ‘Nobody asked us,’ put in the skipper, sulkily. ‘Just says was he cheerful or what?’

  ‘Well he wouldn’t be cheerful if he was sick, would he?’ said the Sergeant testily. He paused to get a grip on his temper. No point in making them button up again. ‘Was he sick bad?’ he enquired more mildly.

  ‘Hard to say. Taken sudden like. Looked a bit grassy – then rushed off.’

  ‘And no one went to find him when he didn’t come back?’

  They looked at each other and shook their heads. ‘Skipper was in bed, off his shift, Harry was seeing to the locks and I was aboard. ‘Course, we looked later when he didn’t seem to be coming back, but it was dark and we couldn’t find him. Thought he’d just got fed up and gawn orff. Happens.’

  ‘Was anyone else ill?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Did you all eat the same things?’

  They all nodded. ‘Yeah,’ said the skipper.

  ‘Did he get anything to eat from anyone else?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said the skipper, looking at the men who all shrugged.

  The lad grinned. ‘There was this nice smell coming from his mate’s boat.’

  ‘His mate?’ Best tried to curb his impatience and stop his voice from rising as he said, ‘What mate?’

  ‘On one of the company boats going south. I saw him talking to one of them … ‘

  ‘Which boat? What name?’

  The lad shook his head. ‘Can’t remember … ‘

  ‘Try!’

  They looked at him in wonderment. ‘You think he was poisoned?’ the skipper laughed. ‘Easy enough up here, I’ll grant you.’

  ‘What d’you mean? Easy?’

  He gestured towards the bank. ‘They’re full of poison, them – if you know which ones to look for.’

  ‘What? Berries? Like deadly-nightshade? Foxgloves? Or toadstools?’ asked new country-boy Best, excitedly. Being ill, that would have made Minchin easier to kill.

  ‘Oh, aye, toadstools, an’ berries, an’ roots, an’ leaves, an’ flowers as well. Even the pretty ones, lily of the valley, jasmine, cowbane – you just got to know which, and how much, that’s all.’ A sly look came over his face.

  ‘And boatmen do know?’

  ‘Oh, aye, a lot of them any rates.’

  They were all grinning at him now. Best felt adrift in a strange land of secret practices and different laws.

  ‘What was it you smelled cooking? A stew?’

  ‘Mebbe.’ The lad thought about it a bit. ‘Nah, it were more like grilled meat – put on sticks or spikes an’ done on a fire.’

  ‘On the boat?’

  ‘Dunno,’ he shrugged, glancing at the skipper warily, ‘mebbe by the side.’

  Best began to deflate, grilled meat didn’t seem very promising for passing on poison.

  ‘Yew,’ said the skipper suddenly reading his thoughts, ‘that’d do it.’

  Not knowing which poison, if any, may have been administered, all Best could do was to delay Minchin’s burial for further investigation of stomach contents and see if he could find sufficient traces of vomit which he could get as a specimen. But he realized that time was against him.

  ‘You try to remember which boat the man was on,’ he urged the lad, adding, ‘There’s a good reward in it for you, if you do,’ hoping the commissioner would cough up. ‘I’ll see you when you get to London.’

  Meanwhile, he had some jobs for Smith to work on in London. If he got writing now, he could make the evening post.

  Smith was following up yet another list of names; those given him by the now humble Mr Van Ellen. Seeing the police as his only hope, he had become patience itself, not even showing any irritation when Smith had to ask him several times how to spell out the foreign names.

  So far, these people had proved even less helpful than those on Smith’s other lists. Most were old school friends with whom the young Van Ellen had lost touch and the set whose dances, balls and coming-out parties he had attended a few years earlier. The message from all of them so far had tallied broadly with what the last young fop had expressed: ‘Lost touch with the old boy when he dropped out and went all arty. Only did it to nark Papa if you ask me. I expect he’ll grow out of it when Pater cuts him off.’

  Having drawn a blank, Smith was itching to get back to the Van Ellen servants whom he felt sure knew more than they were telling, and to the boy’s sister who, so far, was a bit of a mystery. He’d gained reluctant permission to question all of them again. Reluctant, partly because Van Ellen was not only certain that any information available in the household would already be known to him, but was also anxious for Smith to get to work, discreetly, elsewhere.

  So Smith plodded on, but while having a think about it as he made his way from one mansion or town house to another, he hit upon a ruse. He would report back for the personal conferences for which Van Ellen seem
ed eager, but which, so far, he had resisted. Whilst there, he would bite off one or two of the household at a time, with the excuse of striking while the iron was hot, filling in details that might not have concerned the busy master of the household, and getting a fresh eye view. All the sort of things Best might have said.

  He was not sure how Best would have coped with one added embarrassment – the attentions of Helen Franks, partly because the Sergeant’s own reactions in that quarter seemed to fluctuate. Helen was badgering Smith to know how the enquiry was going. How far they had got? Best had made it clear that he no longer trusted her, so he told her nothing. The arrival of a letter from Best put paid to Smith’s investigations and musings about Van Ellen. He dropped all the Van Ellen business for the time being and headed for City Road Basin.

  Smith sat on a high stool at a desk in the offices of the Grand Junction Canal Company. He was setting about the latest task given him by Best. At least, he thought ruefully, he didn’t have another list of people to chase around after. All he had to do, he reflected, as the office fire flickered away in the background, was to find out which boats would have been going south at Marsworth on the night of the murder and the names of the skippers. Once he had that, he would have a bit more chasing about to do, finding the skippers, if they were about, discovering if they knew Minchin, who their crews were, and if they were particular friends of Minchin.

  The names of the crews were not registered, only that of the skipper who did his own hiring. Smith’s task would be complicated by the fact that many people would have at least a passing aquaintance with Minchin through his job at City Road, but maybe that would also be a help as they might know who his friends were. He was cross-checking several registers handed to him by Albert Thornley’s assistant, the traffic manager himself being on his day off.

  A couple of hours later, he had before him a list of twelve fly boats, travelling in two groups of six, and several lone operators.

  ‘If you go down there now you should catch one of the gangs getting ready to leave tonight,’ the assistant told him. ‘But they’ll be working so you’ll have to catch them when they are having a break.’

  ‘This is a murder enquiry,’ Smith informed him with all the dignity he could muster, ‘so I think they must be prepared to break their routine, if necessary.’

  The assistant looked startled at the young man’s temerity. Maybe he was older than he looked and of higher rank? But Smith was not done. ‘I think you should come down with me, point them out, and tell them they must co-operate with me. I will not detain them unnecessarily.’ He stood back and raised his hand to allow the assistant through the door before him, carried out in a mild but determined manner which brooked no refusal without confrontation. Best would have been proud of him. Looking confused, the assistant complied.

  ‘Does Mr Thornley always have Saturdays off?’ he asked conversationally, as they made their way through the stacks of barrels and piles of boxes.

  The assistant nodded. ‘Always. I have Tuesday.’

  ‘When does he come back?’

  ‘Sunday afternoon.’ The assistant looked puzzled.

  ‘It’s just helpful to know when he is available here, in case I have any more questions.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Minchin had gone missing on a Saturday night.

  None of the boatmen, all of whom had been working on the night in question, had been particular friends of Minchin, or, if they were, they were not saying and neither were their colleagues. There seemed to be some resentment in their responses which puzzled the young constable. He decided to plunge straight in. ‘Didn’t you like him?’ he asked the skipper of the Viking, a mild, sandy-haired man with pale-blue eyes and spiky eyelashes.

  ‘Weren’t that,’ interrupted Headley, his second-in-command, a stumpy fellow with smallpox scars.

  ‘Ain’t no need to tell the constable that,’ complained the skipper.

  ‘No? Why not?’ Headley straightened himself belligerently. ‘It’s our living, ain’t it?’

  Smith grasped what was going on. ‘You don’t like men from the wharves being put on the boats?’

  ‘Would you? Would you fancy someone going around arresting people and saying they was policemen?’

  Smith smiled and admitted he wouldn’t.

  ‘There’s boatmen without work an’ these idiots get to ride instead of ‘em.’

  ‘There weren’t none down here when they needed them,’ the skipper sighed, as though he had been through all this before, several times. ‘It was only the once.’

  ‘Twice. And the skippers should’ve refused. They have the say.’

  ‘An’ they need to keep their jobs!’ shouted the skipper. ‘Youse ought to be glad you got one!’

  ‘Twice?’ asked Smith.

  ‘Yerse. They took on another. For a trip just ahead of ours.’

  ‘An’ it ran late!’

  ‘One man wouldn’t cause that.’

  ‘Oh yes he did! He didn’t—’

  ‘Where was that?’ Smith broke in, the technicalities were not important.

  ‘I dunno,’ said the skipper.

  ‘I do,’ said the truculent Headley. ‘Top lock at Linslade, weren’t it? Made them late for the rest of the trip, made us back up behind ‘em.’

  ‘Would that mean they would be late at Marsworth?’ enquired the constable, trying to stop his pencil quivering over the page. His knowledge of the Grand Junction layout was sketchy, but his excitement was intense. He sensed he was on to something.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ said Headley, as usual, answering a question with a question.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Smith gripping the pencil so that it made deep dents in his fingers.

  ‘’Course it did,’ he answered. ‘Just up the line from Maffers, innit?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ repeated Smith.

  ‘Well, it is,’ put in the skipper. He glared at Headley.

  Nearly choking with the effort to keep the question casual, Smith murmured, ‘You don’t … you don’t happen to know who this man was, do you?’

  ‘No, we doesn’t,’ said the skipper, politely but firmly.

  ‘Don’t us?’ laughed Headley. ‘’Course us do! It was ’im, over there.’

  He pointed over to where a darkly handsome, muscular man was loading bales of material on to an already heavily laden boat. As though alerted, the man glanced over. It was Sam Grealey.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Now that Smith possessed this riveting information he was at a loss how to use it. He could scarcely arrest Grealey for being at Marsworth on the same night as Minchin and, if he questioned the man, he might just alert him further. He might also ask all the wrong questions and prepare him for the right ones. In any case, he might have it all wrong. He recalled his misplaced euphoria over ‘Mary Evans’ which had led to his traipsing after the Minchin lad and his friend.

  All of Smith’s new-found confidence deserted him as he wrestled over the problem of whether to speak to Grealey and if so, what to say. If only Best were there. Or even Cheadle. None of the other Inspectors knew enough about the case to be of any help. He should, of course, go directly to Superintendent Williamson, head of the Detective Branch at the Yard, but he would have gone home now, and Best was due back in the morning. Only he knew everything that was going on.

  Smith decided to wait, hoping desperately that his glance of interest had not alerted the suspect. He completed his chat to the crew of the Viking in a leisurely fashion, then began to stroll away without looking towards Grealey.

  As he did so, it suddenly occurred to him that if he didn’t speak to the man he definitely would be alerted. After all, he’d spoken to all the others who were on the fly boat string that night and asked them if they saw or knew Minchin. Why would he leave out Grealey? He stopped, tapped his head and shook it in a manner which he hoped indicated to any onlooker that he had almost forgotten to do something but suddenly remembered, then wandered across
to where Grealey was working.

  He summoned up all his newly acquired acting skills and approached Grealey with his hand outstretched and a friendly smile upon his face.

  ‘Hello, there. Remember me? Constable Smith. Saw you with Mr Thornley at the Yard. ‘Course, you know our Mr Best quite well …’

  Grealey’s guarded look softened a little. ‘Oh aye, we’re mates.’

  ‘He told me,’ Smith grinned. ‘Been through a bit of business together by all accounts.’

  That evidently pleased the man. ‘We have, we have. Saw him up at the inquest yesterday s’matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh, is that so.’ Smith nodded. ‘Well, I’ve come down here to talk to some of the men who were on the canal the night Minchin went missing. But I expect Mr Best already asked you about that.’

  Grealey hesitated. Smith was willing to bet that Best didn’t know he was at Marsworth that night. ‘Oh, yeah.’ He rubbed his grimy hands together then wiped them on his trousers in a vain attempt to dispose of some of the dirt. ‘Bad business that. Bad business.’

  Smith nodded. ‘Yes, terrible.’

  ‘Was they any help?’ He nodded towards the boatmen.

  Smith spread his hands and shrugged. ‘No, not really. They didn’t see him or anything. Or, if they did, they can’t remember.’

  ‘One night’s much like another on the canal.’

  ‘I expect so – on the beat as well!’

  They both chuckled at that.

  ‘She threw a spanner in the works, his missus y’know.’

  ‘So I hear! Funny business, isn’t it?’ He paused. ‘So you don’t remember seeing Minchin that night either?’

  Another slight hesitation. This wasn’t going right. He would be alerted. ‘S’matter of fact I did see him,’ Grealey replied eventually. ‘Just for a minute, in passing, you know.’ Clever move that – tell us what we might already know. ‘But we was late; I expect they told you about that,’ he grimaced. ‘My fault.’

  Smith laughed. ‘We’ve all got to learn.’