Devoured (Hatton & Roumande)

by D. E. Meredith

  Hatton, exasperated, stood up and followed him, picking up the hack’s notebook, which had been left on the table. Outside the air was freezing. ‘Inspector, please. If we have overstepped the mark, I apologise. Let’s not part on these terms. Of course we can cope. We will do the exacting work we always do. Monsieur Roumande is a capital fellow and he loves children, sir. He has five of his own including two girls, and that’s his concern. He meant no harm and did not wish to insult you.’

  ‘Do you think I am so high and mighty I can take no criticism? Quite frankly, I’m used to it. But as it happens, if you genuinely want to make my life easier, then please tell your friend I could do with him at the station. I didn’t mean to offend him, either. I think it might be useful to show him what I have on these girls. Could you spare your excellent fellow for an hour or so? To put his mind at rest? I can show him all the case notes pertaining to these girls when we get to The Yard and then perhaps he’ll be satisfied.’

  Hatton nodded, relieved, and was about to speak again but Roumande had already joined them out on the icy pavers, and spoke for himself, the cold making his face glow. Roumande smiled, his front teeth chipped and stained, his hair unruly in the whipping wind, and said he would be happy to go with the Inspector, if it helped. Hatton looked at his watch, turned to Roumande who was waiting to get into the carriage. ‘But Albert, then an end to this? There are three full autopsies for us tonight and I cannot do them alone.’

  Hatton headed back to The Old Cheshire Cheese, where Mr Gad was standing by the bar. There were no other customers, save a couple of old men playing chequers, who didn’t look up from their game. Hatton asked for porter. Mr Gad gestured over at a rough-faced barmaid to fetch it and said, ‘Strange sort of fellow though, ain’t he?’ Here we go, thought Hatton, more unwanted comments on Monsieur Roumande, but instead the barman continued, ‘That Inspector Adams. Odd for a policeman. Not the usual type. He’s too tall, and if you ask me, he smells funny.’ Hatton couldn’t help laughing, and said, ‘Well, Mr Gad, I cannot say I’ve noticed an odd whiff about him.’

  ‘No? Well, you’re perhaps not as observant as I, because he wears cologne. Like a rich man. Not that I smell too many of those round here, but occasionally I walk past them on The Strand when they arrive in their carriages. They come here for the musicals and the theatre, their women smelling of lily of the valley, and the men smelling of something different. Cologne, I’m telling you. Overpowering stuff.’

  And Hatton knew Mr Gad was right, and that he had noticed the scent but given little thought to it. Odours were part of his forensic work, but he applied the question of their source only when dealing with the dead, not the living. And there was no fault in it, because far from being a man unconcerned with outward appearance, Professor Hatton was not above a little toilette, himself. He knew it became a gentleman, or a man striving in that direction. His sister had many times made mention that it was beholden upon him to make a little more effort than a quick shave and a rub-down with carbolic.

  ‘Darling brother. Outward appearances matter. Here, let me do that for you.’ And she had leant forward to brush a little scurf off his collar. ‘You’re a handsome man, Adolphus, but you make so little of it, hidden away in that morgue of yours. Have a fitting with a tailor, brother, for this suit is shabby and your shoes are scuffed.’

  ‘But Lucy, I have no need for anything fancy. I do little other than work.’

  She had turned him to face her. A face which was open and sunny. ‘Exactly, Adolphus. And if mother was alive, she would speak very plainly. Very plainly indeed, as I shall. You’re turning into a recluse, my darling boy. And you cannot marry a cadaver.’

  Lucy. He smiled to think on her now. Her oldest boy would be twelve come March, and her youngest baby was walking already. They kept in touch through letters, but where she wrote ten, he sent only one in return. One in twelve months, he remembered with appropriate shame.

  Was this his secret?

  A man so intent on success that he would sacrifice everything to achieve it. Hatton put his drink down and headed out of the door, but instead of going back immediately to the morgue, decided to walk a little. He still hadn’t looked at the crime scene for Mr Dodds. He quickened his pace and carried on, further up The Strand towards Millford Lane, to be overtaken by what he thought must be two Specials, running in the other direction. They wore no uniform, but he was long enough in a policeman’s company to know a peeler when he saw one. He wondered what calamity was calling them to race like that?

  And then he saw up ahead, more men with a huge pump heading for Millford Lane, and at the top of the road, a little huddle of people gawping as great plumes of black smoke billowed into the air. ‘Stand back!’ shouted one of the fire officers. The flames were wrapping around the building. The cadaver had been moved to St Bart’s by now, but the ledger book, the details of customers, the minutiae of Mr Dodd’s life, were ablaze. The smoke hurt his eyes, but Hatton still stepped forward.

  ‘Stand back, I say!’ repeated the fire officer.

  ‘Is anybody in there?’

  ‘Are you the owner?’

  Hatton shook his head.

  ‘The shop went up like a timber box. Now, sir, I’ve asked you nicely. There’s nothing to gain by standing there with your mouth agape. Move up to the end of the street.’

  Hatton did as he was told. The building was an inferno. He was sure that Adams would be informed immediately, and they could visit here together later when the fire was quelled. The pumps were going like the clappers but there just might be some scrap that would survive, though he suspected not. There was nothing to be gained here. He was better off at the morgue.

  Back in the morgue, hours had passed. No word had come about the fire, which, yet again, was against procedure. The scene of the crime, devastated. Crucial evidence lost. Hatton shook his head and put his scalpel down, feeling this was no coincidence. Someone had something to hide, but what was it? He remembered the locked room at the bookshop and the Inspector’s eagerness to get him off the premises. He shook the feeling off. Those men he’d seen running? Were they Adams’s men? Or someone else’s? And where the devil was Roumande? He was never late. In fact, he was impossibly early.

  Hatton looked at his pocket watch, thinking to himself, how long could it take to look at some case notes? Then suddenly, of course, it occurred to him that Roumande had probably already left the station and gone to a local tavern. Perhaps he’d learnt something and wanted to think. Hatton smiled to himself, tucking his pocket watch away. But these cadavers wouldn’t cut themselves and so Hatton headed through the North Wing and was just about to leave the building when he saw a policeman and his Hospital Director, Mr Buchanan, shaking his head, and then a glance in his direction. What was this? More trouble, thought Hatton. God forbid, not another murder. There was no more room in his day. Three corpses tonight for dissection, and not another thing would they get from him. Damn the lot of them. He needed Roumande back right this minute or he’d never get home this evening.

  Hatton walked towards the porch, swinging his cane theatrically as he glided past his Director, sending a clear message that he, yes he, was someone of importance with places to go and things to do.

  ‘Excuse me, Professor Hatton.’

  There was something odd here, because Mr Buchanan only spoke to the pathologist when he was suggesting another budget cut. But this voice was grave, concerned even.

  Hatton turned around.

  ‘Will this take long? I’m in a bit of a hurry, as you can see. Monsieur Roumande has taken it upon himself to go off on some jaunt. So, if you don’t mind, sir, I’ll wish you a very pleasant evening.’

  ‘Adolphus, we need to speak.’

  Adolphus? When did he ever call him that? Was it Lucy? God, no. Not his sister. Had something happened to her or one of her children? The Professor’s blood ran cold. His Achilles’ heel. Wasn’t that what Adams had said? And now Hatton would learn his lesson the hard way. It would b
e his fault for neglecting his sister and thinking only of himself. The faces looking back at him were drained and anxious. But it was not Lucy.

  ‘It’s Monsieur Roumande, Adolphus,’ said the Hospital Director. ‘I’m afraid he’s been arrested.’

  FIFTEEN

  THE ISLE OF DOGS

  The rustle of her dress was barely audible above the loud din of the printing machine as Madam Martineau swished past her huddle of dedicated print workers, giving a nod in their direction, because they were artisans and she admired them. Compositors, engravers, and lithographers – the new aristocracy. ‘And they are rising, fast,’ she thought. But by God, like her, they earned their money. Forty hours at a stretch or more, these men would stay at the printing press if the job required it. And she knew what drove these men. It drove her, too.

  Because the demands of the ladies she stitched for bore down on her. A little lower. A little higher. A little tighter. Another button, another flounce, the bustle perter, the silk softer. She provided what her customers required, however irksome, with the sweetest of smiles on her face and a deferential dip of her bonnet. But all the while, her head pounded. The powders usually worked, but a day was fast approaching when she would not be this servile stitching, scurrying, waist-nipped person. What nonsense was required of her? What vacuous conversation?

  She sometimes despaired of her sex and all this whim-wham of the fashion world. But still she hoped that all of this frippery was leading her somewhere, because she’d heard the radicals in Hyde Park promising her that change was coming. That the old order would fall away and that even here in England, revolution was possible.

  Madame Martineau looked at her money. She understood her purpose. They called it sedition but she knew she was a purveyor of the truth and that words were power.

  The first room Madame Martineau stepped into was dedicated to printing production. Not bound up and hand stitched like one of her dresses, because this was not a bookbinders for the burgeoning middle classes. There was no leather here. No gilt or moire grain. This was education for the masses, and Madame Martineau’s investment in this little venture had been more than significant. And to raise this money had cost her everything. On a purely practical level, she’d had to embrace a new sideline or two, but if snooping about a bit paid the rent, what of it? Yet all this risk was a heavy investment. She ran her palm down her throat as she looked at their latest scoop. ‘What’s this?’ she asked one of the printers.

  ‘It’s the story you got us about the lord who lives with pigs. The cattle sit on his sofas, do you remember, miss?’

  She smiled and looked at the picture. It was a perfect likeness, the old goat. What was his name? Lord something or other? ‘Did you get the reference in about his beau?’

  The printer laughed, turning the page for her. The illustration was perfect. The lord bent over; the dog looking surprised.

  She ran her fingers along the page a little further.

  ‘His bill on curbing wage increases for rope makers is coming up next week in parliament. Make sure you release it then. Oh, and …’

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  ‘Ensure a copy gets into The House. Did you mention his syphilis?’

  ‘Yes, miss. It’s the dénouement, so to speak.’

  ‘Well done, and your French, by the way, c’est tres excellent, monsieur.’

  The printer blushed and pulled his forelock. All of this her quiet revolution. Her step-by-step sedition.

  She put the leaflet with a pile of others, took her powders, and, taking her little hand mirror out of her velvet bag, applied a smudge of rouge. A tad tired, perhaps. Was that her first grey hair?

  ‘Vive la Republique,’ she whispered, but the face looking back was empty.

  She sighed. Just one more job, and then all would be completed. A hundred pounds to finish it off, Monreith had said, and that a man called Benjamin Broderig was now their biggest threat.

  ‘He is the author of the letters. And what he knows could soon be common currency and topple us all. Need I remind you what a commotion this would cause if his letters are made public? How the nature of his material might be misconstrued? That my name and the House of Monreith might be dragged into scandal, madam? So here’s a hundred to finish it off, once and for all.’

  Money was nothing to him, but to her? She took the offer of another hundred pounds willingly, because how many hearts could she capture for that price? How many minds could she turn?

  Madame Martineau poured herself a whisky. A hundred to finish it off? She bet the men the Duke hired got more than that. Why, only this morning, she had seen two plainclothed coppers, leaving the Duke’s residence, despatched on some errand or other, and they looked in a hurry.

  And it must have been more than a year ago now, when she hid down an alleyway, unnoticed, and watched another man coming out of Monreith House, a wad of lucre in his hand. At first the man seemed afraid and kept looking behind him. He lit a newfangled thing, a Crimean cigarette. And she remembered him specifically, because Madame Martineau had an eye for a tall fellow. He had long legs and was distinguished in a gabardine coat. He’d swaggered off towards St James’ Park stuffing the loot into his pocket. One in a long line of private protectors, she didn’t wonder. The police were all like that. And she’d said so to one of her tawny girls that very same day, who had been whimpering and dragged fresh from the docks. ‘And don’t worry about the Specials. They’re not like their names suggest. They’re no better than the rest of us.’

  SIXTEEN

  SCOTLAND YARD

  WHITEHALL

  Scotland Yard was busy but Hatton elbowed his way through the throng, demanding, ‘I need to see Inspector Adams, immediately.’

  The Special behind the reception desk was chewing a pencil. ‘You can find Inspector Adams up the stairs on the second floor in the detective’s room, but mind, you can’t just go barging in there. You need an appointment first. Take a seat and we’ll call you when we’re ready.’

  Hatton had no time for this so he pushed past the Special who was already yelling, ‘Oi! You in the derby. I just said you can’t go up there!’

  The detectives’ room was piled high with files and papers and thick with smoke. No sight of Adams, but there was one desk which caught Hatton’s eye. At the back of the room was a desk with an ashtray overflowing with half-smoked cigarettes, a bottle of Machars whisky, and a tin of tobacco. Hatton looked at the lid. A Crimean soldier on the front.

  Hatton turned to a man sitting close by. ‘Is this Inspector Adams’s desk?’

  ‘And you are, sir?’

  ‘I’m the Medical Jurisprudence adviser on the Lady Bessingham case. Inspector Adams has just made an arrest, I understand.’ The word ‘arrest’ stuck in his throat. What the devil had happened here?

  ‘They’ve gone for a pint. Great news, ain’t it? Banged up a French murderer. Always the bloody foreigners, ain’t it? Hanging’s too good for ’em. If I could get my hands around his swarthy neck why I’d …’

  Hatton yanked the vile policeman by the scruff of his neck. ‘You’d like to what? Hang him yourself? Is that it? Without a trial, or a scrap of evidence? Yes, I bet you would.’ Hatton left the officer slumped gasping for breath and, at a pace, headed out of The Yard.

  Outside on the pavement the gas lamps were lit, a tangerine glow, so that the whole stretch of Whitehall was now ablaze as carriages hurtled past him. Hatton made a dash for it and up ahead could see The Northumberland Hotel, knowing this was exactly the sort of place Inspector Adams would frequent with its dazzling cut-crystal windows and elaborate inscriptions inviting him in to drink ‘The Only Real Brandy in London’. Hatton stepped in and found Adams standing by the bar with a glass of cognac in his hand. He was surrounded by his usual flunkies.

  ‘You took your time, Professor. I thought you would have been here an hour ago.’ Hatton staggered back from this audacity, but he’d seen this before. The arrogance of a man with too much admiration thrust upon him. />
  ‘Where is he?’ Hatton gritted his teeth.

  ‘Your French fellow? Monsieur Roumande? Listen, friend …’

  ‘I’m no friend of yours, sir, believe me.’ Hatton’s words tumbled from his mouth.

  Inspector Adams didn’t meet Hatton’s eye as he said, ‘He’s suspected of at least two crimes, Hatton. Why you only have to look at the man to see the violence in him.’

  ‘Violence? What are you talking about, Inspector?’ Hatton was lost. He knew Roumande, and he was the best of men.

  ‘He’s French and, like the Irish, they’re full of it. Violence, Professor. My officers are no strangers to Spitalfields. It’s a den of dissenters, atheists, and drinkers who fly into such a passion when they’re angry. Everything points to him. His very way of being. His manner and his character. His swarthiness plus, of course, the linen thread, the stitching, and his knowledge of anatomy. Need I say more?’ Inspector Adams put his brandy glass down.

  ‘Are you mad, Inspector? What are you talking about? Roumande has no motive. He has no knowledge of these people. He is wholly innocent of the crimes you charge him of. You don’t have a scrap of evidence.’

  ‘Come, Professor. There’s a free table at the back. I’ve got something to show you.’

  Hatton was disarmed by this sudden change of tack, but Adams held all the cards so Hatton had no choice but to listen to him. Adams carried on talking about motive as he rummaged in his pocket, and Hatton at once recognised the note given to Adams on their arrival at Bishopsgate Station.

  ‘More than just a scrap of evidence, I’d call it. By all means, Professor, read it out loud.’

  Hatton was flummoxed but he recognised the hand and his heart sank.

  Dear Lady Bessingham … a leading institution … appealing for your Ladyship’s heartfelt interest … surgical instruments required for the pursuit of excellence in the field of forensics … all donations gratefully received … signed, on behalf of Professor Hatton of St Bart’s … Albert Roumande (Chief Diener).