Adams shook his head and said, ‘There’s nothing more to be got from Violet. And I’ve no more time to waste here.’ He shut his notebook. ‘I need a carriage to London and to find this mantuamaker. Professor Hatton, are you ready?’ Hatton nodded, picking up his surgical bag, but Broderig pushed ahead of the Inspector, blocking his path, saying, ‘But Cook said Monreith Square. And the girl’s wrists were slashed, Inspector. So after you’ve found this mantuamaker, you’ll head straight there, of course?’
Adams shook his head in disbelief at Broderig’s effrontery. ‘Good grief but are we all detectives now? Perhaps, instead of driving myself to an early grave, I should take early retirement?’
‘I’m only concerned for the girl,’ said Broderig.
‘Well my concern is for these dead botanicals, as yours should be. The girls must wait. I need to find this dressmaker before she murders another. So, if you would excuse me, Mr Broderig …’
Hatton watched as Adams pushed past the younger man, who stepped back and almost fell against the wall, running his hands through his hair before saying, ‘Of course, you’re right. It’s most impertinent of me. You know your job. I’m sorry for my outburst. It’s quite unlike me. It’s all this death, Inspector.’
Hatton sympathised. He felt this anger, too, but at thirty-three he had learnt to contain it.
Broderig continued, more calmly, ‘Do you know, I think I’ll join you, gentlemen. I need to get back to the city, myself. My specimens are due in tomorrow. Is that alright, Inspector?’
Adams shrugged. ‘If you want,’ was all he said. ‘My work on this case is practically finished. We’ll pick her up, this Madame What’s Her Face. She’s clearly on the make, working for someone. I’ll squeeze it out of her. Not sure how she did it though, especially the men, because it would take nerves of steel to kill like that, but she’ll hang for it nevertheless, and then I can draw a line under this sorry affair.’
‘Draw a line under it?’ Broderig sighed.
‘Yes, Mr Broderig. She’ll hang and the press will have what they want. The Commissioner will leave me alone and there will be peace in the world.’ He smiled, and lit another penny smoke. ‘Case closed. Gentlemen, our carriage awaits …’
London loomed upon the horizon. Hatton kept quiet on the journey back, still reeling from what the girl had done, and also thinking about what it meant. Her wrists were like the other girls. And this Madame Martineau was a seamstress. But the angel was different. She had died by drowning and been dragged from the river, placed in a box which led them to Dodds. He rubbed his eyes. Or was the girl a miasma, a ghost? Nothing made sense any more, but even in his tiredness everything seemed connected. Violet had worked for Madame Martineau. That’s why she let her into the house.
Hatton preferred to let the others do the talking. Adams puffed away, answering Broderig’s questions. They talked a little of who he worked for, apart from The Yard, and Adams was not unforthcoming. ‘We all do it,’ he said, matter-of-fact. ‘It’s no secret, and my superiors even have a list of my clients. Why, I even did a bit of work for your own father, Mr Broderig, not so long ago when he had an unpopular bill going through. London’s a dangerous city. This isn’t Sarawak!’
‘And do you think the rich are a special case then, Inspector? When it comes to the law? Would you, for example, investigate someone you’ve worked for? I suppose what I’m asking is where do you draw the line between justice and order?’
Adams laughed and shook his head at the young man’s naivety and youthful passion.
‘The rich are a special case. The rich need security, Mr Broderig.’
Hatton listened as the conversation continued. How Broderig thought that The Yard was more concerned with the rich than the poor. And that in his view, it was only the weak that suffered and that without vigilance they would be crushed by the wicked. Beaten, tortured, and then dumped in alleyways like the little girls, who were completely innocent, he said. And Hatton listened as Adams answered Mr Broderig that it was in the nature of girls from the streets to behave like Violet. And that they weren’t so innocent. That they survived by what they offered, and adapted to the streets. ‘Evolve if you like,’ said Adams, and that he was not unsympathetic to their predicament, just pragmatic.
NINETEEN
THE BOROUGH
The scaffolding that shot up the sides of the sweatshop looked unwieldy, as if it would crack across the joints at any minute.
‘Mind out there, gentlemen, look out below!’ A heap of debris came crashing down. Hatton looked up in horror, immobilised by fear, but as the deadly load hurtled towards the ground, an arm pulled him into the building’s porch way and out of danger.
‘Damn labourers. They don’t care what they’re doing. Nearly crushed us to death.’ Adams was angry but Hatton was simply relieved to have been pushed aside, once again into a corner, but this time the corner was one he welcomed with open arms. Hatton thanked him for it.
‘Step in, Hatton. And light a match here. I can barely see my feet. How can anyone work in this half-light?’
They’d dropped Broderig near Whitehall, and were now in a tight little corridor. Hatton put his hands on either side of the walls to steady himself and stepped cautiously forward. He could no longer hear the workmen, who must still be above them, wheeling their precarious loads across rickety planks, but he could hear something – a whirring noise ahead of them – and see something, too – a thin shard of light.
‘Strike another light, Professor. I think this is the place.’
The first room was stuffed to bursting with fabrics and the air littered with fairy dust which settled on Hatton’s hands, and for a moment he was transfixed by its beauty. ‘Sequins,’ said the Inspector. ‘Cost a pretty penny these fripperies do. But terrible for the lungs of those who cut and thread this stuff.’
Ahead of the fabric room, the girls were silent and barely seemed to notice the entry of the two men. One girl with jet-black hair was at a machine, which worked at ten times the speed of her neighbours. The others stitched by hand.
‘Good afternoon, ladies.’ Adams doffed his hat, the proper gentleman. ‘Is Madame Martineau here?’
An auburn-haired girl answered in a piping little voice. ‘Madame’s not ’ere. You gentlemen after her, then?’ A girlish snigger. ‘She only left a while ago.’
‘And your name is?’
‘My name, sir?’ the girl shot Adams such a look of artfulness, she suddenly aged from a child of twelve to a knowing woman. ‘My name is, hmmmm, what shall I be today then, girls?’ The girls around her giggled nervously.
‘Come, don’t play with us. Your name child, if you please?’
‘My name is Daisy so’s you ask? What’s it to you?’ she winked at her friends and then picked up a pair of scissors to guard herself.
‘Well now, Daisy. You won’t be needing any scissors, so put them down. I don’t want to alarm any of you girls but I’m a policeman, that’s right, a regular bobby peeler.’ Adams doffed his hat again. ‘And if you mess with me, you’ll be charged with obstructing the law. Do you know what that means? It means trouble, girls, with a capital T. Now then, I think I have made myself plain. Do you, Daisy, or any of the others, know where your mistress has gone? I need to speak to her urgently.’
But rather than laying the scissors down as she’d been asked, Daisy held them out like a knife.
‘Says who? Madame Martineau wouldn’t appreciate no snitching. We’ve got strict orders to finish six gowns by daybreak tomorrow and it’s heavy work. Why, Elsie ’ere’ – Daisy put her arm round her freckled neighbour – ‘has a whole mourning outfit of silks to sort out, and if we don’t finishes when Madame wants us to, we’ll cop it. So’s you best not be bothering us with your questions, whoever you are.’
Inspector Adams didn’t respond as Hatton expected him to, with a quick grab and a de-arming of her scissors. Instead, he laughed, genuinely amused by her effrontery. ‘Dear, oh dear. What a performance, Daisy. You’r
e in the wrong business, my girl. I’ll let your pa know he’s got a regular Penny Gaff star. Now then, jesting apart, I’ll say it again. Put the damn scissors down, shut your trap, and listen to me. Madame Martineau is in serious trouble. I’m investigating the murder of one of Madame’s customers, and if I get one more word of gutter-snipe backchat, I’ll have you down The Yard so quick your teeth will chatter. So, where’s your mistress gone?’
Daisy looked like she was about to bolt, but another caught her arm and patted it. ‘Sit down, Daisy, for gawd sake. Daisy don’t mean no ’arm and she ain’t got no pa. None of us do. She’s just a little perturbed what with being shut up in ’ere all the time, ain’t you, Daisy? I know where Madame’s gone, Inspector. Once the orders are in and she’s counted all her money and the like, she heads over to the Isle of Dogs. She runs another venture there. Printing and the like, though I can’t read. But Madame can. She’s a right clever one. We don’t know any more. But if we don’t get the dresses done, we’ll more than cop it.’ One of the girls at the other table started to cry.
‘Oh for gawd sake, Kitty. Shut up with your bloody sniffling. Give her a hanky, Margaret.’
Hatton look around at the girls. There were perhaps nine or ten of them. Stick thin and raggedy. But in many ways, they were the lucky ones. Lucky to be in work, learning a skill which might one day lead them out of The Borough if they kept their heads down and didn’t cross their mistress.
‘So, the Isle of Dogs then, Professor?’ Adams pressed Hatton.
But Hatton was distracted by one of the girls. The tawny one named Kitty at the sewing machine. An Irish name, but she was far from it.
‘Come here, please, Kitty. I want to show the Inspector something. Don’t be shy. I’m a doctor. Look, I even have a doctor’s bag. Bet you haven’t seen anything as wonderful as that? Look at the brass buckle. Doesn’t it shine? Come now, child, I just want to look at your arms for a second. I’ll get you a buckle for you just like it, if you let me look.’
Kitty was terrified. ‘Go on, Kitty, roll up your sleeves,’ said the bold one. ‘He won’t harm you none. Show him your arms. It’s the machine. We are always having accidents with it, ain’t we?’ The dark girl stepped forward, the other still speaking. ‘They’re only curious. And it’s a right lovely buckle, ain’t it? And these are proper gentlemen, Kitty, not like Madame Martineau’s sort.’
The girl sniffed and held out her spindly arms. ‘Thank you, Kitty. Thank you, my dear.’
Kitty pulled her arms back as quickly as she had shot them out, and gave a great final sniff before sitting down again at her work.
Hatton’s eyes filled with a visible disgust at the sight of the needle pricks and the deep cuts where she’d been slashed by something sharp. They left the workshop girls to their stitching, Hatton hastily promising Kitty he’d return with a shiny buckle. ‘My word,’ he promised.
In the carriage, Adams was wrestling with his many pockets, agitated.
‘I’ve bloody well lost something or one of those girls is a little thief.’ He began to shower the seat with bits from his coat. Scraps of string, a handful of coppers, cigarette papers, and several boxes of Swans.
‘Is this what you are searching for, Inspector?’ Hatton handed over a tin of tobacco, which he’d seen Adams place down on one of the trestle tables. The Inspector gave Hatton a look of such gratitude, it made the Professor laugh a little, though reluctantly, for he had not forgiven the Inspector. Far from it.
‘I must confess that I cannot think without a puff or two. It helps my mind focus and you would know the importance of that from your own demanding work. Would you care for a cigarette?’
Hatton declined. To him, this drug was bitter and disgusting. ‘You’re quite the purist, aren’t you, Professor? No bad habits at all, eh?’ The Inspector looked at the Professor for a second but Hatton said nothing. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ Adams said as he lit one up. ‘Nothing like them in the world.’ Very slim and tapering, it hung from his mouth and he sucked it up into his lungs.
‘Oh, that reminds me, Inspector.’ Hatton reached inside his coat and brought the notebook out. ‘I’ve been meaning to give this to you. You left it in The Old Cheshire Cheese. It was Olinthus Babbage’s. Might it still be useful?’
Adams nodded and popped it in his waistcoat. ‘Thank you, Professor. Perhaps Broderig is right? That I am getting forgetful. There’s some names still need following up and I might show this notebook to Dr Canning. He seems to know a great deal about the value of these missing letters. Perhaps if I show him this, it might jog something? Who might want them? Who might like to buy them? But for now we must focus on finding this woman.’
Hatton concurred for he, too, had been impressed by Dr Canning. He looked out of the window. The sun was dipping from the sky as the coach began to slow. The Isle of Dogs. Adams fumbled in his pocket again. ‘It’s standard issue, Professor. Do you know how to use it?’
Hatton looked at the pistol. ‘Yes, I think so. Aim and fire?’ Hatton asked, slightly perplexed.
‘Aim and fire, Professor. Exactly. So, here we are then. This is where the girl said. One up from the Machars Trading Company. Salmon Street.’
The printing rooms at the dockside were empty. The door was ajar. There was nothing to say anyone worked here at all, except for a pile of pamphlets and leaflets which were stacked up in the corner by one of the walls. Adams opened one of the leaflets, laughed, and handed it to Hatton, who looked at a cartoon of an old man having his balls licked by a surprised looking collie.
‘Making that bitch’s day, isn’t he? Lord Carruthers. Did a bit of work for him, a while back. Bit libelish to spread such scurrilous rumours, though? Says he has six months left and has syphilis. Don’t they all? Well, seems our Madame Martineau has ideas above her station, and this alone is enough to hang her.’
Hatton looked askance. ‘For cartoons, Inspector?’
‘It’s seditious, Professor. Designed to destabilise order. Practically treason, you could argue. And believe me, there’s plenty who would. Come on, let’s not dilly-dally. There’s nothing here to help us. But where she’s gone, who knows? I need to get my men stationed at both her places so the minute she shows her face, we’ll have her. And I’d better see if there’s been any progress on the other leads.’
Adams continued, ‘So you reckon old Finch was stabbed by a fishing knife?’ Hatton nodded, having already brought the Inspector up to speed. ‘Which means we’ll have to go back to Wickham Fen, Professor. Not that we’d find him. But what’s the connection between Finch and Madame Martineau, I wonder?’
‘The Mucker said his daughter had gone missing,’ offered Hatton. ‘Perhaps she came to London and ended up in The Borough. Perhaps Finch got her with child and found her work with Madame Martineau. You heard the porter suggest he had a way with girls. And bought silk shirts from London. It’s not uncommon, but she was only twelve …’
‘Twelve is old enough. Put it in your report, Hatton, and I’ll deal with it later. But nothing to link the Mucker, forensically speaking, with the other corpses?’
No, Hatton said. Nothing forensic at all. ‘So will you go to Monreith Square now, Inspector? As Mr Broderig suggested?’
Adams was non-committal with, ‘As I explained to him, I can’t just waltz into any old house and start throwing my weight about. I have no name, as such. No actual address. No tangible link. And frankly, it’s more than my job’s worth. I’m looking for another person, entirely. And I won’t rest until I have my hands on that woman. Once she’s dealt with, the rest is just tidying up. So, a lift to St Bart’s then, Professor?’
Hatton shook his head. ‘No, Inspector. I’ll walk from here. The air will do me good.’
Scotland Yard’s main incident room was quiet, although a few detectives were still about. One or two greeted Inspector Adams as he hung his gabardine coat up. He couldn’t go on like this, but he knew that he would, despite the dangers. Would Hatton do anything? Woul
d he say anything?
Adams looked at the pile of papers on his desk, to see an envelope marked Urgent, For The Attention of Inspector Adams. He quickly opened it up, intrigued, and read the details written. At last. This case had done him enough damage. It would only be a matter of time before the Commissioner was on his back again, and despite his show of bravado in the carriage about how the case was almost closed, Adams knew full well he had to tie up all the pieces. And the note promised him this and more, but it also came with a warning. Tell no one. And come alone. The note was signed, Yours faithfully, Dr Canning. So, thought Adams, he must have come back to London and spoken to one of his colleagues, just as he promised he would.
‘Well, I might as well get on with it.’ Adams stubbed the penny smoke out and, stepping out into the cold night’s air, looked towards St James’ Park. And it occurred to Adams that Hatton seemed really chummy with that Broderig fellow. What if he blabbed? And there was Roumande, too. He shook his head, and remembered that molly boy comment at The Old Cheshire Cheese. How could he have been so stupid? He felt inside his coat and pulling out his hip flask, took a sip, thinking it was his word against theirs, if it came to it. There was no evidence against him. There was nothing.
He hailed a carriage thinking he’d give it up. The boy, the hotels, all of it. He’d damn well end it. Adams looked out of the window. He could see where they were. Great Russell Street. His legs were heavy but he got out and paid the driver. Gave him a tip. Why not? He looked at the colossus, which rose majestic, and above it, a flicker of stars in the night sky of London. The sky bore down on him. Just one more push and life could be good again. And he didn’t have to stay in this city. He could get a position in Bristol, Leeds, anywhere else would do, but Adams knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Life had already consumed him.
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