The Thieves' Labyrinth (Albert Newsome 3)

by McCreet, James

  ‘With all respect, I absolutely have that right. As bridge controller, I may close the thoroughfare any time I wish, whether for repairs or for an investigation.’

  ‘A crime was committed on that bridge, Mr Blackthorne. Where is the body? Where is the inquest? Where is the word of the law? You are preventing the hand of justice.’

  ‘Forgive me, Sir Richard; perhaps I have not made myself clear. The death yesterday morning was a suicide. There was nothing to investigate: no crime committed but against the self and no law broken but the religious.’

  ‘You say there was nothing to investigate, but you called in your own investigator: this ludicrous mountebank Eldritch Batchem. Why would the Bridge Company go to such lengths for a mere suicide?’

  ‘Sir Richard – as you may know, Waterloo-bridge has been termed “the noblest bridge in the world” by Canova. It is the pride of the city: a glorious feat of engineering. Much as I am aggrieved to admit, it has also of late earned a reputation for . . . for the unfortunates who wish to leap from its parapets. We at the Bridge Company absolutely resist that reputation. I have made clear to my toll-collectors that any suspicious death upon the bridge is to be reported to me directly. I do not wish to add murder to the infamy already heaped upon the structure, and I intend to address any such ambiguity personally.’

  ‘So you are implying that you would have a murder more fortuitously termed a suicide by an amateur “detective” to protect the name of your structure?’

  ‘Certainly not! And I would have you know that Mr Batchem is a highly respected practitioner of the investigative arts.’

  ‘Respected by whom? Not by I or any of my detectives, who have spent years perfecting their vocation under the aegis of the law. This Mr Batchem approaches police work as an idle hobbyhorse.’

  ‘I am sorry that you feel this way. I meant no slight to you, Sir Richard, or to any of your detectives. The truth is that your Detective Force is known to be . . . somewhat slow in its investigations and I wished only to expedite—’

  ‘Slow?’

  ‘That is to say . . . the . . . er lengthy process . . . I mean, the machinations of the . . .’

  ‘I believe you wish to express that the Detective Force is a thorough and professional body of the finest investigators ever to walk these London streets. They take as long as necessary to find the true solution. And they do not take out advertisements in the Times’s classified pages selling their wares like some common Bermondsey hawker of coals.’

  ‘Forgive me, Sir Richard. I see I have insulted you.’

  ‘I and the entire Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘Well, I can only state that the Bridge Company has already made generous concessions to the Force, whose constables may pass without toll along the bridge as many times as they wish each day.’

  ‘Is this a threat, Mr Blackthorne?’

  ‘It is not. It is not. I have no wish to earn your antipathy further. May I offer the apologies of the Bridge Company on this matter, which I feel is actually a great misunderstanding. I will take your concerns back to the company and you may be sure that the board will communicate formally with you shortly . . . if that would be a satisfactory resolution to this unfortunate situation.’

  ‘I will wait for that communication, Mr Blackthorne – and for a change in policy. In the meantime, I have this to deal with.’ Sir Richard held up the letter he had folded earlier.

  ‘Then I will show myself to the door, Commissioner. You are a busy man and I do not wish to inconvenience you further.’

  Mr Blackthorne closed the door behind him with a soundlessness to rival the thunderclap of the commissioner’s earlier ingress.

  Now brooding alone at his desk, Sir Richard rubbed his eyes and looked at the folded letter. He slipped it inside his waistcoat pocket and rang for his clerk, who appeared at one of the internal doors to the office.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Arrange for the steam launch to collect me at Whitehall-stairs in five minutes.’

  ‘You will not take the carriage, sir? It is ready to leave.’

  ‘No. The launch will be quicker. I am going to the Custom House. Send a fast galley ahead to instruct the inspector general I am on my way.’

  And with his stern expression unchanged, the commissioner of police took his coat and hat and went out to the stand by the riverside, glancing east along the brown waters to the pale arches of Waterloo-bridge, half concealed even at that short distance by the steam and smoke of the city. On the police launch, he would unfold and read again the letter he had received that morning, versions of which had already appeared in a number of morning editions:

  Dear Commissioner Sir Richard Mayne

  May I first introduce myself? You might already have heard tell of my recent efforts about the city, but I am Mr Eldritch Batchem: he who was engaged by the Waterloo Bridge Company to investigate the late death upon the span. No doubt you will be astounded to learn that I have already found the solution to that little mystery, whose investigative process I propose to delineate for you here, that you may derive some pleasure or enlightenment from my methods.

  I admit that the evidence upon the bridge itself initially offered little aid to the skilled investigator, for the dampness of the fog upon the stone surfaces had obliterated my opportunities to read any footprints. I did, however, find a quantity of blood in the middle of the roadway approximately above the fifth arch from the Surrey side. This had been diluted but not dissipated by the atmospheric moisture, and I adjudged it to be the point of injury. No weapon could be found on the bridge.

  A careful examination of the area around the blood stain turned up a lady’s silver earring in the eastern pedestrian recess nearest to where the body lay, and a handkerchief approximately ten yards south of the body, both of which I dismissed as the kind of things lost on the span each day.

  As you may have heard, the victim managed to stagger to the Middlesex toll-house, where he expired. Although the dying man was unable to convey anything coherent to the toll-collector in his dying breaths, his corpse itself would provide me with the solution to the mystery. Thus I had it removed to a place where I could examine it away from the attention of the many newspapermen seeking my intelligence on the matter.

  Well, I made a thorough search of the victim’s clothes, which yielded the initials W.B. on sundry garments. In the left coat pocket, I was pleased enough to find a playbill for my own forthcoming address at the Queen’s Theatre on Wych-street. In the right pocket, I found a bundle of blank Custom House unloading warrants signed by Principal Officer Gregory. Other pockets revealed little of note: a pocketbook, a number of coins amounting to 4s 6d, and a small Sheffield penknife with pearl scales.

  Perhaps your first thought, Commissioner, is that the penknife was used to inflict the fatal wound. You would be wrong in such an assumption, however: there was no blood on the knife, and, in any case, what man would cut his own throat and then carefully fold away the blade before putting the weapon in his pocket?

  No doubt you are also thinking that the unloading warrants suggest the victim was an employee of the Custom House. Though the body itself bore no such uniform, insignia or paraphernalia of a waterside worker, I nevertheless examined the body and clothing closely and was perspicacious enough to find a small stone in the left shoe – a stone, mind you, of the exact colour and dimensions of the gravel upon the Custom House terrace. This was my corroboration of what the warrants suggested.

  As you might expect, my next action was to request that Principal Officer Gregory of the Custom House come to where I was examining the body and look at the dead man’s face in order to identify it. It was thus with great melancholy that Mr Gregory said he knew the victim as one William Barton, a tidewaiter of the Custom House. The blank unloading warrants, said Mr Gregory, had been stolen some days before, and the victim had been one of the suspects in that crime. (Note also the corroboration with the initials W.B.)

  Commissioner – I will torture y
ou no longer with the solution: William Barton was the victim of nothing more than suicide brought about by his own guilt and fear of impending discovery.

  ‘What is the evidence?’ you may cry.

  Well, there was not another soul on the bridge at the time of the incident. Each person who passed through the Surrey or Middlesex toll-houses was accounted for at the other end – at least in the hour or so preceding the death, when the fog descended. The last was a costermonger with his barrow. Where there is no other suspect, there can be no suspicion of murder.

  Ah, but you will say the toll-keepers themselves could be suspects. They were, after all, the only two people on the bridge apart from the victim. Naturally, I took such a consideration into account and examined both of the gentlemen for traces of blood. There was none, and also no opportunity for them to clean their hands prior to my arrival. Nor, indeed, was there any obvious motive: nothing was stolen and there was no benefit for the toll-collectors in such a course of action.

  ‘What of the weapon that bisected his throat?’ you may ask – a question worthy of your position. Let us put ourselves in the position of the victim (as any good detective must do). Here is a man who is suspected of a serious crime; he is in danger of losing his employment and being shamed before all of his fellows. He stands to lose his good name, and possibly also any bond he may have put up in trust as an employee of the Custom House. Would not any man quail before such a fate? No – he simply takes his razor and walks out to the loneliest place in London: Waterloo-bridge in a fog. There, he makes a single slash at his own neck, using the fatal momentum of his arm to fling the offending tool over the parapet.

  ‘Mere fancy!’ you mutter. ‘Supposition!’ you conclude. Not at all – the toll-keeper of the Middlesex side heard metal striking against stone. Since no other metal article could be found on the bridge, we may assume it was the lethal article itself: the razor.

  I trust that you will pass this letter on to your men in the Detective Force (if they do not read it in today’s issues) that they may benefit from my methods.

  Most respectfully yours,

  Eldritch Batchem Esq.

  Sir Richard held the letter with whitened knuckles. Much as he would have liked to rip it into shreds and cast it into the river, there was much in it that deserved more attention. In the meantime, the steam launch was finally approaching his destination: Custom House quay.

  As usual, the river about that point was frenetically a-bustle. Steamships from Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Havre seemed to suckle like piglets at the embankment, spilling chattering passengers and luggage down gangplanks onto the gravel and into the arms of Customs officers waiting to check for significant importations of china, books, instruments, millinery and sundry other goods masquerading as personal effects. Fishing boats jostled for space among the larger vessels and, indeed, the Pool hereabouts was so dense with dark-bodied ships that there seemed to be almost no visible water at all.

  The bell of the police launch cleared a space in the traffic and finally Sir Richard was able to get ashore to crunch rapidly over the gravel for his appointment with the inspector general, who, it must be said, was no more enthusiastic about his impending meeting than Mr Blackthorne had been.

  ‘I thank you for seeing me at such short notice,’ said Sir Richard, shaking hands and taking the proffered chair in the large office overlooking the quay. The din of the embankment echoed up to where they sat.

  ‘I admit I was given very little advance warning,’ said the Inspector General of Customs, Mr Jackson. He was a nautical sort, his long greying beard giving him the air of a captain, and his dark-blue jacket with brass buttons suggesting a ship’s bridge rather than an office desk.

  ‘I trust you have seen this morning’s editions, Mr Jackson?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What do you know of this tidewaiter William Barton and his pocket full of unloading warrants?’

  ‘Forgive me if I lecture you, Sir Richard, but we speak of a small piece of a much larger process. Such warrants are issued by this building (from the Long Room directly below us, in fact) so that any ship which has rightfully declared its cargo manifest may be docked at its point of destination and unloaded, the cargo being warehoused under bond until duties are paid for its release. The unloading warrants found on the body of Barton should not leave this building until ship details and cargo manifests have been logged in our ledgers by the relevant clerk.’

  ‘Then how does one explain such a quantity of blank warrants in the possession of a tidewaiter, all of them apparently signed by Principal Officer Gregory?’

  ‘He signs large quantities of these things at one moment and stores them, as do other principal officers. I suppose it would not be beyond credulity for someone to discern where they are stored and to steal some.’

  ‘You seem unconcerned by this gross case of fraudulence, Mr Jackson.’

  ‘I am concerned, but I am unsurprised, Commissioner. A tidewaiter is not a highly paid employee; his job, after all, is simply to sit about on incoming or outgoing ships and wait for the correct documentation to arrive that he might observe legitimate unloading or loading. As a moderately paid man, he finds himself thus in sole charge of many thousands of pounds’ worth of valuable cargo. Might he not occasionally turn a blind eye to some minor illegality?’

  ‘“Minor” you say? Am I not correct in thinking that a fraudulently completed unloading warrant allows the ship to unload its entire cargo anywhere it likes, without the Custom House knowing of it? I do not call that “minor”.’

  ‘We hope that our employees are men of integrity and discretion, Sir Richard. Indeed, our landing-waiters (who register arriving ships) require two references and a five-hundred-pound bond. Alas, the tidewaiters often work unsupervised and are prone to staying with us for a short time. At the busiest periods, we have difficulty employing enough of them.’

  ‘I must repeat, therefore: how does a mere tidewaiter manage to procure these warrants? Surely he would need help from others? Others more senior than himself . . .’

  ‘I think I see the direction your questioning is taking, Sir Richard. I suppose you are referring to the recent correspondence in the Times concerning alleged corruption among officers of the Custom House.’

  ‘Well, what of it?’

  ‘Of course, the correspondent was anonymous . . .’ said Mr Jackson.

  ‘But evidently also someone with an intimate knowledge of the Customs processes along this river.’

  ‘That may be. But to accuse my landing-waiters en masse of being corrupt, and to accuse this institution of masking corruption at a higher level is frankly rather fantastical. There will always be dishonest men, and we attempt to find them. There is nothing more to it than that, Sir Richard.’

  ‘Merchants have been complaining for some time that there is no record of their cargo and, therefore, that they are unable to pay their duties. Fruit has gone rotten under bond while landing-waiters’ logbooks are “missing”.’

  ‘Our processes are not perfect. Logbooks are sometimes handed between landing-waiters as they move from wharf to wharf. There is a huge amount of documentation . . . but may I be bold enough to ask what concern this is of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner? I am happy to welcome you, but admittedly rather nonplussed as to why you take a personal interest in this.’

  ‘A man was killed yesterday morning on Waterloo-bridge: one of your men who was apparently engaged in some questionable business. The Thames Police are also under my jurisdiction and I will not be made a fool of if smuggling is flourishing beneath my very nose. I trust you are my ally in this earnest wish for legality.’

  ‘Of course, Sir Richard. But I believe the death of William Barton was suicide, was it not?’

  ‘That has not been the verdict of the Metropolitan Police, no matter how many newspapers it may appear in. Was this Barton under investigation as claimed in the articles?’

  ‘Naturally, I spoke with Principal Officer Greg
ory when I heard he had been called to identify the body. He told me that Barton was a recent appointment and that there had been some reports of . . . of irregularity in his work.’

  ‘Irregularity?’

  ‘The man had seemingly vanished during his duty a number of times. On being questioned, he said he had been stricken with a persistent cough and forced to take a drink of tea to calm himself. Not particularly creative as an excuse, I grant you. We were in the process of checking his claims when he died.’

  ‘This was no reason for him to kill himself, surely.’

  ‘Rather not – though he would have faced transportation had we known of those warrants. Assuredly, he could have simply not arrived for work today and we would have been glad of his absence. That would have been the simplest path.’

  ‘That is what I suspected.’

  ‘Is there something more to this incident than has been made public, Sir Richard?’

  ‘I cannot be certain, but you can help me to discover the truth, Mr Jackson. I wish to task a number of my clerks with going through your records for further irregularities over previous months—’

  ‘That is rather an imposition. We are very busy here and—’

  ‘All you need to do is provide a room for my men and supply them with records of arrivals, loading and outgoings for the past six months. You need not concern yourself with any vessel currently or henceforth in your ledgers, thereby inconveniencing you not an iota. I believe that this data, once scrutinized, will reveal any patterns of discrepancy that will benefit both you and I in the battle against smuggling. Nobody else need know of the results. Are you afraid of what we might unearth?’

  ‘Not at all. But I feel this response is quite out of proportion to a simple suicide. May I ask you if I am being told everything? I am not insensible to the fact that your Inspector Newsome has recently been assigned to the Thames Police. He is a detective, is he not?’

  ‘He was a detective and may be again. At present, he is simply aiding the Thames Police in their work.’