‘Who arranged this process with you? “Mr Mann” himself?’
‘O, nobody, sir.’
‘What nonsense are you speaking now, madam? Who asked you to do this?’
‘All the writers, they knows me and what I do. I just receives a letter telling me what to send and where. They all knows I ask for my ten shillings and that is that. No need to meet ’em at all – just how they like it.’
‘Milton-street, you say? That does not surprise me at all. Are you familiar with that street’s reputation, Mr Jute?’
‘I cannot say that I am . . .’
‘Hmm. No other street in the metropolis is more closely associated with the ink-fingered endeavour than Milton-street. It is home to poetasters and hacks, penny-a-liners, copyists, plagiarists, petty novelists and fancy-makers of all varieties. They do not stay long, for they are thrown out or imprisoned for debt before they can get properly accommodated. We should go there immediately – he is likely to be home and expecting letters.’
‘Am I in trouble?’ asked the fraudulent widow.
‘Assuredly. You are to save all future letters you receive and a man will come to collect them. Fail to do this and you will find yourself at Newgate.’
Thus leaving the grumbling old woman, the two gentlemen made their way hastily to Milton-street. Unfortunately, even as Mr Williamson rapped at the door, the man they sought, having been forewarned just moments previously by a panting boy sent by the false Mrs Burgoyne, was exiting from a rear window with his few possessions almost spilling from his leathern bag. The reader need wonder not a moment longer, however, about his identity.
It was I.
THREE
What thoroughfare is there in London to compare with Holywell-street? Certainly, there are others grander and more handsome, just as there are those narrower and darker – but none have the distinctive character of this most unusual passage.
From the church of St Clement Danes to the church of St Mary-le-Strand it stretches, a line of sin strung between two pillars of virtue – a parallel shadow and antithesis to its majestic neighbour the Strand. As the broad courses of commerce and progress flow ineluctably around, human flotsam is washed here to eddy and drift at a different pace among the blind alleys and courts. And if there was once a spring here, it is now subsumed beneath the Old Dog tavern, all holiness lost.
Untouched by the Great Fire, the overhanging gables sigh with the pressure of history, closing almost together above the cobbles to shut out the light of modernity. No bold stone façades for these edifices: it is plaster and lath that peels away and decays over centuries of rain and wind, begrimed multipaned windows that admit only the merest illumination. Some call it charming; others call it rotten – a sewer in place of a well.
The shops are of a dilapidated sort, quite out of the current fashion for plate glass. Rather, they adhere to the style of generations past, wooden signs creaking above doors with tiny dimpled glazing through which to peer into another world. Whether anyone would want to explore this world is another matter: the second-hand clothes shops and masquerade warehouses offer only worn and faded goods; the barber’s is a dingy bourn from which few travellers return, and moneylenders lurk in wait up unlit passages for the desperate.
But it is, of course, the booksellers who have made the street their own – and because of whom it has earned its reputation. Covering almost the whole southern side, their sloping trestles are stacked with spines and their windows thick with tomes and prints to snare the passer-by. Boys stop to gaze at maps and pictures of great ships; gentlemen pore over intricate engineering diagrams; ladies on an illicit diversion from the larger thoroughfares chatter about the latest images from Paris – and all are united in their loathing fascination, their fearful hope, their pagan Christian longing for immoral filth.
For it is also in those windows that the proprietor tempts the law with his blasphemous tracts, his lubricious tints, his provocative lithographs and proscribed copper plates. Crowds gather, people point, and outrage is the communal pleasure as all stare upon what must not be seen.
Should a gentleman venture into those shops and ask for something ‘warmer’ than the common fare, he might – if trusted – be directed into an upper room where the bookseller stores titles and pictures that would make an old soldier blush. Every variety of amatory endeavour is here described and depicted in terms of the basest and most lurid manner. No imagination is required, and none sought, in the works printed, stored and sold upon these premises.
The reader will have no doubt discerned my admiration for the place. There is something of the last century still existent there: the anti-religious liberalism and nonconformist spirit that has kept it a writer’s bohemia. By which I mean a sanctuary for the poor, dissolute, oddly attired and tenuously employed; the press-men, publishers, printers and penny-a-liners; the freethinkers, church-haters, plagiarists, garret-dwellers, fantasists and barely sane.
And it was into this world that Inspector Newsome strolled that afternoon. He was accompanied by a tall and burly new recruit to the Detective Force: one John Cullen who, for the time being at least, was still officially a constable until his suitability for the superior department could be properly ascertained.
The indigenous populace of that place seemed to sense that the two were policemen, despite their lack of uniform. It was the same awareness displayed by hens when the fox is close, and Inspector Newsome was aware of the movements of the people ahead as they slunk into shops, closed doors and sent secret warnings to those who had set such mechanisms in place: ‘Watch your merchandise! The buzzers are close.’
‘This is the place,’ said Mr Newsome to his colleague as they stopped outside Colliver’s coffee house. ‘The proprietress has left word that she will meet us outside and show us to the room. No doubt she does not want us to interact with her customers.’
Faces scowled from the smoky interior at the policemen. From outside, they looked in at a hearty fire and tables populated by boisterous red-faced men who were otherwise engaged in a variety of discursive activities. One group appeared to be having an energetic argument over a newspaper article.
‘It is cold today, is it not, sir?’ remarked Mr Cullen, breathing into his hands and glancing out across the rain-slick cobbles.
‘You are not on the beat now, Constable. We need not bother with such meteorological banter. Look around you; see what you can see. That is what a detective does.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you need not call me “sir” while we are in the street. Our presence here has already been telegraphed to every business, but we need not advertise it further.’
Mr Cullen looked across the road and watched the directionless progress of an itinerant umbrella mender. With his back-borne burden of walking canes, broken ribs, flapping scraps and fishing rods, the man seemed an ambulatory human porcupine. Mr Williamson would have been able to say something insightful about the man and his background, mused Mr Cullen, who had once worked with the detective. The constable, however, could only think that this bitter cold portended snow.
Presently, a woman could be seen making her way through her customers to the door. She emerged in a cloud of smoke, heat and the earthy aroma of coffee.
‘Mrs Colliver, I presume,’ said Mr Newsome.
‘I trust you will be letting me have my room back today,’ replied Mrs Colliver. ‘I am losing money every day with that man of yours standing at the door.’
Her cheeks were red with the heat of the coffee house. Her bonnet was tied so severely beneath her face that the cord vanished between her flabby chins. If she was not guilty of some crime, she exhibited all the signs of being so: eyes shifting about anywhere but on her interlocutor, and her hand nervously pushing stray tendrils of blonde hair back inside the bonnet.
‘I can speak with Mr Colliver if you are busy,’ said Mr Newsome.
‘Dead. Now – let us get this over with.’
‘I would also like to speak w
ith you after we have examined the room.’
‘I have already told all I know.’
‘And you will do so again. You may lead the way.’
The lady hurried them through the coffee house to a wooden stairway that led upstairs to the rooms. There, the uniformed constable lounging at the door to number seven jerked to attention when he saw the detectives and did his best to look assiduous in his duty. Mrs Colliver jangled keys upon a ring.
‘Nobody has entered this room since it was sealed – is that correct?’ asked Mr Newsome.
‘That’s right,’ replied the constable and the lady simultaneously.
‘Good. You may leave us for the moment, Mrs Colliver.’
‘Will I be able to rent my room tonight?’
‘You will be advised of that momentarily, madam. Let me take the key – I will return it to you shortly.’
She muttered her way back downstairs while jabbing rebellious hair back into her bonnet and Mr Newsome held the eager Mr Cullen’s arm: ‘Do not touch anything in here, Constable. Use your eyes and let us hope that your brief time in the company of Sergeant Williamson has taught you something of investigation.’
‘Yes, s—. Yes, Inspector Newsome.’
The room was cold due to the window still being wide open. The inspector walked over and looked at the ledge outside where the victim must have held on. There were no marks, but the night rain may have obliterated any. A scuff mark on the wall below the window may or may not have been caused by a rapid exit.
‘What causes a man to leap from a third-floor window?’ said Mr Newsome.
‘Perhaps he was thrown,’ offered Constable Cullen.
‘I think not. Had he been thrown, I fear he would have gone head-first and been unable to grab hold of the ledge. No – something happened here that he wanted to escape from. And the door must have been barred to him.’
‘There are four dirty glasses here,’ said Mr Cullen pointing to a plain three-legged table. ‘Were not only two men present?’
Mr Newsome bent and smelled each glass. ‘Sherry. I must speak again to Mrs Colliver about her claim that the men ordered no drink. What else?’
‘Neither bed appears to have been slept in. They are barely disturbed.’
‘True, but look here by the pillow of the bed nearer the window: a long blonde hair, possibly of the unruly variety. Neither man had such hair.’
‘Did the gentlemen have a lady in the room with them, then?’
‘That remains to be seen, Constable. If they did, they did not use the beds, and she must have made a hasty exit after the precipitation of Mr Sampson. Or perhaps the hair has been here for weeks. Keep looking; there must be something else.’
In truth, there was little else to be seen. It was a room like any other room of its sort: a hearth with the fire long ago burned to ashes; a generic rustic painting slightly askew on the wall; a few sticks of unimpressive furniture and a smeared looking glass above a table.
‘Can you smell something, Inspector?’
Mr Newsome sniffed. ‘Nothing unusual. What is it?’
‘I don’t know . . . just the faintest . . . I don’t recognize it.’
‘I cannot smell anything. Have the chamber pots been used?’
Mr Cullen gingerly pulled them out from under each bed. He held out the one from the bed where they had found the hair. ‘Yes. Look.’
‘I have seen the contents of a pot before, Constable.’
‘No, sir. It is something else.’
The two peered inside the gleaming white interior at the small brown mass inside.
‘The pith and pips of an orange,’ said Mr Newsome blankly. ‘Perhaps it is that you could smell.’
‘But there is no skin. Just this one chewed mouthful spat into the pot.’
‘So what are you saying? That our case rests upon a missing fruit? Are we to alert the police constables of the city to keep an eye out for an injured orange?’
‘No . . . but Sergeant Williamson—’
‘Sergeant Williamson is no longer with us. We will have to do without him and his superhuman detective vision. I will admit, however, that there is a mystery here: the four glasses, the single strand of hair, the reason for Mr Sampson’s leap. There are people we must speak to, and we can begin with Mrs Colliver.’
The two investigators ensured that the room was secure and returned downstairs to the private quarters of the landlady, where the air was close and hot from the fire. No matter what the temperature, Mrs Colliver did not remove her bonnet, nor loosen the cords that held it stubbornly to her head. The two policemen had already removed their coats before sitting at the bare table in the centre of the room.
‘Do you want coffee?’ asked Mrs Colliver.
‘That would be very nice,’ said Constable Cullen.
‘We will not, thank you,’ said Mr Newsome. ‘Let us get straight to business. I know, madam, that you have recounted the facts before, but I may understand them differently. I am a member of the Detective Force.’
‘What’s that, then?’
‘It is a lot of trouble for you if you don’t moderate your tone. Now – you have said before that you admitted the deceased, Mr Jonathan Sampson, at ten o’clock in the evening.’
‘To his room, yes. But he arrived about an hour earlier.’
‘Was he alone when he arrived, or with the other gentleman?’
‘I cannot be sure. I do not see every customer. My impression is that he arrived alone and was joined shortly after by his friend.’
‘What makes you think they were friends?’
‘Mr Sampson seemed to know and like the other fellow.’
‘I dare say I know and like the Queen, but she might not term us friends.’
‘I mean, they had quite a lot to say to each other. They sat close and spent the time in discussion.’
‘Discussing what?’
‘How could I know, sir? The house is noisy at that time of the evening. There is food to be served.’
‘Well, did they frown? Were they serious or jocular? Did they argue? Did they laugh?’
‘They seemed contented enough, I suppose. Their heads remained close as they tried to make each other heard.’
‘Or not heard by others. And you have said that they did not drink.’
‘Only coffee.’
‘Tell me about this other man. What was his name? What did he look like?’
‘He did not pay for the room so I did not take his name. He was well dressed. A jovial enough sort.’
‘Like myself, then.’
‘Rather better dressed. And more jovial.’
‘How old was he, do you think?’
‘Quite young, I suppose. Twenty something.’
‘An unusual friend for a man of Mr Sampson’s years.’
‘A man might have any friend he likes.’
‘Indeed. Have you seen him here before or since?’
‘No.’
‘More, Mrs Colliver. You are withholding information from me.’
‘I am not.’
‘Then why do you shift in your seat and twitch so? Anybody might think it was you who committed the murder.’
‘Murder? What are you saying? I don’t want anyone talking about a murder at my coffee house. Can you imagine what they would say? “Go to Colliver’s for a coffee and get murdered.” He jumped!’
‘How do you know? Were you in the room? I thought you were asleep when the incident happened.’
‘I was. That is what I have heard. I do not know what happened in the room.’
‘More of that in a moment. You told the inquest that the men went to the room at ten o’clock. They were both quite sober, you said. And yet we found four used glasses that smelled of sherry in that room. Can you explain that?’
‘Might not they have brought their own drink in a bottle?’
‘And four glasses? Nobody reported seeing the young man carrying a bottle.’
‘You would be surprised what I have
found people bringing to those rooms.’
‘I am sure. So the glasses do not belong to you? I could take them and smash them if I wanted to?’
‘If you like.’ But Mrs Colliver’s tone said that she would be happier if he did not.
The inspector scowled and looked at his colleague. ‘Mr Cullen – have you any questions, or are you going to just sit there?’
The constable cleared his throat. ‘Did either of the gentlemen have an orange with them, or buy one from a girl while here?’ he asked, extracting a notebook.
‘No. No orange,’ replied the lady, forgetting for a moment the hair about to spill from her bonnet.
‘And I would like to ask about a long blonde hair that we found on the bed nearest the window. Might it be yours?’
Mrs Colliver’s hand went reflexively to her bonnet. ‘It could well be. I clean the rooms myself.’
‘Would you take off your bonnet for us?’ asked Mr Newsome.
‘Why?’
‘Why not? Have you something to hide?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, then . . .’
Mrs Colliver looked from one man to the other, then at the tabletop as if making up her mind. Finally, with a grimace, she extracted the bonnet cord from between her chins and unleashed a mop of loose blonde hair over her face. But it was not the hair that the policeman noticed – it was the bloody contusion just above her forehead, the hair about it still caked and sticky.
‘Who did that to you, madam?’
‘Nobody. No one. I fell while cleaning the hearth last evening.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘Well, I . . . I was bending to rake the ashes and I slipped.’
‘Slipped on what?’
‘My dress.’
‘I see. Because it looks to me like the mark was made by a blunt instrument of some sort being struck upon your head.’
‘Wouldn’t I have called the local constable if that were the case?’
‘Yes, I am quite sure you would. I want you to provide us with a list of the other people who were staying in your rooms the night of the unfortunate event.’
The Vice Society Page 4