Two Bronze Pennies

by Chris Nickson

  ‘There,’ he said, seeing Ash nod. Plenty of them. He looked for another minute, concentrating, searching for patterns and finding none. But enough scales to convince him. Fields had been here. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to the station and get this bugger’s description out.’

  SIXTEEN

  Harper hurried down the Headrow towards Park Square. He should have been at the Great Synagogue, talking to Rabbi Feldman, but first he needed to do this; he’d promised Annabelle.

  The brass plaque outside the building was lovingly polished, engraved with copperplate script, the door painted a thick, glossy black. The inspector took a deep breath, turned the handle and entered. Inside, the atmosphere was as hushed as any church. A fire burned comfortingly in the grate and a thick Oriental rug covered the glistening floorboards. A single marble bust sat on a table, and in the corner an elephant’s foot container held umbrellas and walking sticks. There were two paintings on the walls, a pair of naval scenes, all the subtle touches of wealth. But the people who paid Dr Kent’s fees would expect nothing less. They wanted luxury and gentility, to feel exclusive. Two patients looked up for a moment and returned to their newspapers. He felt out of place here; he’d been up most of the night, and he was unshaved, his suit rumpled. Turn and walk out, he told himself. But he knew what Annabelle would say. Don’t you dare, Tom Harper. Our money’s just as good as theirs.

  The clerk behind the polished desk was young and so well-groomed he seemed to shine. Harper could feel the man’s eyes judging him and finding him wanting.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  ‘I’d like to make an appointment to see Dr Kent.’

  It was simply done. Saturday the third, two days away, at nine in the morning. Maybe the doctor really could help with his hearing. He hoped to God he could, anyway.

  The burned doors of the synagogue on Belgrave Street had been replaced, and wood shavings still lay on the pavement. Harper entered, removing his hat as he looked around. Everything was clean, smelling of beeswax, seats like pews and a gallery above.

  Feldman stood by a lectern at the far end of the room, a scroll opened before him. He glanced up at footsteps crossing the floor.

  ‘Coming to the funeral, Inspector? It’s at two o’clock.’

  ‘I’m here to see what I can do to help, Rabbi.’

  ‘Help?’ Feldman cocked his head and his eyes hardened. ‘The best help you can give is to find the killer.’

  ‘I know.’ He nodded slowly.

  ‘People are scared, Mr Harper,’ the rabbi continued. ‘We’ve seen it all before. We know that this is how it all starts.’

  ‘We’ll look after you. I told you that. Every one of you.’

  Feldman shook his head. ‘You haven’t, Inspector. You give us promises, but you haven’t made us safe.’ He raised a hand, pointing over to the Leylands. ‘There are already people packing out there. They’re ready to flee. Do you really want to see how people feel around here?’

  ‘What?’ he asked, hoping the rabbi had something useful to show him.

  ‘Come back this afternoon. Take a walk around. You won’t find anything open anywhere in the Leylands. No shops, no businesses. Everything will be closed.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t, Inspector, but never mind. It’s our message. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a service for the dead to prepare.’

  Clouds and smoke hung low in the sky as he walked along North Street. The wind sliced at his face, and his eyes were tearing as he opened the door of Moishe Cohen’s tailor shop. Moses came through as the bell tinkled, a tape measure fluttering from his neck.

  ‘Tom.’ He stopped, staring at the inspector. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I’ve been up since the middle of the might.’ He gave a deep sigh, trying to warm his hands by the fire. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard.’

  ‘There’s no one round here who didn’t know an hour after it happened.’

  ‘What are they saying?’ Harper asked. ‘I need to know.’

  ‘What do you think?’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘Who’ll be next, why aren’t the police doing their job?’ Cohen shrugged. ‘You can’t blame them.’

  ‘No,’ the inspector agreed sadly. He knew how it must look to them, as if the force simply didn’t care, that the people in the Leylands were fair targets. ‘But I hope you know it’s not true.’

  ‘I know you’re not that way, Tom.’ Cohen chose his words carefully.

  ‘We try to keep everyone safe.’

  ‘Those aren’t the right words for today.’

  ‘I know. Just make sure they know that we’re sorry. That I’m sorry. Please.’

  ‘No, Tom, not today. A rabbi dying is bad enough. It means we lose a teacher. But a rabbi murdered …’ He struggled for the right word. ‘It’s a desecration.’

  ‘We’re doing everything we can.’

  Cohen came close and put his hand on Harper’s shoulder, staring him full in the face.

  ‘I believe that. But don’t ask me to convince them, please.’

  Reed and Ash were already in the office when Harper entered. The knife lay on his desk, along with Padewski’s spectacles and hat.

  ‘Clem Fields,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He’s the killer. One of them, anyway.’

  He explained what they’d learned, the lodgings on Manor Street, the fish scales on the ground where the rabbi had died.

  ‘It was Ash’s idea to look for them,’ Reed added, and the constable blushed.

  ‘Good work.’ Harper paced the room, trying to think. They had a name now, somewhere to start. They’d find him, he could feel it in his bones. ‘Go back to the fish market. Find out about his friends.’

  ‘We’ve already been back and asked questions,’ the sergeant told him. ‘No real friends, keeps himself to himself. He has a stammer and he doesn’t talk much. Most of the time he’s a sullen bastard from what they say.’

  ‘Could they tell you anything at all?’ Every way they turned, they hit a brick wall, he thought. They had a name, but they knew nothing else about him.

  ‘Not as you’d notice, sir,’ Ash told you. ‘They didn’t even know where he did his drinking.’

  ‘The knife used to kill Levy was stolen at the Anchor in Mabgate.’ He exchanged a look with Reed. ‘Go there, see if they recognize Fields. And search his lodgings. I want to know what’s in his room.’

  At least Harper was out of the wind in the hackney carriage as it rolled past the Victoria and up Roundhay Road. The horse trotted, head down. All the way to Harehills it was endless streets of houses, red bricks turned sooty black. Factories and forges, shops with their goods displayed in the windows. Men and women walking, faces grim against the cold.

  Roundhay meant the park, acres of green. The cabbie followed the Wetherby Road where houses stood large, fields and farms out on the horizon. He turned down a long gravel drive and came to a halt by a set of solid steps.

  The Whitley home was built from large blocks of Yorkshire stone, made to last for years, a testament to money and power. He rapped on the door and a maid dashed along the hall to answer. He only had to wait in the elaborate drawing room for two minutes before a woman swept in, a young man trailing behind her.

  ‘Inspector Harper,’ she said, extending a strong hand to shake his. ‘I’m Lizzie Le Prince. This is my son, Adolphe. Thank you for coming. I believe it was your wife who accompanied Capitaine Muyrère.’

  She was in her forties, a handsome woman wearing a grey woollen skirt with a small bustle, black button boots peeking from the hem. Her ivory blouse was closed at the collar with a cameo, and her hair was up in a simple bun. But there was an intensity in her stare that hardened her face. The young man had the look of her around his mouth, his dark hair parted neatly in the middle.

  ‘It was,’ Harper told her. ‘You said you had some more information?’

  She frowned. ‘I’d hoped to be able to give it to the cap
itaine.’

  ‘He’s on his way to New York,’ the inspector told her.

  Mrs Le Prince made a small, annoyed sound. ‘Adolphe’s just come from there. It’s been our home for a number of years.’

  ‘So I’ve been told.’

  ‘We have a business in New York. You’re familiar with my husband’s work, Inspector?’ She spoke in clipped sentences, eyes darting around the room.

  ‘Just the bare bones,’ Harper said.

  ‘He’s a remarkable man. His camera and the moving pictures will change everything.’

  ‘And make him a rich man, perhaps?’

  ‘If he can obtain the patent on his new camera, yes,’ she agreed. ‘My son has some information that the capitaine should hear.’

  The inspector looked at the young man and waited.

  ‘I was talking to a couple of fellows in New York last month,’ Adolphe began. There was a musicality to his voice, some of the words pronounced oddly. An American accent, Harper decided. ‘They said that an agent working for Edison had made them an offer.’

  ‘You know who Edison is?’ Mrs Le Prince interrupted.

  ‘Only his name.’ The inspector smiled. ‘He’s a competitor of your husband, I believe?’

  ‘Yes. He’s very famous in America. He’s made plenty of money and he has a great deal of influence.’ She glanced at her son.

  ‘What kind of offer, sir?’ Harper asked.

  ‘To prevent my father from filing his patent. Mr Edison is working on his own machine, but it’s not ready yet. He’s not a man who likes to be beaten.’

  ‘I see.’ The story seemed far too convenient. Adolphe Le Prince had handily managed to talk to a pair of men who’d been offered money for this. ‘Do you have the name of the agent and what exactly he was offering, sir?’

  ‘Five hundred dollars, Inspector.’ Lizzie Le Prince took over. ‘Believe me, that’s a fortune. The agent wanted to be sure my husband never reached America.’ Her eyes were blazing with anger and hatred.

  ‘Sir?’ He turned back to Adolphe.

  ‘That’s right. The man called himself Phileas Scott. The men told me he offered to pay their expenses and a fee if they succeeded. They turned him down. I suspect he found someone who agreed.’

  ‘I see.’ He thought for a minute. ‘How reliable were these men you talked to, sir?’

  ‘They’d have no reason to lie,’ Le Prince said defensively.

  ‘What about this Phileas Scott?’ the inspector continued. ‘What do you know about him? Does he work for Mr Edison?’

  ‘I haven’t been able to find out anything about him,’ Adolphe admitted. ‘I asked a few people. One or two said they’d heard of him, but no one seemed actually to know him.’

  ‘Then, forgive me, sir, but what evidence do you have?’ Harper pressed. ‘Is there anything beyond what these two men told you? Anything in writing?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘The men you talked to, what do you know about them? Do you have their names?’

  ‘Jed Grainger and Bernard Van Duren. I met them in a bar down on the Bowery.’

  Wherever that was, the inspector thought. It meant nothing to him.

  ‘How did you come to find them, sir? And do they have a criminal background, do you know?’

  ‘Someone told me about them, that they’d been telling this story about being offered a lot of money to do something.’ He drew himself up. ‘Yes, Mr Harper, they’re criminals. What else would they be?’

  ‘We have names now,’ Lizzie Le Prince insisted. ‘A trail for the capitaine to follow. You need to get this information to him.’

  ‘Of course.’ He nodded. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’

  ‘I found them in a place called Blecher’s Tavern,’ Adolphe said.

  ‘Thank you, sir. Mrs Le Prince.’

  He began the long walk back towards town. In the distance it looked as if a heavy cloud lay over Leeds, a pall of smoke choking the place off from the sky. What he’d been told could be something or nothing. Still, it might be useful for Muyrère. But he had no way of contacting the man, no address for him in America. All he could do was send a letter in care of the police in Dijon. Tomorrow, though; there’d be time enough for that then.

  Finally, in Harehills, he was able to take the omnibus. A spattering of rain left drops on the windows. If much more fell and froze, he’d be skating to work in the morning.

  Millgarth police station was busy. Three people were waiting to talk to the desk sergeant as he listened to a complaint from a fourth. Kendall was bent over a pile of papers in his office, reading, then signing them with a flourish.

  Reed and Ash were waiting in the detectives’ room, standing together in front of the fire and absorbing its heat.

  Harper took off his gloves, unwound his muffler and shrugged off his overcoat. ‘Found much?’

  ‘Nothing at the lodgings,’ Ash replied. ‘Some clothes, two or three pamphlets and that’s it. According to the landlady that’s all he’s ever had, too. No letters, no books, nowt.’

  ‘Right.’ The inspector looked at Reed. ‘The Anchor?’

  ‘You know the place has a reputation?’ the sergeant asked. Harper nodded. ‘There are flags and a picture of the Queen behind the bar.’

  ‘So?’ Those were everywhere; Annabelle had a photograph of the queen flanked with Union Jacks at her pub.

  ‘A dozen more flags all round the place and a big map of the empire.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did they know Fields?’

  ‘They wouldn’t say at first. I had to insist a bit.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘But they know him, right enough. He’s a regular, in there every night.’

  ‘Was he in last night?’

  ‘They weren’t sure.’

  ‘They’re not sure or lying?’ Harper asked.

  ‘It was New Year’s Eve, everyone was drinking. I think they’re honestly not sure.’

  ‘Who does he drink with? Did you get that out of them, at least?’

  ‘There are three or four of them.’ He looked at his notebook. ‘Tim Hill, Jack Anderson, Robert Briggs.’

  ‘Anderson?’ The inspector repeated the name.

  ‘Jack. Why?’

  ‘I used to know someone with that name, that’s all.’ Maybe it was the boy he’d known growing up in the Leylands, the one who bullied Jews. It would certainly fit.

  ‘Well, this one’s been arrested a few times. So has Briggs. Fighting, assault, public drunkenness. Hill’s been in Armley for taking a bottle to someone.’

  ‘What about Fields?’

  ‘Nothing much. Fined a couple of times. Drunk, fighting.’

  Harper snorted. ‘A charming lot.’

  ‘And don’t forget that Constable Dicks drinks down there, too,’ Reed said.

  ‘Is he friends with them?’

  ‘The landlord didn’t say so. But he’s bound to know them.’

  Ash coughed. ‘If I can say so, sir, not many of the lads like Terry Dicks. He’s a lean streak of piss and nasty with it.’

  ‘Is he on duty today?’

  Reed shook his head. ‘Day off. I checked with Tollman.’

  ‘I’ll want a word with him when he’s back at work tomorrow, too.’

  ‘Fields’s description has gone out to all the divisions,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘Send uniforms out to where the others on that list live,’ Harper ordered. ‘Bring them in. I want some men to go into the Anchor tonight, too. I doubt we’ll find them but it’s worth a try.’

  ‘I can take care of that, sir,’ Ash offered. ‘I know who we can trust.’

  ‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘Any more thoughts, Billy?’

  ‘The landlord at the Anchor told me something curious. Fields and his friends were never there on Thursday nights. He didn’t know where they went.’

  ‘We’ll find out when we question them. Right, anything else?’

  Reed watched the inspector leave for the night.

  ‘You’l
l be fine with going into the Anchor?’ he asked Ash.

  The constable beamed. ‘Don’t you worry, sir. It’s Thursday, they might not even be there. But if they are, we’ll get them. And if anyone gives us trouble … it’ll be their loss.’

  ‘Right. I’ll leave you to it. Bright and early tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to it, sir.’

  A cart had tipped its load out towards Hyde Park. Traffic was at a standstill. Reed fidgeted on the omnibus. They’d been stuck for ten minutes and they weren’t going to be moving anytime soon. At this rate he’d do better getting off and walking across Woodhouse Moor. Another five minutes passed. He stood and climbed down into the cold. Anything was better than just sitting there. In the distance, across the grass, he could make out the lights of the houses.

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘Nine on Saturday?’ Annabelle asked as they ate. Tripe and onions, hot from the oven, a winter meal to warm the belly.

  ‘We’ll see what the doctor says,’ Harper said.

  ‘I want to come with you, Tom.’

  He nodded. Part of him wanted to go alone, but she was his wife. Whatever the truth and their plans for the future, she had to be there.

  ‘I saw someone you know today.’

  ‘Oh?’ she wondered. ‘Who?’

  ‘Mrs Le Prince.’

  Her eyes were full of curiosity. She put the knife and fork down on the plate.

  ‘Well,’ she told him, ‘go on. You can’t leave it at that.’

  He gave her the short version, Adolphe and the men he’d met in New York.

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he admitted. ‘But it seems unlikely to me. The word of a pair of criminals? It doesn’t help. I’ll send the French police a letter. That’s all I can do.’

  He was about to say more when they heard the tramp of feet on the stairs and a light tap on the door.

  ‘Dan must need something,’ Annabelle said, rising, her dress swishing across the floor.