by J. J. Durham
‘I did not!’
‘“This case”.’ Field interrupted his tone cold. ‘You said “this case”. You’re sure, then, that we’re looking at one killer?’
‘I’m certain of it now. Whoever sent Eliza Grimwood’s necklace and the package with the ear knew that I was expecting to see Martha Drewitt’s baby when I opened that last box. He knew it, and he mocked me for it!’
‘Sit down, Harry.’
Pilgrim stayed on his feet.
‘I said sit down!’ boomed Field.
Pilgrim did as he was commanded, but he refused to stay silent. ‘There are too many of us working on this investigation. We’re pulling in too many different directions.’
Field nodded. ‘My sentiments exactly. And that is why I’m taking you off the case.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Pilgrim waited until Field had shown a gloating Tanner out of the door.
‘You can’t mean it.’
Field crossed to the dresser to pour himself a glass of port.
‘I’m afraid I do.’ He sat and stared at Pilgrim. ‘Take a look at yourself.’
Pilgrim swallowed the sour taste in his mouth. He was unshaven, exhausted, and still wearing his dinner suit from the night before.
‘I think the Bonwell case has affected you more than you care to admit,’ said Field. ‘The boy. The way his mother died last night. It all takes a toll. And it’s not only that … this Hackney killer is writing to you. He is trying to make it personal, to gain some kind of upper hand.’
‘Do you think I’d let … ?’
Field held up his hand. ‘It’s already affecting your behaviour. Your judgement. I know you, Harry. I know what makes you tick. Bess has been gone for years, and you’re a red-blooded man. One with appetites.’
Pilgrim’s blood pounded in his temples. ‘You think … ?’
But Field cut across him again. ‘It’s not so much what you’ve done, as the fact you’ve been careless about it. The killer knows you visit whores. I’m taking you off this investigation because I care for you. You think this is humiliating? It’s nothing compared to what could happen if I let you get more involved.’
Pilgrim stood up. He could find no words.
‘Come back to work in a week, Harry. I guarantee I’ll have another case for you to sink your teeth into.’ Field leaned forward. ‘You do see, don’t you, that I have your best interests at heart?’
Pilgrim couldn’t bring himself to answer. He strode to the door and slammed out of it without looking back.
He lay on his cot and stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the snores of the nightshift constables on the other side of the curtain. There was no way he could stay in the barracks. At seven o’clock Dolly and Tanner would be returning from their shift, and he didn’t think he could bear either Dolly’s sympathy or Tanner’s triumph. He had to get away. But where could he go?
An idea came to him. He swung his legs off the bunk and packed his things into his carpetbag.
Pilgrim rang the bell and waited on the step. After a few moments, he heard a tread on the other side of the door, and it opened.
He took off his hat. Charlotte Piper stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. She had obviously been baking: there were traces of flour on her hands, and her face was flushed from the oven.
‘If you haven’t let the rooms yet,’ he said. ‘I’d like to take them.’
She blinked, and pressed her lips together.
‘These are for you.’ He offered her the bunch of unseasonal – and very expensive – chrysanthemums he had bought from the flower market.
She blinked, and put her floury hands firmly behind her. ‘If you think, for one minute … ’
‘I know I was rude,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m not good with words. Not … accurate.’
She flushed to the roots of her hair. He guessed she was remembering her own, all-too-accurate, words. Her mouth opened, and then closed again.
‘What do you think, Mrs Piper?’ he prompted. ‘Can we start again?’
She lifted her chin. ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.’
He nodded, and placed his hat and the flowers carefully on the step. He knelt down.
‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ she asked.
‘What do you think?’ He gazed up at her, knowing the conclusion she had jumped to, and relishing it. Her eyes were round with horror. He stretched the moment deliberately before he spoke again. ‘I’m begging for the rooms on my ruddy knees.’ He watched as at first recognition and then amusement flickered on her face. She snorted.
‘Get up, you fool. And come inside, people are watching.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Charles Dickens looked down onto the street through the rain-spattered window of his study in Devonshire Terrace, watching pedestrians jostle with their umbrellas and slip around on the muddy pavements. It had been raining since the night before – not a clean, hard rain, but the sort that couched itself in bad-tempered fog, confounding the daylight so that it was impossible to tell whether it was dusk or dawn. In fact, it was almost noon. All the horses were splashed to the blinkers in filth, and the dogs that threaded through the crowd were so slimed in mud as to be almost unidentifiable. But Dickens was content. He could feel words welling up inside him, the old familiar quickening that signalled he was ready, at last, to begin his next novel.
Anna Summerson’s witless chatter about wills and disreputable lawyers had set him thinking about his own time as a clerk in Chancery, and the interminable meanderings of legal procedure. Looking out at the weather, a pleasing metaphor had just occurred to him, one that, if he was lucky, might sustain him throughout the course of a story.
He strode to his desk and took up his pen. Started to write.
London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill …
He didn’t lift his head again until his pocket watch chimed two o’clock, its silvery notes echoed by the bass thumps of the clock on the mantel. He shook himself and put down his pen. He would have to order his carriage if he wasn’t to be late for his appointment with Inspector Field. The Inspector had asked him to call at Whitehall as a matter of urgency. Dickens had a fair idea what he wished to talk to him about and guessed he should gird his loins, ready for battle. He was right.
‘Is there nothing I can say to convince you to abandon your interest in the Grimwood case?’ Having settled Dickens in a comfortable chair and furnished him with an excellent glass of port, Charley Field favoured him with his most disarming smile.
But the writer shook his head. ‘Once I have determined on a course of action, I always see it through, Inspector. Perseverance is one of my particular character traits – any of my friends will tell you so.’
Field gave him a look that was close to despair. ‘I must be honest with you; the case is in danger of turning into a circus. Surely you don’t wish to make us a laughing stock?’
‘Nothing could be further from my intention. You know I have always championed your detectives. I may decide, in the end, not to write about the investigation at all, but I would like to reserve the right to make that decision until the affair is concluded.’
‘So you’ll not write anything until afterwards?’ Field’s face betrayed his relief.
‘You have my word on it.’ Dickens took a sip of his port. It really was very good. ‘But surely, Inspector, things are not as desperate as that? Sergeant Pilgrim has everything in hand.’
Field rubbed his nose and looked away.
‘Inspector!’ They were interrupted by Sergeant Tanner who entered Field’s office red-faced and without knocking. ‘We’ve just received a note from Dr Fairweather. He thinks he might have
another victim at the hospital.’
‘Another one?’ Field took the paper from Tanner’s hand and went into the main office to read it. Dickens followed and watched with Dolly, Wainwright, and Tanner, as Field’s face grew darker.
‘Bugger it,’ he said. ‘I suppose someone better get over to St Bartholomew’s and take a look.’
Tanner headed for the door. ‘Get your coat, Williamson.’
‘Can I come too, sir?’ asked Wainwright. ‘Only I’m supposed to be a detective and I ain’t done much detectin’ of late. I’ve been drawin’ mostly, which ain’t really what I’m paid for.’
Tanner sighed. ‘If you must.’
‘I’d like to go too,’ said Dickens. ‘With your permission, Inspector?’
Field blew out his lips, and nodded.
Tanner scowled. ‘We’ll need a bloody omnibus to fit everyone in.’
‘Not at all,’ said Dickens. ‘I’m sure we can all manage in my Brougham.’
Luckily the carriage had two foldaway seats in the front corners of the cabin, but it was still something of a squeeze. When they were all settled Dolly turned to Sergeant Tanner.
‘I found out about that foetus, sir,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘It was left in a privy at the back of Temple Lane. It’s shared by fourteen brick-maker’s cottages. The mother might live in any one of them, or none. Apparently that kind of thing happens all the time. The mortuary often doesn’t bother logging them before sending them to the common pit at St Brides.’
‘How many months gone was it?’
‘According to the officer that fetched it, it was no bigger than a kitten.’
‘Not Martha Drewitt’s, then.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Another goose chase.’
When they arrived at St Bartholomew’s, it wasn’t the Coroner who met them, but Townsend, the Coroner’s assistant. The young American led the three detectives and the writer to the mortuary storeroom.
‘Where’s Dr Fairweather?’ asked Tanner.
‘In court.’ Townsend blinked at them through his spectacles.
Dolly glanced at Dickens, and tugged at Tanner’s sleeve. ‘Perhaps Mr Dickens might like to wait for us outside, sir.’
Tanner turned to Dickens and said, with false jocularity, ‘You don’t want to wait outside, do you?’ He turned back to Dolly. ‘Of course he doesn’t. He wouldn’t want to miss finding out what police work is really all about.’ His face lit with a savage glee.
The room was long and narrow, lined on both sides with tables that bore shapes covered in grey sheets. Townsend stopped two-thirds of the way along, and turned down one of the sheets. Although Dickens thought he had prepared himself for the sight he still couldn’t stifle a gasp of dismay. A woman lay naked on the gurney, her body white, hip bones jutting out. Her hair was stringy and clotted with blood, and a crudely stitched incision ran from her throat to disappear under the sheet at her groin.
‘She was found on Tuesday.’ Townsend’s breath smoked in the air. ‘They thought it was natural causes.’
‘What made them change their minds?’ asked Tanner.
Townsend leaned over, caught hold of the woman’s arm, and raised it up. It ended in a stump, the flesh severed cleanly around a white jut of bone.
‘The hand’s been sliced off post-mortem,’ said Townsend, ‘just for jolly.’
Dolly flashed the youth a startled look, and frowned. Dickens swallowed, hard. He saw with a certain amount of relief that he wasn’t the only one struggling to master his revulsion: Wainwright looked distinctly green.
‘Hard to miss, surely?’ snorted Tanner.
Townsend snorted back. ‘They’d already issued a death certificate for pneumonia when one of the assistants spotted it.’
‘So what is the cause of death?’ asked Dolly. His usually rosy cheeks were pale, and he was regarding the young medical assistant with more than a trace of disapproval.
‘Prussic acid,’ said Townsend. ‘Not common, but easy enough to diagnose. The gastric fluids have a distinctive odour.’
‘Do we know who she is? Where was she found?’ asked Tanner.
Townsend shrugged. ‘It’ll be in the paperwork upstairs.’
‘If Sergeant Pilgrim ain’t on the case no more,’ said Wainwright. ‘Who’s the killer going to send the hand to?’
Dickens flashed him a look. Pilgrim not on the case?
‘Me, I suppose,’ said Tanner. ‘That’s something to look forward to.’ He stomped out.
Wainwright stared down at the woman on the gurney, the tip of his nose red with cold.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why make such a ruddy mess of them?’
Dickens was at a loss. ‘Who knows what goes through the mind of such a man?’
Wainwright turned to him, his eyes glittering. ‘I wasn’t talking about the killer.’ He glared at Townsend. ‘I was talking about him and Dr Fairweather.’ He followed Tanner out.
Dickens caught at Dolly’s sleeve as they followed the others. ‘Is it true that Sergeant Pilgrim has been taken off the case?’
Dolly nodded.
‘That’s a pity.’
‘A pity?’ Dolly’s look was ironic. ‘A tragedy, more like.’
‘The tart’s name was Clara Donald,’ said Tanner, reading through the paperwork in the mortuary admission office. He had stopped modifying his language for Dickens’s benefit, and seemed to have decided to ignore the writer altogether. ‘She was found in a lodging house at 16 Worship Street. Top floor.’ He nodded at Dolly. ‘Take Wainwright and have a look at the room. See if you can discover how he gave her the poison. Question the neighbours. Ask if they saw or heard anything. I’ll get back to Whitehall and tell the Inspector we definitely have another victim.’
‘What should I do, Sergeant?’ asked Dickens.
Tanner shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’
Wainwright, Dolly, and Dickens were out of breath by the time they climbed the five flights of stairs at Worship Street. There were two doors on the attic landing. They could hear children and the pounding of feet on floorboards coming from the nearest one. Dolly knocked.
‘Come on in, whoever you are,’ called a voice. ‘The more the merrier!’
The garret was poky, and strewn with wriggling bodies. In the light filtering through the skylight they could see children of all ages, playing on the floor, romping on the bed, and running from one side of the room to the other, giggling and shrieking. In the middle of it all sat a massive woman, giving suck to one babe, while another, barely walking, tried to climb up onto her lap. A portrait of the Virgin and Child smiled serenely down on the chaos from over the mantelpiece.
The woman adjusted the baby’s position on her breast, releasing her spittle-glossed nipple and then pushing it back into the baby’s mouth. She looked at them expectantly.
‘Sorry to intrude,’ said Dolly with a blush, ‘we thought Miss Donald lived here?’
‘She moved out.’
‘When?’
Dickens glanced around the riotous, heaving room. Whatever traces there had been of the poisoner or his victim were surely undetectable now?
‘You’d have to ask the neighbours that,’ said the woman. ‘Or the landlady. We’ve just got here.’
‘Did she leave anything behind?’ asked Dickens. ‘Bottles or liquids of any description?’ He watched, aghast, as a toddler grappled with a stone bottle and took a swig of the contents.
‘No,’ said the woman. ‘There was nothing here when I moved in.’
A look of relief passed between the men. Dolly nodded and beat a retreat; pushing Wainwright and Dickens back out onto the landing ahead of him.
‘That’s that, then,’ said Wainwright.
‘Pssst!’
They spun around. A red-rimmed eye peered at them from the other door on the landing. The crack opened wider to reveal an old man in a flannel gown.
‘’Ave you ’eard that racket in there?’ he demanded. ‘It’s l
ike livin’ in a bloody farmyard. Widow Kelly moved that lot in this morning, with the other girl not cold in her grave. It ain’t decent.’
‘What happened to her things?’ asked Dolly.
‘The widow has ’em. You’ll find ’er at the bottom of the stairs. Tell ’er I want my ruddy rent reducin’!’ The door slammed shut again.
The three men went back down the stairs. They had to pick their way through a group of men smoking at the bottom to reach the door. A middle-aged woman dressed in black answered their knock.
‘Metropolitan Police,’ Dolly announced.
‘Come in … come in, for gawd’s sake.’ She pulled Dolly, Wainwright, and Dickens into the hallway, and slammed the door behind them. ‘I don’t want that idle lot knowing my business.’ She ushered them into a sitting room that was crammed with furniture and knick-knacks, and stifling hot from the fire that blazed up the chimney. The room smelled of tobacco and grease. The widow Kelly sat in an armchair, took a clay pipe from her apron, and appraised the writer’s Persian lamb overcoat.
‘You don’t look like no Peeler.’
Dolly took charge of the situation. ‘We’re detectives. We’d like to know who found Clara Donald.’
‘Me, the day before yesterday.’ She tapped out her pipe in the hearth, and then took a tin of tobacco from her pocket. ‘She was dead in bed. Fitting, I suppose. She spent most of her life there.’
The three men exchanged a look.
‘We wanted to examine her room,’ said Dolly. ‘But you’ve let it already.’
‘The dead don’t pay their rent, officer. And the girl owed me three weeks.’ She pushed tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. ‘Don’t suppose I’ll be gettin’ it now.’
‘There was no money in the room?’
‘Couldn’t say for sure. Half the building were in and out after I found her. Who’s to say what might or mightn’t have been there?’ She met their eyes directly, defying them to challenge her. ‘Everything that was left is in that there box.’ She waved her pipe at a tin box in the corner, of the kind used to store dry goods.