by J. J. Durham
‘I’m looking for Aaron Levy.’
‘I’m Woolf Levy, his cousin.’
‘I’m here to talk about Mena.’
The youth’s grin evaporated. ‘You’d better come inside.’ He thrust the list at one of the other men. ‘Here, Raphael, keep tally.’
Pilgrim followed him into the building through a passageway that opened out into a massive, double-height room. Warmth hit him, and noise too, from a massive hopper that stood in the centre of the floor, its cog wheels grinding, spinning a massive canvas belt onto more cogs set on beams running across the ceiling. A bank of ovens flanked one end of the room, the upper ones accessed by stairs and a narrow walkway. More than a dozen men, stripped to their shirtsleeves, hurried to and from the ovens, carrying baking sheets of dough, or trays steaming with pliable discs of unleavened bread. Pilgrim’s mouth watered at the sight. He realized that he hadn’t eaten anything that day, except a slice of Charlotte Piper’s questionable Madeira cake.
On the opposite side of the room to the ovens there was mezzanine; a glazed office accessed only by stairs with open treads, little more than a ladder. He scrambled up it after Woolf Levy.
A man looked up from a ledger as Woolf knocked on the office door and opened it.
‘This man has come about Mena.’
‘I am a detective,’ said Pilgrim, ‘from the Metropolitan Police.’
Aaron Levy was considerably older than his cousin, and much heavier. He wore his long hair tied back, apart from two side locks that framed his ursine features. He nodded at Pilgrim, but did not invite him to sit.
‘Thank you, Woolf. I will call if I need you,’
Woolf hesitated, and pushed black curls out of his eyes. ‘If it’s about Mena I want to know.’
‘Do you think I would keep any news from you? I said I will call you afterwards.’
Pilgrim waited until the young baker had clattered back down the ladder, before addressing his cousin.
‘I understand your sister is missing.’
‘She is lost, yes.’
When the other man didn’t expand on the statement, Pilgrim had to prompt him. ‘When did she go missing?’
‘Two weeks ago.’ Aaron Levy closed the ledger and stood to replace it on the shelf behind him.
‘Why didn’t you report it to the police?’ asked Pilgrim.
‘What business is it of yours, or of any other goyim? You think badly enough of us, without our women running around like whores.’
‘You think she’s with a man?’
‘A man has been following her around. Writing her letters.’
‘Letters?’
‘I found them after she left. Burned them. My sister is dead to us now.’
Pilgrim closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them again and took something from his pocket.
Aaron Levy grasped the earring and stared at it. His heavy features flickered with some emotion.
‘You know it?’ asked Pilgrim.
‘It was my Mother’s.’
A few minutes later, on his way out through the yard, Pilgrim caught the sleeve of Woolf Levy who was watching the loaded waggon clatter out of the gates.
‘Did Mena have a friend?’ he asked. ‘Someone she confided in?’
‘Amalia Cohen. Her father is a tailor on Artillery Lane.’ The young man stopped Pilgrim as he was about to walk away. ‘You said, “did”. You said, “did Mena have a friend?”’
Pilgrim swore silently. ‘You had better go in to your cousin.’
He retraced his steps to Artillery Lane, and found a shop with bolts of fabric and ribbons on display in the window. The sign said Cohen and Sons. A bell rang as he entered.
A young woman emerged from a back room behind a curtain, and considered him from under heavy brows. ‘Papa is out just now. If you’re here for a fitting I’m sure he will only be a few minutes.’
‘I’m not here for a fitting. Your name is Amalia?’ Pilgrim watched her carefully. ‘I’m a police detective. I would like to ask you about Mena Levy.’
She turned to a bolt of cloth that lay unravelled on the counter, lifting the heavy roll with ease. She wound the cloth back onto it, and slammed it down again. She was angry, he realized. About what?
‘You should come back when Papa is here,’ she snapped.
‘Did Mena tell you she was going to run away?’
Amalia snorted, but said nothing.
‘Her brother Aaron thinks she eloped with someone,’ he pressed. ‘A man who sent her letters.’
‘So much he knows. That big bear.’
‘You don’t think she did?’
She snorted again.
‘Aaron found the letters after she left,’ he said. ‘Burned them.’
Some of the tension seemed to go from her body.
‘Did you know about them?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ She took a breath. ‘Local people bring in pies and bread to put in the bakery ovens. One day a man came in while Mena and I were there, and was staring at Mena. After that we’d often see him hanging around the bakery, in the street, and even outside the synagogue. He never tried to talk to her. Just stared, like a fool. We used to laugh at him. Then he started sending the letters.’
‘Do you know what they said?’
‘Oh, the usual: that her eyes were like stars, her hair like midnight … No imagination.’
‘Did he sign them? Put an address on them?’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Were they written in red ink?’
She looked at him as if he was mad, and shook her head.
‘Was he young? Old? Tall? Short? Dark? Fair?’
The girl shrugged. ‘All goyim look the same. Except for you.’
He realized she was alluding to his scars, and almost laughed. Was she as rude to everyone?
‘Is that all?’ she asked. ‘I have to shut up the shop. Find Papa. Aaron and Woolf will need him.’
Pilgrim frowned. After his slip with Woolf Levy, he had been very careful not to imply that Mena was dead.
Amalia gave him a scornful look. ‘You say you are a detective? You know nothing of a woman’s heart. What woman would elope with a man and leave his letters behind?’
Pilgrim thought about her words as he walked back to Holborn. She was right, of course. When Mena Levy had left home, it hadn’t been to elope with her mysterious admirer. So where had she gone? There was another thing puzzling him: why was Amalia Cohen so angry? Her whole body had been vibrating with rage. Towards whom? Aaron Levy? Mena Levy? Herself? It was possible, of course, that she was one of those people perpetually dissatisfied with life. Like Dick Tanner.
He let himself into the house with his key, and took off his overcoat. The clatter of kitchen utensils echoed up from the basement stairs.
‘Is that you, Sergeant?’ Charlotte Piper called up. ‘Supper’s ready in half an hour. And there’s a package just arrived for you. It’s on the parlour table.’
He went into the parlour. The table still had tea things on it, a tin of biscuits, and a sewing basket. There was also a package, wrapped in canvas, with a label written in red ink. He picked it up. It was addressed to ‘Sergeant Pilgrim, care of Mrs C Piper, 27 Greville Street, Holborn’.
‘Something nice, I hope?’
Pilgrim spun around. Charlotte Piper stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to make you jump.’
‘You didn’t.’ He resisted the urge to hide the package behind his back.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’
‘Later.’ He pushed past her. ‘I’ll open it later.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
‘You have to put me back on the investigation, Charley.’
‘I’m on my way home.’ Field buttoned his overcoat. His eyes looked sore, as if he had been rubbing them.
‘You have to see this first,’ said Pilgrim.
Field scowled at the cigar box. ‘What is it this time? A hand?’
/> ‘A finger.’ Pilgrim frowned. ‘How did you know?’
‘Walk with me.’ Field nodded at the box. ‘Leave that abomination here.’
They walked for a long time. Field volunteered no conversation, a fact that was startling in itself, without the glowering expression he wore as he strode along. They took the path along the embankment, keeping pace with the river running black and silent beside them. Pilgrim avoided looking at it. He had never learned to swim and the Thames always filled him with a deep unease. Particularly at night. The thought of so much water rushing through the city – a primitive force, heedless of the life that clung to its banks – disturbed him. To distract himself he noted the changes that had taken place on the embankment. It had been some time since he had been there after dark, and the transformation astonished him. What was once broken ground, scarred with ditches, was freshly paved and lined with lamp posts, as bright as any city thoroughfare.
Eventually he spoke.
‘I take it we have another victim?’
Field nodded. ‘Poison this time. Prussic acid. Not so easy to get hold of as arsenic. According to Tanner, it’s only used by chemists, jewellers, and photographers. And miners. But we don’t get many of those in the city. Why did you move out of the barracks, Harry?’
Pilgrim was thrown by the change of subject. ‘I needed some distance.’
Field nodded. ‘Probably for the best. Did you find good lodgings?’
‘Good enough.’ He was impatient with small talk. ‘Put me back on the investigation.’
‘You’re making this personal.’
‘I’m not. The killer is. He sent this last package to my new lodging. What if my landlady had opened it? What if … ?’ He blinked back the image of Charlotte Piper, lying naked on a blood-soaked mattress. ‘You have to let me fight this man, and I can’t do it if I’m not on the case.’
Field strode on. ‘You’re putting me in an impossible situation.’
‘I realize that.’ Pilgrim kept pace with his old friend, not wanting to press him too hard. Charley Field had never responded well to direct pressure.
‘Here we are.’ Field stopped. Without Pilgrim realising it, they had arrived at the yellow-brick house that Field called home. It sat in the middle of a terrace, in the shadow of the grim walls and fairytale turrets of Millbank Prison.
‘You’ll stay for dinner?’ asked Field. ‘Alice and Mother Molly would be glad to see you.’
Pilgrim didn’t feel at all sociable, but he wanted his answer. He nodded and followed Field into the house.
‘Harry!’ As soon as he stepped into the hall, he was enveloped in the embrace of Alice Field, a bird-like woman with a substantial bosom. She stood back to look at him.
‘Mother,’ she called, ‘you’ll never guess who’s here to see us.’
‘You have the voice of a costermonger. I heard you from here.’ Another voice, querulous with age, came from within the house. ‘Harry Pilgrim, is it? Come through to the parlour, boy, and let me see you.’
The parlour was brightly lit. An old woman sat in the rocking chair beside a blazing fire, so close that her stockings were in danger of scorching.
‘Mother Molly,’ said Pilgrim.
She embraced him, then held him at arm’s length.
‘Merciful heavens,’ she said, ‘but you need feeding up.’
He smiled. Molly Mulligan was over eighty, but looked much the same as she had thirty years before. Her currant eyes fixed on him, black and unnerving.
‘Do you still have your token?’ she asked, as she always did. ‘Let me see it.’
He fished beneath his shirt for the cockleshell he wore on a thong around his neck. It was the size of a sixpence, made of silver, of the type awarded to the pilgrims at Santiago. His father had left it with him at the Foundling Hospital: the token by which he could identify and retrieve him. Not that he ever had.
‘Never forget where you come from,’ said Mother Molly. ‘It stops you getting above yourself.’ She looked pointedly at her son-in-law, who ignored her. In police records Charley Field was officially noted as the son of a publican from Chelsea. In fact, he had been found on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Hence his name. Molly Mulligan, mother to all the orphans at the Foundling Hospital, had a literal turn of mind.
‘It’s mutton broth tonight,’ said Alice. ‘Your favourite, Harry. I’m just about to dish up. Come through to the dining room.’
Pilgrim gave his arm to Mother Molly and helped her to totter through to the other room.
‘Sit here next to me,’ she said, ‘and tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself.’ She waited until he had settled her in her chair before firing one of her famous cannonballs into the conversation. ‘Aren’t you an Inspector yet?’
Field and Pilgrim exchanged a glance.
‘Why haven’t you made him Inspector yet?’ she jabbed Charley with a bony finger. ‘And don’t tell me he ain’t good enough. I’ve been reading about him in Mr Dickens’s journal.’
‘You better ask Harry.’ Field helped himself to buttered potatoes.
‘Leave it, Mother.’ Alice spooned the broth into bowls. ‘It’s none of our business.’
‘None of my business? My boys are always my business.’ Molly jabbed at Pilgrim just as he was about to take his first spoonful of broth. ‘What does he mean, “I’d better ask you that?”’
Pilgrim lowered his spoon, and was about to answer, when Field spared him the trouble.
‘I wanted to promote him before Christmas, but he wouldn’t have it.’
‘He wouldn’t have it?’ Molly turned her incredulous gaze on Pilgrim. ‘Why ever not?’
‘He doesn’t want the responsibility.’ Field answered for him again, his bitterness only thinly veiled. ‘He doesn’t want to have “underlings”, isn’t that right, Harry?’
Pilgrim lifted his spoon again.
Molly looked from one to the other. ‘Boys!’ she snorted. ‘I should just knock your heads together, the way I used to do.’
‘Charley tells me you’ve moved out of the barracks,’ said Alice. ‘Are you still convenient for the station?’ She steered them into less contentious waters. Alice had always been a diplomat, even as a skinny six year old. It was something she’d been obliged to cultivate, being Molly’s daughter. Her tact made her an asset to any man of ambition, as had soon become obvious to the young Charley Field.
‘I’m at Holborn,’ said Pilgrim. ‘So I’m close to Whitehall. Too close, in truth.’
Charley and Alice exchanged a smile, and Pilgrim felt his isolation yawn, cavernous, around him. He glanced at Mother Molly and noted that she was watching him. If anyone could penetrate his careful facade, it was Molly. She pursed her lips.
‘Got yourself a sweetheart yet, Harry?’
Charley almost choked on his broth.
‘I’m married,’ said Pilgrim, eyes narrowing. ‘As you know very well.’
Alice jumped to her feet. ‘There’s treacle pudding, if anyone wants it.’
The broth bowls were cleared away, and the pudding dispensed, complete with custard and walnuts. It proved too much for Pilgrim – he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten so much.
‘I’ll have that,’ said Molly, ‘if you’re finished with it.’ She pulled his bowl towards her and emptied it in three spoonfuls, smacking her gums with relish. Pilgrim watched Charley devour his own gigantic portion. It was easy to see how his friend had acquired his impressive physical presence. When they were finished Alice collected the dishes.
‘Come on, Mother, let’s leave the boys to their port. They’ll have things to discuss.’
Pilgrim was subjected to a hug from Alice and a whiskery kiss from Molly, and then left alone with Field. He sighed and leaned back against the cushions.
‘They’re glad to see you,’ said Field. ‘It’s been too long.’
‘You’re right. It has.’
They fell into silence again. Field rubbed his nose and stared into
the fire. When he finally spoke, his tone was grave. ‘This one could bring us down, Harry. Theft and burglary we can handle. Murder even, in the common way. But this killer … he’s making fools of us. If we don’t catch him soon, the Home Secretary could be forced to disband the detective division.’
‘You think that’s a possibility?’
‘More than a possibility. Sir Richard has tabled a motion to the Law and Order Committee.’ Field rubbed his hand over his face. ‘The thing is no one wants us. The upper classes don’t. The politicians don’t. And ordinary folk think that detection should be a part of every policeman’s job.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘That’s when they think at all.’
‘How much time do we have?’
Field shrugged. ‘Another week? After that we’ll be considered a failed experiment, and Sir Richard, George Moxton, and their ilk will rub their hands together and crow “We told you so”. It could be years before anyone tries again. The pity of it, Harry, is that this city may not want a Detective Force, but it needs one. It bloody needs one.’ He subsided into silence.
Pilgrim stared into the fire. What would he do if he could no longer be a detective? He couldn’t imagine returning to the beat. The alternative was to push paper around at Whitehall, and he couldn’t imagine doing that, either. He glanced at Field, who was also staring into the fire, his bluff face illuminated by the flames. His friend seemed to be more concerned for the population of the city than for himself, but Pilgrim was worried on his behalf. What would become of the flamboyant Chief Inspector Field if he were deprived of his position? It didn’t bear thinking about. If ever there was a man born to the job it was Charley Field.
‘I think the key to the murderer’s identity could lie with Mena Levy,’ he said.
‘Who?’ Field’s head whipped round.
‘The woman in the Hackney carriage. I found out who she was today.’
‘I distinctly remember taking you off the case.’ But there was no heat in the words.
‘We wondered why he hadn’t left her body to be discovered, like the others. I think he didn’t want to risk anyone finding out who she was, because she wasn’t a random victim. She was being followed by a young man who wrote letters to her.’