by J. J. Durham
‘Do you have your carriage nearby?’
Dickens nodded.
‘Give me a lift to Aldgate and I’ll tell you about it.’
It took longer than the short ride to Aldgate to tell Dickens everything that had happened in Artillery Lane. While Pilgrim finished his tale, the coachman pulled into the kerb beside a dray, which was being unloaded on the High Street. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the sound of barrels being bumped down onto the pavement.
‘What do you intend to do now?’ asked Dickens.
Pilgrim nodded out of the carriage window to a shop with a green and yellow awning on the opposite side of the street.
‘You remember the wrapping canvas? Reuben Cohen buys it from Hatchell and Manson. It can’t hurt to take a look.’
The stationary shop was quiet. A solitary customer, a housekeeper, judging by her sober clothes and the basket on her arm, was being shown an assortment of ebony handled seals by the older of two attendants. Both attendants wore waistcoats of green and yellow stripes, the same colours as the awning outside. The younger attendant, who was stacking shelves with rolls of paper, sealing wax, penknives, and quill pens, hurried to greet them. Pilgrim saw him note the writer’s expensive clothes.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ he said with an unctuous smile. ‘May I be of assistance?’
Dickens moved off to inspect the shelves. Pilgrim took the wrapped ribbon from his pocket.
‘I believe you sell this wrapping canvas,’ he said.
The assistant took it from him. ‘Yes, indeed. It’s American. Stronger than English canvas, but still wonderfully pliable.’
‘Who else in London stocks it?’
‘No one, sir. We’re the sole supplier. We buy it by the ton, and so we are able to sell it cheaply.’
‘Do you keep a record of sales?’
‘Detective Sergeant!’ Dickens called out from the back of the shop.
The shop assistant looked sharply at Pilgrim. The older attendant and the housekeeper stopped what they were doing to stare at him as well. Pilgrim sighed. He had wanted their enquiry to be discreet, but he should have known that nothing with Dickens was ever that. He joined the writer who was surrounded by stacks of blotting books and canvases.
‘Red ink!’ Dickens held a jar triumphantly to the light. The contents looked like blood. ‘Exactly like the ink on the notes.’
The young attendant had followed Pilgrim. ‘We stock ink in several shades, sir, both Indian and Chinese. Lavender is popular with the ladies, and red with accounting firms.’
‘Do you keep a record of sales?’ Pilgrim repeated his question.
‘Of course.’
‘And customers’ details?’
‘Most of them. Those we deliver to and the ones that hold an account with us. Only a small proportion of our custom is passing trade.’
‘How many people might buy both the canvas and the red ink?’
‘I have no idea.’
Dickens replaced the ink on the shelf. ‘Our murderer must buy both here.’
‘Murderer?’ squeaked the attendant.
‘Excuse me one moment, madam.’ The senior attendant abandoned the housekeeper to join them. ‘I am Frederick Manson, co-owner of this establishment. Is there a problem?’
Pilgrim submitted to the inevitable. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Pilgrim of the Metropolitan Police. I need to take your sales ledgers for the last year.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your sales ledgers.’
‘What, all of them?’
‘I will provide a receipt, and return them as soon as possible.’
There were six ledgers in total: hefty, leather-bound volumes, too heavy to carry more than two at a time. Dickens’s coachman helped Pilgrim manhandle them into the station at Whitehall, and to stack them on the floor beside Sergeant Phelps’ desk.
‘Thank you, John. Tell Mr Dickens I’ll let him know if I find anything.’
‘Right you are, sir.’ The coachman tipped his hat and left.
‘Evening, Sergeant Phelps,’ said Pilgrim. ‘Could one of your boys give me a hand up the stairs with this lot?’
‘Actually, sir,’ the Sergeant gave him an ambiguous look, ‘I think it best if you wait here a moment.’ He whispered into the ear of the uniformed officer beside him, who darted a glance at Pilgrim before hurrying up the stairs.
‘What’s going on?’
The Sergeant wouldn’t meet his eye.
‘Is Dolly … ?’ Pilgrim felt the blood drain from his face.
‘No, sir. We’ve had no news of Constable Williamson.’ For an instant, Phelps looked as if he would say more, but then he clamped his lips together.
Pilgrim’s mind whirled. Perhaps Charley had decided to resign after all, ahead of the deadline Sir Charles had given them? But that wouldn’t explain Phelps’ peculiar behaviour. The Sergeant was practically rigid with tension as he stared up the staircase. His expression changed to relief as Dick Tanner, followed by Wainwright, thumped down the stairs.
Tanner stopped in front of Pilgrim, his expression oddly blank. His eyes seemed to look through him rather than at him.
‘Henry Pilgrim,’ he said. ‘I’m arresting you in the Queen’s name on suspicion of the murder of Mena Levy, Johannes Appler, Eliza Grimwood, Martha Drewitt, Clara Donald, and Amalia Cohen.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Dickens sat down to his breakfast: fresh sausages, boiled eggs, ham, porridge with fresh cream and butter, Whitby kippers, and pheasant pie. A pot of tea and a teacup waited beside the congested plates, and, as instructed, the tablecloth was plain, rather than patterned: he found patterned fabric upsetting to his digestion in the morning. Everything was exactly as it should be, and yet he felt … dissatisfied. Ill at ease. Yes, distinctly ill at ease.
‘What are your plans for today, dear?’ His wife Kate eyed him nervously over the rim of her own teacup. She was still in her wrap and curlpapers. At the age of thirty-five she looked fifteen years older, with deep grooves running from her nose to her mouth, and a perpetual expression of weariness. It was hardly surprising: nine children in thirteen years would take a toll on any woman’s looks and nerves.
‘I thought I might press on with my new novel.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve written the first instalment, but don’t have a title for it yet. I have two possible ones …’ he tailed off. Tapped his fingers on the table. Was there something else he was supposed to be doing today? He knit his brows together. If there was, he couldn’t think of it.
‘And what are they?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The potential titles. For your new novel. What are they?’
‘I thought either “Bleak House” or “Hard Times, for these Times”.’ He peered at her. ‘What do you think?’
‘I like Hard Times. I imagine it would be in the vein of Oliver Twist?’
‘Yes. But I think I prefer “Bleak House”. I’m going to make it a mystery … a proper mystery, with a police detective …’ he tailed off again. ‘His mother worries about him … we live in hard times.’
Kate put down her cup. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Charles, you seem a little distracted. Why don’t you take a walk after breakfast?’
‘Capital idea.’ He nodded and helped himself to a slice of pheasant pie. Looking at the dark meat inside the crust, he put it down again. ‘Actually, no. I rather think I need to go out now. Could you please ask John Thompson to bring the carriage around while I dress?’
When Dickens arrived on the ward at Westminster Hospital he could hear raised voices. He walked down the room towards the bed he had been directed to, and saw that Dolly was not only alive, but apparently in the middle of an argument.
‘I need to speak to Sergeant Pilgrim, of Whitehall.’
‘If you don’t remain still,’ said the doctor, ‘I shall be forced to sedate you again.’
‘But it’s urgent.’ Dolly struggled to si
t up, but the doctor held him down. The doctor signalled to a nurse, who nodded and rushed into a side room. She arrived back at the bedside at the same time as Dickens. ‘Here you are, sir.’ She gave a glass of colourless liquid to the doctor.
‘Drink this.’ The doctor pressed the glass to Dolly’s lips.
‘No!’ Dolly twisted his head to avoid it. The doctor took a hold of his chin. ‘Get off me, damn you.’
‘Adolphus, my boy!’
They froze into an absurd tableau vivant: the grappling doctor, the red-faced nurse, and their patient.
‘Mr Dickens,’ gasped Dolly.
The doctor’s eyes widened. He released his grip on Dolly’s chin and stepped back.
‘I’m delighted to see you’re not dead yet,’ said Dickens. He struggled to master his shock at Dolly’s grotesquely distorted features.
The doctor flushed. ‘He was trying to get out of bed … but he has broken bones and a head wound. Not to mention the possibility of internal bleeding.’
Dickens nodded and went to the bedside, trying not to betray his revulsion. He patted Dolly’s hand. He took a handkerchief from his waistcoat to dab at a tear that had leaked from the boy’s swollen eye. ‘You must calm yourself. What is all the commotion about?’
Dolly licked dry lips. ‘I need to know what happened, sir, in Artillery Lane. Is Miss Cohen safe?’
The writer’s expression told him everything he needed to know. Dolly sank back onto the pillows and closed his eyes. Dickens took the glass from the doctor.
‘Perhaps I might administer it?’
The doctor glanced from Dickens to Dolly, and back again. He gave a brusque nod and steered the nurse away. Dickens sat on the edge of the bed. Dolly opened his eyes.
‘How?’ he asked.
‘The killer used your little disturbance as a diversion, knocked out poor Constable Wainwright, and slipped in at the rear of the house. He killed Amalia Cohen with a cudgel.’
‘He was carrying one,’ said Dolly.
‘Yes, he must have been.’
‘No, you misunderstand, sir. He was carrying one. I saw him, you see. In Artillery Lane. I saw the killer.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Pilgrim sat on the cot and stared at the floor. In spite of the hours the station char had spent scrubbing the flagstones there were still marks on it from Appler’s blood. Pilgrim stared at the stains and tried to think, but it was as if his usual mental processes had been disconnected by shock. He dropped his head into his hands. A woman’s voice, hoarse with shouting, echoed along the corridor, bouncing off steel and stone.
‘I’m the daughter of a British officer, so strike me blind and dead! You can’t treat me this way. I’ll write a letter to the bloody Queen, so I will, and then you’ll be sorry!’
Elsewhere in the cells a base voice started up.
‘The Camptown ladies sing this song,
Doo-da, doo-da,
The Camptown racetrack’s five miles long,
Oh, de doo-da day.’
‘Keep the noise down, you sot,’ bellowed a different female voice. ‘You’ll wake the babby!’ Sure enough, the wail of an infant sliced through the air. ‘See! See what you’ve done?’
‘Goin’ to run all night,
Goin’ to run all day,
I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag,
Somebody bet on the grey.’
Without opening his eyes, Pilgrim curled on the mattress and pulled the blanket to his chin. The wool was threadbare, but clean. Miraculously, he slept.
He dreamed of Clara Donald’s finger. He put his hand into his pocket and felt something there, tangled in the lining like a twig. He didn’t realize what it was until he turned out the pocket and the finger dropped onto the floor. He looked down and saw he was soaked from armpit to ankle in blood. Fresh blood, stringy and clotting.
‘It’s all my fault.’
He woke with a gasp, and, for a moment, couldn’t think where he was. Then he heard the coughs and snores of the other prisoners and remembered. It took a while for the horror of his dream to drain away, but by that time, the sky behind the high barred window had paled and so he gave up on any thought of going back to sleep. He sat up. His head was clear again, as if all the sediment stirred up the day before had settled.
Breakfast was skilly, pushed through the flap at the bottom of the door. He ate it quickly and sat back on his cot. There was no point getting exhausted with imaginings. Someone would tell him why he had been arrested soon enough. All he had to do was to wait.
The noise in the cells lessened as the overnight prisoners were released, one by one. The officer’s daughter was the first to go, still shouting threats of letters to the Queen, then the woman and baby, and finally the singer, who had sobered into muttering resentment.
Finally, when the cells were silent, he heard footsteps approaching his cell. He sat up. The door opened, framing Charley Field.
‘Good morning, Sergeant,’ he said. He looked tired, but full of purpose.
Pilgrim wondered at the coldness of his tone. Was it for his benefit? Or for the constable he could see lurking in the passage? Field closed the door.
Pilgrim stood up. ‘You shouldn’t be speaking to me alone.’
‘Don’t tell me how to do my job.’ Field’s earlier morose mood had crystallized into something harder. Much harder. ‘Sit down.’ He waited for Pilgrim to obey him before speaking again. ‘We found Martha Drewitt’s baby in your rooms. Or, rather, your landlady found it.’
Pilgrim’s bile rose. ‘The killer must have put it there.’
‘This isn’t just about the baby.’
Pilgrim opened his mouth to speak, but Field forestalled him with a raised forefinger.
‘You were connected personally to Martha Drewitt through your niece Frances. You had intercourse with Clara Donald the night she was killed. You had access to Appler’s cell. And now, of course, there’s the baby.’
‘It makes no sense. Why would I have stopped the Hackney with Mena Levy’s body in it?’
‘To set up Appler.’
‘Why would I bother?’
‘Because he knew who you were. Because it was you who asked him to move the body.’
‘Surely it would have been easier just to move the body myself. Or kill him, rather than arrest him? And what about the notes? The finger? The ear?’
‘False clues, to mislead us.’
‘And what about Mena Levy’s admirer? I don’t fit the description.’
‘You said yourself, he might not be the killer.’
‘But why?’ Pilgrim spread his hands. ‘Why would I do all those terrible things? Even a maniac has to have a reason, even if it makes sense to no one but himself.’
‘Only you would be able to answer that.’
‘I didn’t do it, Charley.’
Unexpectedly, Field grinned. ‘I know that. But my hand has been forced, for the time being.’ He sat beside Pilgrim on the cot. ‘You have to admit, it doesn’t look good. I’ve spent most of the night going through statements from witnesses, such as they are. I’ve talked to your landlady. She said she didn’t see you after seven o’clock on the night Amalia Cohen died.’
‘I fell asleep after Wainwright left.’ He hesitated. ‘How is Mrs Piper? It must have been a shock.’
‘That foetus stank to high heaven. God knows how long it had been there.’
Pilgrim touched his nose. He wouldn’t have known it was there, no matter how rank. But surely Charlotte would have smelled something foul, if it had been there long? And Wainwright hadn’t commented on any smell.
‘Your widow Piper is tougher than she looks,’ said Field.
‘I don’t think she’s the fainting type.’
‘Just as well.’ Field lifted his eyebrows, and then he continued. ‘We don’t know exactly when Mena Levy was killed, but Martha Drewitt died on the sixth of February, and Eliza Grimwood had her throat cut between eight o’clock and midnight on the third. You need to think h
ard about where you were on those nights. If you have an alibi for even one of the murders, the prosecution case will crumble.’
‘I was in the barracks, both nights.’
‘Excellent. No one’s likely to question the testimony of a dozen policemen. I won’t be allowed to interview you, for obvious reasons. They’re sending George Moxton down to do it. But it will take him a while to get here, and also for Tanner to give him all the information he needs. I’d say you have a day or two to prepare yourself and to find a decent lawyer.’ Field got to his feet. ‘In the meantime, however, the best way to clear your name is for me to find the real murderer.’
Pilgrim managed a smile. ‘You did it, Charley.’
‘Did what?’
‘You made an arrest. Now Sir Charles will have something to give the Home Secretary this morning.’
‘Other than my resignation?’ Field grinned back. ‘It’s true what Mother Molly says, Harry: every cloud has a silver lining.’
After Charley had gone Pilgrim lay down on his bunk again. He knew several lawyers who would be happy to help him: he would ask for writing paper as soon as someone came to take his empty breakfast bowl. He looked at the flaking paint on the ceiling and thought about Charlotte Piper. It must have been shocking for her to find the baby in his room. Did she believe he was a murderer? He hoped not. He hoped she knew him well enough to doubt it at least, but there was no real reason to think that she might.
He must have drifted off, for he was woken by the noise of the flap in the door. A mirror, a razor, a towel, and a bowl of water had been pushed through it. He heard boots clump off down the corridor, and cursed the missed opportunity to ask for paper. Then he shrugged. A shave would fill the time.
The water was lukewarm; he was only able to get a half-hearted lather with the soap. He felt the bristles under his fingers and guided the blade of the razor towards them. The fragment of mirror he’d been given could barely reflect a square inch of his face at any one time; it was like trying to fasten a shoelace through a keyhole. He was surprised they had given him the razor at all, considering what had happened to Johannes Appler. Then he thought again. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange. It would probably be a relief for the police force if he were to cut his own throat.