by Alex Grecian
“Doctor. It’s good to see you again so soon.” He turned and nodded at Day. “Detective,” he said. “Making progress?”
“Dr Kingsley has made an interesting discovery.”
“I’d like to show you something,” Kingsley said, “which I think might make the process of criminal identification much easier in the future.”
“By all means.”
Sir Edward gestured toward his desk, which was far neater and more organized than Day’s own. Kingsley set his bag on the desk and opened it. He laid the piece of foolscap in the center of Sir Edward’s blotter and held out his hand to Day, who gave over the razor. Kingsley set that down nearer to the three men than the paper and then took the shears from Day as well. He picked up the ink bottle and handed it to Day.
“I believe that’s yours. Thank you for the use of it. May I trouble you now for a pen?”
Sir Edward took a pen from his top desk drawer and handed it to Kingsley. Kingsley nodded at the ink bottle and Day opened it. Kingsley jabbed the pen into the ink and leaned over the desk.
“I should have labeled these immediately, but I believe I remember the order of them.”
He scratched a name under each of the four useful marks on the paper: Day, Blacker, Mayhew, and finally his own name.
“Who’s Mayhew?” Day said.
“Isn’t that the name of the unfortunate man from the storage closet?”
“He said his name was Henry.”
“Yes, Henry Mayhew.”
“He never gave a family name, only Henry.”
“Well, for some reason, the name Mayhew sticks in my mind. Regardless of whether it’s correct, we shall know that it stands here for that same man.”
Day nodded and indicated that Kingsley should continue.
“Now, Sir Edward,” Kingsley said, “as I showed your detectives yesterday, each and every citizen has a pattern on the skin that is different from that of anyone else in the city.”
“Do you mean skin coloring? Brown and white and freckled and so on?”
“No, sir, a pattern of ridges. Look carefully at your fingertips.”
Sir Edward held his hand up to the light and stared at his fingers. “You mean the wrinkles here at the knuckle?”
“Even smaller. If you’ll look at this piece of paper, you’ll see that the application of ink brings the patterns out and records them for future comparison. Here we have finger marks made by two of your detectives, a street person, and myself. None of them are exactly the same. There are minute differences in them all. And if you were to record this same sort of mark from the tip of the thumb or finger of everyone for miles around, none of them would match exactly.”
“That’s impossible. A fingertip is too small. Eventually you would come across an exact likeness.”
“It would seem so, but I believe this is one of nature’s many little miracles. Now, as fascinating as this is in theory, I’m about to put it into practice.”
He reached into his open bag and removed a brightly decorated tin that had once held snuff, but when Kingsley opened it Day could see a quantity of black powder inside.
“You’ve already shaved the charcoal,” Day said.
Kingsley smiled. “By keeping a certain amount of charcoal dust prepared and ready, I believe I might save time in the future. Now let’s see what evidence we can find on these two instruments of murder.”
He tapped a small amount of dust out onto his hand and blew it across the surface of the shears, then did the same with the straight razor. He picked them up, one at a time, and shook off the excess dust, then set them next to the paper and got his magnifying lens from the bag. He peered through it at the razor, moved over to the shears, back to the razor.
“Here,” he said. “And here. You see?”
He turned around and pushed the lens into Day’s hands. Day bent over the weapons and looked at the magnified marks. He played the lens over the paper and then back to the shears.
“Remarkable,” he said. “Unless I’m mistaken, I see Mr Blacker’s prints on these scissors. These, right here, may be yours. But there are more that don’t match any on the paper.”
“Those are undoubtedly the marks of Inspector Little’s killer,” Kingsley said.
“You don’t say,” Sir Edward said. “May I?”
Sir Edward bent over the items on his blotter and spent several minutes looking through the lens before straightening back up. He was frowning.
“I see it. I do see it. Mr Day, you’ve handled this razor, as has the good doctor and, it would seem, Mr Blacker. This other mark, this Mayhew fellow, his marks aren’t visible on the razor. At least not to my eyes, but perhaps Dr Kingsley has a more well-trained ability of perception. These shears, on the other hand, have all four sets of markings, and at least three other patterns.”
“Yes,” Kingsley said. “Very observant, sir. I’m going to assume that at least one of the sets of prints on the razor belong to the victim, since we’re going on the theory that his own razor was used to shave and kill him, but I won’t know until I have a chance to retrieve finger marks from the body in my laboratory and compare them.”
“Grisly work, that.”
“Simply a part of the job, sir. A new part of the job. I believe I’ll institute this step in all future examinations. It might even be possible to build some sort of repository of finger marks to compare against.”
“That sounds dreadfully tedious.”
“But if a suspect were to be winnowed out by other methods, then this sort of evidence might prove the clincher, mightn’t it?” Day said.
“And I can imagine other uses for this,” Kingsley said. “I’ve been considering it for quite a while now. Think of how useful it might be in helping to find missing persons. Or identifying bodies. You have no idea how many bodies come through my laboratory in a week that are not claimed, that end up being buried anonymously.”
“I understand how frustrating that must be,” Sir Edward said. “I’m not entirely convinced, but there does seem to be enough merit here to explore this.”
“Thank you. Let me dust the opposite side as well, the side lying against the table now. There may be surprises awaiting us there. But at the moment, these finger marks do provide us some clues.”
“Such as?”
“You already knew that Mayhew, the dancing man, has handled the shears. But he did not handle the razor. That points to his innocence in the murders committed by … What did Mr Blacker call him?”
“The Beard Killer.”
“Right. The Beard Killer is not your dancing man. At least, I don’t believe he is. This doesn’t excuse him from possible suspicion in Inspector Little’s murder.”
“I have some trouble believing Mr Little would have been surprised and overpowered by the dancing man.”
“Nevertheless, it is at least a possibility. But the extraneous set of marks on the shears do not match any of the marks on the razor.”
“We already suspected that the Beard Killer and Little’s killer were not the same man.”
“But this confirms it.”
“If we can somehow find more prints to compare with both weapons…”
“The trunk. I will dust the entire trunk and we may discover something helpful there.”
“Indeed.”
“I wish we’d known of this even yesterday,” Sir Edward said. “I can see how it may be quite useful in the future. But for now, please continue along traditional lines of investigation and use this as a last resort until we know more. I would like to have some confirmation that these finger patterns are always different. I won’t see a man convicted and imprisoned solely on the strength of his fingertip marks.”
“Of course, sir.”
“But let’s keep this in mind as a means of narrowing down the pool of suspects in a case.”
“Thank you, Sir Edward,” Kingsley said.
“Now-”
Kingsley and Day jumped at the sound of a knock at Sir Edward�
��s door.
“Yes?” Sir Edward said.
“Sir, there’s been a development,” Blacker said.
“Well, open the door and talk to me face-to-face, man.”
Blacker came in and bowed his head. “Sorry, sir.”
“Like the Crystal Palace in here today, all this traffic in and out of my office. What is it, man?”
“There’s been another murder.”
“There’s always another murder.”
“Another body was found in a trunk, sir. I’m afraid it’s another policeman.”
50
His name’s Sam Pizer,” Blackleg said.
Hammersmith was sitting with the criminal at a small round table in a pub five blocks from the Shaw residence. He had been late arriving and Blackleg seemed impatient. Judging by the number of empty mugs on the table, Blackleg hadn’t waited for Hammersmith before he began drinking.
“The chimney sweep, you mean?”
“Yeah. You been tippin’ the bottle already, copper? Y’act like yer on the deck of a sinkin’ ship. Yer weavin’ about on yer chair.”
“I was poisoned earlier today.”
Blackleg sat up and leaned forward. “What’d they use?”
“Benzene.”
“Aye, I’ve had it myself. You’ll be shipshape by the day after tomorrow. Plenty a sleep, plenty a water. That’ll do the trick fer ya.”
“I feared I might not wake up if I slept. I had a great deal of trouble the last time I awoke.”
“I never said it’d be fun to wake up. But unless you was already dead afore you come in here, you’ll wake up again.”
Blackleg gestured to the serving girl to bring another mug. He shook his head at Hammersmith.
“You’ll wanna be avoidin’ the drink, though, or your head’ll shoot clean off and to the moon.”
“Tea sounds lovely.”
“You’ll drink water.”
When the girl brought Blackleg’s ale, he asked her to bring his friend the biggest glass of water she could find. As he watched her go, Hammersmith noticed two tarts at a table across the room. They seemed familiar to him, and it appeared they’d been looking his way, but he couldn’t be sure. He turned his attention back to his tablemate.
“You said you’d discovered the chimney sweep’s name,” Hammersmith said.
“Right. Not easy to track down, neither.”
“Well, how did you do it?”
“You did the right thing, you did, settin’ a gonoph to find a gonoph.”
“A gonoph?”
“Somebody don’t mind gettin’ a little dirty in the pursuit of coin, right?”
“Oh. Understood.”
“I asked around a bit, here and there, nothin’ too indiscreet, you understand. Pressed a little of the coin you gave me into the right palms.”
Hammersmith winced. He’d given Blackleg half the grocery money for the month in order to help the criminal track the chimney sweep. He hoped Pringle would be able to come through with groceries for them both, or Hammersmith would have to tighten his belt again.
“Anyway, I found him in a flash house down the road a piece. He’s been talkin’ up his business, askin’ about for a kid might do as a climber. Seems he lost the climber he had.”
The girl interrupted them with Hammersmith’s water. She plonked it down on the table, rattling Blackleg’s empties, and turned on her heel before Hammersmith could thank her. Clearly she wasn’t impressed by men who drank water. Hammersmith saw the tarts across the room looking at him again and finally recognized them as the same two from the previous evening. The tall one had a distinctive scar across her face. He was still certain they had set the younger woman to bait him. He was surprised because this pub seemed a good bit nicer than that other one had. He smiled at them and raised his glass. The two women abruptly stood and hurried down a hall at the back of the pub. They were quickly out of sight.
Hammersmith shrugged and took a drink. The water burned his throat going down, and still unable to breathe through his broken nose, he felt a sudden panicky sensation, as if he were drowning. He set the glass down on the table and left it there.
“Where can I find him?” he said. “The chimney sweep. Where is he?”
“You don’t wanna go where he is, Mr Hammersmith.”
“I can handle myself.”
“Oh, no doubt of that. But you’d be outnumbered afore you got two words out, and I don’t like yer chances.”
“You go with me, then.”
He watched Blackleg size him up, taking in the ripped and soiled clothes, the broken nose, the eyes that wouldn’t focus properly. At last the criminal nodded.
“Aye, I guess I’d better go along, hadn’t I? Come with me.”
51
He knows.”
“He don’t know.”
Liza and Esme were in the alley behind their favorite pub. It seemed to be deserted except for dozens of broken crates stacked against the wall behind them.
“But that’s two times we seen him.”
“Did you hear his name?”
“I heard the other one call him it. I walked right by their table.”
“He’s on the beat, is all. Or havin’ a drink afore he goes home.”
“He ain’t drunk nothin’, though,” Esme said. “And Jonny’s on the beat round here, not him.”
“Could be Jonny’s ill.”
Esme gave Liza a look that said she was through arguing about it.
“Fine, then,” Liza said, “if he knows, he knows.”
Esme threw her hands in the air, clearly exasperated. She opened her mouth to speak.
“How much?”
Liza turned to see a man shambling out of the shadows behind the crates. He smelled like rye, and the four front teeth in his upper jaw were missing, leaving a gaping pink maw of need.
“I said, how much?” the man said.
Esme’s lip curled and she turned away, leaving Liza to deal with the potential customer. The man didn’t have a beard or mustache.
“We’re done for the night,” Liza said.
“Can’t be. It’s early yet.”
“We’re done when we says we is.”
“When I says you is, is when yer done.”
He reached out and Liza slapped his hands away.
“Hard to get, eh?” the man said.
But then he suddenly backed away from Liza, his hands up, and Liza turned to see Esme holding a pistol. The man tried to smile, his lips quivering, the black hole of his mouth twisted in a leer.
“No need for that, little lady. I was innerested in yer friend, anyhow. Don’t go in for big scars like the one you got there, not that you ain’t fetching. Let’s all be friends.”
“I have enough friends,” Esme said.
She pulled the trigger.
The three of them stood for what seemed a lifetime, waiting for the echo of the gun’s report to fade down the stone walls of the alley. When they could hear silence again, the man blinked at the two women and then collapsed, his knees buckling under him. He fell gradually, straight down and from the bottom up so that he appeared to be shrinking in on himself. When he had reached the ground, he finally slumped back, and Liza could see the blood flowing from his gut faster than his clothes could soak it up. The black fluid spread out, free of the flesh. The man sputtered once and did not move again or make another sound.
“You didn’t have to shoot, Esme. He was harmless enough.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Well, accidents happen. We’d best move on afore Jonny comes runnin’.”
Liza took the gun and shoved it to the bottom of her bag, and then she grabbed Esme by the elbow and dragged her through the door back into the pub. The back passage was empty, nobody running to investigate the sound of a gunshot. Liza let go of Esme’s arm and turned to face her.
“I really didn’t mean to shoot him, Liza.”
“I know, love. It don’t matter. Lord knows we done worse.”
“He didn’t have no beard like the others. Like-”
Esme closed her mouth, bit off the next word. It didn’t matter. Liza knew what she was going to say. Like him. Him. Saucy Jack, the great bearded beast of Whitechapel. He had left his mark on Esme’s face and on her chest, and she still waited for him to return and claim her.
“He was a man, wasn’t he?”
“Aye. He was.”
“Then the beard don’t matter, whether it’s there or not.”
“The other ones, the ones we done up, they had the beard.”
Like him.
“The bluebottle don’t have it, neither.”
“Are we gonna do him up, too?”
“If we don’t wanna get caught we will.”
“He might not know.”
“You’re the one said he does.”
“That was afore I kilt that man back there. I don’t wanna kill no more, Liza.”
“We started somethin’.”
“I think it’s enough. None of ’em with beards was the one. And I don’t feel so mad no more.”
“What if I still do?”
“Oh, Liza.”
Esme stepped in close and put her hand on the back of Liza’s neck. She drew her in and Liza breathed the smell of her, sweat and smoke and mint, and Esme’s mouth was on hers and her body pushed in close. Warmth radiated out from Liza’s core. Her face flushed and she shut her eyes to contain it.
Esme broke the kiss and stepped away. Liza took a moment before opening her eyes. She smiled.
“All right, love,” she said. “Unless someone else gets in our way, the bluebottle will be the last one.”
“Only ’cause he knows it was us done the others.”
“Only ’cause he knows.”
“Good. Liza?”
“Yes, love?”
“What’s his name? The bluebottle, I mean. You said you heard the other one say his name.”
“Hammersmith. The other one called him Hammersmith.”
Esme nodded. “Then he’ll be the last one. We’ll kill Mr Hammersmith and be done with it.”