Mind of a Killer

by Simon Beaufort

  As he spoke, the door opened, and a boy darted out, loaded down with lead pipes. He gave Lonsdale and Hulda a friendly nod as he passed.

  ‘Ain’t much left now,’ he said helpfully. ‘Better hurry.’

  ‘Where’s the nearest alehouse?’ Lonsdale called after him.

  The boy nodded to a spot past the Board School. ‘Just down there – the Jolly Tar.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why he’d be jolly around here,’ muttered Hulda. ‘Still, I see why you want to go – it would have been Walker’s local, and we know from the inquest that she plied her trade in taverns.’

  The Jolly Tar was crammed to bursting, but exclusively with men. As Lonsdale and Hulda entered, all conversation stopped, and every eye in the room turned to them in what Lonsdale could only describe as naked hostility. To persist would be reckless, so he left abruptly, pulling Hulda with him. As the door closed behind them, the buzz of conversation resumed.

  ‘Are they all going to be like that?’ asked Hulda uneasily.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Lonsdale. He thought for a moment. ‘At the inquest, Mrs Tanner said that she last saw Cath at the Dog and Bone on Minto Street. Let’s try there. I think I can find it – I looked at a map before we left.’

  Lonsdale had been in areas of chronic privation before, but few were as mean, poor, and hopeless as the area between Westcott and Minto streets. They traversed alleys into which even the police seldom ventured, lined with lodging-houses of the worst type, catering to costermongers, mudlarks, robbers, pickpockets and prostitutes. They were teetering, half-ruinous buildings that looked less safe than Mrs Tanner’s lodgings – but were still in use.

  They turned into a passage about twenty-yards long and three-feet wide. At the end of it was a rectangular court, illuminated only by the light from upper-storey windows. Slimy wet mould grew on the few paving stones that had not been prised up and spirited away, and on the rubbish that littered the yard like bizarrely shaped gravestones. It stank of urine and decay, and rats scurried in the shadows, brazenly feeding on a dead dog.

  ‘Here?’ asked Hulda, gripping Lonsdale’s arm tightly. ‘Are you sure?’

  Lonsdale struck a match, and in its momentary flare he saw an old horse trough filled with all manner of putrid rubbish. To his right were three latrines, open to the elements, the pit below them overflowing and topped by a layer of scum. A bucket of filthy water was set for those individuals inclined to rinse their hands. Lonsdale was not surprised that cholera and typhoid regularly ravaged the population.

  The match went out, so Lonsdale groped his way forward, right arm extended to feel his way ahead and left hand holding Hulda’s. He moved gingerly until he felt a clammy, dirt-encrusted wall. A small arch halfway along gave access to a tiny, stinking alley that led into Minto Street. Evidently it was an important watering hole, as it was heaving with beer houses, gin palaces and taverns of every description. Despite it being eleven o’clock, the road was busy with people walking in pairs or alone, some weaving, some strolling, a few moving purposefully.

  ‘Why are all these children out?’ asked Hulda, retrieving her hand now they were in a better-lit place. ‘Why don’t they go home?’

  ‘Some people make money by letting out their rooms for immoral purposes at night,’ explained Lonsdale. ‘Or the mothers are prostitutes who need somewhere to take their clients. The children will go home in the morning.’

  Before he could add more, Hulda pointed to a decaying sign of a rather wicked-looking dog holding what looked unpleasantly like a human femur. She strode purposefully towards it, ignoring Lonsdale’s suggestion that they look through the windows first, to avoid a repetition of their first experience. She put her hand on the door handle, and glanced back at him.

  ‘I’ll do the talking,’ she said. ‘You just stand and listen.’

  The Dog and Bone was tightly packed, with men, women, and even children collectively exuding a breathtaking stench of sweat, unwashed clothes and cheap tobacco. Underlying all was the warm aroma of horse manure, brought in on the patrons’ shoes. A fire popped and hissed in one corner, adding its own pollution but doing little to provide warmth. The walls were brown and splattered with stains, and the sawdust on the floor had not been changed in months.

  A woman wearing a black wig reeled into Lonsdale, wafting gin-laden breath into his face as, simultaneously, he felt her hand slide into his coat pocket. He had taken the precaution of hiding the small amount of money he had brought in the lining of his jacket, so he was not unduly concerned about theft. He could not deny, however, that being frisked so brazenly was disconcerting. He eased away, then almost tripped over a child so small that she had to use both hands to hold her jug.

  ‘Watch it!’ she snarled, as the mild stout known as ‘entire’ slopped over the rim. ‘This costs money!’

  She raised the jug to her lips and quaffed a good part of it with all the ease of the experienced drinker. Then she wiped her lips on her sleeve before joining two other children under a table.

  Hulda reached the bar and perched on a stool, where she was immediately surrounded by men, several of whom offered to light the cigar she pulled out and clamped between her teeth. Lonsdale’s heart sank, and he wondered whether she had considered the fact that it cost more than these men would earn in a day. Thankfully, none of them seemed to notice, and he watched in growing alarm as she affected an appallingly bad cockney accent and began to hold forth. Whether because they were interested in what she had to say, or because she was by far the most attractive woman in the room, she soon had quite a following.

  Lonsdale edged as close as he dared and watched as she artfully steered the conversation around to Cath. To his astonishment, her admirers vied frantically with each other to answer her questions. All the while, Hulda looked from one to the next, giving each the impression that she had never met anyone more interesting in her life.

  ‘It was a shame about Cath,’ said a short, stocky fellow with scarred hands that suggested he worked in a steel foundry; his friends called him Frank. ‘We all liked her, if you know what I mean.’ He treated Hulda to a leering wink.

  ‘She was a good friend,’ agreed Hulda in her terrible accent. ‘More like a sister, really.’

  ‘And old Joe,’ said another, raising his frothing tankard of four-ale in tribute. ‘I’ll miss him, too.’

  ‘Joe?’ asked Hulda guilelessly. ‘You mean Joe Johnson? Was she still knocking around with him?’

  ‘I don’t know any Joe Johnson,’ said the tankard man doubtfully. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Must have been before your time, Bob,’ suggested Frank. He beamed at Hulda, keen to win her favour. ‘Was he a skinny fellow, lived in Long Walk and died of the consumption?’

  ‘Maybe,’ hedged Hulda, too clever to agree to something that might trip her up later.

  ‘You must be older than you look, if you remember Cath with him,’ said Frank, giving Hulda a dig in the ribs with his elbow; if Lonsdale had taken such a liberty, he was certain Hulda would have responded with violence. As it was, she simply listened. ‘We’re talking about Joe Greaves, who she walked out with more recent-like.’

  ‘Oh, Joe Greaves,’ exclaimed Hulda. ‘The one who worked on the railway?’

  ‘No,’ said Bob. ‘That’s Joe Hayes. He died about five years ago, hit by a train.’

  Lonsdale resisted the urge to point out that being named Joe was dangerous in Bermondsey.

  ‘Joe Greaves worked on the coal barges,’ said a short, bald man. ‘Up London Pool way. Good job, too. It’s a wicked shame that someone did away with him. He had a wife and children.’

  ‘Poor things,’ sighed Hulda. ‘Perhaps I should visit them, seeing as me and Cath were close.’

  ‘She’d like that,’ said Baldy, although Lonsdale could not imagine why the widow could possibly want to see a friend of the woman her husband ‘walked out with’. ‘She still lives in the same place.’

  ‘The workhouse?’ asked Hulda, sipping her second gi
n from a thick, greasy glass.

  ‘Don’t talk daft!’ Frank said, while Lonsdale cringed – there were only so many mistakes Hulda could make before even the most drunken of admirers would suspect something amiss. But he was underestimating Hulda’s charm. ‘Mrs Greaves wouldn’t be at the workhouse with what her Joe was making on the barges. She lives in Mermaid Court, over by the Zion Chapel; number ten.’ Frank smacked his hand on the bar to gain the attention of the landlord, then gestured for Hulda’s glass to be refilled, while Hulda beamed at him and blew a thin stream of cigar smoke up at the ceiling.

  ‘Makes you sick, don’t it?’ came a low voice at Lonsdale’s side. He turned to see a sad-eyed woman sitting next to him. She wore a cheap sateen dress, which had faded from black to brown. She had a pale, thin face, and greasy hair with nits nestling at the roots.

  ‘It does,’ agreed Lonsdale, and turned to watch Hulda again.

  ‘See? Even you’re at it,’ said the woman spitefully. ‘As long as she’s here, no one else will get a look in. I been working here for six years, and now some north bank tart comes swanning in and takes all my regulars. And Frank’s been buying her quarterns of gin like they’re free. It ain’t right.’

  So, thought Lonsdale, Hulda might be able to wrap men around her little finger, but she had only made enemies among the women. He decided to leave her to it and work on the ladies instead.

  ‘She’s only here because Cath died,’ he said reassuringly. ‘She’ll leave soon.’

  ‘She’ll be back,’ predicted the woman, eyeing Hulda with raw jealousy. ‘The likes of her knows a good thing when she sees it.’

  Lonsdale was sure she did, but he was equally certain that she would not consider it to be the clientele of the Dog and Bone.

  ‘Drink?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, yes,’ said the woman, pleased. ‘And to show I got more taste than she does, I’ll have a Scotch.’ She spoke the last word at quite a volume, sliding her glass across the bar for the landlord to fill. ‘Come on, Bill. The gentleman here is buying.’

  ‘Right you are, Tilly,’ said the landlord. ‘Large one, is it?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Tilly, regarding him askance. ‘What else?’

  When the glass had been filled so high that there was a meniscus across the top, Tilly put both hands on the bar for balance and lowered her lips towards it. Lonsdale watched entranced as, with a soundless slurp, her lips made contact: not a drop was spilled, although he suspected that if one had, she would just have licked it off the counter.

  ‘Did you know Cath?’ asked Lonsdale when the glass had been drained and the whole process repeated. ‘I met her a couple of times.’

  Of course, he thought, once was when she was dead, but there was no need to mention that.

  ‘Of course I knew her! Poor lass – throat slit like an animal to slaughter. It happened up in Regent’s Park, although God knows what she was doing there. Always did have ideas above herself, Cath. Ain’t so grand now, is she?’

  ‘What ideas?’ asked Lonsdale.

  ‘What are you, a peeler?’ asked Tilly, loud and suspicious.

  Several heads turned in his direction, and Lonsdale realized that he was asking too many questions, instead of steering the conversation subtly like Hulda.

  ‘Do I look like a peeler?’ he asked with as much indignation as he could muster.

  ‘Yeah, you could pass for one, actually,’ said Tilly. ‘But if you say you’re not …’

  ‘I do,’ said Lonsdale firmly.

  Tilly grimaced. ‘They were in here last week asking about Cath. Of course, they don’t care about her now, not when they got the music-hall man’s killer to catch.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘Did you ever see him? He had this wonderful turn with a bicycle, an umbrella and an accordion. His place was at the Wilton Music Hall, over on Sayer Street.’

  ‘He was good?’

  ‘The best – folks came all the way from Hampstead to see him. And that explains why Cath and Joe are getting ignored.’

  ‘Did the three of them know each other?’

  Tilly laughed at the notion. ‘The likes of Philip Yeats doesn’t mix with the likes of us, no matter how grand Joe and Cath thought they was with their flash money and smart clothes.’

  ‘I thought Joe was a bargeman. What flash money?’

  ‘Lord, sir! A woman could die of thirst in here.’

  Lonsdale put two shillings on the counter for the remainder of the bottle. Tilly hooked dirty fingers around it and held it close to her chest. She tipped forward on her stool, and Lonsdale was not sure whether she was going to kiss him or pass out in his lap. Neither would have been welcome, but all she did was lower her voice and start to talk.

  ‘Joe had a good wage from the barges – sometimes ten shillings a week! But lately he had extra. A lot extra. So did Cath.’

  ‘Where did this extra come from?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Tilly resentfully. ‘Because neither of them could do anything I can’t, and I’d like some cash myself. All I can tell you is that they had meetings in different parts of the city – and when they came back, they always had money.’

  ‘Do you know where?’

  ‘No, but if you find out, will you tell me? If you do, I’ll share what I get with you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lonsdale politely, suspecting that Tilly would be wiser to stay away from the whole affair.

  Leaving the Dog and Bone was more difficult than arriving, because Hulda’s throng of admirers had grown while Lonsdale had been entertaining Tilly. He eased his way through them and nodded to indicate that it was time to go. Hulda, however, had been an interesting diversion with her stories and wit, and the men who encircled her were enjoying themselves. When she tried to take Lonsdale’s arm, he became the object of some venomous looks, while she was propelled back onto her stool and ordered to tell them another tale, like the one about the bishop’s daughter and the jar of Macassar oil.

  Fortunately, Lonsdale was not the only one who wanted Hulda out of there. So did Tilly, who was more than happy to help oust the pretty rival from her domain.

  ‘When you hear me holler, grab the doxy and run,’ she ordered. ‘Some might follow you, so nip into the doorway around the corner. They won’t bother looking for long. It’s a rotten night, and it’s nice in here.’

  Idly, Lonsdale wondered what her home was like if she considered the Dog and Bone ‘nice’.

  Tilly took one more gulp from her bottle, then tottered towards a table, which she climbed onto unsteadily. She almost fell, but was steadied by eager hands. Whatever she was about to do, Lonsdale had the sense that she had done it to good effect before, as Hulda was already losing her admirers. Suspecting the diversion would not last long, Lonsdale edged towards Hulda.

  When it came, Tilly’s yell created a sensation. Heads whipped around, and men began to cheer. Lonsdale darted forward, grabbed Hulda, and steered her towards the door.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ demanded Hulda, trying to pull away. ‘I want to see.’

  ‘I don’t think you will,’ predicted Lonsdale. ‘Now, move – unless you want to be here all night.’

  Not everyone was diverted by Tilly, however, and a couple of men cried their indignation when they saw what Lonsdale was doing. He barged outside, hauling Hulda unceremoniously down the alley and into the doorway Tilly had mentioned. Several men followed, but Tilly was right – they did not linger long before returning to the shabby tavern. Lonsdale heaved a sigh of relief, while Hulda regarded him furiously.

  ‘That was unnecessary,’ she whispered curtly. ‘I was enjoying myself – and so was my audience.’

  ‘Perhaps so, but I suspect it wouldn’t have been long before they lost interest in your stories and demanded a different kind of entertainment.’

  Hulda’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  Lonsdale stared at her, not sure whether she genuinely wanted an answer or was merely trying to embarrass him. He realized he did not understand he
r at all. She swore, was more outspoken than was seemly, and she smoked. Yet there was a curious, contradictory innocence in her.

  ‘Things might have become unpleasant,’ he hedged.

  ‘It was unpleasant the moment we stepped inside,’ sneered Hulda, then sighed. ‘But it was worth it – we have a name for Walker’s dead friend. Shall we go and see the widow now?’

  But Lonsdale demurred. They had escaped from the Jolly Tar and the Dog and Bone, but their luck would not last forever. ‘Tomorrow, at a more decent hour.’

  ‘But you’ve been saying all day that this is the time to deal with whores and ruffians.’

  ‘Mrs Greaves is – or was – a wife and mother. We’ve no reason to believe that – although poor – she has anything but the best character. So, we should call on her in the evening, not late at night. If we want information from her, we shouldn’t start by treating her with disrespect.’

  Hulda pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. ‘I wish I had seen what your woman was going to do, though. I might have learned something.’

  ‘I doubt it was anything you’d want to try yourself,’ said Lonsdale. ‘Incidentally, she told me that at times Greaves and Cath had extra money that had nothing to do with their regular work.’

  Hulda nodded. ‘Frank said the same. Greaves would swagger into the tavern and buy drinks all around, even though it wasn’t payday. People asked him how he could afford it, but he wouldn’t say. Walker didn’t share her windfalls – instead, she bought herself new clothes and drank whisky rather than gin.’

  ‘When we learn who paid them and why, we may know why they died.’

  Hulda nodded. ‘Let’s hope that Widow Greaves will know, so that tomorrow will see us with answers at last.’

  Lonsdale peered into the shadows to ensure none of Hulda’s suitors were still there. The alleys seemed safe, so he led the way to Minto Street, aware that while the road had been crowded when they arrived, it was now virtually deserted. Before he could step into the street, Hulda grabbed his arm.

  ‘Someone’s over there,’ she whispered. ‘In the shadows by the Fountain and Grapes.’