Dread Murder

by Gwendoline Butler

After all, they did this for their horses, so why not their men?

  Judged this way, some officers were gentlemen and some were not. The Major remembered that the great Duke himself, although he thought his army was scum, nevertheless got the badge of a gentleman.

  ‘Not that we ever thought of it like that, or said so; but we knew it. “He’s a good ’un,” we said,’ thought the Major.

  ‘You’ve gone quiet,’ said Denny, as he poured the Royal burgundy.

  The Major said slowly: ‘You know the King has not. The King is not quiet.’ He drained his glass. ‘Let’s have another drink.’

  They finished the bottle.

  The Major awoke late, his head aching (the burgundy could not have been as good as he had thought). But after a breakfast of hot tea and a slice or two of ham, cut thick, he felt better. Denny did not appear, but there were signs that he had breakfasted and gone.

  Major Mearns walked slowly down the widening path, out of the Castle and into the town. It was a fine morning, although chill. He was not an admirer of natural beauty; too many rough campaigns had made him sure that all he demanded of the scene was that it should be quiet, warm and dry.

  Outside the gate was a small figure, standing there silent and still, as if on sentry duty.

  ‘Charlie.’

  The boy did not answer for a moment, but stared, eyes quiet and interested.

  ‘What are you doing, boy?’

  ‘Just looking, Sir.’

  ‘For anything?’

  No answer.

  ‘For anyone?’

  Charlie gave a smile of great sweetness. ‘No one to talk to in the Theatre.’ Suddenly his face had a pinched look.

  ‘Have you had anything to eat?’

  ‘Theatre people don’t get up,’ said Charlie regretfully. ‘Don’t eat breakfast.’

  ‘Follow me,’ said the Major, leading him down the hill to the coffee house in the side alley.

  ‘Hot coffee for me – the strongest and the hottest,’ he ordered. He gave the boy a questioning look, and continued the order to the proprietor: ‘Same for the lad and some hot bread for him.’ Then he turned to look at Charlie again, and added, ‘make it two, he’s hungry. Had nothing to eat.’

  ‘He’ll say a prayer for you,’ said the proprietor, giving Charlie a steady look, which the boy returned with the look of one who has learnt how to live in the world and to accept breakfast when offered, even if one has eaten much already.

  As the Major was drinking his coffee while considering what to do next, a tall, thickset fellow swaggered into the eating house and sat down in the corner near the fire, where he was promptly served with cooked ham and toasted hot bread.

  Before he was finished he was given a beaker of ale and, stretching out his hand without a word, was given a small glass of something infinitely stronger. At no time did he utter a complete sentence.

  He stood up to go, still not uttering a word. He took a few puffs at an old black pipe, which was then thrust back into his pocket – still alight as far as Mearns could see. Then he was off.

  ‘A quick meal,’ remarked the Major.

  ‘And a cheap one,’ said the proprietor grimly.

  ‘Does he come every day?’ asked Mearns, who had observed that no money had passed hands.

  ‘Not every day – just when he can.’

  ‘But you are always ready for him?’ The ham and toasted bread, the ale and the whisky, had all been to hand.

  ‘It pays.’

  ‘Who is he?’ But he was already making a guess, and asking himself: ‘Why didn’t Denny and I think of this?’ But of course, in a way they had and did the same, but it was the King they took from, rather than some other patron at a coffee house.

  ‘Jim Fox – he’s one of the Crowners’ Unit … You know what that is?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘He’s off to see Felix, another fox,’ said the proprietor, who seemed a man of literature. ‘Last night’s killing made them jerk. Poor Dol … Did you know her, too?’

  ‘I knew who she was.’

  The proprietor’s face accurately reflected his view that everyone said that.

  Mearns stood up, fastening his jacket. He felt invulnerable when he had that coat on, tightly buttoned. It had seen him through Waterloo, a battle in which he had not actually fought, but in which he had been getting ready to do so when Blucher had arrived and Napoleon had yielded. ‘I’m off.’

  Charlie swallowed his mouthful. ‘Can I come too, Sir?’

  Mearns strode away without answering, but Charlie followed. No one had asked him, but he had learnt lately that a cheerful smile together with a polite voice opened doors. And he was curious, very curious.

  Deep inside him, so deep it was almost unconscious, was the feeling that events had a shape, and if you followed the first event then you would see the shape. The story.

  He followed Mearns’ broad back down the hill into a part of the town he did not know. Nice enough little houses, though; he had seen enough of the back streets of London to know what made a slum.

  The Major strode on and Charlie had to step out to keep up with him.

  He wondered what sort of story he was making up inside himself now. Well, a woman had been killed; that was a start. He frowned; he thought he’d like a bit of laughter somewhere in any story that was his, and it didn’t feel as though there was much of that in this killing.

  Looking ahead, to his surprise, he saw Mr Pickettwick apparently coming out of one of the houses down the road. Pickettwick advanced towards the Major, holding out his hand in greeting.

  The Major responded by taking his hand with a good shake. Charlie could only see the Major’s back, so he could not see if he was smiling, but he guessed he was. Mr Pickettwick was smiling, anyway.

  ‘He’s a good smiler,’ Charlie thought; they were genuine smiles. He was beginning to assess smiles, although what Mr Pickettwick’s smile meant this morning, he was not sure.

  It really wasn’t a morning to smile, in his opinion – not after a murder.

  Once they were talking, Charlie kept his face down, staring into the gutter, until the two men began to walk on together – almost as if they had met by plan.

  He went on watching them with interest, his mind busy arranging them into his story. In his tale, the two men had met to call at a house down this road.

  Mr Pickettwick broke off his conversation on the murder of Dol, the whore of Windsor.

  ‘Is the boy with you?’

  Mearns did not answer for a moment. If he had said anything straight away, it would have been ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

  ‘He is following us,’ observed Mr Pickettwick.

  ‘He could be,’ agreed Mearns. He took an unobtrusive look. ‘Take no notice. Ignore him.’

  ‘Seems like a nice boy, speaks well, some education … He ought to go home.’

  ‘If he has one.’

  ‘Where’s he living?’

  ‘In the Theatre, I think. It can only be temporary. Are you staying in Gracious Street, Mr Pickettwick?’

  Pickettwick gave his sweet smile. ‘No. I have been visiting a friend in Ellen Street.’

  The Major mentally assessed the inhabitants of Ellen Street. He kept a kind of an address book in his head. The Barret family in the first house. Miss Macaulay in the second; a highly respectable lady, she had taught in the schoolroom of the younger Princesses. Even he did not know who owned or lived in the next house, which had recently been sold. The last house in the row was the dwelling place of Amy Delauney, and he certainly knew who she was: the beautiful, elegant, more-expensive equivalent of poor dead Dol. Not a bad house visit if you fancied it. She was lovely and willing – very willing the gossip said – but she was also willing to use a little blackmail if necessary. Some thought it worth it, as she was not unreasonable. It depended on how you felt about that sort of thing. ‘Miss Macaulay,’ went on Mr Pickettwick, ‘a friend of my daughter.’ The Major remained silent with his thoughts.

 
; ‘Ten minutes with her and then how long with her near neighbour of the lustrous hair and friendly nature?’ thought the cynical Major. ‘Wonder how the two women get on?’

  ‘I’m on my way back into town,’ Pickettwick explained. ‘No more news about the sad killing last night? No, I thought not. You would have said.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ thought the Major, ‘I keep my own counsel.’

  ‘I have promised Mr Thornton a drink of some good Madeira this morning …he will tell me what he knows.’ Mr Pickettwick held out his hand.

  The Major shook it. ‘Take the boy with you.’ Mearns turned his head to look behind him.

  The boy had disappeared.

  There was no difficulty in finding out which was the house from which the Crowners’ Unit managed its affairs, because Felix’s head was visible through the window. He had his back to the window, talking to a man inside, but he turned around, still talking. Then he saw Mearns.

  The Major gave a wave as he advanced up the garden path. They had never worked together. He knew what Felix was and did, just as Felix knew, within limitations, what Mearns did, but that did not make them friends.

  Mearns was jealous of Felix – plain, straightforward, manly jealousy on account of Mindy, and he could see that Mindy liked Felix. He did not try to stop being jealous. Jealousy was not a wine to drink in moderation. Better to get drunk on it and get over it.

  The front door was not locked – hardly practical to have it locked with members of the Unit coming and going all the time. Felix advanced to meet Mearns while beckoning to the other man to whom he had been talking, nodding him to the way out. A big burly figure, he brushed against the Major, but touched his forelock politely as he did so.

  Addressing Felix, Major Mearns said: ‘Just calling to see you.’

  ‘I wondered when you’d do just that.’ He led Mearns through to the room the Unit used, and spread out his hands, as if offering a display. ‘You see us as we are – a bare room. Don’t be mistaken though.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘It’s all here.’

  ‘Best place for it.’

  ‘Same place you use, from what I’ve heard.’ It was true enough that Mearns wrote very little down, even delivering important reports by mouth. He had learnt that much of politics: trust no one.

  ‘Everyone says you are doing a very good job. That’s what I hear.’

  Felix nodded. ‘Good. You want to talk about poor Dol’s death? That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t deny it.’

  Felix walked across the room to a cupboard in the wall, from which he took a bottle and two glasses. ‘Let me offer you a drink.’ He poured a good measure. ‘I was advised to keep a bottle of brandy in case I should need to receive a lady in distress or a gentleman suffering an Injury.’

  ‘And have you?’ The bottle was half empty.

  Felix gave his charming grin. ‘Not so far. But I have several times felt a little strained myself.’

  The Major looked at his glass, studying the colour and smell. ‘Rum,’ he said aloud.

  ‘I fancy it works better than brandy, and I prefer it myself.’

  ‘What more is known about the death of poor Dol? Is her killer known? Or even caught?’

  ‘Not caught, of course,’ said Felix soberly. ‘Not known either.’ He paused, then went on: ‘She was strangled …you saw that for yourself. Strangled by a pair of hands.’

  ‘By a man then?’ the Major suggested.

  ‘It does seem likely, doesn’t it? One of her … customers – an unsatisfied one?’ There was a note of doubt in Felix’s voice. ‘But the poor young actress who found her …’

  ‘Henrietta Temple,’ prompted the Major, thinking it was the first time anyone had called Henrietta ‘poor’. ‘Young’, yes, but not ‘poor’, as she specialised in rich protectors – one of whom was a Royal duke.

  There was a hint of a smile at the back of Felix’s eyes, which suggested he knew all about Henrietta.

  ‘Yes, she says she saw a woman disappearing into the darkness. Dressed all in black.’

  ‘So the strangler could have been a woman?’ The Major wanted to follow this through.

  Felix shrugged. ‘No one else saw a strange woman in the Theatre that night. Doesn’t mean anything, of course. The play was Macbeth after all; there were a lot of people going round dressed in dark cloaks.’

  ‘The three witches, for instance?’

  ‘The Thorntons – husband and wife – were two of them,’ said Felix, with that smile again.

  ‘They were all on stage for most of the performance. I could see them lurking around,’ said the Major reluctantly. He did not like Mr Thornton and would have been glad to have had him for murder. ‘Perhaps his wife pretended to be both of them …she’s large enough.’

  ‘Whoever it was, it scared that poor young woman who saw her,’ said Felix sardonically.

  ‘Ought to have had some of your brandy or rum ready for the poor girl.’ Mearns was enjoying his own potion, while wondering why Felix was being so generous.

  ‘She was given some water. Women are tough, you know. And an actress …trained to recover quickly.’

  Their glasses were refilled, then Felix said, with some hesitation: ‘There has been some trouble in the Theatre lately … I have been looking into it.’

  ‘Ah!’ thought Mearns, ‘so that is why I got a welcome. He wants to tell me, and find out what, if anything, I know.’

  ‘Thefts?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe that would disturb them so much. No.’ Again some hesitation before stating: ‘Blood …’

  ‘Nasty.’ It was all Mearns could say as he gulped down some rum. He was thankful Denny was not with him, because for sure Denny would have claimed the blood for Traddles. He could almost hear Denny’s voice: ‘That’s Traddles’ blood …so that is where he was killed and cut up.’

  His own voice was echoing it, but silently. Yet he knew he had to say something.

  ‘How much blood?’ he asked at last – his voice steady, trying not to sound too interested.

  ‘Two or three pools in the yard behind the Theatre. It leads on to Waterloo Place.’

  ‘Then on to Peascod Street.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You can see why the blood and now the killing are making them all nervous.’ Felix was walking slowly round the room as he spoke.

  ‘You too,’ the Major thought to himself. ‘You need help, my friend. This is too much for you, Felix, and you don’t know what to do.’ He decided to tell him.

  ‘Someone will know who killed her and someone else will know about the blood.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes, you just have to keep asking. It’s how it works.’ The Major tried to sound decisive.

  ‘God help me,’ Major Mearns thought, ‘I hope I’m right. Always worked inside the Castle, but that’s a special world. No secrets inside the Castle. In the end someone always tells you.’

  ‘Where is her body now?’ he asked.

  ‘Down the mortuary,’ replied Felix matter-of-factly, adding: ‘The Coroner’s orders.’

  The same place Traddles was. Or parts of him. The dead calling to the dead.

  Down the road, Charlie had crawled out from behind the holly hedge where he had hidden after realising Mr Pickettwick was talking to the Major about him. He had nothing against Mr P – a nice, jolly old fellow who knew where to keep his hands, which was not true of all. In any case, it had not taken Charlie long in London to learn how to deal with gropers and graspers. His first friend, Gog, had instructed him: ‘You are a pretty boy, Charlie, and round here you can use that for money, if you choose; but don’t go free. Teeth, nails and feet, Charlie; use ’em. You can practise on me.’ Which was good of Gog, but Charlie had not done so. There was one lesson he had already learnt: never trust anyone.

  He emerged from his hiding place in time to see the Major go into a house further down the road. Whose house it was he did not know, nor why Mearns s
hould be calling there, but in the story he was forming in his head it was because there was someone living inside with whom he must speak.

  Yes, that was it, an important interview was about to take place. But there his plot stopped for the time being. Real makers of plots, he told himself, waited to see how the story grew. He would have liked to have a scene of jokes and laughter here, but nothing would come. He had already discovered that such scenes were hard, but joyous, to create. He walked down the road just in time to see Felix come out to greet the Major. Then they went into the house.

  Charlie would like to have followed. He could see the two men talking together. He liked the Major better than Felix; he seemed the stronger and the kinder of the two. It would not do to rely on any man’s kindness, of course, nor did he. But if he had any trust in his heart, then he felt it for Mearns. For Denny, too – he felt he could make a friend of Denny. It was his secret wish to have a friend.

  A narrow, muddy passage ran between this house and the one next door. Charlie took himself down the passage, half crouching and stumbling in the mud.

  There was a side window through which he could see the two men inside, talking and drinking. He nodded and thought that that was what men did. He himself had once been offered an ale and some stronger stuff, but he had had one taste and not enjoyed it; nor had he felt confidence in the motives of the man who had offered it. One swig and he had felt woozy – a feeling half agreeable and half alarming. In the world in which he moved, it was best to keep on your own two feet, with your eyes wide open.

  As his eyes were now.

  He had got round to the back of the house where there was a patch of sad-looking grass and a small shed in which a cat had taken up residence. The cat looked sleek and well fed.

  There were two windows for him to look in. One was large and uncurtained, allowing him a good view of a totally empty room. Bare boards on the floor, no furniture, but a wall cupboard into which, to his annoyance, he could not see.

  The next window was small, high up, and uncurtained like the other one.

  He moved on to look in to the smaller window. By reaching up, hanging on to the slate windowsill and dragging himself up, Charlie could see into the room.