A Burden Shared: The Dundee Murders

by Malcolm Archibald

  Mendick recognised the green cloak and the bitter twist of cruel lips just before she crashed into the trees. “Stop that woman! That’s Beth!”

  Menzies jumped down from the back of the cart, stumbled and held on to Deuchars for support as Sturrock tried to manoeuvre around them.

  “She must have been hiding among the barrels.” Sturrock gave up his attempt to follow. “She’s gone now.”

  “I want that woman!” Mendick raised his voice: “Stop! Dundee Police!” He strode across the road and followed into the woodland. He saw the flick of a cloak ahead, heard a shrill curse and plunged on, feeling his feet sink deep into the soft ground beneath. A branch flicked against his hat, another whipped his face, briars and brambles hooked thorns into his coat and ripped at his hands; he plunged uphill with the breath rasping in his throat and his lungs already burning. Town life had many advantages but it was poor preparation for thundering up a wooded hillside in pursuit of a suspect.

  He stopped to listen. Above the creaking of branches and the whisper of the undergrowth he heard the crash of Beth’s progress, not far above him.

  “Dundee Police!” He drew a deep breath and plunged on. The trees were densely packed now, rank upon rank stretching out gnarled branches to impede him and aid the fugitive. He registered green leaves budding, the old green of coniferous trees, the fresh green of grass and bracken underfoot mixed with the rustling brown of last year’s dead leaves. He no longer shouted for Beth to stop and saved his breath for the climb, gasping, swearing as the hill became steeper and he had to support his progress using the boles of the trees.

  Beth was in sight, her sparse figure flitting through the trees like a wraith. Mendick fixed his gaze on her cloak, rippling green among the green. He saw her stop and redoubled his efforts. Perhaps the hill had defeated her. As he drew closer he saw her cloak had been discarded and lay on top of a battered bramble bush.

  Mendick swore, sucked in a hard breath and thrust on, step after step, the muscles in his legs screaming in protest and sweat blurring his vision. Then miraculously he was clear of the trees. The hillside opened up in front of him: wind-cropped grass and budding heather in a long rising ridge, undulating in folds of sunlight and shadow that rolled towards the west. Beth was about quarter of a mile ahead. Bereft of her cloak she looked even slighter as she lifted her skirts high and her bare legs powered her forward.

  With his quarry in sight Mendick needed no encouragement. He ignored the burning of his throat and lungs and the ache in his leg and pushed on. He saw Beth stop, saw her face white against the green-brown hill, but she turned and ran again. The summit rose in a series of broad ridges, with the ground falling away in steep heather slopes either side, the sweet farmland of Strathmore on the right and the rippling blue water of a small loch to the left. In front of him the ground rose, dipped and rose again and still Beth ran on, legs white and stick-thin but seemingly tireless.

  To his right, far below, Mendick saw a number of carriages pulled up in the driveway of Mandarin House. He heard high male laughter and the blare of a hunting trumpet and wondered how two different worlds could co-exist, so close but so far apart. While he tried to find a murderer, Gordon was holding a party. Unless the murderer and the party holder were one and the same person? He shook his head, he had no time for speculation. He had to concentrate on catching Beth.

  “Stop!” Mendick shouted again, but the wind snatched the word and tossed it aside, unheeded and unheard. He had closed the gap on Beth, she was only a few hundred yards in front of him now. She held something in her right hand but he could not see what it was. He lengthened his stride and ran on, his boots thudding on the spongy peat underfoot.

  A short, steep rise lay ahead, leading to a distinctly conical knoll. Beth stopped half way up and turned to watch him for a moment. A sudden shaft of sunlight probed the scudding clouds to highlight her face. She was sheet-white, her features set, and even from this distance Mendick could sense her malevolence. She turned and ran on. Mendick followed, cresting the hill, bracing his hands against his knees as the pain in his muscles increased. The ridge broadened slightly now although the slope on the left was steeper than ever. The path narrowed onto the top of a short rocky cliff easing to a near-vertical slope that descended forever to a tear-shaped loch.

  Beth moved more slowly now as she felt her way between the top edge of the cliff and a tall drystone wall on the right. She was forced onto a very narrow path, broken in places, and she held onto the wall for support as she clambered along. Mendick followed. He clutched the coping stones of the wall and stumbled as one shifted under his hand and crashed onto the path, bounced once and tumbled over the cliff, down towards the loch. A small avalanche of soil and small pebbles accompanied it. Mendick watched for a second, saw the splash far beneath and continued. Beth had increased her lead now and seemed to glide along the track.

  A few hundred yards more and the path deteriorated to only a few inches in width, the slope slithering down and the loch below, dark and chill. Mendick heard the hunting cry of an eagle and blinked as the shadow passed over him. The bird swooped from above, its wings so close he could hear the rustle, and then it was beneath him, gliding above the loch, a splendid vision of gold and brown, so beautiful, so deadly, and a reminder of the precariousness of his position up there.

  Beth stopped at the narrowest section of the path. She turned to him, her face lined and set. “So, it is you and me again, Mendick.” She was balanced on the finger-thin path. “How often do I have to kill you before you stay dead?”

  “I think you have run yourself out,” Mendick said. He heard the eagle call again and felt the drop suck at him as if in invitation to step over and join Emma. But Johanna was here, in the land of the living. “If you surrender now it will save us both a lot of trouble.”

  Beth laughed harshly. “Sergeant Mendick; pray tell me why should I give up when I have you exactly where I want you?” She lifted her hand and pointed a double-barrelled pistol at him. “Or did you think I was running away because I was scared of you?” She shook her head. “That’s twice I’ve caught you with the same trick, Sergeant. I’m surprised at you.”

  Mendick realised he had been led into an ambush all of his own making. Beth had lured him up the hill and along the ridge. He wondered briefly why she had come so far when she might have stopped and shot at him at any time since leaving the wagons, but the answer was obvious. Up here she was far from any witness. Now she was breathing easier and on this narrow path he was unable to dodge a bullet. Trapped between the stone wall and the sheer drop, Mendick knew he had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. He could only plead for his life, retreat, or pull out his revolver and attack.

  He lunged forward, yelling, in an attempt to put Beth off her aim. She stood firm, extended her arm and pulled the trigger. Mendick had expected that. The second Beth committed herself to the shot, he dropped to the ground. He saw the flash and the jet of smoke, felt the burning zip of the ball passing just over his shoulder. He rolled towards the wall in the hope it might provide some shelter, tried to release his pepperpot and saw Beth take careful aim with the second barrel. He had not enough time to draw and fire.

  Beth’s grip on her pistol did not waver, “Before you die, Sergeant Mendick, I thought you should know that your men will also be dying in a very few seconds. If you hold on you may just about hear them . . .” She grinned and put pressure on the trigger.

  The explosion was muffled by distance but quite distinct. The concussion was like distant thunder and Beth began to laugh. “That should be them now . . .” and in that instant, as her concentration wavered, Mendick flicked the stone.

  It was no larger than his thumb and he had no time to throw it properly but the impact on Beth’s sleeve was enough to cause her to pull the trigger. There was a spurt of white smoke from the pistol, a momentary flash, a whine and the ball ploughed a long furrow in the dirt near Mendick’s head.

  He threw himself forward, almost tripp
ed over an uneven tussock of grass and smashed into Beth. They fell on to the stone wall together and slid to the ground, his arms around her as she snarled obscenities into his ear. She tried to thrust a thumb in his eye but he blocked, she reached for his groin with savage fingers and he blocked again. She twisted free, swearing.

  “This way is better than any pistol,” Beth dropped her razor from her sleeve and whipped it through the air. “How does it feel, Mendick? Your men all blown to shreds and you about to be sliced to ribbons? And you still don’t know who China Jim is, or anything about him!” Her laugh was as harsh and cruel as anything Mendick had ever heard. “China knows all about you, Mendick but you will never know about . . .” She stopped in mid sentence and slashed sideways at his face.

  Mendick ducked and withdrew step by step as Beth followed, slashing with the glittering silver blade that made such pretty patterns in the air. He gasped as his left foot slipped on the very edge of the path and a small shower of dirt and pebbles cascaded to the loch below. They seemed to hang in the air for agonisingly long moments before landing with a barely audible splash.

  Beth laughed again, her pinched, white face convulsed. “I’m going to rip you to pieces, Mendick! And then spit on you as you lie bleeding on the ground!”

  “And then cut slices of me and eat them? Is that what you do, Beth? Is that what you and China Jim do to people who cross you?” Mendick feinted forward with his left hand, but Beth did not fall for it. Instead she slashed upwards with her razor, an evil stroke aimed at Mendick’s groin.

  Her laugh was as ugly as her weapon. “You really have no idea, do you?” She flicked her wrist, sending the razor into a figure of eight movement that was impossible for Mendick to pass. She stepped forward slowly and he retreated step by step along the crumbling path. “You will die as ignorant as you lived, you bluebottle bastard!”

  Darting forward, she sliced at his face. Mendick raised a protective arm; his world exploded in white hot agony as the blade slashed through his jacket and up the length of his forearm, still he pushed forward, smacking his elbow into Beth’s jaw. The impact momentarily stopped her, leaving just enough opportunity for Mendick to snatch at her wrist and snap it behind her back. The razor clattered to the ground and Mendick toed it over the edge.

  “You bastard Mendick! You dirty bastard!”

  “That’s me all the way.” Mendick agreed. “Now. You and I are going back to the police office, and we are going to have a nice long chat about China Jim and whisky and dead people being cut to pieces. Then a nice judge will send you to the gallows or to Australia for the remainder of your natural life.”

  Beth said nothing as she crashed her boot into Mendick’s shin. The pain was sudden and unexpected. He swore and fractionally relaxed his grip on her wrist. She wriggled free and stepped back.

  “You’ll never send me to Van Diemen’s Land, and you’ll never find out about China Jim, bluebottle!”

  As Mendick reached for his revolver, Beth spat at him, swivelled and jumped over the edge. For a second she seemed to hang, suspended parallel to the path, her skirt ballooning around her thighs and her legs shockingly white and exposed, then she plunged down, voiceless, her arms flapping.

  “Beth!” Mendick reached out too late and he watched her fall for a second that felt like an hour. She landed with an audible crunch on the bank of the loch and lay still. Even from his position far above, Mendick could see the slow stain of blood seeping from her head into the dark waters, but he had no time to spare on sentiment for a dead criminal. He had to check on his men.

  He ran with trembling legs, ignoring the rasp of breath in his lungs. He ran back along the ridge with the memory of the explosion uppermost in his mind and the thought that his men lay screaming and in pieces. He ran, aware that the party at Mandarin House was in full swing, hearing snatches of music and the sound of male laughter. As he ran Mendick could smell the drift of gunpowder in the wind. He saw a column of dark smoke smudge the sky and he cursed and threw himself down the wooded slope. Brambles ripped at his face and clothes, branches whipped at him but he ran, sliding, slithering and staggering towards the road where he had left his men. There was a rustle and a muttered curse from a patch of bracken. A ginger head appeared.

  “Sergeant!” Sturrock gave his characteristic grin. He carried his official staff held over his shoulder, rather like a recruit with a musket. “Are you all right, Sergeant? We heard gunfire, I was coming to help.”

  “I’m fine, Sturrock. Beth is dead. The explosion?” Mendick gasped for breath and spoke in short, staccato phrases.

  “Oh, aye,” Sturrock shrugged. “The convoy was a trap. China Jim hid a barrel of gunpowder in the middle of the first wagon. Between that and the whisky there would have been a hell of a mess.”

  “So what happened?” Mendick whooped oxygen into his lungs.

  “We saw the fuse spluttering so we rolled the thing down the slope.” Sturrock shrugged, “There was a bit of a bang but no harm done. Beth is dead, then? Oh well, we still have a carter to question.”

  There was so much left unsaid that Mendick merely nodded. He pictured the scene. The realisation there was a barrel of gunpowder about to be detonated, the brave man who climbed onto the wagon to see what could be done; the scrambled search for the fuse, the seconds of effort to lift the barrel and roll it down the hill. Mendick’s respect for the Dundee police increased.

  “You are brave men,” he said. The words were inadequate but all he could manage.

  The three wagons were just as he had left them, the police lounging against them or sitting on top, chatting or puffing on their pipes as if they had never heard of gunpowder.

  “Who rolled the barrel away?” Mendick asked.

  Menzies removed the pipe from his mouth and pointed with the stem. “Sturrock. Him and Deuchars jumped on the wagon and threw it down the hill.” He replaced his pipe then pointed along the Dundee road. “Horseman coming.”

  Mendick loosened his revolver and stepped into the road while the others watched with varying degrees of interest as the horseman galloped in. He reined up so abruptly that his horse reared. Lieutenant Cameron slapped the surface dust from his riding cloak and surveyed the cynically watching policemen.

  “Where’s Mendick?”

  Mendick took a step forward. “I am Sergeant Mendick.”

  Cameron nodded. “There are three cabs coming behind me, Mendick. Get your men back to Dundee. While you have been playing in the country, China Jim’s been at it again. There’s been another murder.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The man lay spread-eagled on his back with his insides removed and slices of flesh cut from his thighs. A linen bag lay in the bleeding hole where his intestines had been. There were thirty coins, all dated 1842. Mendick looked down at the bearded face. The eyes were open, glazed in death.

  “Good evening to you, Iain Grant,” he said. “You have harpooned your last whale, then.”

  “Do you know this man?” Sturrock asked.

  “Constable Sturrock, meet Iain Grant, harpooner from the Rose Flammock.” Mendick knelt at Grant’s side. As well as the kindly wisdom, he recalled the the man’s hidden strength and menace. “Now, Sturrock, Grant was a handy, capable and strong man. As a harpooner he had a position of authority in the ship, he would make good money. I can’t imagine why he would have dealings with the criminal class or why China Jim would want to butcher him like this.” Mendick indicated the surrounding carnage. “It’s frightening to think there is someone capable of incapacitating a man as physically powerful as Grant.”

  “There doesn’t seem to have been a struggle,” Sturrock said. “Look, the room is undamaged.”

  Mendick glanced around. “There isn’t much to damage.” They were in a one room flat in a tenement in Trade’s Lane, with a box bed in one corner, a deal table in the other and a shuttered window. There was nothing else.

  In common with the previous murders, Grant’s clothes were neatly folded an
d placed at his side, but this time the pockets were empty of all possessions.

  “That’s not like our man,” Mendick observed. “He doesn’t normally rob his victims, and look here.” He bent closer and pointed to Grant’s fob pocket. “See how this is ripped? The killer has just torn it straight out. He’s even left a couple of links of the gold chain there. He’s getting greedy.” Mendick stood up. “Let’s hope that’s his downfall.”

  Sturrock nodded. “Yes, Sergeant. But once again, why would anyone do this? What on earth could this man have done?”

  “As we agreed,” Mendick said softly, “we have to discover the reason. If we find that, we find our murderer.” He stepped to the table where a pewter plate lay with a selection of cuts of meat on it. He wrinkled his nose. “This will be human flesh, I presume. And probably pretty tough if it’s from a whaling seaman. Whoever the cannibal is, he’s not doing it for the taste.”

  Mendick tapped the table. “Sturrock, we’ve been looking in all the wrong places. There is no Chinese connection here at all. Grant was a professional whaler: I doubt he sailed anywhere else in his life.”

  “We still have not discounted Gordon,” Sturrock said, “he even lives in Forfarshire. Very handy for the whisky distilling. I wonder where he was when we were searching that convoy?”

  “He was at home,” Mendick remembered the coaches ranked in front of Mandarin House. “So we can remove him from our list. That leaves one man. Gilbride, with the limp.”

  “Gilbride who owns Rose Flammock, and who loves Walter Scott,” Sturrock said quietly.

  “And there is our connection,” Mendick pulled out his pipe. “Grant was a harpooner on Rose Flammock and Thoms had the name Rose tattooed on his arm.” He pushed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “All right. We’ll get the surgeon’s report tomorrow. In the meantime, I want the crew lists of Rose Flammock for the last few years and particularly for 1842. Something happened that year and perhaps on that ship. I want to know if all our murdered men were in her crew that year.”