by Jon Redfern
“Indeed, sir,” answered Sergeant Caldwell, “the beadle’s story was correct. The porter’s wife was alone and told me she had seen nothing in the night. Only Mr.Ratcliff claims to have any idea of the time when the three culprits fled—two o’clock in the morning.”
“Or thereabouts,” said Endersby.
“And then, sir, there was the fourth lone man.”
“Yes, sergeant, the lone man coming out a while later. But leaving from the back entrance of Mr. Cake’s house.”
“Perhaps the assailant, sir.”
“Likely, Caldwell. Or a witness to the brutality and the smashing.”
Sergeant Caldwell rushed ahead to Number 46 Doughty Street and spoke to the constable with the white gloves who was now guarding the front door. Endersby arrived limping from his gouty foot and entered the area leading down to the kitchen. “Caldwell, make certain these two young policemen are relieved for the coming evening. Also, instruct one of them to have the superintendent from Gray’s Inn send over a locksmith to secure these doors.”
Inspector Endersby waited and thought about the other key fact learned from the woman in the blue dress: Mr. Cake received “frequenters”. Visitors who came and went in the afternoons. A veiled woman with two young men being regulars. And a tall gentleman—coming at one time wearing a beard. Or perhaps it was two different tall gentlemen? “Indeed,” mumbled Endersby.
He entered the house with Caldwell behind him and climbed the two flights of stairs from the basement to the second floor. By this time in the day, the doubt he felt was clearly embodied in the level of pain in his foot. In fact, Endersby measured the success of his fact-finding by how much the gout bothered him. He dipped into his pocket. He had secured at the tavern a bit of bread and pickle wrapped in brown paper. He quickly ate it, thinking that at this point facts were many, but the logic of their patterns was still obscured.
“Let me catch my breath, for the moment, sergeant,” Endersby said, wiping crumbs from his lips. “Do you recall that bit of business, Caldwell, the witness claiming the tall man once came dressed as a Covent Garden coster?’
“Certainly, sir. One of the frequenters, you mean?”
“Precisely.”
“A tall man in a Macintosh and coster’s cap.”
“A coat not unlike your own, sir.”
“I beg your pardon, Inspector.”
“A casual comparison only, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And the red beard.”
“Yes, sir. The witness was most insistent it was red.”
“Most emphatic about it.”
“Notice, sir,” Caldwell then said. The floor was muddied. The red earth was more plentiful than below on the first floor.
“Whoever the person was wearing those boots did much tramping about, didn’t he?” said Endersby.
Caldwell walked ahead and opened the door to the front bedroom.
“Only red mud in here,” noticed Endersby. “Curious.”
“And look here, sir.”
“Another desk with its contents scattered. What are those, Caldwell?”
The sergeant picked up a wad of crumpled papers.
“Letters?” wondered Endersby. “No. Notes,” he said on examination. “Promissory notes. Here is one for ten pounds. Was Cake a lender?”
“Here is another bunch, sir.”
“Promissory notes again. Ten pounds. Twenty-five pounds. From what we’ve seen of this house, Mr. Cake must have hidden his money well. Perhaps the ruffians were looking for ready cash.”
“This bed, sir, is still made. Unmussed.”
Endersby opened his satchel. “Hand me the papers, Caldwell. There are three notes here signed by a P. Buckstone. The two others have the signature of…can you make it out?”
“Looks like a P, Inspector. Simmons…no, Summers. P. Summers.”
“Fellow theatre folk, you imagine?” Endersby placed the notes into his satchel.
“It is odd, sir. Actors are always wanting money, I presume.”
“Not so odd, then, Caldwell, given the hazards of their profession.”
Inspector Endersby yanked open one of the curtains in the room. Shadows fled from the pillows and coverlets. “Cake has not slept here recently. He did not sleep here at all last night, if these bed clothes indicate anything. Might he have come home and discovered the burglars and his assassin? Make a note, Caldwell, to have Mr. Arne bring the cloak and hat and the other clothes found on the corpse to our station.”
“Noted, sir.”
“See how this blasted red mud is everywhere in here, but scant evidence of the other variety. And look at that curtain.”
A long green damask on the other window drooped from its rod, as if torn by a violent pull. Endersby drew it aside and found a porcelain chamber pot tipped over. Its yellow liquid had pooled under the window, and floating up from it was a faint, acrid odour. “Curious,” commented Endersby. “No top to the potty. And why has it tipped?”
Caldwell’s knees cracked when he knelt down to inspect the small corner covered by the drape. “Clusters of the same red mud here, sir, and a distinct foot print.”
“Let me see. A large boot indeed. And the toe facing out to the room. Check the hem of the curtain.”
“Telltale mud on the inner panel, sir.”
Endersby straightened. What to make of this, he wondered. “Picture the room, Caldwell. A desk rifled. A curtain torn. But no bashing up here. Perhaps a man was hiding here, behind that curtain?”
Caldwell scratched his head. “Hiding?” he asked impatiently.
“Yes, perhaps. Not one of the bashers. Someone else. Someone who also needed to pay a visit to Mr. Cake. A lone figure. If a thief were desperate for money, why would he not search this room and wreak havoc? Unless, Caldwell, he knew what the desk contained before he broke in.”
“All possible, sir. You do love your rambles.”
“I do, indeed, Sergeant. The by-ways of crime lead us in many directions at once.”
Caldwell went back to the desk and pulled open the drawer once again. “What do you make of this, sir?” He held up a folded parchment with its wax seal broken. Endersby read the first few lines.
“It’s a letter of offer from Lord Harwood. He is the proprietor of Old Drury and the lease-holder of other properties near the Strand. It appears he wished to contract Mr. Cake to take over Old Drury’s management duties.” Endersby slipped the parchment into his satchel. “How odd that Mr. Cake kept such a document here .”
Endersby sat down on the edge of the bed. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “I shall wait here, Caldwell. Go to the third floor and see what you can find.”
Sitting alone, Endersby reflected on the objects and papers and mud samples and the positioning of the corpse and the bashed chairs and scratched tables and…
“Nothing, sir,” said Caldwell on his quick return. “No mud, empty rooms. No cupboards. No sign of thieves breaking any wall or floorboard. This place is as cold as a tomb.”
“Appropriate, then, for Mr. Cake’s present state, I reckon,” quipped Endersby.
“Sir?”
“Sergeant, I think it best for you now to contact the beadle, find a locksmith and relieve our young constables. I am in need of tea and a hot soak of this wretched toe.”
“Very well, Inspector.”
“Tomorrow being the Lord’s day, we shall rest. But Monday, we must meet early and plan our strategy. Superintendent Borne will need a brief meeting, and we shall also speak to the magistrate. I think we need to start our investigation, first, at Mr. Cake’s Coburg. Kindly pass by the man’s theatre this evening and inform his stage manager.”
“I shall do so, sir.”
“A good deed on your part, Sergeant. The gutter press will have the story out on the streets soon enough. I shall go to my table and my good Harriet. I bid you good evening.”
“Good evening, sir.”
* * *
With his min
d in much turmoil, Inspector Endersby held his gaze on the passing parade of London. He had left Doughty Street and hired a hansom cab. On his way home, he asked the driver to stop in Mecklenburgh Square. One stone wall of the Foundling Hospital blocked the western entrance. To the north, toward Heathcote Street, a line of houses stood with an open space, like a gap in a row of teeth. “Drive past there, cabby,” said the inspector. The mud pit was red, and the timbers lining the foundation hole showed smudges of the same colour. The cab then rumbled on, clacking its way toward Cursitor Street. “Curious” was the only word which planted itself in the inspector’s thoughts. What to do, indeed, he wondered, as the cab pulled up to his front door.
After a bath in his copper tub, he joined Harriet at the table for a quick supper of capon and potatoes. Without further delay, the two of them then hired a hansom cab to Old Drury for the performance of the hit melodrama, Rachel; or, the Hebrew Maid.
As the hansom rattled forward down Chancery Lane across Carey Street and into the hurling gigs of Drury Lane, Inspector Endersby looked out mournfully at the misery beyond the cab window. Beggars huddled in corners, barefoot children with blackened hands cried out for ha’pennies to buy food. Thick mud and slush and smoky brown air had become the three elements of London’s streets. A stench of sewer and a sharp smell of rotted timber and sulphur brought to Endersby’s mind images of war and hell. “How dismaying,” he whispered to Harriet.
She nodded to him. “Terrible,” she said. “And to think, dear Owen, of all you do to help alleviate such misery.”
The inspector shook his head. “One man is not enough. We need a miracle. Or a revolution.”
Harriet frowned. “Now, now, dear, we know well enough what happened to the French.”
The cab slowed and turned a corner, and when Endersby looked up, Harriet was fussing in her handbag.
“Owen, my dear,” she said, an expression of dismay marking her face. She pointed to his hands held in his ample lap. “You cannot wear those day gloves, those stained suedes, into Old Drury. I shall not allow it.”
“Harriet,” replied Owen Endersby, “Can we not…”
“Mr. Endersby,” she interrupted. “You may command your sergeants to bring order to our city, but as the proud wife of a public official, I cannot let stained suede stand for black kid. Thank goodness we have time.”
In her flowered bonnet, Harriet Endersby seemed younger than her forty years. Owen Endersby had few, if any, complaints about his two decades of married bliss, though at fifty he continued to suffer gout, an ailment he attributed to his wife’s rich cooking. He watched his beloved draw a pair of black kid gloves from her small handbag. “You see, Owen,” she said, handing him another pair of gloves. “I imagine you will look the part much better now.” Harriet helped Owen change his suedes to the black kid, and by the time she had folded his workaday “mittens”, as she called them, into her handbag, the hansom had drawn up to the portico of Old Drury.
“No less than nine minutes,” quipped Owen as his wife pushed open the door.
Before them rose the great theatre. Its portico crowded with theatergoers. Shadows from the streetlamps played across the theatre’s marble façade. The odour of horse dung, the glitter of the nearby shop windows, the very loudness of the street only increased the excitement Owen felt on going to the play. “Careful,” Harriet said, taking Owen’s hand. They mounted the steps and pushed through the high open doors. The ticket-taker recognized him and Harriet at once.
“Good evening, sir. Mum.”
“Isn’t this wonderful, dear,” Harriet said, as she always did when they first stepped onto the marble floor of the foyer. Above them, the ceiling was painted gold, with frescoes of gods floating in clouds. Indeed, the place was much like a temple, as Owen Endersby had often observed. Portals, saloons, mezzanines, boxes and galleries, all aglow with candles and gaslight. Like a temple, it inspired awe, but instead of silence, there was always shouting and laughter and much stomping of feet. Owen nodded to the two statues of Shakespeare and David Garrick as he and Harriet moved beyond the foyer into the broad, bustling, echoing tiered auditorium, rows of benches, five levels of boxes and galleries, the stage framed by a golden arch, while amidst all, like a giant glass tulip, the great chandelier shimmered with yellow gaslight.
A man in a green coat approached them. “Good evening, sir. Mrs. Endersby.”
He tipped his hat to Harriet and shook Owen Endersby’s gloved hand. Then the man moved into the crowd toward a place on one of the long pit benches which faced the stage.
“Remind me, dear,” Inspector Endersby whispered to his wife.
“A colleague of my cousin, if I recall. We have met him once before. How polite of him to remember us.” Harriet helped him up the steps and into their first-tier box. “I believe he is a jobber in the stationery trade,” she said.
“More likely a copy clerk, my dear.”
“How do you know?”
“Look at his rigid back. From sitting all day at the tilt. Did you notice his thumb and forefinger when he shook my hand? Black with India, which never rubs off.”
“Pleasant enough fellow, he seems.” Mrs. Endersby removed her bonnet and opened a small tin of candied chestnuts.
“He could be a rabble-rouser just as easily.”
Harriet Endersby raised her eyebrows. “No, surely not.”
“Did you spot what was in his pockets, dear one?”
“What were those in there?”
“Political weeklies. I saw clearly the title of one in his left coat pocket. The Eye. A disgruntled man, I surmise.”
“Owen, dear. We are at the play. Let the poor man be.”
Inspector Owen Endersby nodded consent to his wife’s request. His natural tendency toward critical analysis of the human race led him to perceive the perverse in people. For most of his twenty years as a London policeman, he had dealt with the brutalized nature of Man. Now he recalled the nails in the shutters in the house of Mr. Samuel Cake, but halted himself saying, “You must leave this for the time.” Endersby knew the details of his day would harass him with doubts, questions. And the bloodied glove? Left in terror or haste? But come now, old gander. Endersby stretched his arms forward. For further relief, he raised his sharp eyes and his heavy eyebrows to survey the laughing bonnets and caps. High above his head, the fussing members of the shilling and two-penny galleries began to clap and shout out their impatience. There were cutters and seamstresses and coffee runners and footmen and upstairs maids and hall porters’ wives holding their sleeping infants. A veritable sea of Man, thought Endersby, as a hush fell over the auditorium. The canvas front curtain slowly rolled up to reveal a second curtain of luxurious green.
“I hear she is wonderful.”
“Who?” asked Endersby.
“Owen, I told you. Miss Root.”
“We have seen her before?”
“Of course. In The Tempest. But tonight she plays a Hebrew maid in disguise.”
“Don’t tell me…”
“A pilgrim.”
“Thank you, Harriet.”
“Mr. Weston plays the prince. He can bring a tear. Pathos is his great talent.”
Owen Endersby ate a candy and watched a young boy across the pit slip his hand into the coat pocket of a drunken gentleman and pull out a clutch of coins. The boy slipped back and disappeared into the crowd. “Is he the tall fellow who sword plays so well?”
“Yes, dear. Mr. William Weston. A tenor voice, too. Oh, look.” Harriet pulled at her husband’s sleeve. A pregnant woman had fainted in one of the boxes, and two ushers in livery carried her out. “I hope she will not be ill,” said Harriet. Owen patted her hand and watched her cheeks flush with excitement as the orchestra began tuning up. As drums rolled, shouting and whistling started up in earnest, but then quieted when there was a loud knocking from the right wing of the stage.
“Here,” said Harriet holding the candy tin. “Take another before we start.” Owen lifted his broad ha
nd delicately secured a candied chestnut before settling back in his seat. A violent drum roll now pummelled the chattering in the pit. A trumpet blew, and the galleries at last fell to silent wondering. The luxurious green curtain tore apart in its centre and lifted like a cloud. To Owen Endersby’s delighted eyes, a painted city appeared, towers, dormers, lanes and a phalanx of drummers whose rat-a-tat-tat brought clapping from the slips and boxes. A fountain floated up through a trap door as a crowd in multi-coloured robes rushed onto the stage holding chalices.
“Oh, Let the Trumpets Sound,” sang the men, arms raised.
A figure in pilgrim’s dress scurried onto the scene.
“There she is.”
“Yes, Harriet.”
“What lovely hands Miss Root has.”
Owen Endersby took hold of his wife’s plump wrist and placed it in his lap. She leaned into him in rapt attention as the yearning words of the pilgrim recounted a tale of loss. When Miss Priscilla Root sang her first air accompanied by a flute, the audience hummed along, bursting into deafening applause on the final stanza.
“Once agin,’ lovely. Come agin’, Miss Root,” shouted a bravo from the upper benches.
“Sssh,” lifted a chorus from the pit. “Quiet, quiet.”
A round of cymbals and brassy fanfares announced the retinue of a prince, and the entire scene filled with men mounted on jumpy horses; banners waved, shields and pikes lined up on either side of the stage. The prince rode in and dismounted. His cloak embroidered in gold braid bore the insignia of an eagle.
“Mr. William Weston,” pointed Mrs. Endersby, breathless.
Owen Endersby sat forward. “Yes, indeed,” he winced and shifted his throbbing foot.
A host of dancing village maidens later inspired Owen Endersby’s eyes to tear as his foot cramped with pain.
“Are you unwell?” Harriet Endersby asked, her eyes held by the movement on the stage.
“To be truthful,” Owen replied, “it is like sticking my foot into hot mercury. But it shall pass.”
“Here.” Harriet offered the tin of chestnuts.