She could walk, after a fashion; she staggered like a drunkard wearing leg splints, lurching and listing alarmingly. We decided pretty sharpish we couldn’t let her out to walk the streets like that. Instead, we would station her somewhere, propped up against a lamppost or something in a come-hither pose, ’cause she weren’t half alluring. In a certain light. There was something about the way her eyelids half-closed and her lips barely parted - I could see the inspector was quite taken with her, while I was just appreciating Hoo’s craftsmanship - of course I was.
She could move her hands, by which I mean they could rotate at the wrist but her fingers didn’t work independently. It was all or nothing where her fingers was concerned; she could clasp money in her palms but then she didn’t know what to do with it.
Her speech was limited to a few phrases that Hoo had recorded in some way - don’t arsk me how, but I reckon it was something like them rolls of paper you pop in a pianola, with holes in that play the tune as it goes through the machinery. Or the cylinder in a music box, with raised bumps on it. Come to think of it, our Coppélia was a bit like them little ballerinas you sometimes get in a music box, standing on one leg in front of tiny mirrors - and come to think of something else, I think there’s even a ballet with the same name as our tin trollop.
Because that’s what she was made of, not sugar and spice, and definitely not the stitched together bits and bobs of dug-up bodies. Doctor Hoo had really surpassed himself with this one. He’d stretched thin rubber over her and painted it so it looked like skin. And of course the hair was a wig and the eyelashes was real false eyelashes, and her face was painted up just like any other whore’s, so on the whole, there weren’t that much extra about Coppélia that was falser than any other dollymop, if you want to look at it like that.
As far as speaking was concerned, the copper said she shouldn’t utter a word if somebody was looking right at her, on account of her lips not moving, only her jaw going up and down like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s. She needed to move just enough and speak just enough to give the impression that she was a living human person, waiting outside an alley, and not a statue in honour of prostitutes.
He weren’t half excited, that copper. His eyes was bright with the possibilities of what Coppélia could do.
“We ain’t putting nobody at risk,” he said. “None of my men has to dress up and no real dollymop is in danger.”
Doctor Hoo, he stood back, watching us with his dollymop dolly. He didn’t make no notes nor nothing but I could tell he was taking it all in and - what was that? - Could it be a hint of pride on his usually blank face? Well, my hat was off to him.
“This will revolutionise police work,” old Fishface paced up and down but his plates couldn’t catch up with his loaf. His thoughts was running away with him.
And then he stopped, all of a sudden, as though something had struck him. Or he’s struck something, like walking into a pane of glass.
“How does it work, your miraculous invention? Is it a puppet? Do you have to be near her? Is that it?”
He searched Hoo’s face but of course it was like trying to read a blank sheet of paper. The doctor put his hand into his lab coat pocket and he took out a key, very like the one I told you about before, with a butterfly head. Kipper the copper plucked it from Hoo’s gloved fingers and examined it.
“Clockwork! Of course!”
Yeah, bleedin’obvious when you think about it.
Hoo turned Coppélia around - in a rather ungentlemanly fashion, if you arsks me - and unlaced her bodice. Rows of keyholes was revealed, up and down her back. Hoo pointed at them in turn.
“Eyes,” he said. “Hands. Mouth. Left arm. Right arm. So on.”
Fishface tried the key in a couple of the holes. It fitted them all. Coppélia straightened and her gob began to flap. Her eyes rolled in opposite directions and her hands chopped the air. Hoo’s hand stayed Kipper’s.
“Too tight,” he rumbled. Kipper looked embarrassed, like a kiddie told off for breaking his new toy on Christmas morning - Well, I’m imagining this, on account of I ain’t never had no toys on Christmas morning nor any other morning neither. But put away your violin and save any tears you might have for me for later.
The copper swears - he even crosses his heart but I don’t think that makes a blind bit of difference to Doctor Hoo - he swears and promises that he’ll be careful and treat Coppélia with the respect she deserves. He couldn’t wait to get started. I don’t know why he was in so much of a rush but somehow I don’t reckon it was concern for another dollymop - a real live flesh and blood one - that was spurring him on.
I looked at Inspector Kipper with fresh eyes. Turns out you’re a bit of strange one too, ain’t you?
Twenty-Four
Inspector Kipper thought they had better wait a few nights before putting Coppélia to use. The killer would no doubt be wary after the police’s last botched attempt. Kipper could only hope no more dollymops would fall foul of Foggy Jack in the interim. Every morning, Kipper dreaded news of another victim but, mercifully, there was none. Bigby accredited the lack of new murders to having the killer in custody; he had rounded up every stage magician in London and was in the process of whittling them down. Kipper went along to observe a couple of Bigby’s interrogations, which were little more than private demonstrations of the magicians’ art.
“Tight-lipped bunch, these prestidigitators, what!” Bigby pressed new teeth marks into the stem of his pipe. “Not giving anything away. One might suspect a conspiracy.”
“Shouldn’t think so,” Kipper shrugged. “They’re all under oath, I shouldn’t wonder, not to reveal how their tricks are done. They daren’t breathe a word or else they’ll be for the chop. Or the saw. Or the sword through the loaf.”
Bigby blinked. “You amaze me. So, I’ve got a right bunch of c - conjurors, shall we say? All keeping mum because of some professional code of conduct.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Kipper tried not to laugh. “You’d have been better off going to see them in their natural habitat.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nipping along to see their shows. See if any of them use fog in their acts. See if any of them can disappear the way Foggy Jack did. All this fannying around with cups and balls - well, shall we say,” he mocked Bigby’s tone, “it ain’t doing the trick.”
Kipper left Scotland Yard feeling three feet taller. It was a rare occasion when he got one up on the smug bastard Bigby and his bleedin’ pipe; he considered marking the day on his calendar.
***
Damien Deacus walked the puppet prostitute through the streets of Whitechapel, lurching and staggering to match her peculiar gait. His voice carried to Kipper’s ears, which were stationed (along with the rest of the inspector) in a first floor window of The Ferret’s Legs, where he was afforded a view of the main thoroughfare in both directions - provided the fog didn’t congeal into a greasy peasouper. Already a thin mist hung in the air and the lampposts spilled yellowish pools around themselves. Piss clouds, thought Kipper, in rare poetic mood.
“Come on then, dearie,” Deacus was encouraging his supposedly inebriated companion, “Let’s have another chorus of The Old Bull and Bush. I’ll be the old bull and you can be - the other one. Here, you ain’t half a deadweight, girl, when you’ve got a drink or ten inside you.”
Coppélia’s head lolled; convincingly, Kipper thought. Or one of the springs in her neck was busted. Either way, Deacus was doing a bang-up job of getting the decoy to its agreed position. She was to be left at the mouth of an alley, in ‘come hither’ pose, and not to utter a word to potential clients until they had passed her by. Men of that inclination were accustomed to dollymops calling after them - it would all add to the illusion.
Kipper watched Deacus prop the puppet against a wall. He pawed and groped at her, making the requisite gru
nts and groans; anyone would think an ordinary transaction was under way but Kipper knew it was a cover. The lad was conducting final checks, a last-minute turning of the key in Coppélia’s holes - Blimey, how much would a flesh-and-blood dollymop charge for that?
The lad stumbled away, whistling to himself and adjusting his trousers. Good lad, thought Kipper. Deacus had played his part well and as for Coppélia, she was artfully positioned to appear as though she belonged there. Even her blank stare suggested she was bored with her profession.
Now we wait; Kipper rubbed his hands in eager anticipation. He was looking forward to bettering smug bastard Bigby once and for all.
***
He did not have to wait for long. Within the hour, a figure emerged from the thickening mist, wearing the top hat and cloak Kipper was expecting to see. The man was dragging his right leg. If he’s half lame, Kipper thought, he should be easier to nick.
On cue, Coppélia’s mouth dropped open and she uttered an advertisement of her services, informing the passer-by that he could have access to her back passage for a tanner. At the sound of her strange, metallic voice, the figure froze and rotated on the spot. All Kipper could see was the man’s silhouette, a darker shape within the pale grey fog. Coppélia’s blonde wig was a dim blur of colour in the murk.
The man pounced. His hand went around the decoy dollymop’s throat and he shoved her into the alley. Kipper swore. Fumbling in his pocket for his police whistle, he tore from the room and pelted down the stairs. The bar was crowded and Kipper’s egress was impeded by the crowd of carousers having a singsong around a piano. Elbowed and shouldered off course, Kipper emitted swearwords and apologies in equal measure as beer was spilled and sloshed all over him. At last, he made his way to the street. A Hackney cab made him spring backwards as it appeared from nowhere and then seemed to take an age to trundle by.
Kipper crossed the street in prancing strides. Caution slowed him as he approached the alley mouth, the whistle in his fist forgotten. Steeling himself lest horrors lay in wait, he stepped into the alley where the fog had failed to penetrate. The fog, he saw, was not the only one.
There was blood but not where Kipper expected. Coppélia’s chin was dripping with it. Her head was tilted to one side; one eye was staring blankly while the other rolled around.
Something groaned. A shadow moved and groaned again.
“Who’s there?” cried Kipper. “Police!”
The man was curled on the ground with his hands cupped on his crotch. His top hat was off, revealing golden curls of hair and a face red and sweating.
“Foggy Jack,” said Kipper, pulling out a pair of handcuffs. “I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.”
“Oh, don’t be absurd!” snapped the man on the ground. He yelped in agony. “Arrest that woman. She damned near bit orf my tallywacker.”
“She what?” said Kipper. He gave Coppélia a wary look and edged away from her. He stooped over the injured man. “What happened? Who are you?”
“I am Edward,” the man winced through clenched teeth, “Lord Beighton. I was just taking my evening constitutional when I was assaulted by that - that creature.”
“Oh, you was, was you?” said Kipper. “It’s not what it looked like where I was standing.”
Lord Beighton’s mouth hung open as if he and Coppélia were of the same stock.
“Oh,” he said. “Very well then, Inspector –?”
“Kipper,” said Kipper.
“Really? Very well then, Inspector Kipper, I shall be pleased to relate to you the incident in vivid detail, provided you oblige me by summoning an ambulance. I really am in the most excruciating pain.”
Twenty-Five
Well. That was a turn-up for this book! Who’d have thought it? That bleedin’ toff, Lord Whatsisface - Beighton! Patronising prostitutes! Doling out dosh to dollymops!
I come running out of the Ferret’s Legs and found Fishface trying to help the toff out of the alley. Let’s get him to hospital, says the copper and I says No - on account of the new leg what Doctor Hoo had stuck on him - and I suggests we take him back to the gaff in Limehouse instead. The toff is all for it; he don’t want to draw no attention to his shenanigans, I shouldn’t wonder.
We gets a cab and all through the ride, the toff’s protesting that the situation is not what it might look like. He says all this through grimaces of pain and I see we’re going to have to tip the cabby extra for all the blood he’s leaking on the upholstery.
“Oh, really?” says the copper and I can see he’s a little bit amused by the toff’s plight.
“I’m not Foggy Jack, damn you,” spits the toff and his boat contorts in agony like a scrunched-up piece of paper.
“I can see that,” says Kipper, “or you would have vanished long since.”
“Eh?” winces the toff.
“You what?” says I.
“Scotland Yard,” says Fishface and the words is dripping with contempt, “believes the killer to be a conjuror - a stage magician.”
The toff sneers in derision.
“Well, he is dressed like one,” I observes. “Stands to reason.”
“The very idea!” the toff sneers. “A man of my standing! In show business!”
“A man of your standing was lying in an alley not long back,” smirks the copper.
“And that is not how it appears,” says the toff, with another reason to feel uncomfortable. “That woman! You must arrest her for common assault!”
The copper and me exchanges glances and we’re both thinking the same thing: You can’t arrest a puppet.
“If you must know,” the toff would be blushing from top to toe, I’m sure, if he weren’t so pale from the loss of blood, “I carry out a great deal of charitable work incognito.”
“Where?” I says.
“In Whitechapel,” he says slowly, as if I’m a bleedin’ idiot. That’s rich, coming from an actual rich, bleeding idiot. “I was merely offering that young lady succour.”
“Ain’t you got that backwards?” I interrupts. “Ain’t she supposed to offer you that?”
The toff does his best to ignore me. His face is grey like a bedsheet what hasn’t been changed for ages, and the sweat is pouring off of him. If it was me, I’d have sat back and saved my energy, but not him. He’s keen to impress his innocence on us. “I was merely offering her funds for accommodation. A decent hotel where she could go and forsake the streets, even if only for one night.”
Fishface purses his lips. “Got it all sorted, have you? Bridal suite at the Savoy?”
The toff blenches. “No!” he sounds scandalised. “I meant for her to go there alone. I am insulted to my core that you would infer-”
He swoons; he’s on his way out. Just as well we’re pulling up at Hoo’s Limehouse warehouse. The doctor will sort him out and sharpish.
We - well, the copper does - pays off the cab and we bundle the toff into the warehouse and up to the lab. Doctor Hoo looks at us, all three, with cold eyes, then Hoo shoos the copper and me out of the lab and closes the door.
“He don’t look too happy,” says Fishface.
“He always looks like that,” I shrugs - but I know this ain’t strictly true. There’s something else. Something else has got on Hoo’s wick.
“Bloody hell,” I smacks myself on the brow.
“What?” says Kipper.
“We’ve only bleedin’ gone and forgot the dollymop, ain’t we?”
The copper’s jaw drops.
“He’s put a lot of time and effort into her,” I paces up and down and I chews at the skin at my thumbnail. “We’ve got to go back and fetch her.”
“You can if you like,” says Kipper, looking intently at the laboratory door. “Only I’m staying here to find out what else our flesh-and-blood friend has to say.�
�
I stops pacing and pulls up a chair. The copper thinks it’s for him but I sits on it; let him find his own bleedin’ chair. Truth be told: I don’t fancy facing that metal mistress on my Jack. I’d seen what she’d done to that toff. Well, I had a good idea but I thinks I’ll sound out the copper.
“What do you reckon happened, then?” I nods at the door. He knows what I mean straight off.
“I reckon the posh git got a little bit too rough with her. I saw how he shoved her into that alley. That weren’t no charitable donation he wanted to give her. I reckon he put himself in her mouth and she just about changed his religion for him, if you catch my meaning.”
I crosses my legs. It don’t bear thinking about.
“And all he can do is wallop her until she lets go. Before she can change him from lord to lady. Did you see how her head was out of whack?”
I nods. “Doctor Hoo’s not going to be happy with us, getting his prize puppet beaten up.”
“I don’t give a rat’s arsehole about that,” says Kipper and now it’s him what’s pacing up and down. “All I know is I’m no closer to catching Foggy Jack.”
“Perhaps your mates is right?” I offers but all I gets is a frown.
“Who?”
“Your mates down Scotland Yard. Perhaps he is a magician.”
“They’re not,” he stamps his foot. “Not my mates and not right. Magician, my arse.”
Before he can launch himself into a proper tirade, the lab door opens and Doctor Hoo is standing there with blood on his lab coat and dripping off of his gloves.
“Come in,” he says.
He even bows his head.
***
In we went. The toff was lying spark out on a table, covered by a sheet up to his neck. The copper got to him first, a look of concern all over his mush, which the doctor interpreted faster than I could.
“He lives,” said Doctor Hoo. “He rests.”
Trapping Fog Page 14