Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  With his father’s viciousness and mother’s business acumen, Hanratty built up a string of businesses, starting with a jellied-eel stall and terrorizing other costermongers until he had a near monopoly of that highly lucrative trade, expanding into the supply of other foods and alcohol, buying and building his own premises. By the time I arrived in the city, Hanratty owned – by Sidney Grice’s reckoning – a sizeable portion of the Whitechapel area. His activities were multifarious and nefarious for Hagop did not care what he was involved in so long as it was profitable.

  Hanratty was no uncouth thug, however. He had a reputation for being a man of cultured tastes and great charm. His three gin palaces glittered, his music hall – The Hallows -attracted the most famous acts in England, and his theatres put on a range of plays and spectacles to rival anything produced in the more opulent West End. The Waldringham Hotel was one of Hanratty’s pet projects. Whilst its reputation was risqué, its seeming immunity from the unwanted attentions of the police and criminals alike made it an attractive proposition to those wishing to feel secure in their escapades. He began to attract the fashionable, wealthy and powerful to his entertainments, catering for a wide variety of tastes, not all of them legal.

  Most importantly, Hanratty kept an iron grip on his empire. The only crimes committed were at his behest and it was his boast that a woman could walk unaccompanied down any of ‘his’ streets at any hour of the day or night without fear of molestation. He did not take kindly, therefore, to being proved wrong. So, when Johnny ‘the Walrus’ was brought to trial – contrary to Sidney Grice’s advice – for complicity in the attack on Geraldine Hockaday, and released to general dismay, Hanratty let it be known that Wallace was no longer under his protection and he would not be overly concerned if his former minion were to be quietly and quickly removed.

  6

  The Empty House

  Friday 1 August 1884

  THE WINDOWS WERE boarded over and the house had obviously been empty for a long time. Dust had made heavy curtains of the cobwebs draped across the hallway and none of them had been disturbed before Sidney Grice sliced our way through with his cane.

  I made to follow but he stopped with one foot on the step and his other on the threshold, and put out his arm. ‘You promised to wait outside.’

  A grey mouse scuttled along the gully by my feet. ‘I have waited,’ I reminded him, ‘while you picked the lock.’

  ‘I shall not allow you to risk your safety.’

  ‘But you are risking yours,’ I pointed out, ‘and your life is worth much more than mine.’

  It was rare that an appeal to my guardian’s vanity failed and I could see that he was swayed by that argument.

  ‘Nevertheless—’ He tipped the brim of his soft felt hat.

  ‘Besides which, you cannot mean to leave me outside here without a chaperone.’ I waved my furled parasol to indicate the dilapidated filth-strewn street. It was deserted and we both knew that I had been unaccompanied in far worse places than this. Mr G clicked his tongue.

  ‘Very well,’ he decided as the mouse doubled back and scrambled on to the roadside by my feet. ‘But you will stay close by and do exactly as I say.’

  The mouse rose on its hind legs like a puppy begging titbits.

  ‘Probably and possibly,’ I responded to the two instructions.

  I found a few stale breadcrumbs in my cloak pocket – left over from feeding the pigeons – and sprinkled them on the ground. The mouse wandered away.

  Sidney Grice went inside and I followed into an unfurnished, narrow, uncarpeted hallway, running alongside the wooden stairs and straight to a frosted glass-panelled door that stood a few inches ajar. The dust lay thick and gritty and there was a strong musty smell. The walls bulged with lathes breaking through the thin damp plasterwork and the ceiling sagged in the middle, bursting like a lanced boil.

  ‘Somebody has come in the back way.’ I pointed to the faint cleated marks on the floor, coming towards us before going off and away to mount the stairs.

  ‘Those are very like our man’s footprints.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ They seemed unremarkable to me.

  ‘See how they are twisted and are blurred at the edges by a slight hobbling shuffle? He is preternaturally vain about his undersized feet and squeezes them into the tightest boots possible,’ Sidney Grice murmured. ‘At least he appears to be alone.’

  I closed the front door and there was only a pale glimmer through the boarded windows to light our way.

  ‘Do you have your revolver?’ I asked.

  He tapped his satchel. ‘I shall not get it out unless I have to. A man who sees a firearm pointing at him is more likely to use his own.’

  I bobbed to retie my bootlace and he paused.

  ‘The back door is still open. I can feel the breeze.’ The whole hall felt draughty to me but I had come to accept that my guardian’s senses were more finely attuned than mine. ‘Listen.’

  We stood noiselessly. ‘I can hear nothing.’

  ‘When do you ever?’ Mr G did not wait for a reply. ‘There is a hansom waiting in the alley. Whoever came wants to leave in a hurry and is willing to pay for the privilege. It is not difficult to hail a cab on the main thoroughfare.’

  ‘Shall we go up?’

  He nodded. ‘Keep behind me and to the side. The boards are less likely to creak.’

  The treads were still quite solid.

  ‘I am surprised they have not been torn out for firewood,’ I whispered.

  ‘The locals would not dare. They know who owns this street,’ Sidney Grice responded. ‘Stop chattering.’

  We climbed to the top and here the footprints scattered. Their creator must have been up and down the corridor. Some went to our left and through an open doorway, the rest to a halfclosed door of the next room to the right and a shut one at the end.

  ‘The open one?’ I suggested and we edged towards it.

  We stopped and Mr G pointed. There was a faint shadow on the wall, the silhouette of a seated man.

  ‘Not a good idea to take him by surprise.’ Mr G cleared his throat. ‘Lord,’ he boomed, ‘I would welcome a cup of tea.’

  ‘So would I,’ I yelled as we approached. ‘Let us seek a kettle in here.’

  I knew he was in there, but I still jumped when I saw the man who sat facing the doorway and pointing a pistol straight at us.

  ‘Good afternoon, Johnny.’ I struggled to keep my voice steady.

  The room was bare and unlit except for a pallid slopped rectangle where a board had been torn from a grimy window. Dusk was already falling.

  Johnny ‘the Walrus’ Wallace uncoiled to rise a full five or six inches over us, and spreading almost as much to either side. His trousers were crumpled and he had been a few days in need of a shave.

  ‘You two.’ He was breathing heavily. His eyes, watery and red-threaded, were darkly underscored and congested. ‘I fought it might be someone ’ere to kill me.’

  He pitched to his right, rising on to his left toe to peer past us into the passageway.

  ‘Oh, we may one day,’ my guardian assured him cheerfully, ‘but by judicial means.’

  Johnny Wallace cackled and dropped back on to his heels. ‘Leave it awt.’ He leaned against the wall, distemper powdering the shoulder of his patched, grey cloth coat and black, low, curve-brimmed hat. ‘You ain’t got a ragman’s scratch to ’old against me.’

  The Walrus was not an attractive man. His skin was lifeless and pocked. His nose was twisted and snubby. His upper teeth were so splayed that he could never pull his lips together and there were red streaks from saliva leaking into the creases that ran down from the corners of his mouth.

  Sidney Grice took one step forward. ‘I am very sorry, Wallace—’

  ‘I shall consult my s’licita over this.’ Johnny wagged the barrel reprovingly. ‘You can’t not keep ’arrassin’—’

  ‘That you have drawn such a conclusion,’ my guardian continued smoothly. And Johnny
Wallace paused and scratched his armpit, but ‘Eh?’ was all he could manage.

  ‘Because I intend to harass you into the dock of the Old Bailey,’ Mr G explained.

  Johnny the Walrus slurped. ‘Look – that girl, she wasn’t not nuffink to do wiv me.’

  ‘Miss Hockaday recognized you,’ I reminded him, ‘when we and her brother took her back to the Waldringham Hotel.’

  Johnny Wallace did not flinch. ‘I gave her directions,’ he argued. ‘I ain’t never denied that. The Barnaby—’

  ‘The what?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Barnaby Rudge / Judge’ Mr G translated.

  ‘The geezer wiv a’norchard on ’is loaf.’ Johnny rummaged through his poorly scythed marmalade thatch.

  ‘I know what a judge is,’ I said irritably, and I understood that loaf of bread meant head. But I could only guess what he meant by an orchard.

  ‘Said there was no case to answer,’ Wallace concluded smugly. ‘Don’t know what all the fuss was anyway. She was pro’lly lookin’ to get it when she got it.’

  ‘You disgusting toad.’ I stepped forward unthinkingly and Johnny the Walrus turned the muzzle towards me.

  ‘No funny business.’

  ‘I shall not hurt you,’ I breathed, wishing that I could, ‘yet.’

  ‘You?’ Johnny Wallace put out his chest. ‘Why, you ain’t big enough to ’urt a —’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Sidney Grice burst out. ‘Ain’t.? Ain’t? You are worse than my maid and she is very bad indeed. If you mean are not, just say it, man.’

  ‘You are not,’ Johnny Wallace corrected himself, ‘’ardly big enough to—’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Mr G broke in again, pacing the floor and waving his stick like an irate schoolmaster. ‘Either Miss Middleton is not big enough or she is hardly big enough to hurt whatever feeble creature you—’ his cane whipped down and the gun flew to Johnny Wallace’s tiny feet – ‘were going to mention.’

  Johnny Wallace bent but Sidney Grice flicked the revolver back over the floor towards me and I cautiously scooped it up. I do not like guns. The last time I had handled one, I almost killed a constable.

  ‘I shall give you a receipt for it later,’ I promised and popped it into my handbag, having very gingerly lowered the hammer first.

  ‘Damn,’ Johnny Wallace cursed. ‘Damn, that frobs. Dammit.’

  ‘Ladies,’ my guardian reproved.

  ‘Sorry.’ Johnny Wallace rubbed his wrist. ‘But I still don’t not understand. Eeva she aren’t ’ardly big enough or she are and I don’t not fink she are.’

  ‘You explain,’ my guardian told me, but I had had enough of that game.

  ‘Perhaps later.’

  Johnny Wallace sucked his teeth while he considered the situation. ‘If you was goin’ to arrest me the place’d be crawlin’ with bluebokkles long before now,’ he decided. ‘So what’s your game?’

  ‘We have another witness, Mr Walrus,’ I told him for I knew that he hated being called that. ‘A lady of excellent repute.’

  ‘What was she doin’ round the Waldy then?’ Wallace sneered.

  ‘Trying to save women from vermin like you,’ I replied. ‘This lady will swear in a court of law that she saw you follow Miss Hockaday down that alley before the gaslight was smashed and our client was attacked.’

  ‘So?’ Wallace shrugged. ‘You can’t try a man for the same crime twice.’

  ‘That is true,’ I agreed, ‘but only if you are found not guilty. Your trial never went that far.’

  My godfather seemed to have lost interest in us and was rooting about the room, though there was precious little to poke around.

  ‘There weren’t no lady.’ Johnny pushed the tip of his tongue between front teeth. ‘What lady?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘You’re makin’ it up.’

  ‘I most certainly am,’ I agreed. ‘But whose evidence is a court more likely to believe?’

  ‘That ain’t nice.’ Johnny’s voice took on a wheedling tone. ‘Even if I did send her down the back way, it wasn’t me what did ’er.’

  ‘Then who did?’ I demanded and Wallace coughed and his face twitched with fear.

  ‘I’il take my chances in any court any day before I’d go against ’im.’

  Mr G lowered his head and considered the statement. ‘Very well,’ he decided. ‘If you will not tell us the attacker’s name, at least give me that of your companion.’

  Johnny Wallace scratched his groin and growled. ‘Wha’ companyun?’ And, for the first time, Johnny Wallace seemed genuinely puzzled.

  ‘In that case,’ Mr G said quickly, ‘I suggest you step smartly aside.’

  Johnny Wallace laughed throatily. ‘I don’t not know what you’re playing at.’

  Sidney Grice leaped towards him and as he did so there was a snap like a twig breaking and I looked up to see a narrow metal pipe withdrawing though a hole in the ceiling and there were footsteps and the ceiling bowed, splintering into fissures.

  Johnny Wallace doffed his hat. ‘Funny,’ he said wonderingly.

  ‘Stand back,’ my guardian commanded me.

  I obeyed automatically, my eyes fixed on Johnny as he put a hand into his hat and poked a thumb through the crown.

  ‘What has happened?’ I watched the cracks speed overhead.

  Sidney Grice ripped his satchel open and brought out his ivory-handled revolver. ‘He has been shot.’

  ‘Shot?’ Johnny Wallace sniggered and tossed his hat aside. It flopped comfortably into a corner.

  Mr G raised the revolver in both hands high above his head, pointing to where the ceiling was rupturing near the far wall. I put my fingers in my ears but the two detonations still made my head ring. A three-foot section of plaster disappeared, showering a fog of powder and splinters of wood all over us.

  Sidney Grice was miraculously unsoiled. He lowered his gun and I hurried to Johnny Wallace. Johnny was patting his chest, not to clean the debris off his waistcoat but checking himself against my guardian’s claim, oblivious to the dark pool appearing on his forehead. He blinked as it trickled over his eyes and, as he bent, I saw a cavity, the shape and size of a halfpenny, just above his hairline. I ripped off my scarf, intending to stem the flow, but Johnny skilfully dodged past me. The blood was pumping now, bubbling like mud over a leaking water mains, and Johnny staggered sideways in a grotesque novelty dance, tricky little steps with crossed feet, one knee bending and then the other, limbo dancing with arms thrown out, then everything buckling as he went down. I tried to catch him, but Johnny was wrenched through my fingers by the heaviness of his fall.

  The back of Johnny Wallace’s head smacked on the bare boards and bounced twice.

  ‘Blimmit,’ he said.

  I kneeled beside him and pressed my balled-up handkerchief uselessly over the cavity, the silk instantly saturated.

  ‘You are – to all intents and purposes – a dead man,’ Sidney Grice informed him chattily, leaning on his stick to contemplate the spectacle. ‘So you had better hurry if there are any lastminute confessions you wish to make.’

  Johnny drifted and I thought he had gone, but he rallied and made an effort to sit up. ‘That woman—’

  ‘Which woman?’ Sidney Grice demanded

  The wounded man’s eyes were lost already but he sagged back and managed to raise a hand to beckon me. I put my ear to his mouth. Five words. I heard them sough and then a short faint cough, and then nothing.

  I stood up and wiped my face but my hands were as bloody as my cheeks.

  Sidney Grice dashed to the door.

  ‘Look out of the window,’ he rapped. And from the corridor he called, ‘I shall look out of the front. Shout if you see him.’

  I hurried to the window, grasped at one of the planks and heaved it, but it was solidly nailed into place. The gap was just about large enough to squeeze my nose and one eye through, and I was still unpinning my bonnet to do so when I heard two sets of crashes – one from the front room, where my
godfather seemed to be having more success with the boarding, and a series from behind me and then above. The ceiling bowed and there was a loud cracking as it gave and a boot broke through.

  ‘Gah!’ somebody exclaimed, wrenching at his leg, snared in a tangle of lathes.

  ‘Quickly,’ I shouted and heard footsteps approach, then Sidney Grice burst in just as the boot pulled free.

  He raised his revolver and I braced myself. But another bulge near the wall showed that the intruder was already over the adjacent room. Mr G was out in the corridor and through the next door, just in time to see another series of splits disappear into the neighbouring house.

  ‘Either he gashed his leg or I got him.’ Sidney Grice pointed to a dark stain above our heads. ‘I shall have the hospitals and medical practices questioned. If he seeks help, there may be an honest doctor somewhere, though I have yet to meet him.’

  We went back to Johnny.

  ‘He said the Empress of Cathay, ten thirty,’ I told my guardian.

  ‘I doubt it.’ He put his gun away.

  ‘I heard him.’

  Sidney Grice crouched and rifled through Johnny Wallace’s pockets. ‘As you wish.’

  ‘Perhaps it is the name of a horse he had backed.’

  Mr G tossed a rag aside. ‘His watch has been broken.’

  ‘Or a greyhound.’

  My godfather whistled quietly, content in his work. ‘But not recently.’

  ‘Can we not get into the loft?’ I asked, shocked by his inaction.

  ‘We could.’ My guardian stood up, brushing the dust from his knee. ‘But, first, the killer might still be up there and will have had plenty of time to reload his – assuming it is a man – device. Would you care to be the first to introduce yourself into his line of fire?’

  I admitted that I would not and Sidney Grice continued calmly, ‘And, since my head is of much more use than yours, neither would I.’ He fluttered his eyelashes. ‘Second, as even you should know, the roof spaces of these terraces interconnect.’ He peered out of the window. ‘He could have climbed down into any of twenty-two houses to effect his escape.’ He beat the plaster from his Ulster coat. ‘What a nuisance.’