Act of Murder

by Alan J. Wright

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Course, I knowed it weren’t real, all done with them lanterns an’ all, but the missus . . . you shoulda heard her scream.’

  ‘Quite. Now the manager tells me they had nine guests staying here last night – that’s seven plus the Throstles. There are six of them in the bar and we need to take down their names and addresses, and ask them if they noticed anything strange or unusual last night, or any previous night.’

  ‘They’ll have seen summat bloody unusual if that bugger were up to his tricks. Him an’ his lanterns. You know what I reckon, sergeant?’

  Slevin was about to push open the door to the bar, where he could hear raised voices and protestations of outrage. ‘What?’

  ‘We could be lookin’ at the spirit world.’

  In spite of his desire to press on, Slevin stopped and looked at the constable, whose expression showed a deadly earnestness.

  ‘I mean, that bugger conjured up all sorts durin’ his show. There were sights yonder I’d never seen before. Can’t all have been fakery now. Stands to reason. He might’ve called up demons what didn’t want callin’ up, eh? They say you should let the dead stay dead, an’ if you disturb ’em, well, the spirits can turn very nasty indeed. My cousin went to a sittin’ once an’ she . . .’

  Slevin raised a finger and pointed it at Bowery. ‘You utter one word of that superstitious drivel again an’ you’ll be on mortuary duties for a fortnight. That should curb your enthusiasm for the dead. Understand?’

  Bowery nodded and the admonitory finger was lowered.

  ‘Now,’ Slevin said. ‘Let’s get busy.’

  ‘Hang on, sergeant,’ said Bowery, anxious to show he still had a grip on the real world.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘You said there was seven guests apart from Throstle an’ his missus?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, if there’s only six of ’em in yon bar, then where’s t’other bugger?’

  ‘He isn’t here, constable. Early riser, apparently. And I’m glad to see you retain a grasp of basic arithmetic.’

  Constable Bowery, on whom irony was wasted, smiled and followed his sergeant into the small bar.

  The results of the interviews, once Slevin and Bowery had shared their findings, were less than encouraging. No one had seen or heard anything unusual the previous night, although one of them – Mr Golding, the Inspector of Mines – had spent half an hour in the bar late the previous night and seen the victim, who had been enjoying a convivial drink and more than a few sniggered confidences with the hosiery salesman, Mr Jenkins. Golding had shared the conversation briefly, explicating the range and compass of accidental deaths in the coalmines.

  ‘And how did Mr Throstle seem?’ Slevin had asked.

  ‘Interested, sergeant. That’s how he seemed.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘Why, in my experiences.’

  ‘And Mr Jenkins?’

  ‘Oh he’s an affable sort of chap, if a little boring. Told us about his two daughters, immensely proud of them, he was.’

  ‘Did he appear to be . . . worried about anything?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Throstle.’

  ‘Not at all. Confident is the word I would choose.’

  ‘Didn’t mention card sharps, by any chance?’

  Golding shook his head. ‘He seemed in high spirits. The future is beckoning, he kept saying. Expansion is the word.’

  ‘Is there anything you can tell me that might shed some light on the dreadful fate that lay in store for him?’

  The Inspector of Mines looked to the ceiling for inspiration. ‘He did happen to ask me if I had any opportunities for female company in my line of work.’

  ‘That was a strange question to ask.’

  ‘Yes, it was. I told him of course that the very nature of my work with the mines precluded much contact with the gentler sex. ’

  ‘Did he elaborate?’

  ‘On the subject of women? Not really. But he did say – now this was when he had taken more than his fair share of drink, and he began to slur his words most alarmingly – he did say that I was quite right. I should keep away from them, because they are demons. That was it. Demons. “And they have fathers that are worse than demons.” I quote him verbatim, sergeant. It just seemed a curious thing to say.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Mr Golding had nothing more useful to add, and so he retired to his room to consult his papers.

  ‘What’s all that about fathers?’ Bowery asked in the solitude of the empty bar.

  ‘Perplexing, constable. That’s what it is. But perhaps also revealing.’

  Bowery blinked. How could something be perplexing and revealing at one and the same time?

  ‘I should like to speak to the missing Mr Jenkins.’

  ‘You reckon he’s our killer, sergeant?’

  ‘No, constable. But I should like him to corroborate something Mr Golding, our esteemed Inspector of Mines, said. It appears that Mr Richard Throstle had an eye for the ladies. Ladies with fathers. What does that suggest to you?’

  Bowery thought. ‘Well, it suggests young ladies, sergeant. Dads don’t tend to turn into demons when their daughters get past a certain age. They don’t get angry any more if someone tips their cap at ’em – they get grateful.’

  Slevin gave him a pat on the back. ‘Excellent, constable! Reason founded on the rock of experience. The best kind.’

  Bowery, who had no idea what the sergeant was on about, nevertheless smiled. It wasn’t often he got a pat on the back from Sergeant Slevin.

  Then a very rare thing happened. Constable Jimmy Bowery had a flash of inspiration.

  ‘That’s a bugger,’ was how he articulated the sensation.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Well, it might be owt an’ it might be nowt.’

  Slevin sighed heavily.

  ‘Yesterday we were called out to Springfield. Billy Cowburn. Know ’im?’

  Slevin shook his head.

  ‘Well, neighbours reckon he heaved his daughter downstairs.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Neighbour said she saw a chap runnin’ from the house, an’ Cowburn after him cursin’ an’ threatenin’ to rip him apart. Looks like he’d caught ’em at it.’

  ‘Where’s Cowburn now?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Bowery, letting his gaze fall to the floor. ‘Well, we had him an’ then we didn’t.’

  ‘Thus giving our esteemed chief constable occasion to harangue you in his office last night.’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘But what I’m sayin’, sergeant, is that it could’ve been Throstle what run, and Cowburn what did for him, eh?’

  Slevin pondered this scenario for a while. ‘I think we’ll have a word with Miss Cowburn,’ he said finally.

  *

  Georgina Throstle had of course given instructions for the evening’s Phantasmagoria to be cancelled. The manager of the Public Hall, Mr James Worswick, whom she had summoned to her new room at the Royal (thoughtfully provided by the hotel management and situated on the ground floor), had been the embodiment of sympathy and understanding. Unaware of the exact details of her husband’s unfortunate demise, he was therefore at a loss to explain to anyone who would listen to him later how his words could have reduced the poor woman to a state almost of delirium.

  ‘I shall ensure your late husband’s equipment will remain safe and unmolested,’ he had assured her.

  Now, in the dark seclusion of her room, she sat at the small writing-table by the window and pored over Richard’s papers. Among the items he had carefully kept in his briefcase were the detailed records of his more ‘exclusive’ material. This was normally kept under lock and key back in Leeds. Some of the slides, she knew, were kept with him at all times, and she cast an eye over the small notebook he used to record these.

  The entries he had inscribed were couched in the most innocent of terms: ‘Rose Blossoms’; ‘The F
lower Girls’; ‘The Organ Grinder’; ‘Picking Cherries’.

  Yet she knew what those slides contained. The fact that the first set – ‘Rose Blossoms’ – had been underscored in the notebook told her that these had been brought with him and were even now stored in the safe in the Public Hall office. She would have to retrieve them and decide what to do with them. She had no doubt now that the man she saw Richard talking to in the street, whom he had described as a pillar of the community, had entered into some financial arrangement for a private showing of the slides. Now, with Richard dead, it would be prudent to destroy any evidence of such wickedness, for she herself could be considered guilty by association.

  And yet . . . these slides had made him considerably more money than anything else, and in destroying them she would in effect be destroying the means to financial independence. It pained her to admit it, but Richard had been right.

  Did she really desire a future with her sainted brother, who rose every morning at five and chanted the Te Deum in a voice so grave and forbidding you’d think he was offering a lament for the dead rather than a hymn of praise? A brother who, because of her earlier life as a governess, would now, after her period of mourning, expect her to earn her keep by teaching his parishioners’ children in Sunday School, after having sat through yet another of his interminably long sermons?

  ‘I mustn’t be hasty!’ she thought, closing the notebook gently. ‘Above all things, I must consider my future.’

  *

  Enoch Platt lay in his bed, covered with his greatcoat and gazing at the small curtained window. Slivers of morning sunlight managed to creep through the grubbed holes in the fabric. Not that he took any notice of the light, or the sun, or the myriad of street noises coming from beyond his bedroom window. No. He was seeing a blackness so total it felt like the onset of Death itself, and hearing the cries that came from all around him . . .

  Cries that had been laughter only a few minutes earlier, laughter mingled with the sound of picks striking the coal face, and the dull gritty trundle of the corves being pushed along the tracks, and the frequent bursts of coughing and curses. Then they heard the distant rumble, like thunder in the next county, swiftly followed by a huge blast that sent Enoch and the others flying through the suffocating dust clouds until they came to near the shaft. Coal tubs and huge wedges of timber lay scattered in all directions, and from afar came a dim red glow that illuminated everything, rendering it akin to a scene from hell itself. He coughed, and fought to gain control of his breathing, but the dust was swirling and clogging up his nostrils and stinging his eyes. He could just make out the shattered remains of countless bodies, limbs ripped from their sockets and bodies twisted at impossible angles. Then he dropped down to his knees, where he felt his hands touch someone’s face, and stooped low to see who it was. Despite the storm raging all around, and the cries of those still trapped beneath the tons of rubble from the collapsed walls, he took great care to wipe his eyes clean of the dust for a few seconds to examine the one he had found. His heart raced as the dim glow of flames from afar revealed his brother, Joseph, his eyes open and gazing back at him. Gazing but not seeing.

  It was then that he noticed the dust speckling his eyes, tiny dots of grit colouring the blue eyes grey, then black, with no reflex flutter from his lids. He tried to close those eyes, clogged thick now with dust, but as he held his brother’s head in his hands he realised with a sickening sensation of horror that it moved too easily, and when he gazed fearfully down he saw the neck had been severed just above the breastbone and there was no sign anywhere of the rest of his broken body. With a low, keening groan he raised the head in both hands, and the groan became a high, piercing scream that was deadened only by the next explosion which slammed into his ears, bringing both welcome darkness and a permanent dislodgement of the brain.

  *

  ‘Now that we’re here,’ said Detective Sergeant Slevin with a look of venom towards the hapless Bowery, ‘we might as well make use of it. But I can tell you, constable, I am less than pleased by this wild goose chase.’

  Where Violet Cowburn had lain in some distress the night before, now a female of indeterminate age was sitting up and singing at the top of her voice.

  ‘Transferred from the Idiot Ward,’ said a tight-lipped matron. ‘She has tubercolosis, though you wouldn’t think so, listening to that caterwauling.’

  ‘You must have a great deal to put up with,’ said Slevin, giving her a smile. ‘Now, would it be possible for you to tell me where I might find Dr Bentham?’

  ‘In the operating theatre and under no circumstances to be disturbed.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing,’ Slevin replied. ‘But the great doctor knows me well, and he has promised to do something for me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Both he and I would owe you a debt of gratitude if you were to pass this on to him.’ He produced the small brown bottle containing the potion Georgina had been taking for her neuralgia.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said with another of his winning smiles, ‘you have my question all ready. That’s precisely what I want you to ask him. On my behalf. What exactly is this potion?’

  She took it uncertainly.

  ‘Tell him I’ll look forward to his opinion on the potion. Good day.’

  Before she could say anything further, he and Constable Bowery were already leaving the ward and its unruly patient behind.

  ‘What do you reckon’s in the bottle, sergeant?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably what Mrs Throstle says is in it. But it will do no harm to check.’

  As they travelled towards the Cowburn house at Springfield, suffering the uneven rattle of the hackney as it bounced along on the cobbled surface, Slevin pondered the gruesome circumstances of Richard Throstle’s death. Why, for instance, had he been mutilated in such a manner? If you want to kill someone, then you take the quickest and most economical route, surely? Yet somehow the murderer had gained access to the victim’s room – the door was undamaged and the lock untampered with – and rendered him pliant in some way. There had been no visible signs of a blow to the head, so it was possible he was suffocated before the murderer set about his vile task. But what if Mrs Throstle had awakened at any time? True, she had taken her analgesic, but surely the murderer wasn’t to know that? And what if she had awakened at the moment of execution? Perhaps then she too would be lying in the infirmary mortuary beside her husband. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that there was something deeply personal about this crime, and that robbery was far from the crazed mind of the creature who perpetrated the act.

  ‘Presence of mind,’ Slevin said aloud as the hackney trundled its uncomfortable way past Mesnes Park.

  ‘Beg pardon, sergeant?’

  ‘Would you have the presence of mind to do what she did?’

  ‘What who did?’

  Slevin tightened his lips in exasperation. ‘Mrs Georgina Throstle.’

  ‘Why? What’d she do then?’ Perhaps, he thought, if the sergeant occasionally let him share whatever he was thinking about then he wouldn’t have to ask such questions. Bowery was no mentalist.

  ‘When she awoke and discovered her husband so abominably defiled in death, she had the presence of mind to look under the bed to see if her jewellery had been stolen.’

  ‘Perhaps she was fond of ’em.’

  ‘Her husband is lying there drenched in blood with his member swimming in a pisspot and she thinks of her baubles? A remarkable woman, constable, don’t you think?’

  ‘Could’ve been the shock?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it could have been. Let’s keep an open mind, eh? When we return, I want you to take a couple of men and do the rounds of the public houses and drinking dens.’

  ‘Bloody ’ell, sergeant! Do you know how many of them there are?’

  ‘A fair number, I should say. But if Throstle was threatened by card sharps, then surely he would have had enough sense to r
estrict his wanderings to the town centre? He’s hardly likely to take an afternoon constitutional up Scholes or Beech Hill, now is he? Specially in all that fog. No, restrict your enquiries to the town centre.’ He gave a smile of mock compassion. ‘There. See how logic and deduction are a boon to detection, constable?’

  Bowery sighed. He had a vision of blistered feet, and sullen and hostile responses. There were still a good number of such places in the town itself. ‘What are we lookin’ for?’

  ‘Card games. Gambling of any description. Throstle told his wife he was chased by card sharps.’

  ‘But we know that was a lie, sergeant. It was Cowburn who did the chasin’ after skimmin’ his young wench downstairs.’

  ‘That’s as may be. But we cannot ignore the possibility that he was referring to an earlier encounter.’

  ‘It’s a wild goose chase, sergeant.’

  ‘Is it?’ Slevin asked innocently.

  Constable Bowery folded his arms, stared glumly through the window and silently swore. He would have cursed out loud if he had known what was waiting for them in Mort Street.

  *

  The morning after an opening night is always thought of as a dead time, when the euphoria of the night before, especially when the audience is as rapturous and generous in its applause as it was at the Royal Court, has long since faded like echoes in an empty hall. In her small room at the lodging-house, with Belle Greave still snoring loudly in the adjoining room, Susan Coupe had spent a few hours preparing her next role – that of Portia in Julius Caesar.

  Later, as she left her lodgings in Greenhough Street, having politely but firmly declined Belle’s offer to accompany her, she walked quickly down the incline towards the town centre. The warnings from her landlady were still fresh in her mind: ‘Whatever you do, love, don’t go up Greenhough Street. That’d take you to Scholes, an’ that’s the last place a fine-lookin’ lass like you wants to end up in.’ Scholes, she went on with gruesome relish, was a ‘lively place’, where policemen never ventured alone and whose Saturday nights were often a veritable bloodbath outside several of the seventy or so public houses.

  Susan had shuddered, the advice reinforcing her dislike of the town. The notorious district might well be set apart from the more respectable part of town where she was lodged, but the very existence of such brutish creatures disgusted her. She had seen many of them over the last few days, slouching past in the late afternoon, their faces smeared and blackened by coal dust and their eyes somehow seeming to select her, of all those in the street and outside the many shops, for prurient attention. Must the male sex always regard women with such a leering desire?