The Detective and the Devil

by Lloyd Shepherd

  And in that library was a manuscript. A very particular manuscript, with a very particular purpose. The old scholar’s dull eyes had glittered with young hunger when he talked of this text, as if he’d have killed for it. The manuscript, if what was said of it was true, had the capacity to change everything. To make the merchants rich beyond the dreams of Croesus.

  ‘What’s in it?’ Jacobus had asked, in his simple direct way.

  ‘The great secret,’ the scholar said, unhelpfully. ‘The celestial light,’ he added, no more helpfully. The merchants’ eyes glittered in the candlelight. When they told Jacobus the great secret, his eyes glittered as well.

  These merchants had put their plan to him. The main event was still the conquest of the East, in mercantile terms, but this delicious nugget was an irresistible sideshow and merchants do not grow rich by ignoring opportunities, however obscure. Seize Dee’s library – a prize worthy of any group of ambitious men, worth riches in itself, droned the scholar – and at the same time seize this secret text.

  Well, all right, then. A job worthy of Jacobus Aakster’s skills. A lot of money changed hands over the following year – well, a lot to him, no doubt little more than a day’s household silver to these wealthy men. But it was more than enough to secure the services of an ugly mercenary named Jacobus Aakster, with an unexpectedly beautiful wife who had the morals of a snake (the wife, not him, though he was hardly an angel and John Dee would not have wished to commune with him). A fighter of other people’s wars, with as little money to afford property as to afford morality. Get the library, they told him while their scholar looked on, glassy-eyed, but don’t let on that you’ve got it. And make sure you get the manuscript. Steal the one, and they won’t know you’ve stolen the other.

  How to secretly steal a library? Well, that was the easy part. The secret was in the boxes of books which his drunken English helpmates had unloaded onto the towpath. The Englishmen had grumbled about those boxes, but the English grumbled all the time. They were only happy when they grumbled. But they did what they were told, and carried the boxes from the barge up to the sorcerer’s house. A thousand books, ransacked from dozens of Dutch printers and homes and sailed over to London before being transplanted onto a barge in a dark inlet near Deptford.

  They burned these worthless books, and removed the others from the library to the barge. But by that time, Jacobus Aakster had disappeared, with the thing the merchants wanted most of all in his coat and his beautiful young wife Mina Koeman alongside him.

  He disappeared for three years: three years during which time certain Dutch and Flemish scholars delightedly indulged themselves on Dee’s stolen library, which had been transplanted to Amsterdam. But for the merchants there was no such joy. Aakster had made off with the only volume they cared about. They were murderous in their fury.

  So they were surprised when, three years later, Jacobus came back to see them. He had a proposal for them. They didn’t like it very much.

  They met in the back of the same tavern they’d gathered in three years before. The scholar came along with them, older and dustier than ever, and the merchants placed a few mercenaries of their own at the door, to capture Jacobus or to punish him, it didn’t matter which.

  ‘You still have the manuscript?’ said one of the merchants.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Jacobus replied, and the merchants looked at each other with some concern. ‘The physical text has been destroyed.’

  The temperature in the room, which wasn’t that high to begin with, fell even further.

  ‘We will kill you, then,’ said the merchant.

  ‘Ah, well, no. I wouldn’t do that. You see, I have put the text to memory. It still exists.’ Jacobus tapped the side of his head. ‘In here.’

  ‘Prove it,’ the merchant said.

  Jacobus began to speak.

  ‘Seeing there is a three-fold world, combining Elementary, Celestial, and Intellectual, and every Inferior is governed by its Superior, and receiveth the influences thereof, so that the very original, and chief Worker of all doth by Angels, the Heavens, Stars, Elements, Plants, Metals and Stones convey from himself the virtues of his Omnipotency upon us . . .’

  ‘Enough!’ said the scholar.

  ‘Is it the text?’ asked the merchant.

  ‘The translation is ugly, but yes – it could be the Opera.’ The scholar looked at Jacobus as if he were one of Dee’s angels. The merchant looked at him as if he wanted to kill him.

  ‘What is it that you require?’ asked the merchant.

  ‘A ship, and some men to build a fort,’ Jacobus replied. ‘Give me that, and I’ll make all of us rich.’

  CONSTABLE HORTON INVESTIGATES

  Despite his age, despite his recent illness, despite the case being Shadwell’s and not Wapping’s, despite all these dreary facts, it was in John Harriott’s rooms at the River Police Office that a meeting was convened the next morning. The man’s force of personality was still great enough to ignore the niceties of jurisdiction.

  Horton saw how irritating Edward Markland of Shadwell found this continuing reality: that John Harriott was in some unfathomable way still the senior magistrate in the area, the man to whom the press and the politicians and the populace turned at times of crisis. Harriott was old, but he was still the man who had tamed the Thames.

  Yet Markland behaved himself. He would continue to do so, Horton believed, because of another truth, a peculiarly sour one. Harriott was dying. Everyone knew this to be the case. His infirmity hung in the room like the stench of rotten cabbage in the street. Markland smelled it as well as anyone. All he needed to do was exploit Harriott’s most useful asset – his constable Charles Horton – and who knew what would happen at the old man’s demise?

  It was a warm May morning. Wapping had been awake for hours, and Charles Horton had barely slept. He was wearing the same clothes as the night before. He had returned home for a few fitful hours, lying awake alongside his sleeping wife, listening to her breathe, the memory of the awful skull beneath Mrs Johnson’s burnt face vivid in his mind.

  Despite the early hour there was a ticklish sense of panic out in the streets, and he could sense some of it in Harriott’s impressive office, with its leather chairs and fireplace and its massive desk by the riverside window. People outside were talking of the Monster again – and in their telling, he came back, the same Monster that had dispatched the Marrs and then the Williamsons three years before. Walking past the mammoth white walls of St George’s in the East the previous night, Horton had seen a group of men stamping on the cobbles of the street at the crossroads where John Williams had been interred – the Williams that the Shadwell magistrates, Markland included, had decreed was the Monster. There was no logic to it, but Horton had understood the need: to stamp on returning devils, to send them back to Hell. For a moment, he had almost joined them.

  Unwin the coroner planned to hold his inquest today, upstairs at the Jolly Sailor, the same venue as for the Marr inquest. Harriott had invited Unwin to this meeting, along with the surgeon Salter, who performed the coroner’s medical inspections. Harriott had asked Salter to give his preliminary view and in a calm, dispassionate way the surgeon was doing so. The bodies of the Johnsons remained in their home, for now.

  ‘The man found in the kitchen died from injuries to his head,’ Salter said. ‘The older woman died when she was pushed into the fire, which must have still been alight, judging by her injuries. The younger woman died either by a cut throat or an assault with a maul, or both.’

  Salter was a methodical man, Horton knew, but he was also an unimaginative one. He was reading from his notes as if he were reading from a church Bible at a family funeral. He did not draw conclusions. That was not for surgeons. They cut open, they took out or they severed, they sewed up, they moved on. Salter’s was a descriptive mind, not a speculative one.

  When Salter finished, Harriott cursed under his breath. Even Markland, who had seen the injuries that Salter descr
ibed, looked grey.

  ‘With your permission, sir,’ Horton said to Harriott, and the magistrate nods. ‘Dr Salter, the girl downstairs. Had she been interfered with in any way?’

  The surgeon’s face was calm, but Horton could see it in his eyes: a species of fear at the demonic intensity of these deaths. Perhaps the surgeon was not so devoid of imagination after all. Even Salter could detect the smell of older murders, drifting back across years.

  ‘I take it you mean: had she been ravished?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Horton.’ This from Markland. ‘Is this necessary?’

  ‘Answer the question, doctor,’ said Harriott, with a scowl towards his fellow magistrate.

  ‘There is no way of telling,’ said Salter. ‘Not without a full investigation of the body. And that is impossible at the house.’

  ‘Am I to understand, then, that you have not examined the bodies unclothed?’

  ‘Of course not, constable. I would not do so at a private residence.’

  ‘And how do you account for the lack of any blood?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You have stated that you believe the causes of death to have been either physical injury or burning. Yet there was no blood in the house. The floors were clean. How do you account for such a thing?’

  Salter frowned.

  ‘I cannot account for it.’

  ‘You would expect a great amount of blood, then?’

  ‘Yes. I can only imagine that the killer cleaned up after himself.’

  ‘There are not even stains.’

  ‘No. There are not.’

  Unwin broke the uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Can I suggest that Salter brings the bodies here for a full inspection? I will postpone the inquest until then.’

  ‘It would seem the doctor has further work to do,’ growled Harriott, and Salter’s face reddened. Horton did not feel sorry for him. ‘We have a room that has been used for such purposes before. He can use that.’

  ‘It is agreed?’ said Unwin, still trying to rescue Salter. ‘How much time will you need?’

  ‘A day. Perhaps two,’ said Salter, his voice a whisper.

  ‘Then if we are willing, I will postpone the inquest until the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Salter, and fell silent. Harriott glared at him, then turned back to Horton.

  ‘What do we know of the deceased?’ he said.

  ‘Very little as yet,’ said Horton. ‘The master of the house is . . . or was . . . one Benjamin Johnson. I’m told he worked as a clerk for the East India Company.’

  Harriott baulked at this.

  ‘The East India Company?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Perhaps you could assist with dealing with the Company?’

  ‘Assist how?’ asked Markland, somewhat put out.

  ‘I have personal history with John Company,’ said Harriott, glancing down at his left leg without further comment. If Markland had bothered to read Harriott’s memoirs he would have known that the magistrate’s left leg had been ruined in service of the Company in India. Horton found it interesting that Markland did not know this.

  ‘Markland, have your men interrogated the neighbours?’

  ‘They have, Harriott. Of course.’

  ‘And their findings?’

  Markland frowned at being asked to report in this fashion, but then he consulted an elegant leather notebook. A look passed between Harriott and Horton. Edward Markland, it seemed, had taken to writing notes.

  ‘Mrs Johnson’s name was Emma, the daughter was called Jane. The neighbours say they were a pleasant enough family, the wife particularly. She seems to have been generous with her money and her time, both of which she seemed to possess in decent amounts. The mother took in some sewing, and the daughter did some work alongside her.’

  ‘Any other family?’

  ‘The wife has a sister, living in Putney.’

  ‘And were there any witnesses to the events?’

  ‘None at all. No unusual noises, no raised voices at all.’

  ‘Though there is a menagerie next door,’ said Horton, causing Markland to glance at him with irritation. ‘Unusual noises are not uncommon on that street.’

  Markland appeared not to have noticed the strange shop next door, and did not relish having its presence pointed out to him.

  ‘No one seen coming or going?’ asked Harriott.

  ‘No,’ said Markland, looking away from Horton.

  ‘He was careful.’

  ‘Assuming he worked alone,’ said Horton, and Harriott looked at him.

  ‘You think there was more than one man involved?’

  ‘I have no idea. But there is nothing to suggest there was only one man.’

  ‘Who discovered the bodies?’ asked Unwin.

  ‘The servant, a girl called Amy Beavis. She lives with her father over towards Whitechapel.’

  ‘I suggest Horton goes to speak with her,’ said Harriott. ‘He is good with servants.’

  Horton had little idea what this might mean, but nodded in any case.

  ‘Your thoughts, Horton?’ This from Markland.

  ‘My thoughts, sir?’

  ‘Have you developed a picture of the case?’

  ‘By no means, Mr Markland. It is far too early for such things. I will need further time to investigate.’

  ‘Well, time is something we do not have,’ said Markland. He rose, and placed a hat on his head. ‘There is a frenzy of chatter in the streets. People believe the killer of the Marrs and Williamsons has returned. Nonsense, of course – Williams is dead. But the uneducated and the idle thrive on gossip. I must return to the Shadwell office. Horton will report to me any developments. Is that agreed, Harriott?’

  Harriott grunted, a noise that Horton knew could signify almost anything.

  ‘Well, then. I will go and speak to the gentlemen of the press, and try to calm the populace. Gentlemen.’

  Markland left, and Unwin made his own farewell, leaving with the silent and stone-faced surgeon. Horton and Harriott were left alone.

  ‘He will calm the populace, will he?’ grumbled Harriott. ‘My word, sometimes I think Edward Markland imagines himself to be Bonaparte.’

  ‘He certainly seems to desire an empire,’ said Horton, without thinking. He looked at the magistrate, embarrassed by his revealing insubordination. Harriott smiled, though the smile was an old, ill and tired thing.

  ‘You have made an enemy of the surgeon, constable,’ said Harriott.

  ‘So it would seem, sir.’

  ‘Tell Markland everything,’ the old magistrate said. ‘But tell me first.’

  Amy Beavis did not live in Whitechapel, despite what Markland had said. Her address was actually Dorset Street, a place of moderately ill repute in Spitalfields, somewhat to the north of Whitechapel and a fair walk from Wapping.

  The dwellings on Dorset Street were old and dilapidated, decent houses from the last century or earlier that had declined into common lodgings, a warren of the old and sick and infirm. Horton estimated that three or four dozen of the rooms on the street would be taken by whores, another three dozen by common criminals, and perhaps the same amount by weavers from old families who had failed to ascend to anything better. Some of these people were on the street, and a desperate lot they seemed.

  He found the right door and told the vicious, ancient landlord within that he must speak with Mr Beavis.

  ‘Beavis? You’ll get no benefit, speaking to Beavis,’ came the mysterious reply. He was shown, with surly reluctance, to a flight of stairs which looked like a line of dominoes falling down a steep hill. He made his way upwards, gingerly.

  The door on which he knocked was opened by a girl whose face was so beautiful that it seemed to light up the gloomy place. Her hair was finely cut, her skin was clean and clear, and her eyes held none of the wrenching despair of the people he’d seen outside in the street.

  ‘Miss Beavis?’ he asked.
r />   Her eyes widened, and she nodded, carefully.

  ‘Miss Amy Beavis? Servant to Mrs Emma Johnson?’

  Her hand came to her mouth, and she stared at him, terrified. It was answer enough.

  ‘My name is Horton, Miss Beavis. I am a constable of Wapping. I am sent to ask you some questions about the Johnsons and their terrible fate.’

  The door swung wide, and an ancient was revealed, dressed in grey underthings and swinging what looked like a poker.

  ‘I see you! I see you!’

  ‘Sir, please, I only . . .’

  ‘Come at last, have you? Come at last? Where is it?’

  The old man shoved past him out into the hallway, and looked up.

  ‘Roof still there. Roof still there.’

  He turned back to Horton.

  ‘Where’s your machine, Jacques? Where’s your bloody machine?’

  The girl was beside him now, rubbing his shoulders while he glared at Horton.

  ‘Come now, father. Come now. This is not Jacques.’

  Her voice was soft, precise, well spoken, purest silk to the East End rasp of her father.

  ‘Not Jacques? Of course it’s Jacques! He’s come for me, and he’s not having me.’

  ‘Sir, my name is Horton, not . . .’

  ‘Barbarian!’

  This with a shout and a lunge, accompanied by a shriek from the girl, but the lunge was in truth more like a fall. The poker went to the ground as the old fellow collapsed into Horton’s arms. He was as light as new-baked bread, and smelled like ancient dried leaves.

  ‘Please, sir,’ the girl said. ‘Please. Bring him within.’

  ‘Bloody Jacques. Come to bloody take me away. Bloody Jacques,’ muttered the old fellow, but he already seemed half-asleep.

  Horton took the man under the armpits and half-dragged, half-lifted him into the room. Within, there was a bed next to a fireplace, a single armchair, a dresser with some plates and bowls upon it, a small table with a pile of books. A cheap and ancient etching hung on the wall, which must once have depicted St Paul’s but was now little more than a round blur inside a fog.