Honour & Obey

by Carol Hedges

  ****

  Lunchtime, and Detective Inspector Stride sits alone in his accustomed booth in Sally’s Chop House. He is deep in thought, so remains unaware of the numerous pairs of eyes covertly watching him. A detective deep in thought is always a worrying sight for those in the immediate vicinity, in that a detective deep in thought might quickly turn into to a detective hot on the trail.

  Having spent another morning poring over crime reports and medical reports, Stride is thinking about the relativity of truth. He is beginning to conclude that it is a fairly flexible concept.

  There is the truth of the police surgeon, which is based upon medical observation and digging about in dead bodies. There is the newspapers’ truth, which is based upon hyperbole, scaremongering and gross inaccuracy. There is also his truth, which is based on a legal system that draws a clear demarcation line between right and wrong.

  Everybody has their own truth, he concludes. And maybe, ultimately, truth is what we make of it ourselves. This, in turn, is just the sum of what is in someone else’s interests, balanced by the power they hold.

  All this thinking means that Stride is not eating his plate of chops, a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Sally, the eponymous owner, who now steps (or rather, given his size, looms) out of the background.

  “Everything alright today, Mr Stride?” he asks, wiping his hands on his food-stained apron. “Chops done to your satisfaction?”

  Stride stares into the middle distance broodily.

  “What is truth, Sally? Do you know?”

  “Couldn’t say Mr Stride, I’m sure,” Sally replies innocently, a lifetime of minor offences and infractions having somewhat blunted his understanding of the concept.

  “No, neither can I,” Stride replies grimly. “And therein lies the problem.”

  “Right. Right. ’Nother glass of ale with your meal?” Sally inquires, deciding to err on the side of selective stupidity.

  Stride lifts his glass and takes a meditative swallow. He has barely set it down when his field of vision is unexpectedly blocked by a big bearded man in a loud tweed suit and bowler.

  “Am I addressing Inspector Leo Stride?” the man asks in an unmistakably Scottish accent.

  “I am Detective Inspector Stride, yes. And who might you be?”

  Sally glances around swiftly, then discreetly withdraws to a listening but not noticeably intruding distance.

  The big man pulls a card case from an inner pocket and hands Stride his card.

  “I am Inspector James McGraw, of the parish of Leith in the city of Edinburgh,” he says, sliding his bulk into the opposite bench. “Your Sergeant told me where to find you. I believe you may have one of my bairns, as I like to call them. For they were all bairns once, though they have strayed far from their innocence now.”

  He signals to the not-really-hovering Sally.

  “A glass of your best ale and a plate of mutton chops with tatties, if you please.”

  Stride marvels at the ease of the man as he settles himself more comfortably, spreading his bulk to fill the narrow bench seat.

  “Bairns?” he queries.

  The Inspector unfolds a newspaper and spreads it out upon the table, stabbing a large tobacco-stained finger at the lead story.

  “Here it is now – yesterday’s newspaper: When Will The Slasher Strike Again?

  “Ah. I see. You don’t want to believe everything you read,” Stride says knowledgeably. “They make a lot of it up – especially the reporters that write for that particular rag.”

  McGraw leans forward, bringing his face within a couple of inches of Stride’s, and lowers his voice to a confidential level.

  “So, let us compare notes, Inspector Stride: We are talking about young lassies – yes?”

  Stride nods.

  “Each discovered sitting upright, with her throat cut? Head bashed in? No theft of personal property? No hanky-panky?”

  Nods again.

  “And has the bairn tried to cut out the heart of each one with a sharp knife?”

  Stride sucks in his breath.

  “How did you know that? It isn’t in any of the newspapers. We deliberately kept it quiet.”

  McGraw sits back and smiles.

  “I didn’t know for sure. You just told me.”

  Stride pulls a face. Caught by the oldest trick in the book!

  McGraw nods.

  “Aye, it is him. For certain. He murdered two lassies, then disappeared completely just as we were closing in on him. The newspaper reporters called him the Monster of Morningside. They also like catchy headlines in my part of the world. Looks like he pitched up here in your fair city.”

  McGraw pauses as his meal is put on the table. He picks up his knife and fork, examining them carefully for smudges.

  “For God’s sake man, tell me what you know!” Stride exclaims, raising his voice without realising it and causing several diners to set down their cutlery and glance apprehensively in his direction.

  “Weesht, Inspector. We don’t want the whole world kenning our business,” McGraw says, shaking his head. “Now then, let me taste this good London food, and after, I shall tell you all about your Slasher.”

  By the time Stride leaves the chop house, it has started to rain. Stride likes rain. Street crime goes down when it rains, because people stay indoors. Some of the best nights of his career have been rainy, when he’s stood in doorways, or in the lee of a building, or under a pillar or portico, his collar pulled up, hat pulled down, and just listened to the silver rustling of the rain.

  Once he’d been standing so still, so not there as it were, that a fleeing pickpocket had actually leaned against him to catch his breath. And it was only when Stride laid a quiet hand on his shoulder and whispered, “Police. You’re nicked,” that the pickpocket realised what had happened. And wet himself.

  There were few joyous moments in the life of a beat constable. That was one of them.

  Stride heads back to his office, mulling over what the Scottish inspector has told him. Clearly, they had got it wrong. They had made assumptions based on false premises. Now he feels better. He had been having doubts. Not a good thing. Doubts are like cold water, and you don’t want cold water when you are trying to apprehend a murderer.

  He quickens his pace, hoping that Jack Cully will be waiting for him when he arrives. He has much of interest to impart.

  ****

  But Jack Cully is not going to be there. Twenty-four hours have passed since he managed to gain entry to Emily Benet’s lodgings, and discovered that not only was her room empty, but that it had been re-let to another tenant. Twenty-four hours since he had learned from her workmates that she had collapsed, and, close to death, been carried away by Caro Wilson’s husband and one of his friends.

  Where she is now remains a mystery. Caro has not returned to the sewing-room, and Little Fan, the only other source of information, has not been seen since the day Emily collapsed. It is as if Emily Benet has simply vanished from the face of the earth – a conclusion that Cully just cannot bear to contemplate.

  So he is attempting not to contemplate it, and to get on with his job. And while Stride is being enlightened over a plate of mutton shops, Cully is walking briskly towards the Corinthian-porticoed edifice that is University College Hospital. He thinks better when his feet are moving. The mere activity helps him to order his thoughts.

  Cully is following up his own line of inquiry. He has conflated the police surgeon’s comments about the knife used by the murderer to excise the hearts of his victims, together with the murderer’s possible medical expertise, and has realised just how close the crime scenes are to one of the seven London teaching hospitals.

  Cully enters the University College Hospital and looks around for someone to question. He is just wondering what might happen if he ventures through the double doors and into the bowels of the hospital, when the double doors are opened and a man in a porter’s uniform bustles through. He stops short at the sight of the v
isitor.

  “Yes, can I help you?”

  Cully introduces himself, a move that inevitably results in the man taking a few steps back and assuming an innocent expression, as people always did, much to Cully’s secret amusement.

  “I wonder whether I might speak to one of the doctors,” he says. “It is about the series of murders that have been taking place,” he adds, lest the man assume it is a personal or medical matter.

  “Do you mean one of the physicians, or one of the surgeons?”

  “Exactly,” Cully nods, not having a clue what the differentiation means.

  The man rubs his chin.

  “I’m not sure. Mr Featherstone is off today. He usually says who can or can’t come into the building. Bit of a stickler for the rules and regs, he is. If you know what I mean. And it’s operating day today too, so Mr Bliston is in theatre.”

  “I see.”

  Cully folds his arms, plants his feet firmly apart and adopts the I’m-not-moving-from-this-spot stance beloved of all police officers of whatever rank. It generally achieves its purpose.

  “Oh, all right. I’ll show you up to the gallery – you might be able to have a quick word in between operations. Or maybe one of his assistants could help you. As it’s a police matter. Only please don’t tell Mr Featherstone, will you, it’s more than my life’s worth.”

  Promising not to divulge anything to anybody, Cully follows him up the stone steps. As he does so, the reason why this isn’t a good idea shuffles from the back of his mind to the front, but it is too late. He pauses on the threshold.

  “Can I ask you a quick question – have you had a young woman admitted recently? Her name is Emily Benet. She collapsed at her place of work from exhaustion.”

  The man shakes his head.

  “Only people who come here are those who needs operations. Did she need an operation?”

  Cully shakes his head.

  The man shrugs.

  “In there,” he says, waving him through the wooden door. He hurries off.

  Cully enters a whitewashed brick-walled room with a bare-boarded floor area at the centre and wooden galleries all around. The word ‘theatre’ seems wholly appropriate: the galleries are packed with medical students leaning over the rails and peering down.

  Beneath, and the focus of their gaze, is a table with a box of sawdust under it. A man lies strapped to the table, a tube in his mouth. His left trouser leg has been cut back to the thigh, revealing a bloody mass of flesh and bone.

  Cully winces. It is one thing to see a dead body being prodded by the police surgeon; but this is a live individual, though the strange noises he is making right now as the surgeon approaches him carrying a sharp knife are more animal than human.

  “Train guard,” the student nearest him whispers, getting out his pocket watch. “Crushed his leg in a fall between the train and the platform at King’s Cross. Bliston’s going to amputate below the knee. Fastest surgeon in England.”

  The surgeon grasps the man’s foot with one hand and lowers the knife to just below where his knee would have been located. There is a breathless hush, followed by cries of: “Heads, heads,” directed at those nearest the table from those further back.

  Cully scans the eager focused faces, trying to locate the odd one out, the one whose expression doesn’t quite match that of his fellows. He barely hears the sound of the saw, the moans of the patient.

  Suddenly there is a muffled cheer, followed by applause.

  The surgeon glances up and calls: “Time, gentlemen please?”

  “Forty-five seconds, sir,” comes back the reply.

  Bliston nods in a satisfied way. Wiping his hands on his frock coat, he gives instructions to the two surgical assistants, who begin swabbing and bandaging the stump. Another glance round the room and he strides majestically towards the door.

  Cully hurries back downstairs, catching up with him as he crosses the foyer.

  “Sir, a moment please.”

  Robert Bliston turns, frowning.

  “If you are a member of the press, I shall not speak to you,” he says coldly. “I have told you I have nothing to say. Whatever stories that woman has concocted, I shall neither confirm nor deny. You are wasting your time.”

  “I am Detective Sergeant Jack Cully from Scotland Yard,” Cully says.

  “Are you here to arrest me, detective sergeant? For God’s sake! Has it come to this?” Bliston’s voice rises as his black brows come together in a frown.

  Cully explains his mission. Briefly.

  The surgeon listens, then shakes his head.

  “I know nothing of these matters. My students are all of the highest calibre – many of them were educated at Oxford or Cambridge. None would stoop to such bestiality. Now if you will excuse me, my carriage awaits.”

  He sweeps out, a couple of students holding the door with an air of reverence.

  Cully stands helplessly in the centre of the foyer. He is just about to leave when one of the two assistants comes out of the operating theatre, his apron bright with blood.

  He holds something wrapped in a cloth. Blood stains the material. For a moment, their eyes meet. The young man gives him a searching glance. Then, as the hallway fills with loud chatting students, he lowers his gaze and hurries away.

  Mentally crossing University College Hospital off his list of harbourers of potential suspects, Jack Cully goes to find a cup of strong coffee and a ham sandwich. After consuming them he will visit St Thomas’s and St Bartholomew’s, two more local London hospitals (the outcomes will be the same, and neither will have any record of an Emily Benet). He will then make his way back to Scotland Yard, where he will be awaited by Stride and an interesting revelation.

  ****

  There are very few revelations, interesting or otherwise, to be found in the laundry room of the Strand Union Workhouse in Cleveland Street. Here it is all soiled bedding and crusty garments. The air smells of damp, drains, stale sweat, and unwashed clothes.

  A young girl with an old face stands on the top step of a high stool. She holds a wooden paddle in both hands and stirs the water in a big copper boiler. Once it has attained a modicum of heat, it will be decanted into a series of wooden tubs, each provided with a bar of cheap lye soap and a couple of washboards. A group of older women wait patiently by each tub. None of them is the mother of the young girl.

  “You want to watch you don’t fall in, my gal,” one of the women jokes.

  The girl ignores her. Face set in a venomous expression, she stirs and stirs, watching the bubbles rise. As she stirs, thoughts rise to the surface of her mind. She remembers a family scrabbling to get by, small brothers and sisters playing in the dirt. A mother who occasionally smiled.

  The young girl with the old face stirs and stirs. She remembers damp walls, a leaky roof, windows stuffed with rags to keep out the draughts, a bare cupboard. A landlord without pity. A rat-faced street-hard landlord’s lackey who took her father’s last link to his past and broke his spirit. The bubbles rise faster.

  From her perch, she can see the overseer’s room. The door is open. On the table is a steaming mug of tea. She sees a plate of cold meat and bread. A box of lucifer matches. No overseer. She stops stirring and climbs down.

  “Water’s hot enough now,” she says.

  The girl walks swiftly, her bare feet cat-quiet, to the office. Pauses on the threshold. Glances over her shoulder to where the women are busy filling the tubs. Then she darts in and seizes the box of matches. Her face wiped of any expression, she re-crosses the laundry floor and goes out. The box is hidden in her hand. Her fingers stroke the sandpapered back.

  The bubbles rise faster and faster.

  ****

  Detective Inspector Stride spends the afternoon in his office rewriting his report on The Slasher in the light of the new evidence he has received, while waiting with barely concealed impatience for the return of Jack Cully. Luckily, the completion of the report and Cully’s arrival in his office dovetail
neatly.

  Barely is Cully through the door, when Stride thrusts the report at him.

  “Where have you been, Jack? Never mind, don’t answer – read this. We have had a breakthrough. Finally!”

  Cully stands in front of the desk and reads in silence:

  New Information Received upon the Suspicious Deaths of Violet Manning, Cora Thomas, Annie Smith and Susannah Higgs

  The man suspected of killing the above, known colloquially in the popular press as ‘The Slasher,’ has been identified by Inspector James McGraw of the parish of Leith in Edinburgh as possibly the only son of a Scottish baronet, Sir William MacKye.

  The young man, baptised Edward, is living in London and likely to be using a different name. He is 24 years old, of above average height, thin build and with dark hair. He has very deep-set brown eyes and a scar on his left hand, the result of a fall in childhood.

  The young man came to the attention of the Edinburgh Police when a report of harassment of his daughter was made by Mr David Balcombe, a city wine merchant, in September 1860. Mr Balcombe said his daughter Harriet (18) had met Edward MacKye, then a student at Edinburgh Medical School, at a ball in the city in the previous spring.

  There was some mutual attraction; meetings and an exchange of correspondence followed, but the lady had many suitors and her interest soon waned. Also, her father’s wish was for her to marry elsewhere. Upon being informed of this by Mr Balcombe, MacKye fell into a great rage and tried to remonstrate violently with him, having to be restrained by a servant and ejected from the house.

  There then followed a brief period when, according to Mr Balcombe, MacKye consistently followed his daughter in the street, stood outside the house every night into the small hours, and bombarded her with letters telling her of his love for her and imploring her to run away with him.

  Such was his persistence that Miss Balcombe for a short time became a prisoner in her own house, unable to leave for fear of being followed or importuned by MacKye. Even upon her engagement to another, he did not stop his unwelcome attentions. Eventually, Miss Balcombe, on the advice of her medical physician, left the family house and went to stay with relatives in England.