Death and the Dreadnought

by Robert Wilton

  And then a woman screamed.

  It came from the direction of McArdle’s, and immediately I was heading back there. I felt Quinn’s restraining hand on my arm – I assumed it was his – but shrugged it off.

  A few steps closer and I heard a word screamed distinctly: ‘murder!’ By the time I was outside the chop house I was among a dozen curious loiterers, peering as best we could through the steamy bay window at the front. From nearby I heard a police whistle. Around me the busy empty chatter of the gawping crowd.

  Sick, knowing, I shifted to the side of the crowd, to the alley which runs down beside McArdle’s. The snug where I had sat with Merridew looked out onto this alley. I took a couple of steps down into its darkness.

  The bottom half of the sash window was raised. Through it, slumped on the bench, I could see Merridew. His shirt front was crimson, and his face was white. His gaping eyes stared up into the ceiling. Joshua Merridew would never open his pub or play with his grandchildren.

  Who could have got to him? What could Raikes possibly benefit from –

  My heart kicked, and started to pump a very cold mixture indeed.

  Presumably the last person known to have been alone with him was… I.

  21.

  I took a couple of instinctive steps back, out of the alley. I was still considering the window, getting my last glimpse of that old man, who had tried so hard to do his duty and eventually, somehow, died for it.

  Assuming for the moment that I wasn’t the murderer, in the bustle of the chop house anyone could have slipped into the snug after I’d left it.

  Or could someone have stabbed him through the window? Someone he recognized, recognized enough to accept a whispered summons to the window, close enough to get a blade in the chest?

  With each day, each outrage, I seemed to find new depths of anger.

  ‘Get clear!’ It was a low murmur, urgent, in my ear. I glanced round. It was Quinn, standing beside me but affecting not to be paying me any attention. ‘Get clear, sir.’

  It was probably sound advice, but he wasn’t as angry as I.

  I glanced further around myself, considering the options.

  And I found myself looking into a face I knew too well. The face was on a man standing on the edge of the crowd. The very fair hair wasn’t common, but that hardly showed under his hat, and to most people he’d have seemed unremarkable. Not to me. The face from the bathhouse lobby. The face that had hunted me over the rooves of London, almost to my death.

  We gazed at each other for a long moment. I realized that my whole body was tensed, waiting for his move, anticipating the threat. Would he have the gun on him? Would he dare to use it in the street? Should I stand and fight? Where could I run? Still he stared.

  And then he turned and, first at a fast walk and then at a trot, hurried away up the street.

  Well, tally ho… I set off after him.

  He hadn’t gone ten yards before he glanced over his shoulder and saw me. His eyes widened and he broke into a run, and I did the same. Let’s see how you like it, you ___.

  He was a lively runner, but this time I wasn’t barefoot and I about kept pace with him. We tore up Golden Lane. Behind me I heard a police whistle, and then another, and shouts. It was a mad race, weaving in and out of the drifting pedestrians and leaping out of the way of carriages that careered out of side-streets or wobbled wildly through the twilight. Beside a park my man crashed into an orange-seller and sent him sprawling and carried on, and I had to vault over the swearing hawker and through the scattering fruit. At the junction with Fortune Street there was an explosion and a motor car lurched out in front of me in a belch of smoke. I came up hard against its snub-nosed engine casing, pushed myself off and spun around.

  Fifteen yards behind, a policeman was running hard towards me. For a stupid second I felt heartened that someone was helping me – and then his expression confirmed that of course he had no interest, no awareness, of the blond assassin ahead.

  He was coming for me. I turned and ran again, now in the middle of a three-way chase.

  We raced on up Golden Lane. I jumped left to avoid an old man having trouble with his pipe, and suddenly a horse reared up in front of me and sent me staggering back a step. Regathering myself, I realized I was right outside Jolly’s Theatre.

  I turned, looking again for my prey. Someone grabbed my arm. I spun round, fist up. I saw the helmet first, and hesitated: the policeman.

  He was heavily-moustached, red-faced and breathing hard. ‘You are Sir Henry Delamere,’ he said, hoarse between gasps. Damnit… He had me tight. I could wriggle free, surely, and would I be seen escaping in the darkness? But I was static now, and he’d have reinforcements coming up behind. ‘And you are under arrest.’

  A hand tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, starting to speak, and caught a mighty fist in the centre of his moustache and dropped like a rock.

  ‘Why Quinn,’ I said, ‘I’m not the best example, I know; but even I haven’t started assaulting policemen yet.’

  He didn’t seem to find it amusing. I looked around the street, looking for the options, looking for –

  And there he was. Just twenty yards farther up the street, standing still and watching me: my hunter-turned-hunted. From behind me somewhere there was another police whistle.

  Our eyes met again. He smiled. Then he touched the brim of his hat cordially, and turned and began to walk away.

  I was already starting after him when I felt heavy hands on my shoulder and collar. ‘Come along, sir!’ – and Quinn was bundling me up the steps and into Jolly’s theatre. In the doorway I knocked into a young woman, made an instinctive apology, looked at her.

  It was Bliss. She was in street clothes – presumably her act wasn’t until later in the proceedings, and she’d popped out for a bit of air or a brandy-and-soda before getting togged up. Our eyes held a moment longer, but she made no acknowledgement and carried on down the steps, and anyway Quinn had given me another shove and we were inside.

  22.

  Quinn and I settled ourselves in one of Jolly’s boxes. The theatre was hardly bigger than my sitting room (and the melodrama promised to be about as ripe). There weren’t more than a dozen rows of seats in the stalls, from the front of the little stage back to the chap in the check suit sitting just below me; had check suit been more than five feet tall he’d have banged his head on the front of our box; my valet and I had to squeeze together on the box’s two chairs like an over-friendly couple on the top deck of an omnibus. The atmosphere – the crowd milling around in front of me, waiting until the last minute to fold their legs into the stall seats, and my companions in the semi-circle of boxes, stooping and jostling to find their places – felt more like a rugger scrummage or the last stand at Stormberg.

  A pocket orchestra, heavy on the brass and apparently skirmishing among the knees of the front row of the stalls, hurried through a cheerful rendition of ‘God Save the King’ like they had tickets for a better show round the corner, and the master of ceremonies trotted onto the stage and told the one about the French sailor and the pygmy princess.

  I wasn’t in the mood. I was even less in the mood when one of the side doors to the stalls opened, down to my right, and a man slipped in and pressed himself against the wall – in his defence, the alternative would have been to perch on the lap of the woman in seat C1 – and began methodically to scan the faces in the theatre.

  It was my fair-haired friend of the rooftops: the man who’d invested a considerable amount of energy in trying to murder me, and now by an extraordinary coincidence happened to be on the spot when someone I’d just been speaking to had been murdered.

  It didn’t take him long to spot me. In a theatre auditorium barely bigger than a privy he couldn’t fail to. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second. This time there was no courteous acknowledgement, no wry smile. As I watched, he turned and disappeared back through the door. There was a burst of audience applause, and a woman of the general propor
tions of H.M.S. Thunderer steamed onto the stage and launched into ‘I’ve got rings on my fingers’.

  ‘Ever defended a siege from a theatre box, Quinn?’

  Good chap that he is, Quinn considered the point seriously. ‘Wouldn’t fancy their chances trying to get through this little door, sir. But I’d worry about our supplies.’ I nodded. ‘You have your piece, sir?’

  ‘Mm. And a full half dozen in the cylinder and an itchy finger. If this chap and his pals want to come on in I’ll happily attend to them.’ I touched the bulk of my revolver through my coat. ‘But there’s a snag, Quinn.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Several snags. One, I don’t know how many they are: the fact that this chap went and came back suggests he’s got reinforcements as well as new instructions. Two, they’re probably not so obliging as to line up outside and knock. Three, they don’t need to: they don’t need to risk a massacre; they can just wait until we get start to get hungry or go mad from too much musical sentiment, and follow us out somewhere nice and quiet and finish the job at their leisure. Four… four, Quinn, time is on their side, not ours.’ He frowned. ‘Your policeman will have woken up by now. With a sore head and one thing on his mind. Won’t take him long to find out where we got to.’

  ‘I don’t mind answering for putting him down, sir.’

  ‘Good show. And so you should: guilty beyond question. Don’t want to seem heartless, Quinn, but I’m more worried about myself. On top of my previous crimes, I must be their principal suspect for poor old Merridew. The longer I sit squeezed in this damned box, the more men Inspector Bunce can have waiting outside.’

  Around us, the audience burst into wild applause again. We stood, as best we could in the cramped box, and I opened my coat just in case I felt the need for the Webley, and Quinn took a breath and opened the door.

  The singer, having paused to take on more coal, started on ‘The Glow Worm’. I closed the door silently behind us, happy to have escaped that at least.

  The corridor behind the boxes was empty.

  On the off-chance, we re-traced our steps towards the front of the theatre. But through the glazed door to the foyer, I saw fair hair talking to another man in the main entrance. If we left that way, they would track us easily.

  I’d spent time in the dressing rooms of Jolly’s, but not come at them from this direction before. We accosted an usher, who was well used to taking a shilling or two to point discerning gentlemen towards the actresses’ quarters, and shortly we were through an anonymous door and heading down a spiral staircase towards the back-stage maze of the theatre. So far so good.

  At the bottom I paused. ‘Rules of engagement, Quinn. We do whatever it takes to get past these plain-clothes brutes. We do what we can to avoid arrest for our many crimes – you particularly, as the only man actually guilty of what he’s suspected of’ – Quinn smiled heavily – ‘but we ain’t shooting any policemen. Above all, this: if Miss Bliss can show us a way out of here without drawing attention to herself, well and good; but if there is any chance of endangering her, we stay clear and do as best we can ourselves, yes?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  Bare gas lamps lit our way along a brick passage.

  At the end, another passage went left and right. We separated. I’d got ten yards when I heard a door from the other direction opening, and with it a sudden chattering of female voices. A beautiful dark-haired girl in a translucent wrap had stepped into the passage, to be confronted by a large Cornish valet.

  Mercifully, she didn’t scream. Nor, to his credit, did Quinn; I doubt he’d come across much like her in his God-forsaken fishing village. They chatted a while, while I loitered in the gloom feeling very exposed. Not for the first time, I wondered how numerous my enemies were; and – given that the policeman outside had recognized me – how quickly word would have reached the implacable Inspector Bunce.

  Eventually my valet sauntered along to join me.

  ‘No rush, Quinn; take your time. Friend of yours?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’ He pointed ahead. ‘There’s a way out along here, according to Miss Francesca.’

  ‘Miss Francesca, is it?’

  There was indeed a way out, after a few more turns in the passage and another narrow staircase. But when we got there, we found a doorman arguing with someone outside. ‘Nah, y’ain’t comin’ in! Y’s can stay out like everyone else. An’ keep yer damn’ shillings!’ A one-sided argument, to be honest. Whoever it was outside said something placatory and didn’t push it.

  The doorman was a stout line of defence, for now. But this clearly wasn’t a way out for us.

  We retreated down the staircase again, back into the gas-flickered brick maze of passages.

  And through them we continued to prowl. Rats in a sewer. I didn’t like the furtiveness of it, the sense that I was having to hide. And I liked even less the growing sense that we were trapped. Clearly, we were dealing with several opponents. They had methodically covered the entrances. Unless we decided to set up permanent residence with Miss Francesca and her company for eternity – and if that is what eternity looks like it’ll be fine by me, but I’ve a few bits of unfinished business first, and I do like my fresh air – sooner or later we would have to break cover, and then these unknown hunters could pick us off.

  Unless they decided to move in and flush us out; or finish us off somewhere among the tunnels.

  Intermittently, from somewhere far above, I could hear the muffled harrumphing of the Jolly’s orchestra. A world of innocence and cheerful operetta favourites.

  We prowled on.

  Once, as we trod silently along a passage, the figure of a man crossed in front of us ten yards ahead, wearing a distinctive helmet. Pressed against the wall, we waited a minute or two before we ventured on. The police were in the mix too.

  Then, as we approached a corner in the passage, we heard feet on the metal staircase beyond it. Quinn and I exchanged a glance and, with rare prudence, retreated.

  I knew there was at least one other exit, because I’d used it the previous day. It wasn’t even too hard to find, once we’d plotted our way through the maze, endless and unchanging brick and sick yellow gaslight, avoiding the shadows who hunted us.

  But when we got to this other exit, walking quietly up behind the doorman who stood slumped in the opening smoking a cigarette, I saw beyond him a man in the street leaning against a lamppost, and watching. He saw me at the same moment, and then he was gone somewhere into the gloom of the alley. All of the exits were marked, by men who didn’t hesitate to stab a man through a window or stage a shooting in the middle of the day.

  So back we went, down the nearest spiral staircase, into the warren again.

  ‘Plan B, sir?’

  ‘B, Quinn? We’re on about Plan Z now, I should think.’

  ‘What happens after that, sir?’ his normal growl was the faintest rasp in the gloom.

  ‘Reckon your charming friend needs an understudy?’

  We marked our journey by increasingly familiar landmarks: a tea-chest half full of fabric; a broken and dusty violin, which had obviously been lying in the dirt for a long time. Catching sight of a shadowy figure at the end of a passage, still and waiting, it took me a full minute to realize it was a mannequin. We walked on.

  ‘Halt!’

  I’d tried to check first. Perhaps I’d been distracted by the music from the stage, which seemed nearer now. I’d looked right and I’d looked left and then I’d turned right – and immediately the voice boomed behind me.

  ‘No funny moves now! Put your ‘ands up where I can see ‘em.’

  I put my hands up – enough that they could be seen over my shoulders, anyway. As I did, I pulled open my jacket with my thumbs. I wasn’t fully clear of the side passage, and the open jacket enabled Quinn to reach in and retrieve my revolver and retreat a step or two.

  I started to move forwards. ‘Stop there!’ I stopped. And then I took another couple of steps forwards. I had to
hope that whoever it was behind me would want to see my face before he did anything desperate. Or at least that he’d want to be closer. Another step. Another.

  I heard a thump behind me, and a faint groan, then nothing.

  ‘Alright now sir.’

  I breathed out, and turned. ‘Who is – Quinn! It’s another policeman.’

  My valet was bending over his prey. ‘Actually, sir, I think it’s the same policeman.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it better. Quinn, they won’t tolerate this sort of thing at the Albany.’ He was bent down next to the unconscious body. ‘He going to be alright?’

  ‘Should be, sir.’

  ‘You realize they’ll pin this on me, too?’

  He stood, and smiled bleakly. ‘Thought had occurred, sir.’

  The shot roared in the confined passage, and Quinn hissed and clutched his arm. The shot had come from behind me, and I grabbed Quinn by the shoulder and collar and shoved him forwards and away down the corridor. The gunman could shoot me in the back at his leisure.

  But he didn’t, and I made the corner with spine intact and bundled Quinn round it to safety and turned, and peered back. Half way along the corridor a couple of chorus girls had emerged, hurrying for the stage. They’d blocked the gunman’s view.

  They were dressed as policemen.

  Well, their top halves were, anyway; bottom halves were regulation dancers’ frills. Of course. For a moment, they stood fluttering over the unconscious-but-real policeman at their feet, whispering in alarm. There was a clatter of cymbals and a fanfare of brass from behind me – they could set up a shooting gallery back here and the audience would never know – and one of the girls patted the other frantically on the arm, and they set off moving again, one away down the corridor and one towards me, brushing past oblivious as she rounded the corner.

  We were by the stage. The corridor ran along behind the back of it. To my left, light was being funnelled off the stage by bits of scenery in the wings, and painting bright rays across the floor. I saw the girl grab up a policeman’s hat from a box, there was another crash of cymbals and fanfare, and she and presumably her pal from the other side sashayed onto the stage in the Paris style to a roar of audience approval.