by Alex Grecian
“Perhaps I’ll see you again soon,” the bald man said to the little girl.
“I’m often here in the early afternoon,” the girl said. “My governess brings me here before tea almost every day, unless her gentleman friend comes to call.”
“Then I will make every effort to visit you as soon as I’m able. And perhaps you can tell me your street then.”
He nodded and led the boy away. When they had passed out of the girl’s sight, he frowned and gazed down at the top of the boy’s head.
“You told her your name?”
“Yes, sir. I thought there wouldn’t be no harm in it.”
“Hmm. From now on, you’ll keep your name to yourself unless I tell you it’s all right to share it.”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
“Good lad. We’re getting along just fine, aren’t we?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said.
The bald man saw a tear fall from the boy’s downturned face and splash in the dust on his shoe. The man sighed and said nothing, looked away into the branches of the trees as they passed down the path.
He would work harder to make the boy happy. A little more work, a little more time, and eventually the boy would accept his new life as if he had always been with the bald man. The boy was young, and he would forget his old life.
But what if it never happened? The bald man tried to push the unwelcome doubt from his mind. It would happen. The boy would be happy again and smile at the man. He was sure of it.
The thought of having to find another boy was almost unbearable.
4
The detectives stopped chattering and all heads turned toward Sir Edward, who stood in his office door holding a cigar box.
“Thank you all for taking the time to meet today,” he said. “Most of you have no doubt heard that Detective Inspector Little has been found dead. He was murdered.”
Sir Edward waited for the wave of excited murmurs to subside and then set the box on an empty desk in front of him and held up his hand.
“The first question I know you all have—in fact, the question I had—is whether this is the work of the Ripper. Our own Inspector Day assures me that it is not.”
Sir Edward gestured at Day, who nodded.
“But,” Sir Edward said, “although it may not be Jack himself, it may very well be the work of that dissatisfied citizenry who routinely jeer at us in the streets. It’s true that the frightened people of London have begun to calm. After all, there has been no renewed activity from the Ripper that we’re aware of. But there is still anger directed toward you, toward us I mean, for our inability to solve that most important mystery. And I’m afraid a very great deal of anger was directed toward Mr Little’s corpse.”
“Why are we here?” Inspector Tiffany said. “All due respect, sir, why aren’t we out there hunting the blighter down?”
Sir Edward nodded. “We are, all of us, inclined toward a certain degree of disorganization. This job requires us to be out and about in the city, and it’s a rare occasion when we gather. This needed to be such an occasion. One of us lies dead.”
Inspector Tiffany looked down at the top of his desk as if in mourning, but Day suspected he was simply embarrassed by the mild rebuke.
“It would behoove us all,” Sir Edward said, “to pay respect to Mr Little. If you’ve the means to contribute a bit to Little’s family—and there’s no shame in it if you haven’t—I’m sure they would appreciate your generosity. This box on Inspector Gilchrist’s desk will be here for the rest of the day, and if you’ve something you can spare to put in it I’ll take it round to his widow.”
He drew a five-pound note from his vest pocket and placed it in the box as if it were made of porcelain.
“Meantime, Inspector Day will be heading up this investigation.”
At that, there was an angry swell of voices, and Sir Edward held his hand up again.
“I know,” he said, “that you are anxious to cooperate with him, but please save your comments until I’ve finished.”
Day felt a warm blush spread up from under his collar. He hoped it wasn’t noticeable. Of course nobody in the room was anxious to cooperate with him. Every one of them, he was sure, wanted to work the case, and every one of them was justifiably unhappy that the youngest and least experienced of them had been put in charge.
“Because you are all so busy and because we are so seldom gathered together like this,” Sir Edward said, “many of you may not have made Mr Day’s acquaintance. I’m afraid I have not taken the proper time to make formal introductions, but I would like to remedy that oversight here and now. Detective Inspector Day was a constable, and then briefly a sergeant, in Devon and was brought up by Inspector March upon his retirement. He has been with us for a week and, so far as I have observed, he is an exemplary addition to our Murder Squad.”
Day felt the blush move to his cheeks.
“He has every qualification necessary to solve Mr Little’s murder, and I have chosen him to do so. If you disagree with my decision, you may take it up with me, not with him. I will take your comments now.”
A low rumble passed through the room, but nobody spoke up.
“Good. Now, all of you knew Mr Little. Some of you may have something of value to contribute to Mr Day’s investigation and, if so, I would like you to speak with him when we’re done here. Mr Day…” Sir Edward turned to Day and held out his hand, then swept it across the room. “This is your squad. These men are at your disposal. I trust you will not take them away from their existing cases if you don’t need to, but if you do decide it’s necessary … well then, I’m sure they will cooperate without complaint. Do you hear me, Mr Tiffany?”
“Aye,” Tiffany said. “I hear you.”
“Had you met Mr Tiffany yet?” Sir Edward said.
Day nodded.
“Then you have no doubt already decided how best to put him to use.”
Sir Edward looked out over the room and drew a deep breath. He let it out slowly and his beard fluttered.
“There are eleven of you now. The loss of Inspector Little hurts us. It hurts us a great deal. You all depend on each other. You cannot function as single police anymore. Whether you’ve realized it yet or not, you are soldiers, and soldiers work as a unit. Mr Boring.”
Oliver Boring sat up straight and his ample stomach pushed his desk an inch away from him.
“Sir?”
“I just said that there are eleven of you, but I only count ten. Where is Inspector Gilchrist?”
“Patrick, sir? I don’t know, sir. He’s always busy, always hopping, you know.”
“Apparently so. I have just realized that Mr Gilchrist is the only one of my detectives I’ve yet to meet.”
Day glanced at Gilchrist’s desk. It was the cleanest of all the desks in the squad room. In fact, Day was sure nothing had been moved on that desktop in the past week.
Sir Edward’s brow creased and he sniffed. He turned his back and drew a handkerchief from his trouser pocket. The detectives looked around the room at one another, and Day recognized that there was something being silently communicated among them. After a moment, Sir Edward turned around to face them again.
“I apologize,” he said. “I’ve got a bit of a chill and thought I was going to sneeze just now. What was I saying?”
Tom Wiggins cleared his throat.
“You was sayin’ Patrick Gilchrist is the one you ain’t met yet,” he said.
“So I was. That in itself is bothersome, but it is particularly so on a day such as this. Are we sure he’s quite all right? Has anyone seen him in the past twenty-four hours?”
He held up a finger and turned away again, his handkerchief flying to his nose. Day watched the detectives. Every man in the room looked at Inspector Gilchrist’s spotless desk. Then they all looked at one another again. He had met barely half of them in the course of the week and spoken to maybe three of them. They were busy, in and out of the building at all hours, and there had been no time for niceties.
But he knew them by their desks. He had memorized where each of them sat so that he would be able to talk to them in the future without confusion. He knew Oliver Boring, of course, and Jimmy Tiffany. He knew Michael Blacker and tiny Crockett O’Donnell. This was the first time he’d laid eyes on Tom Wiggins. He glanced at the other desks, doing his best to associate these faces with the names he already knew: Inspectors Alan Whiteside, Waldo George, Waverly Brown, Ellery Cox. There were so few of them. And there was so much death for them to deal with.
And he suddenly understood something about them.
If there was one thing Day felt he was good at, it was reading people. He had an honest face and most people opened up to him easily, but even when they didn’t, he was able to read their expressions, no matter how they tried to compose themselves. This ability made it easy for him to trust others and that often led to the mistaken belief that he was naïve.
But he wasn’t naïve.
He waited for Sir Edward to turn back around.
“That sneeze won’t leave me,” Sir Edward said. “While we wait for it to present itself, who has seen Mr Gilchrist?”
“I have, sir,” Day said. “He was by earlier this morning. Hot on the trail of a dangerous criminal. He asked me to tender his apologies.”
“A dangerous criminal, you say? I suppose there’s no better excuse. But please tell him that I’d like to see him at his earliest convenience.”
Sir Edward looked down at the cigar box on Gilchrist’s desk. He drew in a deep breath before looking up at the room again.
“You are my Murder Squad,” he said. “You were all chosen for this unit because you have demonstrated exemplary skill in solving crimes. You are among the best that Scotland Yard has to offer. Therefore you are the most qualified to solve the worst crimes in London. Many of you are still carrying cases having to do with robbery, missing persons, assault, and the like. For eleven of you to try sorting out the murders in London is a difficult task. Perhaps an impossible one. But for you to take on the burden of every crime is ridiculous. Your morale is already low, and Mr Little’s fate can do you little good in that regard. In addition to helping Mr Day with this case, if he so deems, you will also sort through your files and remove anything that doesn’t have to do with murder. You are to deal with no cases that are not to do with murder. You are experts on murder now.”
“What makes us experts on murder?” Oliver Boring said.
“I do,” Sir Edward said. “Now, when I arrived here,” he said, “I asked that you limit your duties and take on no new work that wasn’t to do with fatalities. It was my expectation that you would gradually work your way through your cases and be left with nothing but murders. That has not happened. Your workloads are simply too large. And so I now ask you to take every case that is not a murder across the hall and give it to the sergeant on duty there. He will pass those cases along to the other detectives. Or to the many constables whose job it is to deal with common crimes.”
“Sir, the other detectives’ve got their hands full with the dockworkers’ strike. They don’t got no more time than us.”
“No. You’re right, they don’t. But murder trumps all. You are my elite detectives, the select few chosen to excel at solving the most heinous of crimes. And, beginning today, you will act the part. A member of my Murder Squad has himself been murdered, and that will not do. You will find the man responsible for this crime and he will pay.”
He waited for his words to sink in, nodding almost imperceptibly to himself.
“Take care,” he said. “I cannot afford to lose another man.”
He opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then turned without another word and closed himself in his office.
A moment later, Day jumped at the sound of a hurricane-level sneeze that shook the walls of Sir Edward’s office.
5
Well done, old man. But how did you know?”
Day turned to see Inspector Michael Blacker staring up at him, a mischievous grin at play beneath the limp ginger mustache.
“How did I know what?”
“That won’t do, old boy. Nobody’s seen Gilchrist round here since he upped to Wolverhampton last year. Heard he’s a bona fide shopkeeper there now. But you knew he wasn’t here and you carried on our little joke with Sir Edward. How did you know?”
“Intuition, I suppose. The behavior of everyone since I arrived as regards Mr Gilchrist and his empty desk. You might want to make it look like it’s being used if you want to continue pretending he’s working here.”
“But that’s just it. Patrick was the most cleanly of the lot of us. That desk looks just the same as it did when he was here.”
“I think that’s why he left us,” Tom Wiggins said. He walked over to stand with Day and Blacker. Oliver Boring and Ellery Cox followed behind him. Boring reached out and clapped Day on the shoulder.
“Work here was too untidy for the likes of him.”
“A nice little shop in the Midlands is what a personality like his calls for,” Cox said. “Probably serving tea to old ladies at this very moment.”
“Discussing the weather, they is.”
Wiggins minced about the room and pitched his voice high, mimicking an old Black Country woman. “Oh, it’s quite brisk out today, don’t you think, Mr Gilchrist?”
“If it’s brisk you want,” Crockett O’Donnell said, “then you’ll want a holiday in London right about now.”
“Oh, did you know I used to be police round in London?” Boring said. Day was sure Gilchrist couldn’t possibly have sounded like Boring’s lisping impersonation. It was more likely a sign of contempt. One of their own had washed out and left, his tail between his legs. Gilchrist had failed. There was probably a certain amount of fear in Boring’s mimicry: There but for the grace of God go I, and do I have what it takes for the long haul?
“Why, let me tell you about a grisly murder I saw there, Mrs Dalrymple,” O’Donnell said. He, too, had pitched his voice high and sounded much like a teenaged girl.
“Oh my, no. That sounds dreadfully … well, dreadfully dreadful, Mr Gilchrist.”
“More tea, then?”
“Yes, please. And some for my dog as well.”
By now the other men were laughing despite themselves at the impromptu play being enacted by their friends. They were all exhausted and worried and they had lost a colleague. The laughter eased the pressure in the room. Day was laughing along with them, despite never having met Patrick Gilchrist. A small part of him, the part that was always the outside observer, felt silently pleased to be included.
“But why you?” Wiggins said. His voice had returned to its normal pitch.
The laughter gradually died and the detectives’ eyes all turned toward Day.
“Pardon?” he said.
“Why did Sir Edward choose you for this one? You didn’t even know Little.”
“I was first at the station when the trunk was opened. I don’t think there’s more to it than that, but I have to think it’s something of a relief for you, since all of you are so overworked. I don’t have many cases yet and have more time to dedicate to this.”
“There’s time and there’s skills,” Ellery Cox said. “The one’s of no use if you haven’t the other.”
“Go to it, then,” Tiffany said. “Just don’t come to me when you get stuck. I’ve plenty enough to deal with.”
“Little was one of our own, Jimmy,” Cox said, “and he still deserves the best we’ve got. Not a fresh-faced kid. No offense intended.”
“How do we know Day’s not the best we’ve got?” Blacker said. “He could be.”
The others stopped arguing and looked at Blacker. There was a long silence. Finally, Tiffany cleared his throat.
“I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?” he said.
He walked back to his desk, sat down, and began sorting files. One by one, the others followed suit, returning to their desks, until Day and Blacker were left standing in the middle of the s
quad room alone.
“Thank you,” Day said.
Blacker shook his head.
“Don’t prove me wrong,” he said.
6
Nevil Hammersmith lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. He blew the smoke upward and inhaled the scent of it. Across the room, Dr Kingsley arranged a freshly laundered sheet on the bare wooden examining table. The table had been washed down countless times with lye and water, and the timber gleamed in the light of a nearby electric lamp before the white sheet settled gently down atop it.
A girl leaned against the far wall of the laboratory hugging a large tablet of paper to her chest. Hammersmith estimated her age at somewhere between twelve and fourteen. Her long hair fell straight past her shoulders and her dress was too short; she had clearly outgrown it. She kept her eyes on Kingsley. The girl had not responded to Hammersmith’s greeting, and Kingsley hadn’t made any attempt to introduce them.
The odor in Kingsley’s laboratory was almost unbearable, but neither the doctor nor the girl seemed to notice. Detective Inspector Little’s body had spent a night and the better part of the next day inside a trunk in a warm train depot, and there were no windows in the cramped lab. Hammersmith couldn’t blame Constable Jones for leaving immediately after they’d delivered the trunk. It would be up to Hammersmith to assist the doctor with his examination.
“Here now, we’re ready for him,” Kingsley said.
Hammersmith took another drag of the cigarette and ground it out against the inside of a spittoon next to the door. He positioned himself between the trunk and the girl and made a point of looking the other way as he reached into the trunk. Little’s body was solid, heavy like a river rock. The detective hadn’t been a thin man in life, and death had somehow added weight. Hammersmith struggled with the legs while Kingsley lifted the dead man from the other side, his hands hooked under Little’s armpits. The two men shuffled sideways and gave a great heave. Little flew through the air, bounced once, and settled on the table. Maggots plopped loose onto the wood and wriggled around looking for shelter while Kingsley scurried about, straightening the sheet under the body.