by David Field
It was Percy’s first foray into Lambeth Police Office, the central focal point of ‘L Division’ of the Metropolitan Police, and after flashing his Yard badge and making it sound urgent, he was eventually sitting in front of Inspector Makepeace.
‘I would have been a young constable in those days,’ Makepeace smiled benignly, ‘but I can sort of remember it, because it was so unusual. The man who died was a right old bastard, even for this area in those days. Beat his wife and children for daily exercise, drank like it was his religion, got himself locked up in here for “D and D” every Friday night, you know the sort. Or are they all law-abiding churchgoers on your patch?’
‘My patch is notionally the whole of the Met,’ Percy reminded him with a smile, ‘so you don’t have to draw me a diagram. I’m told by the man who owns the business now that the previous occupant was murdered by his own children. That correct?’
‘So they reckon, but it was never proved and quite frankly nobody cared. We all but had a party the night it happened and we looked the other way. Mind you, we needed to, ’cos he was a right mess to look at. Forty odd knife wounds, they reckoned, but of course, with it being a tanner’s business, there was no shortage of leather knives lying around.’
‘And the children?’
‘A boy and a girl. They may have been twins, because I remember that they were roughly the same age. They were taken in by neighbours, but they repaid the community pretty poorly.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, for a start, the boy turned into a really nasty piece of work, if you were a young girl, that is. He was done a few times for burglary and indecent assault and narrowly escaped an attempted rape. Then he disappeared into the woodwork — ten years or so ago, it must have been.’
‘This is a real shot in the dark, but his name wasn’t by any chance Wally Mathewson, was it?’
The inspector’s face lit up in recognition.
‘That was it — Mathewson! The father’s name was Albert, I remember him well enough now. A real criminal family, if ever there was one, and she certainly kept up the family tradition.’
‘The daughter?’
‘Yes, her. She got married pretty young and after a while her husband got tired of her, because she wasn’t exactly an oil painting. Then she caught him playing an away game with the woman a few doors down and all Hell broke loose. She got off the murder charge because she persuaded the jury — who must have felt sorry for her — that she’d strangled her old man in self defence when he went for her in this almighty fight that woke up two blocks of neighbours. I didn’t believe it and neither did anyone else in this station, but there’s no accounting for juries, is there?’
‘Do you remember her name?’
‘We charged her under her married name — the same name as her victim. Can’t remember it now, but it was only a few years back, so we should find her in records.’
‘Without a surname to go on?’
‘We file them by crime, as well. At least, we cross-reference them, so all we have to do is go back through the “Murder” file and that’ll give us her name. Then we can pull the file from the alphabetical pile.’
‘We?’
‘Yes, why not? I know the old cases better than most, given that I’ve been in this station all my police career, and as soon as we hit the name it’ll all come back to me. If you come back in an hour, I might have something more for you.’
‘Can I bring you back a meat pie or something?’ Percy asked gratefully and Makepeace smiled and tapped his stomach.
‘Ulcer, I’m afraid. It’s boiled eggs and cheese sandwiches only for me, according to the doctor, but thanks anyway.’
Outside, Percy was too nervous to eat, so he walked up and down the busy thoroughfare smoking one pipe after another. He heard a distant clock chime two and went back into the police station, where the desk sergeant waved him over to his barred window.
‘Yer the bloke from the Yard what were in ’ere earlier, ain’t yer? The Inspector said ter show yer this file when yer come back in. I’ll need ter ask yer fer some identification first, I’m afraid.’
Percy handed across his police badge, accepted the file and took it to the empty public bench across from the charge desk. Slightly trembling, he read the front cover and learned that the woman who had narrowly escaped the gallows for the strangling murder of her cheating husband was called Marjory Collins. That had been in 1892 and by then most police stations had adopted the practice of photographing their suspect when they were first arrested. If this file contained a photograph, he could sign for it and take it up to Luton and ask them if this was the woman using that same name who’d reported the finding of Helen Trenchard’s body.
With fumbling fingers he flipped through the pages to the first entry — the one at the back of the file that contained the photograph. The desk sergeant looked up out of curiosity as he heard Percy give a yell of triumph.
He didn’t need to travel to Luton to pinch this particular lady. Just a mile or so back north across the river.
Chapter Twenty-five
‘Why wouldn’t Uncle Percy tell us why it was so important that I move out of Lamb Street?’ Esther asked on the Wednesday as she and Jack proudly surveyed the first fully papered wall in the fading light. ‘At any event, it’ll have to wait until we get a bed installed.’
‘A double bed,’ Jack reminded her.
She smiled. ‘Don’t think for one moment that you can visit me at night once I move in here. If anything, it only encourages me to stay where I am. You don’t have a spare key to Lamb Street.’
‘All the same, the sooner the better, to judge by the look on Uncle Percy’s face. He’s obviously found out something important and didn’t even want to tell me, presumably because he needs to confirm it in some way and didn’t want to unduly alarm you. I won’t be seeing him for the next two days, because I’ll be busy finishing off this room, but I think we should take heed of what he was warning us.’
‘Then the sooner we get on with this, the better,’ Esther replied. ‘I’m glad we had to change it for the good of our health — those rose clusters are really pretty and not so difficult to line up on the edges.’
‘We should have this room finished by the time we knock off on Friday,’ Jack predicted. ‘After we give it the weekend to dry off, we can go looking for the bed and the sheets that go on it. Then you can move in.’
‘If you insist,’ Esther agreed. ‘But that’ll mean that I’ll have to take the bus down to Wapping every day.’
‘Except Thursdays and Fridays, if you can wangle it,’ Jack reminded her. ‘Those will be my days off until the shift rosters are changed again, then it’ll be back to Sunday dinners at Barking, but without Uncle Percy.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Esther replied with a grimace. ‘Can’t we just plead that we’re busy decorating?’
‘If we try that, Mother will insist on coming down here to supervise in order to speed things up and everything will finish up in her favourite blue. How long do you think you’ll need to finish off that work for the Alliance, anyway?’
‘Another couple of weeks, I’d guess. Then I’ll be free every afternoon to come back here and wallpaper.’
On the Friday morning, Esther came to an abrupt halt in the doorway of the union office and stared at the front counter. Behind it sat Margaret Templeton, with a facial expression that resembled a tree-feller’s double handed saw. She looked up briefly as she saw Esther rooted to the spot, then looked back down at the counter and sneered.
‘Ten shillings, wasn’t it? I’m just counting it out for you, then you can go back out where you came from.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Esther demanded.
‘You don’t work here any more,’ Margaret told her with an unpleasant smile that was directed towards the counter. ‘I handed in my notice at my other place of employment yesterday, so we don’t need you today — or ever again.’
‘That’s not necessarily the case,’ G
eorge advised them both as he emerged from his office, having heard the sound of the two women talking. ‘I have in mind promoting the union outside London and I thought that Esther and I might put together some sort of presentation that we can make to groups of potential members in cities up and down the country.’
‘You’ll be doing no such thing!’ Margaret shouted. ‘Don’t think I haven’t been aware of your tongue drooling like a cat with a fish head every time this little baggage shows her face in here! You don’t want to travel up and down the country with her — you just want to travel up and down her garters, you dirty old goat!’
‘You can’t speak to Miss Jacobs like that, as if she’s some sort of cheap tart!’ Manners protested.
Margaret’s face rapidly turned crimson as she yelled back at him. ‘Can I not? Well just remember this, George Manners. You and I are up to our necks in all this and if you think for one moment that you can abandon me for the first bit of fluff that sticks her bosom in your face, then you can think again! You’re going to marry me like you promised and if you step one foot over the line you’ll regret it when you find your feet inside Newgate instead. Now tell this tottie where she gets off — or do you want me to throw her out on her arse?’
‘Don’t either of you trouble yourselves on my account,’ Esther replied haughtily. ‘I’m just leaving. I hope never to see either of you again.’
With that she turned and walked sedately out of the door, quickening her pace as she headed for the bus stop.
Once safely on the bus, Esther took it all the way to its terminus at Liverpool Street Station, then changed to a direct service down to Charing Cross, from where she knew she could walk along the Embankment to Scotland Yard. It was almost dinner time before she sat down, exhausted, on a bench in front of the slowly churning river, having been informed that Detective Sergeant Enright was out on enquiries and that no-one knew when he was likely to be back. She rested for a few minutes, then walked back to Charing Cross and took the Farringdon service bus that she knew ran through Clerkenwell on its loop through the inner northern suburbs.
It was mid afternoon before she handed the late dinner to Jack with an apology, then all but staggered through to the kitchen and flopped down in the only chair.
‘Sorry I’m so late, but I’ve got something important to report.’
‘So have I,’ Jack grinned. ‘The bedroom wallpaper’s finished. Come and take a look.’
‘In a minute, Jack. I’m exhausted after travelling all the way to Scotland Yard, only to find that Uncle Percy isn’t there and they don’t know when he’ll be back.’
‘So what did you find out?’
‘George Manners and Margaret Templeton all but admitted that they were behind all those burglaries. They got into a big argument over me — and I’m dismissed from there, by the way — and then Margaret let fly something about Manners finishing up in Newgate and that whatever it was, they were in it together.’
‘Do you think that included Helen’s murder?’
‘No idea, but we have to tell Percy without delay.’
‘I’ll do that tomorrow and we’ll probably both come down to Lamb Street to get more details from you. Now come and see where you’ll be sleeping when the wallpaper dries out.’
‘Quite frankly, the way I feel at the moment, I could sleep on the floor in there. But never let it be said that I didn’t give you support and encouragement.’
Her eyes opened wide as she took in the finished room and the tiredness seemed to be consigned to memory.
‘Oh Jack, it’s beautiful!’ she breathed. ‘I can’t wait to move in!’
‘Next week, I reckon,’ Jack replied proudly. ‘And now that you have no other distractions, you can finish down at the Alliance and move up here. That’ll please me as well as Uncle Percy, wherever he is.’
While his whereabouts were being guessed at, Percy was back at Scotland Yard, cursing loudly. His grand entrance into the premises of Hemmingsworth Properties in the company of two uniformed constables had netted one suspect, but not the important one.
Two hours earlier he’d strode purposefully into the front office and demanded to speak to Timothy Bowden. When the man had emerged, Percy had informed him that he was under arrest.
‘What for?’ Bowden demanded. ‘Haven’t we met before?’
‘We have indeed, Mr Bowden, and on that occasion we discussed how a team of joiners headed by a bogus foreman supplied by you had conducted certain internal alterations inside premises in Lamb Street, Spitalfields, of which your company is the landlord. By this means you obtained an unauthorised list of members of the Alliance that was occupying those premises, thereby facilitating a series of burglaries carried out by a man called Walter Mathewson. A man whose sister you also employ here, no doubt under the assumed name of “Marjory Collins”. Where is she, by the way?’
‘She’s no longer employed here,’ Bowden advised him. ‘She resigned with effect from yesterday.’
‘Do you have her home address?’
‘I assume so, although I’d need to consult our records.’
‘Do it. Now,’ Percy instructed him.
Bowden opened a filing cabinet to the side of the inner office in which a young female employee sat, open-mouthed at the dramatic turn of events on an otherwise dull Friday afternoon.
‘Here we are.’ Bowden smiled hopefully as he handed Percy the employment application letter.
Percy took one look at it, then snorted in disgust.
‘I spent an interesting morning at that Lambeth address, Mr Bowden,’ he snarled. ‘As if you didn’t already know, it’s a tanners’ yard and Marjory Collins — or Marjory Mathewson, as she was born — hasn’t lived there since she was a child, and she and her brother — the man you were persuaded to employ as a bogus joinery foreman — knifed their father to death some thirty odd years ago. The same lady also committed a callous murder in Luton two weeks ago that has deprived you of a long-term tenant for your Lamb Street premises.’
‘I know nothing of any murders!’ Bowden protested.
Percy nodded. ‘I’m prepared to believe that, for the time being anyway. But you’re under arrest for being an accessory to burglary. Take him out, constables.’ He looked back at the white face of the girl in the office. ‘Don’t let it upset you, my dear. Fridays can be a pain sometimes. If it’s any consolation, I used up two of my days off preparing for this.’
Esther unlocked the front door to the Alliance building with a light heart, knowing that she wouldn’t be living there for much longer. She was a good way through the pile of correspondence that she had set herself to conduct, she had obtained all the information she could regarding George Manners and his union, and on Jack’s next days off they would be choosing the bed in which she’d begin married life with him.
She went into the kitchen, made herself a cup of tea, then decided on a whim to venture downstairs with the lamp and collect some more correspondence, which she took back to the kitchen and began writing. The sooner she started on the last of the letters, the sooner she could get on with choosing furniture and working fulltime on preparing the rooms in Clerkenwell in which her future awaited her.
After an hour or so she felt her head nodding with the exhaustion of all the day’s excitement and she decided to call it a night. She took the lamp and walked the few steps down the hallway into her bedroom, climbed into her night dress, smiled lovingly at the wedding dress hanging from a hook on the wall, and fell almost instantly asleep.
Percy finally tracked Jack down at his lodgings in Farringdon, having wasted a valuable hour looking for him in both Clerkenwell and Spitalfields.
‘Where’s Esther?’ Percy demanded.
Jack looked back at him fearfully. ‘Isn’t she in Lamb Street? That’s where she said she was going; she was exhausted after running around looking for you at the Yard and she claims to have the evidence we need against Manners and his union crowd.’
‘That may explain it,’ Percy
replied, obviously agitated. ‘I hammered on the door until it threatened to come off its hinges, but there was no response. Hopefully she’s safely tucked up in bed.’
‘What’s all the urgency, anyway?’ Jack enquired, now thoroughly alarmed.
‘I’ve identified Helen Trenchard’s killer, but she’s still on the loose,’ Percy explained. ‘She was working at Hemmingsworth Properties, which explains the link between them and the attacks on union members. The name she’s using now is “Marjory Collins”, but before that she was “Marjory Mathewson”. Name ring a bell?’
‘Damn,’ was Jack’s only response.
‘It’s worse than that,’ Percy explained breathlessly. ‘As Marjory Mathewson, she and her brother Wally knifed their parents to death. Then, as Marjory Collins she strangled her husband of that name when he proved unfaithful to her.’
‘Wasn’t Marjory Collins the name of the woman who allegedly found Helen’s body in Luton?’
‘She obviously didn’t just “find” it — she created it,’ Percy replied, grim faced. ‘She also has a spare key to Lamb Street.’
‘We had the locks changed, didn’t we?’
‘Yes, but a copy of the key was supposed to be delivered to Hemmingsworth Properties, in accordance with the terms of the lease. We have to assume that this was done.’
‘So what now? Head down to Lamb Street and break the door down? It’ll give Esther the fright of her life if we pull a trick like that.’
‘She won’t have a life left if Marjory Collins gets to her first. I’ve got a police wagon and a couple of constables outside. I’m off back down to Lamb Street and I thought you’d want to come with me.’
Less than thirty minutes later the police wagon was drawn up immediately outside the door of the former Alliance office and two uniformed constables were standing on the narrow pavement outside the front door. Percy pushed his head through the open carriage window and looked carefully up and down the street.