by David Field
‘That “idiot girl”, as you call her, is my wife,’ Jack replied angrily, ‘and please do me the courtesy of resisting arrest, so that I can belt blue blazes out of your greasy self-satisfied mug.’
‘Steady on, sir,’ Oakley warned him.
‘“Sir?”’ Ormonde echoed in disbelief, ‘you’re addressing this self-inflated pipsqueak as “sir”?’
‘He’s Scotland Yard, sir, an’ I ’as ter do what I’m told by them folk up in London. An’ right now, I’m instructed ter take yer in charge on a count o’ attempted murder.’
‘I demand to speak to a senior officer!’ Ormonde insisted.
‘All in good time,’ Jack advised him through gritted teeth, ‘although you’ll no doubt be concerned to learn that he’s also related to the woman you tried to strangle.’
‘May I finish my supper first?’
‘No, you may not,’ Jack advised him with a sadistic grin. ‘A shame really, because although I’ve never had occasion to taste it, they tell me that Newgate fare doesn’t run to chicken.’
‘May I at least get my coat and hat?’ Ormonde requested, slightly less sure of his ground.
‘Certainly,’ Jack replied with mock politeness, ‘although of course your deerstalker bonnet’s no longer available to you, is it?’
Somewhat pale in the face, Ormonde rose from the supper table, dabbed his upper lip with a napkin to soak up the beads of perspiration that had just formed above his top lip and headed towards the door that led to the corridor.
‘I’ll just come wi’ yer, sir,’ Oakley advised him with appropriate deference, ‘just so’s yer don’t try jumpin’ out o’ the winder.’
As the three of them re-emerged from the back door into the laneway that led back to the police coach, Oakley spoke quietly in Ormonde’s ear. ‘By rights I should be tyin’ yer ’ands be’ind yer back, sir, but if yer promises ter come quiet like, there’ll be no need o’ that.’
‘But if you do make a run for it, I’d welcome the opportunity to grind your face into the dirt of your own driveway,’ Jack muttered ominously.
Back at Kemble Station, matters were progressing smoothly. Lucy had reappeared from the Ladies’ Waiting Room along the platform, dressed in the costume retrieved from Marianne Ormond’s corpse and protesting vociferously at the foul smell that was coming off it. Percy and Frances had placed the mirrors on the chalk marks and Michael Parsons had obligingly extinguished the gas lamps in the Booking Hall and most of the “up” platform. The only light was now coming from inside his office, where the mirror had been covered back over with one of the blankets and Frances had supervised the total blacking of Lucy’s eyes, including the lids when she closed them as instructed. Finally, the thin veil had been draped over her head and hung down over her face as they all awaited the arrival of Jack with Ormonde under arrest.
As the police coach turned right towards Kemble Station at the junction of Sandpool Lane with the main street, instead of turning left for the Swindon Road, Ormonde demanded an explanation.
‘You asked to speak to a senior officer, did you not?’ Jack reminded him with sadistic satisfaction. ‘He’s waiting to speak to you at Kemble Station, then it’ll be all stations to Newgate.’
Back at the station, Percy was anxiously peering out from the darkness of the Booking Hall for any sign of the approaching coach, while Michael Parsons was fuming quietly from his chair inside the office, wondering how he was going to explain any passenger complaints to the Regional Inspector. Then from the outside door Percy heard two bells ringing inside the same room, where Lucy was waiting silently, eyes closed, in front of the covered mirror, praying for it all to be over so that she could discard the malodorous costume. The sweat smell from previous actresses under the armpits of a queenly gown was one thing, but this was unbearable.
Both she and Frances had jumped at the sound of the two rings of the bell inside the office and were glad when Percy rushed back in and glared at Michael Parsons.
‘What was that ringing noise?’ he demanded.
Parsons seemed not to be concerned. ‘Two rings, sir. That’s from the “down” signal box the other side of the bridge, to alert us that the London-bound through train just passed the box. It’ll be here in a couple of minutes or so.’
Percy made it back out through the darkness of the Booking Hall as far as the door, where he saw the police coach pulling up in the forecourt and Ormonde being assisted out of it towards the station entrance. Percy rushed back inside the office and hissed for the action to begin when he gave the signal by dropping his outstretched arm, hoping upon hope that Jack made the agreed noise upon entry with his prisoner.
‘In here, matey,’ Percy heard Jack yell sarcastically and he dropped his arm. Frances swiftly and deftly whisked the covering blanket off the front of the mirror in the office and a ghostly face appeared on cue in the upper right hand corner of the Booking Hall. It shimmered in the half light, a funereal veil draped over a white face with black caverns where there should have been eyes and Ormonde screamed.
‘Get that way from me!’ he pleaded.
‘What would that be?’ Jack enquired calmly over the rumbling sound of the approaching train as it glided slowly past the platform in a cloud of steam that wafted into the Booking Hall and somehow added to the ghostly unreality of the merciless image hovering halfway up the wall.
‘Leave me alone!’ Ormonde pleaded hysterically. ‘Go back to your grave! All I did was take your life in one short push, but you’re going to haunt me for the rest of my days! Get out of my life — I’ll be dead soon anyway! For God’s sake leave me be!’
With the strength of a madman in mortal terror, he struggled free from the uncertain grasp of a Sergeant Oakley who was equally transfixed by the ghostly face that had appeared out of thin air, not having been warned in advance. Ormonde raced through onto the platform, skidded to the right and ran down its full length, leaving the end of the “up” platform at high speed and running around the guard’s van of the London-bound train onto the “down” line.
The noise of the arriving London-bound train had masked the sound of a goods train destined for Cheltenham loaded with coal. It had reached its maximum speed of forty miles an hour and the hundreds of tons behind the engine ensured that even though a horrified driver applied the brake with commendable speed, it was too late to prevent the front of the smoke box door hitting Ormonde a resounding blow to the head that delivered a merciful death before his body was tossed like a rag doll fifty feet down the line, where it was mangled almost beyond recognition as the engine screeched down the track after it, wheels locked under the force of the brake, but the latent weight of the load behind it, in wagons with no brakes, pushing it relentlessly forward.
Back at the station, Sergeant Oakley and Constable Jacks had raced after their man, but had been sufficiently behind him to avoid the oncoming goods train. Oakley could see the fate that had befallen Ormonde from the end of the up platform and he turned to instruct his constable to fetch a lantern and check that their man was dead. Then the two men walked slowly back along the up line to where the goods train had finally ground to a halt on the other line and a trembling driver was in the process of descending from his cab.
‘Can I get out of this disgusting costume now?’ Lucy demanded, and the moment that Frances confirmed that she could, she raced back to the Ladies’ Waiting Room to change back into her own clothes. Percy walked onto the platform and looked back down to where Oakley and Jacks were approaching the twisted remains wedged under the front wheels and he saw the young constable lean forward, then stagger sideways and spew all over the up line.
‘I think we’ll leave that to the local force,’ he advised Jack.
Chapter Eighteen
‘Well, that went very well, didn’t it?’ Chief Inspector Wallace bellowed sarcastically at the two men across the desk from him in his office at Scotland Yard. ‘It cost us over a hundred pounds and we have no-one to put in front of a jury!’
Percy
simply looked defiant, while Jack hung his head, red-faced and wishing he were somewhere else.
‘We got our man,’ Percy reminded him, but this was not about to stem the flow of wrath.
‘We’re supposed to buckle them, lock them up, bring them before a judge and jury, then hang them!’ Wallace yelled back. ‘Or have you become a public executioner as well? If so, let me remind you, the approved apparatus is a noose, not a coal train!’
‘If we’d put him through the court process, some glib-tongued barrister might have got him off,’ Percy offered by way of justification.
‘Talking of expert use of the English language, read that!’ Wallace thundered, as he reached forward, picked up that morning’s copy of The Times, and hurled it back down in front of Percy.
‘I already have, sir,’ Percy confirmed, ‘but that’s just scurrilous uninformed rubbish.’
‘The sort of scurrilous uninformed rubbish that’s on the breakfast table of every Member of the House, let me remind you,’ Wallace spat back. At least the volume had decreased, if the sentiment hadn’t softened. Wallace glared at Jack. ‘Do you have nothing to say, Constable?’
‘We had no idea the man would make a run for it, sir,’ Jack mumbled at the floor, provoking a bitter laugh.
‘And he wouldn’t have done, if either of you had secured him properly! Instead you pulled a cheap theatrical stunt designed to provoke him into a confession.’
‘We got the confession, sir,’ Percy reminded him, generating another angry outburst.
‘And we can make precious little use of it now, can we, you pair of idiots! Is there something in your common inheritance that causes you to be feeble minded? Was a distant ancestor perhaps the village idiot?’
‘My father — and Constable Enright’s grandfather — was a doctor, as it happens,’ Percy replied.
‘Presumably not one who ministered to afflictions of the brain,’ Wallace retorted, ‘or else he would have had half his family committed!’
‘The business with the train was just an unfortunate accident,’ Percy observed.
‘Unfortunate for your suspect, certainly. And we only have your word for it that he confessed before he ended it all in that spectacular fashion. The Times is suggesting that the two of you hounded him to suicide by staging some sort of séance, and the directors of the Great Western Railway have been obliged to publish a notice in the newspapers, assuring the travelling public that none of their lines are haunted!’
It fell silent for a moment, until Wallace held up a buff file and waved it in the air. ‘My superiors have instructed me to go easy on you two because of your success in putting a stop to those prostitute murders in Whitechapel. But from what I can deduce from that file, you managed to kill the principal suspect in that case as well, didn’t you?’
‘That was me, sir,’ Jack admitted. ‘I hit her over the head with my billy club to prevent her slitting the throat of her latest victim.’
‘Who, one can only hope, was not a prostitute, since you went on to marry her, did you not?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Jack admitted, unsure whether or not to remind him that he had been the one who had authorised Esther’s involvement in this latest debacle. He decided against it, since they were in enough trouble already.
After another excruciatingly long silence, Wallace looked at each of them in turn before announcing his own verdict. ‘I think it’s high time we split up this unhealthy family enterprise of yours, killing suspects rather than arresting them. You, Constable, were allocated to your uncle’s team because it was felt that you would benefit most from an avuncular influence. That was a very grave mistake on someone’s part, it would seem, and I’ve marked on both your files that you’re never to be allowed out of London together on the same case ever again. That leaves the question of your next allocations.’
They waited in a deathly silence that Wallace employed to maximum effect before continuing. ‘Constable, you’ll be allocated to general duties in Inspector Pennington’s team. I’m not sure what they have on at the moment, but they’ll shortly be kicking down doors in Limehouse in search of Chinese drug dens and the like. As for you, Sergeant, we need promoted men to boost the squad investigating a series of bank robberies that we believe may all be the work of the same gang. If you discover that they are, Chief Superintendant Murphy would be grateful if you’d leave a few of them alive for him to buckle. Very well, out you go, the pair of you.’
‘Look on the bright side, young Jack,’ Percy grinned unrepentantly as they headed downstairs to the canteen. ‘Your mother will be delighted that you’re out from under my wicked influence and Esther will have a greater expectation of your being home for tea on time every evening.’
‘Do you still have a job, or will I have to start taking washing in?’ Esther asked as she wrapped her arms around Jack in the hallway when he returned home.
‘Only mine,’ Jack grinned sheepishly at her, ‘but I’m afraid I won’t be working with Uncle Percy any more.’
‘And that’s bad news?’ Esther replied with a gleeful smile. ‘You must be the only one left in the family who’s got any remaining faith in him. Your mother thinks he’s the Anti-Christ, and when I visited Lucy today she could talk about nothing but the stinking dress he forced her to climb into in order to scare the pants off Ormonde. As for me, you presumably haven’t forgotten what I had to go through as the result of his hair-brained scheme?’
‘You’re right about Mother,’ Jack agreed. ‘She’ll be over the moon, until she learns that my immediate duties are likely to bring me face to face with drug-drenched Chinamen wielding hatchets.’
‘Don’t tell her that, else she’ll resume her never-ending campaign to persuade you to resign from the police force. And I might even join her in that.’
It fell silent as Jack looked down into her eyes with a pleading look. ‘Do you really want me to give it up and become a coalman?’
She softened and kissed the end of his nose. ‘What, and create even more washing for me? It’s what you want to do and what you were doing when we first met. It’s how we got together.’
‘Yes, and that nearly got you killed as well,’ Jack reminded her. ‘If I’ve learned one lesson, it’s never to allow you to get involved in my work again.’
‘Allow me?’ Esther bridled. ‘You’re not my father, Jack — if I want to get involved in something, I will, with or without your permission. And now I need to get involved in preparing supper.’
‘That’s something else,’ Jack admitted hesitantly. ‘It’s taken care of.’
‘You’re taking me to supper at the Cafe Royal?’ Esther asked sarcastically.
‘Not exactly — but I’ve arranged for more of that fried fish and potatoes to be delivered.’
Esther’s brow knitted in a frown. ‘Since when did Farringdon Market tradesmen deliver to your home?’
‘They don’t,’ Jack conceded, and Esther’s eyes flew wide open as the realisation hit her.
‘Not Uncle Percy? He wouldn’t dare show his face in here after what he got us into, and damned near ended your career.’
‘He’s not turning up alone, so please be nice to him,’ Jack pleaded.
‘Nice to him?’ Esther echoed. ‘I’ll scream at him if he comes within ten feet of our front door! So who’s he bringing with him — the Police Commissioner?’
‘Next best thing — Aunt Beattie.’
‘I’m surprised she’s still married to him, after all those years of madcap bungling.’
‘He’s actually a very good thief catcher,’ Jack offered in his defence.
‘Oh, so it’s only murderers he kills, is that it?’
‘You’d better get yourself beautified in order to receive our supper guests,’ Jack suggested.
‘You mean I don’t look beautiful now, in my apron, with my hair in pins and no makeup?’
‘Of course you do, but I know that you women like to look your best in the company of others.’
‘It’s
as well that I agreed to marry you, Jack Enright, because you know nothing about women,’ Esther insisted, just as the knock came on the front door. ‘You might have given me more notice than this! Keep them entertained while I go and smarten myself up.’ She scuttled down to the bedroom, leaving Jack to open the door to their visitors, accept the steaming parcel from a beaming Aunt Beatrice and the wine bottle from Uncle Percy, and lead them down to the kitchen, where the food was placed in the oven to keep it warm, and Aunt Beatrice made a bee-line for the nursery in order to make a big fuss over ‘the darling little Lily that I so rarely see’.
A few minutes later Esther reappeared just as Jack was opening the wine bottle. She had rapidly transformed herself into the elegant hostess, wearing her best maternity gown that still didn’t quite disguise the burgeoning bump below her navel. She threw her arms around Aunt Beatrice and scowled at Percy behind her back. Then she made a show of rearranging the supper table after Jack’s inadequate efforts to lay it and invited everyone to take a seat.
‘Percy tells me that you to won’t be working together any more,’ Beattie commented by way of a silence breaker.
‘At least that’ll improve his chances of staying alive,’ Esther replied sarcastically, but Percy wasn’t going to let her get away with that.
‘You think so? Opium is big business down near the docks and our Oriental friends don’t take kindly to our interrupting their trade.’
‘When exactly are you due?’ Beattie asked Esther, hoping to divert the conversation.
‘Are they really as violent as I’ve heard?’ Jack persisted.
‘Sometime in June, according to the doctor,’ Esther replied across the male conversation.
‘Not simply violent — crafty as well,’ Percy advised Jack. ‘They have to regularly change the men on the opium den details because the Chinese who operate them are not above bribery and threats. And they’re particularly good at hiding their true activities behind lawful ones.’