by David Field
‘Are you two going to talk police work all evening?’ Beattie demanded. ‘I thought that would be an end to it, when they split you two up. Apparently not.’
‘I’m simply warning Jack about what he’s going to be up against in his next set of duties,’ Percy insisted.
Jack was all ears. ‘Have you had much experience of that sort of thing, Uncle?’
‘Some years ago,’ Percy replied as he stared nostalgically at the far wall. ‘It was when I first joined the Yard, after working out of Bow Street, and they thought that my experience among the totties and street sharpsters might be of some value. There was a set of premises in Gerrard Street, Soho, which we suspected of operating a pipe house. To outward appearances it was only a restaurant, but when we entered one night we found a gambling room at the back. The proprietor was all smiles and bows when we nicked him for that, then it occurred to my boss at the time that Mr Ho was not looking unhappy enough. So we went upstairs, where we found his bawdy house. He still didn’t look totally devastated, so we tried the next floor, and that was an eye-opener, believe me.’
‘Percy,’ Beattie intervened in a warning tone, but it was too late in the tale to stop him.
‘Go on,’ Jack invited him, and Percy obliged.
‘Imagine a large room with no widows, just rows of beds down either side, men — and a couple of women as well — lying there almost insensible, with a couple of girls moving backwards and forwards between them, handing them pipes full of what turned out to be opium. Mr Ho was shouting and jumping up and down by that stage, so we knew we’d finally hit his weak spot. He offered my boss hundreds of pounds to turn a blind eye and offered the rest of us the pick of his whores one floor down, but the last I heard our generous host was still in Newgate, serving a very long stretch.’
‘Right, that’s it!’ Beattie announced. ‘Either you change the subject or we’re leaving now.’
‘Actually,’ Esther intervened with a related topic, ‘I was hoping you could advise us what’s happened to poor Abigail Prendergast at Ormonde’s art gallery. She and I got quite friendly when I worked there and I know that she was dependent on her job to continue her art studies. Is she going to be alright?’
Percy nodded as he began filling his after supper pipe. ‘I called in there last week, to advise her of the date of the inquest, which incidentally is next week, in Kemble. I’ll have to be there, obviously, but the bulk of the evidence will be coming from Sergeant Oakley, thank God. Anyway, Miss Prendergast won’t need to attend, but she advised me that Ormonde has a cousin who’s an antique dealer and he’s bought the premises from the estate. The initial plan is to keep the gallery running, with Miss Prendergast as its manageress, so Ormonde’s death worked very much in her favour.’
‘Which is more than be said for you two,’ Esther reminded them. ‘Did you really expect that the spiriting up of his sister’s ghost would result in a confession?’
‘Well it did, didn’t it?’ Percy replied with a smile.
‘But Ormonde’s death?’ Esther persisted. ‘Was that all part of your master plan?’
‘Of course not. It was genuinely an unfortunate turn of events.’
‘You realise that you have a reputation in the Yard for killing your suspects?’ Jack told him and Percy smiled.
‘That won’t do me any harm. You’ll be aware of the general attitude in there — provided we get the villain, nobody cares how it comes about.’
‘But there are procedures laid down by law, surely?’ Esther insisted and Beattie snorted.
‘Percy never follows procedure. I well remember that when we got married, he kept the ring in his own jacket pocket because he didn’t trust his best man with it.’
‘Well, he was in the Robbery Squad,’ Percy replied with a chuckle. ‘But he was also one of the most forgetful officers I ever knew. If anyone could be relied upon to dive out of a police wagon minus his billy staff it was Tommy Fletcher. “Forgetful Fletcher”, we used to call him. It killed him in the end — he forgot to duck when the bullets started flying during an armed robbery in Holloway.’
‘Horrible!’ Esther muttered and Beattie smiled across at her sympathetically.
‘Welcome to the Scotland Yard Apprentice Widows’ Club, Esther. If Jack’s anything like his uncle — which, let me assure you, he is — then nothing will persuade him to give up police work and find a less dangerous job. Anyway, I’d better take Percy home before he persuades Jack to undertake firearms training.’
‘You get an extra three bob a week for that,’ Jack announced thoughtfully. Esther smacked him across the back of his head and Percy and Beattie made their farewells with the usual hugs and undertakings not to leave it so long until their next gathering.
‘And you take care of that lovely wife of yours,’ Beattie instructed Jack just before the front door closed behind them.
Esther turned quickly and hugged Jack to her.
‘You really won’t volunteer to use a gun, just for an extra three shillings a week, will you?’
‘Of course not. Aunt Beattie was just having you on. She’s spent the last thirty years living on the edge of her seat waiting for the news that Uncle Percy’s copped it in the line of duty.’
‘And me?’ Esther said with tears forming in her eyes. ‘Is that my future, as well? Waiting for the knock on the door?’
‘Your future, my darling wife,’ Jack assured her as he hugged her closer, ‘is to be loved to death by a husband who adores you, and raise two beautiful children in relative comfort. If you’re definitely finished with detective work?’
‘Until next time, knowing you,’ Esther replied as she leaned forward and kissed him.
***
Want to carry on the journey with Esther & Jack? Read The Slum Reaper — Book Four in the Victorian crime series.
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A NOTE TO THE READER
Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking the time to read collection and I hope that it lived up to your expectations.
The series began with the fascination I’ve always had by England’s most notorious series of unsolved murders. I hope that dedicated ‘Ripperologists’ will take into account that The Gaslight Stalker is first and foremost a work of fiction, although I took considerable care to weave my story around the known facts regarding the ‘canonical’ series of atrocities. I also acknowledge that not everyone ascribes the first of these — the murder of Martha Tabram — to the Ripper, but perhaps that is why the possibility was overlooked, both at the time and by subsequent armchair investigators, that the person responsible for those that followed might have been covering up their involvement in the first of them.
The second book, The Night Caller was not so much born as dictated by three determined characters who wouldn’t leave me alone. It explores the lowly status of women generally in late Victorian society, with particular emphasis on their underlying vulnerability when they appeared to be challenging the subordinate role that male tradition had consigned to them. A generation before the strident Suffragettes with their battle banners and illegal marches, women like Esther Jacobs were being held down in their allotted places in a man’s world, and brought to heel by crude physical and psychological retaliation when they attempted to push back up.
But Esther isn’t easily intimidated, and she’s lucky to have Jack and Percy on hand when she takes matters into her own hands.
In the third volume, The Prodigal Sister I felt obliged to remind the reader that as the Nineteenth Century was drawing to a close, the work of Scotland Yard was not confined to London. What had begun as an experiment in criminal detection in the 1840s had expanded by the final decade of Victoria’s reign into one of the world’s most organised and effective crime detection organisations, and it was in great demand.
Not every police force had its own Detective Branch of plain
clothes officers who were free of routine patrol work, and could therefore concentrate instead on stealthy enquiries in their own clothes, disguised if necessary as workmen, tradespeople or professionals. The rural forces in particular did not develop what we now call ‘CID’ branches until relatively recently, and if they were called upon to investigate something out of the routine, such as a murder or a serial sex offender, they would call in ‘The Yard’.
Those of us old enough to have been reared on slightly cheesy TV series such as ‘Fabian of The Yard’ retain a vague memory of serious looking individuals in trilby hats, smoking pipes as they were driven through the streets in black sedans with bells ringing loudly to warn other motorists, and pedestrians, that a serious crime had been committed, and that the elite professionals were on their way to ‘crack’ it.
It was no different – although the ubiquitous black motor sedan was not yet available – for Yard officers in the 1890s, who were frequently transferred from their normal duties suppressing crime in London in order to assist a rural force that possessed no detectives. Thus it was that Percy and Jack Enright found themselves in deepest Wiltshire, looking for a reason why a young woman finished up dead inside a railway tunnel. But once it was discovered that the victim came from an up-market location in London, they had need of the services of their third, and highly unofficial, team member, Esther, who was already feeling mentally unfulfilled while settling into the traditional role of the late Victorian wife and mother.
The storyline of this novel is also different in another vital respect. Whereas detective work traditionally involves a search for a culprit, this time Jack and Percy have no doubt as to his identity almost from the start of their investigations. What they are required to search for on this occasion is the evidence to prove it, and Esther is soon undertaking lines of enquiry of her own. Undercover, of course, since officially she doesn’t occupy any role in the work of the Metropolitan Police – no woman would, until well after the turn of the century.
Percy is an old hand at the use of techniques that are not so much ‘undercover’ as downright ‘underhand’, and he doesn’t shrink from using a cheap theatrical trick. This was the age of optical illusion, after all, and although the moving picture was still a thing of the future, audiences formed long queues to marvel at stills photography and kaleidoscopic effects, while gasping in awe at the antics of stage performers such as Harry Houdini and sitting around chilly tables beneath red lamps while mediums, both genuine and fake, connected them with the spirit world. Who, therefore, can blame Percy for resorting to ‘Pepper’s Ghost’, which was already thirty years old by then?
I’d be delighted to receive your feedback, and I would be thrilled if you could post a review up on Amazon or Goodreads. Or, of course, you can try the more personal approach and contact me directly on my website, and my Facebook page: DavidFieldAuthor.
Happy reading!
David
davidfieldauthor.com
MORE BOOKS BY DAVID FIELD
Esther & Jack Enright Series:
The Slum Reaper
The Posing Playwright
The Mercy Killings
The Jubilee Plot
The Lost Boys
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Copyright © David Field, 2018
David Field has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales are purely coincidental.