The Quickening and the Dead

by J C Briggs

  And murder’s a tale, he thought. Its beginning lay in the early chapters of Plume’s life, perhaps. But the ending was, as yet, unwritten. And the characters’ destinies were obscure. Miranda, Kitty Quillian and the Italian boy. He had said to Sam that the boy might have run from the man in the dark coat. Joe Seppy, as Scrap had said. Guiseppe. That led him to Guiseppe Mazzini, the Italian politician. He wondered about the Italian school in Clerkenwell. It would be worth asking there — Dickens had visited the school with John Forster. Mazzini, who had established the school, had taken them. Mazzini was back in Italy now, but Dickens knew James Stanfield, the brewery owner who was looking after the school. He would go there after he had been to Mrs Plume’s with Sam. There was a chance, perhaps.

  Chapter 24: Written in Blood

  Bertha Raspin was on remand in Newgate, her case having been heard by the Bow Street magistrate, who was satisfied with Jones’s evidence that she had committed an indictable offence. Doctor Fuller had sent word that the girl he had taken to the infirmary had died. When Jones had dealt with that, he went back to the police station to meet Dickens. They were to go to Mrs Plume’s. It was time to find out about the doctor’s past.

  Dickens was waiting in Jones’s office. In his spectacles, his hair smoothed down with bear’s grease, and wearing a long black coat, he looked, Jones thought, like a particularly unctuous undertaker. He saw, too, the neat moustache. Dickens had not been able to resist. Jones wasn’t surprised, though he raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Nothing shall move it except that I be torn to pieces by some whirlwind.’

  ‘You’re sure it won’t come off in the rain?’ Jones glanced towards the window where the rain ran down the panes.

  ‘Sammy, Sammy, you speak to the man who has taken theatres by storm, wearing mustachios which would not have disgraced Don Quixote. And have they fallen? Never. A dot of spirit gum and the thing is safe.’

  ‘I believe you, and, despite your looking to me very like an undertaker, you’ll do very well. Just keep in the background.’

  ‘Dumb as a drum with a hole in it — from this time forth I never shall speak word as Iago said when he was asked why he had ensnared Othello. Though, I did want to tell you a thought I had about the Italian boy. I —’ Before he could begin, the door opened to reveal Constable Feak who was to have accompanied Sergeant Rogers to bring the Brimstones to the station. He looked like a man who had come in a hurry.

  ‘Feak — I thought you were at the Brimstone house. Something happened?’

  ‘We went there. No one answered the door so we went round the back and found a body.’

  Kitty Quillian? Dickens thought.

  ‘Man or woman?’ Jones asked.

  ‘Man, sir — stabbed.’

  On the way out, Jones called Inspector Grove and two constables, Semple and Johnson, to come with them to the Brimstone house.

  A ten minute cab ride brought them to Dab Lane, where they stood in the rain looking down at the corpse of Arthur Brimstone who lay on the flagstones, his eyes staring up at the louring clouds, and his shirt front stained with blood. His face was bruised and there was blood on his mouth. His coat was half off and wet; his hat had fallen some distance away and there was a case that looked like a medicine bag, which looked as if it had been flung away. Little bottles had smashed from which the sweetish smell of cordials spilled. Some wooden boxes had been toppled over. It looked as though a struggle had taken place. Arthur Brimstone had lost the fight.

  ‘No sign of his wife?’ Jones asked Rogers.

  ‘No, sir. I went in, but there’s no one there.’

  ‘No sign of a child or a young woman?’

  ‘No, sir, the house is empty.’

  Jones turned back to the body. ‘Turn him over, will you, Feak.’

  Feak did so and they saw that underneath the body the ground was dry.

  ‘It rained in the night,’ Dickens said. ‘I heard it — about midnight.’

  ‘So, he was killed before then.’

  ‘Door was open, sir, and the key on the floor at the bottom of the steps. Perhaps he was locking the door when he was attacked. His back to the murderer. He turned round, they fought and Brimstone was stabbed in the chest.’

  ‘Hm — someone came in from outside. Not his wife — the evidence of a fight suggests a man. Brimstone knew Plume — perhaps he knew Plume’s murderer. Brimstone was stabbed — a link to Plume’s death. It could be that the killer of Plume is the killer of Brimstone. That’ll be our thinking until evidence proves otherwise. But, we need to find the wife. Feak, you’ll go back to Bow Street for the mortuary van. Grove, I’ll need you to ask the neighbours, find out where Mrs Brimstone might be. Take Semple with you. Rogers, Johnson, you stay here with the body.’

  Dickens examined the broken bottles. The handwriting on the labels was familiar as were the names: tincture of opium, morphine, savin pills. He picked up a bottle and showed it to Jones. ‘He was deep in it. He supplied Plume.’

  ‘Made up to his own recipes.’

  ‘Or Plume’s, perhaps — a little more opium and a little less water.’

  Semple who was standing by the door from the alley to the yard, spoke up. ‘There’s blood here, sir, on the door — handprint, sir.’

  Jones went over to look. There on the inside of the door was the clearly discernible print of a hand. Not likely Brimstone’s blood, he thought, looking back at the body which lay at some distance from the door. It could be the murderer’s. He might have been injured in the fight.

  ‘Semple, have a look down the alley — see if there’s any more blood — our man might have been injured. Rogers, you go with him.’

  Dickens came over to look at the mark. It was large enough, he thought, to be a man’s hand. That was something. He was real: that spectral black figure he had seen bending over the Italian boy. His signature. Written in blood.

  ‘He’s real, then,’ he observed to Jones.

  ‘I think he is, but where is he — that’s the question.’

  Semple shouted out, and Jones, Dickens and Grove went out into the alley, leaving Johnson and Feak to guard the body. Semple was looking at another handprint on the wall. It looked as if the murderer had leant there for a moment.

  ‘Injured, do you think?’ asked Dickens.

  They walked further along and they saw at intervals the handprints. He had been resting then moving on. They came to the end of the alley which then turned into another. There was another handprint on a door which was ajar. They went into a yard to find themselves at the back of a house. The door was open. There was no sound at all, only their breathing. Jones looked up. There was no light, just a few broken windows. That didn’t mean the house was uninhabited. People lived in worse places. Jones pointed, telling Semple and Dickens to stay at the door of the yard and indicated to Grove that he should take out his wooden truncheon.

  Grove went first, followed by Jones. They were in an old scullery. There was a sink where a tap dripped. Black stains covered most of the distempered walls. They could smell the damp and mildew. There was a rusty bucket with no bottom and a collection of cracked and broken bottles on the floor where the stone flags were damaged and split. But there was blood, a few spots on the floor. They stopped and listened. They heard the tap dripping — one drop at a time. Jones looked in the sink. There was water which had not fully drained away — blocked probably. But he thought that someone had used it recently. And he could see that the water was faintly pink and there were splashes of red on the edge of the sink.

  The scullery door was hanging off its hinges. Jones walked on tip-toe to peer into the next room. It was in half darkness, but he could make out the shape of a table and some chairs. But he could not see what was to the left of the door. There was a human smell — the smell of old clothes and sweat — and worse, the smell of excrement and urine. He listened again. Someone was in there — someone was breathing, a regular, rather hoarse, whispering sound. Breathing in. Breathing out. Someone asleep
?

  He pushed at the door which fell at his touch and crashed to the ground, creating a plume of dust. He picked up a piece of wood as he stepped into the room. Grove was after him in a second with his truncheon.

  ‘Police,’ Jones shouted.

  At the noise, the man on the rough bed sat up and the sickening stench of an unwashed body and mouldy bed coverings and gin swept at them like a wave of filthy water.

  ‘Holy Mother o’ God!’ They saw a grimy face framed by a matted thatch of long black hair and a pair of indignant eyes glaring at them. ‘Can a man not be left to sleep in peace?’

  ‘Police.’

  ‘Ye don’t need to knock the door down. Faith, if an English man’s home is his castle, can’t a poor Irish man have a miserable feckin door to call his own? And, mebbe ye’d care to open that curtain so’s I can have a look at ye.’

  An Irish man — no doubt, a rogue, probably a thief, certainly a drunk — but not the murderer, Jones was sure.

  ‘And ye can put that lump o’ wood down — no need to murder me as well as frighten me to death.’

  Jones felt a bit of a fool, brandishing his piece of wood. He dropped it. And he opened what the man had called the curtain — a ragged affair, dangling from a piece of string. ‘We’re looking for someone. Someone came here last night — someone with a bloody hand. I want to know about him.’

  ‘Clever, ain’t ye. And are ye after payin’ for this information?’

  ‘Never mind that. You can tell me now — or at the station.’

  The man fumbled around the bed clothes. He found his bottle and took a long swig of whatever it was — the gin, Jones supposed, but he waited. He didn’t want to be bothered with taking the man in.

  ‘’Tis a terrible thing. A man’s willin’ to cooperate with the authorities — a poor man an’ all, but where’s the gratitude? ’Tis the way o’ all this miserable world.’ He sighed and drank again.

  All I need, thought Jones, a loquacious Irish philosopher. ‘You’ll get your bob when you’ve told me.’

  The man took another deep swig. ‘Well, what is it ye’re wantin’ to know?’

  ‘All about him.’

  ‘He came creepin’ in here — what time, I can’t say. I haven’t me time piece about me these days. Dark, though, except for me little candle. I was about to say me prayers to the Blessed Virgin and the Blessed Saint Margaret — herself the patron of the gentlemen of the road. Well, in he comes, the poor divil. Said he’d hurt his hand and could he stay till he was feelin’ a bit more like it. To be sure, I didn’t mind. Open house, this is.’ He gestured to the hole where the door had been, chuckling at his own wit, and took a swig from his bottle.

  ‘So I see,’ Jones said drily. ‘Go on.’

  ‘’Tis all. He came. He went away. Gave us a couple o’ bob, mind. Said I should get a good meal and give up the drink. A real gent — two bob for nothing but a sit down, whereas —’

  Blood and stones and drawing teeth came into Jones’s mind. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘A gent — not a gent of the road, o’ course, like meself. Clean except for a bit o’ mud. Fell p’raps. Shockin’ state o’ them streets. Black coat and hat an’ a ruddy great cut on his hand.’

  ‘Hat? Spectacles?’

  ‘Black hat — quare thing, that — all muddy like he’d dropped it. Specs — yes, he had.’

  ‘How long did he stay?’

  ‘Don’t know. Rainin’ when he went. Invited him to stay, o’ course, but he wrapped his hand in his handkerchief an’ said he had to be off.’

  ‘Did he say where?’ Useless question, thought Jones, but he might as well ask.

  ‘No. Just went. Didn’t look so good, to be sure. Went out the back the way he came.’

  ‘He didn’t give you a name?’ One could always hope.

  ‘I introduced me self — Michael O’Malley, I said —’

  ‘Bridie —’ The word was out before Jones could stop himself. Not that this could be the Michael O’Malley who was Bridie’s husband, last heard of — God knows when. Bridie O’Malley at whose house Jones had lodged all those years ago, and who was still a good friend — despite the fact that her house now was not entirely respectable. Bridie O’Malley who looked after her girls — and an assortment of waifs and strays.

  Michael O’Malley was staring at him. It was the eyes that Jones recognised now. Green, so deep that it was like looking down into the sea — the very eyes that Bridie had sworn had ensnared her, though she had known very well what he was. Light-fingered Michael O’Malley who’d left her, giving his emerald eyes to someone else.

  ‘Sammy? Sammy Jones?’ Michael O’Malley laughed, a great-hearted, deep laugh, and Jones remembered that, too. ‘The divil, it is. Sammy, the policeman. Did you marry her then?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bridie, the light o’ my life — but she had a fondness for you, me boy.’

  ‘She was married to you, as I recall, Michael — she wasn’t free to marry anyone else.’

  ‘Ah, to be sure, I ought to have told her — you see, Sammy, my lad, although my heart was Bridie’s, I didn’t like to mention that I’d married before — in Ireland. ’Twas —’

  I haven’t time for this, Jones thought. Dear Lord, Michael O’Malley and his talk of love and bigamy when he was looking for a murderer.

  ‘Michael, I’ll tell you about Bridie another time. I’m looking for a murderer — and you have met him. I need to get you out of here — into lodgings. I’ll give you some money, but for God’s sake, tell me about the man — did he give his name? Don’t give me the full narrative, just tell me.’

  ‘Bedad, a murderer and I —’

  ‘Michael, please.’

  ‘Well, I introduced meself, o’ course. Michael O’Malley at your service, says I —’ Michael saw Jones’s face. ‘Then, “Will”, he says.’

  A name. A name. A cut hand bound in a handkerchief. A low crowned black hat. A black coat. Spectacles glinting in gaslight. He was coming into focus. Jones had seen a daguerreotype being developed. He had seen the image take shape on the silver plate, a man emerging from blankness, blurred to begin with, but finally he was there. “Will.” Or was it? ‘Michael, are you certain?’

  Michael O’Malley screwed up his green eyes and thought. ‘Sure, I don’t know, Sammy. I thought it was his name, but o’ course, you’re thinkin’ why would a murderer say his name? But, I heard the word “Will” — an’ then he said no more — finished wrappin’ his hand and went.’

  Jones turned to Inspector Grove, who was still standing with his truncheon ready.

  ‘Get Mr Dickens, will you. He can stay with Mr O’Malley while we work out our next moves.’ Grove went out. ‘Michael, I want you to wait with Mr Dickens. I’ve got some things to organise.’

  ‘You don’t mean —’

  ‘I do, but I can’t explain now.’

  Dickens came in. Michael O’Malley looked at him. ‘Deed, Mithter Dickens, you’re not like your picture, sir — I’d a thought you was an undertaker come to measure me up for me coffin.’

  Dickens laughed. ‘In disguise, sir.’ He looked at Jones.

  ‘This is Mr Michael O’Malley —’

  ‘Not —’

  ‘Deed I am, though I’m ashamed to say it. I left a beautiful woman, sir — to me lastin’ regret.’

  Jones went out to confer with Inspector Grove and Semple. Dickens would have to manage — if he could get a word in.

  ‘Now, Mithter Dickens, I’ll tell ye what I think — them tales of yours is very fine things. When I was a readin’ man, I did like that tale of Oliver Twist. ’Tis a lesson to us all — and I should know. Too fond I’ve been of askin’ for more —’ Dickens thought of interrupting, but it was clear that the critic had not finished — ‘an’ the Carol — yes, sir, sure we could do with a bit more benevolence in this world. However, I’m bound to be honest with you —’

  I’m sure you are, thought Dickens. Some adverse comment was comin
g — it was usually prefaced by the speaker’s earnest resolve to be honest.

  ‘Ye’ll not be offended, now —’

  ‘No offence in the world,’ Dickens said. He longed to know what truth would be unfolded. Michael O’Malley was not a man to be hurried.

  ‘Well, bein’ an Irish man o’ the world, a trampin’ man, you might say, an adventurer of the road, I’m bound, now, to tell ye, the grandest book of all is — no offence, now —’

  ‘Indeed, no — I am all agog.’

  ‘Barry, sir, Barry Lyndon — The Luck of Barry Lyndon — an Irish wanderer like meself. Mr Thackeray had it right there. A grand man and a grand writer, to be sure.’

  Dickens couldn’t help laughing. What a story for Thackeray — how Charles Dickens met an Irish man in a filthy room who told him that Thackeray had written the best book ever. It made him feel better — something to chuckle over with Thackeray. He still felt uncomfortable when he thought of their conversation about Edward Lawson. More amusing still was the fact that Thackeray didn’t much care for the book.

  Jones came back. He had sent Grove back to the Brimstone house to make sure that the body had been taken away. Then he and Feak were to question the neighbours, to ask if they had seen or heard anything, to ask about a man who might be called Will. Johnson and Semple were to search the alleys near the empty house for any further trace of the murderer after Semple had taken a message to Stemp at the chop house, telling him to wait with Scrap until he, Rogers and Dickens should join them. It was well after 12.30, the appointed meeting time. But Jones had thought it out. He longed to go to see Mrs Plume, but the murder of Brimstone sharpened his fear about the Italian boy. It might be too late. But they had to try. Mrs Plume would still be there later and she might know something about a man called Will.

  He heard Dickens laughing as he went back into the room — that was Michael O’ Malley. An incorrigible rogue, but you had to laugh. Bridie O’Malley said that his silver tongue and his eyes were what she had missed.