A Metropolitan Murder (39 page)

Webb sighs. ‘You might say that, sir. I did not.'

Cotton takes another sip of tea.

‘You may come,' says Webb, ‘and stay in the carriage with Watkins, in case you can help with the girl.'

‘Thank you, Inspector.'

‘Do not thank me, Mr. Cotton. I merely think I had better keep a close eye on you. You seem to be a veritable magnet for trouble.'

D
ECIMUS
W
EBB RINGS
the doorbell at the house in Doughty Street. He can hear it echoing in the kitchen and hallway, but there is no sound of footsteps on the stairs, no servant to greet him. He steps back and looks up at the front of the house; all of the curtains are drawn.

He tries the bell again. But there is no reply.

He walks back down to the cab, which sits waiting by the kerb, and beckons both Watkins and Cotton to step out.

‘Sergeant, you ask next door, see if there's been any trouble, or if she's gone off somewhere. You, Mr. Cotton, come with me.'

‘Should I stay?' mutters the driver of the cab, looking down at the trio, conscious he has not been paid.

‘If you would,' replies Webb.

The cabman takes out his pipe, and lights it.

‘Do you suspect some mischief?' asks Cotton.

‘I do not know, sir. I don't suppose there is something you are not telling me?' says Webb.

Henry Cotton does not have time to refute this suggestion, as both men notice the front door of the house being abruptly opened. Behind it is Mrs. Harris, dressed in a smart mourning dress of black velveteen;
her hair is tied back in a black silk band, and jet earrings compliment her face. She looks more composed than on Webb's previous visit, and the calmness with which she addresses them is almost peculiar in itself.

‘Ah, Inspector. And, why, it is Mr. Phibbs, is it not?'

Henry Cotton nods a little nervously. Webb gives him a sideways look.

‘Would you like to come in?' asks Mrs. Harris.

The inspector nods, advancing back up the steps, and, uncertain what to do with Henry Cotton, beckons him to follow.

Mrs. Harris leads the pair of them into the downstairs parlour, and bids them to sit down, arranging her crinoline over the chaise longue as she seats herself.

‘I'd rather stand, if you don't mind, ma'am,' replies Webb. ‘I have some news for you.'

‘It concerns my husband, does it not? He is dead, then?'

Webb looks a little taken aback. ‘How did you know, ma'am? Did someone speak to you last night?'

‘I had hoped he might be, that is all.'

‘Hoped?' says Cotton, involuntarily blurting out the question.

‘You heard me correctly, sir. In any case, I am afraid, if you wished to see my husband, you are clearly too late.'

Cotton can think of no appropriate words to answer her.

‘Mr. Phibbs is here with me, ma'am,' interjects Webb, ‘and I will explain the reason later, if I may? Indeed, I am sorry, ma'am, but I share his sentiment. You wished your husband dead?'

‘You are married, I believe, Inspector?'

‘No, ma'am.'

‘Well, then you cannot imagine what sacrifices I
made for that man, Inspector. That worthless, rotten imitation of a man.'

Webb frowns, but continues, ‘You are upset, ma'am. There is no pleasant way to say this, but your husband was killed, by a man named Hunt. Do you know anyone of that name?'

‘Not as far as I am aware.'

‘Forgive me, but you are remarkably composed.'

‘I have finished grieving, Inspector.'

Webb exchanges a nervous glance with Cotton. The conversation is not proceeding as he had expected.

‘Can you tell me, then, why you yourself just said you wished him dead?'

‘I . . .' Here, she hesitates. The look of steely composure that marks her appearance almost falters, her hand trembling as she touches her face. But only for a moment. ‘I cannot say it.'

‘I fear you must, ma'am.'

‘Come,' she says, getting up, walking briskly out of the room.

Mystified, the two men follow her into the hall, and upstairs; she leads them into her husband's study; its customary order is marred by the disarray of numerous notebooks and papers heaped upon his writing desk.

‘I was going to take them out and burn them, but I suppose you shall want them now. I'd be grateful if you would take it all away. You are an antiquarian, are you not, Mr. Phibbs?'

Cotton nods.

‘The books – the published books, I mean – ' she says, gesturing to the bookshelves, ‘they are yours if you like. I should like to be rid of them.'

Webb walks over to the writing desk, and picks up one of the notebooks, left lying open at a particular page.

‘Read it, if you have the stomach for such stuff, Inspector.'

Webb casts his eyes over Harris's neat script.

July 31 1863. Pleasant girl; ripe and unplucked; not as fresh as I would like, but Mrs. F. had primed her well. Conducted a
full
examination; fatter than I had expected, and her physiognomy not as pleasing as the last girl; unremarkable, excepting that she did
scream
awfully when I had her; told Mrs. F. I prefer the quiet ones, even if no-one may hear us; still, gave the girl five bob.

Henry Cotton does likewise; the two men read several similar entries, and can both see a dozen or more of such books set out upon the desk. Webb shuffles his feet, uncertain quite how to proceed with Mrs. Harris, who seems more anxious than before.

‘This is why . . . ?' he says, his sentence deliberately not finished.

‘You don't see, Inspector, do you? You don't see the worst of it? That man has made a fool of me for thirty years. Look,' she says, taking a particular book, showing him the open page, ‘look at the names by the entries, here. Look!'

Webb looks in the margin and reads the names of Meynell and, a few weeks later, White
.

‘He had the pick of these soiled creatures come live in my house, Inspector.
My
house! My servants – these were the women he chose for me! What do you think of my blessed husband now?'

‘Well, I am rather afraid,' says Webb, ‘that I must speak to them both, ma'am, the White girl in particular.'

‘You cannot, I am afraid.'

‘I cannot? And why is that?'

‘I dismissed them last night. Do you think I would keep them here for a moment longer, for my own amusement?'

Mrs. Harris looks a little flushed. ‘Will you take it away, all of it?' she says.

Webb nods. ‘We will, ma'am. Perhaps you should rest yourself.'

It is only when Mrs. Harris has left the room that Webb addresses Henry Cotton.

‘An awful business.'

‘I would never have thought it of him,' replies Cotton, still reading, incredulously, the contents of one of Harris's books.

‘Hmm. You think, perhaps, Mr. Bill Hunt had the right idea?'

‘I do not say that, but at least it explains what he meant, does it not? Some girl, a sister, cousin, or what-have-you, was one of these girls; he came across Harris, wanted revenge of some kind.'

‘Some girl? You need to look at all the facts, my good man. It is plain who is behind this whole wretched business, from Sally Bowker onwards.'

‘It is? You have the better of me, Inspector.'

‘Well,' says Webb, ‘rather, I should say, I have narrowed it down to one of a pair. But it is rather hard to say which one.'

C
LARA
W
HITE WALKS
along Wapping High Street. The smoke stacks of the London Docks are belching sulphurous spirals of soot-black cloud into the sky, and the heavens themselves are dark and pregnant with rain. She looks down at the small carpet-bag containing her few belongings, and cannot help but picture her mother walking the same dirty street, with two bedraggled little girls trailing behind. Indeed, the relics of her childhood are all around her, the same frowsy public houses; the slopsellers who specialise in ‘souwesters' or ‘norwesters', as the fancy takes them; whole fronts of buildings taken up with dirty-looking oilskins and draped lines of canvas trousers; the pawnbroker's shop by Red Lion Street, where the sign is not the three balls, but an iron globe and mariner's compasses. Even the air is familiar, spiced by the presence of the docks, a faint foreign aroma, the dust of oriental cargoes dragged into the great warehouses behind the walls; and then there is the ever-present smell of tobacco and, passing by the Black Boy, of rum and cheap gin.

She is not fond, she decides, of any of her memories; and yet somehow her feet have conspired to drag her back to the wretched place where she began.

Gravehunger Court.

She hesitates by the alley; she has not been down the muddy passage since the night her mother was found. She looks over her shoulder and walks hesitantly down it, towards the courtyard. When she was a girl, she thinks to herself, the yard seemed such a large playground; now it makes her feel hemmed in, and her very lungs feel constricted by the rank and foetid air that lingers in the place. She does not look overly long at the well; rather, she stares at her grandmother's house, the wretched pile of crumbling bricks and stucco that was once something resembling a home. As she glances upwards, it begins to rain, and, for a moment, she fancies she see someone moving by a window upon the second floor; or, at least, by the empty frame, since there is no glass to be seen there.

She hurries under the porch, and pushes against the front door, which hangs only loosely on rusting hinges.

‘Halloa?'

Her voice reverberates about the house; the building seems in such disrepair that she fancies the very sound of it will shake free another piece of the plaster from the walls. She looks in the downstairs rooms; they are quite empty, stripped long ago of anything of value, down to the water-logged bare boards of the floor, the only thing that remains. It is peculiar, she thinks, how loud the river sounds in these rooms now, when there is nothing else to be heard.

Wait.

The sound of footsteps. She retraces her steps into the hallway, and shouts once more, but there is no reply. She knows the stairs are not to be trusted; she can see two or three are splintered in half, bent nails projecting from the wood where someone has attempted to prise a few loose for the timber.

But there it is again.

She tries the first step, then the second; gradually she makes her way upwards, to the first-floor landing, gingerly testing every board before she puts her full weight upon it. The wind bellows in through another of the empty casements, behind her this time, at the rear of the house, carrying the rain with it. From the landing she can look down on the black river; the boats at anchor seem to her to huddle together, tall masts nodding in silent communication. In a moment, as the breeze dies down a little, she can hear it again.

‘I know you're there,' she says, shouting upwards.