Abracadaver (2 page)
‘Hm. Far enough for the likes of Woodwright. Injuries to young women are best taken on trust. I’ve heard of more than one sprained ankle that lost a good sergeant his stripes. What’s the second report you’ve got there?’
Thackeray scrutinised the sheet. ‘Bellotti the barrel-dancer, Sarge, on September 17th at the Metropolitan in the Edgware Road. He finishes his act with a kind of sailor’s horn-pipe on three barrels. As soon as he stepped on the centre one he fell flat on his face, broke his arm and set light to his hair on the footlights. Not surprising with the macassar some of these foreigners use. Inflammable stuff, I believe. Well, the surprise was that they found a line of axle-grease smeared right round one of the barrels. As soon as Bellotti’s foot touched that he was sure to come a cropper.’
‘Shabby little episode,’ commented Cribb with a sniff. ‘Then there was this fight at the Oxford. Wasn’t that on the next night?’
‘Yes, the 18th. A comedian by the name of Sam Fagan broke a stage-hand’s jaw after the curtain went down on his act. Constable Barton, who was on the spot, did him for assault right away, of course, but the magistrate at Bow Street dismissed the case next morning. It says here “Fagan acted rashly, but he had been subjected to excessive prov . . . er . . . prov—” ’
‘Provocation. That’s the part we’re interested in. Read out Barton’s account of what happened on the stage.’
‘Right, Sarge. He says here “nothing untoward was noticed until Sam Fagan’s third and final song Take it from me she likes it, when he invites the members of the audience to sing with him. For convenience, he has the words of the song written on a large sheet wound on to a roller. This evening he unrolled the sheet as usual and called on the customers to sing up. The first line was the proper one, I wish I could tell you what I’ve seen, but the rest of the song had been shamefully altered by some unknown person and contained certain references to a Gracious Personage I cannot as a loyal subject repeat in an open report. I committed them to my notebook, which Inspector Fredericks has secured in a sealed envelope in the station safe. Unfortunately the eighteen hundred members of the audience had sung three-quarters of the song before they realised the appalling significance of the words. Fagan was thereupon showered with fruit and booed from the stage. It was then that the assault on the stagehand took place.” What do you think the words said, Sarge?’
‘Better not speculate, Constable,’ warned Cribb, ‘but if it’s what I suppose, you can take it from me she wouldn’t like it.’
Thackeray thought it prudent to turn to the next report.
‘This was on the following Monday, Sarge, September 20th. The sword-swallower, if you recall. I think this was downright mean. It must be painful enough pushing a blade down your throat to earn a living, without someone smearing a line of mustard halfway up the blade. The poor cove must have coughed something dreadful.’
Cribb’s hand stole to his own throat in sympathy. ‘Bad enough when a fishbone goes astray,’ he said. ‘Where did this happen? The Tivoli Garden, wasn’t it? Near enough to Charing Cross Hospital, anyway. Now, what reports are left?’
‘The other incidents happened two weeks later, at the beginning of October, Sergeant. There was this—er—misfortune to Miss Penelope Tring, the Voice on the Swing. What a predicament! The constable on duty seems to have been quite well-placed to report it all so accurate.’
‘Damn it, Thackeray, you’re looking wistful. You weren’t at the Royal that night and we can’t stage it all again for your benefit.’
‘D’you think it could have been a pure accident, Sarge, not connected with the other happenings?’ He saw at once that Cribb did not.
‘I can see you got no further than the account of what happened to Miss Tring,’ Cribb admonished him. ‘If you’ll read on, you’ll see that the garment had been tampered with in three places. As soon as it came under pressure—’
‘Unspeakable!’ murmured Thackeray. ‘Quite so. It ain’t surprising she chose to jump off her swing. Landed in the stalls, broke her arm in two places and knocked out one of the audience. Don’t suppose she even felt the pain, though.’
There was a moment’s pause while each detective lamented the mishap to Miss Tring. Cribb made a clicking sound with his tongue and Thackeray contemplatively straightened his shirt-cuffs. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Last of all there’s the accident at the Canterbury on October 9th. If this was deliberate I think we’re after a lunatic, Sarge. The girl in the box could have died. D’you really think it’s connected with the other incidents?’
Cribb shrugged. ‘Can’t say. But if it is, we’re holding the wrong man in Newgate jail.’ His off-hand manner came a shade too readily. Thackeray had a sharp ear for deception.
‘There’s something else, ain’t there, Sarge? You wouldn’t trouble yourself with penny gaff performers getting blushes and broken limbs here and there unless something else was bothering you.’
Cribb responded with a glare, and then produced a folded sheet of paper. ‘This was delivered to Stones End Police Station this morning.’
Thackeray unfolded the paper, a tattered music hall bill for the Grampian in Blackfriars Road. Twenty or more acts were listed, none of any distinction, so far as he could tell.
‘D’you see the rings?’ Cribb asked.
He examined the bill again. The second turn listed was ‘Gleaming Blade—Sensational Redskin Hatchet-Thrower.’
‘Sensational’ was ringed in black ink. Lower down, the word ‘Tragedy’ was similarly marked in a reference to ‘Jason Buckmaster, Tragedy Actor and Rhetorician.’ A third ring had been drawn around the single word ‘Tonight’, which appeared in heavy ornate type at the foot of the sheet.
Thackeray spoke the three words aloud. ‘It sounds like a boast, Sarge. He’s a madman, for sure, this one. What do we do?’
‘Could be just a crank,’ said Cribb, ‘but I can’t take the chance. I’m having everything in the Hall checked for safety, and you and I and four plain-clothes men from Stones End will be there tonight to watch every movement on that stage, from the Japanese gyrist to the transformation dancer. But right now we’re going to see that man in Newgate—if you think I’ve got a case, of course.’
Thackeray thumbed through the reports again, trying to establish a connexion between them. Strange things happened in the theatre; odd coincidences. He scratched his beard.
‘You’ll be detached from all duties at Paradise Street,’ promised Cribb.
‘Educational classes, Sarge?’
Cribb winked, and in a few minutes they left Scotland Yard together.
THE TWO DETECTIVES, WELL-wrapped in ulsters and bowler-hats, watched the L.G.O.C. knifeboard bus recede in the direction of Cheapside. Then they crossed Newgate Street to the corner of the Old Bailey, too busy finding a route between copious horse-droppings to give much attention to the sombre exterior of the prison.
‘Been inside before, Constable?’
‘No, Sarge.’
‘You’ll find these walls are like a hat-box—all for effect. Inside, it’s built like any of your London hospitals. It’s not the inmates they want to impress, you see. It’s the likes of that solicitor’s clerk over there that shudders at the mention of Newgate. All he sees is a fortress with walls forty feet high. Capital way of keeping a man honest.’
Thackeray looked along the grim facade of rusticated blocks and recesses and recalled a bleak Monday morning fifteen years before, when duty had brought him to that same street. It had been jammed by a crowd of twenty thousand and he had stood among them from first light until St Sepulchre’s chimed eight o’clock. ‘Hats off!’ the cry had gone up. ‘Down in front,’ as the condemned man was escorted to the scaffold from a door in the prison wall. Times had changed; public executions had been discontinued for a dozen or more years, and now Newgate was a hat-box to Sergeant Cribb. But that door remained.
‘This’ll be a routine visit,’ Cribb explained as they approached the governor’s house. ‘I volunteered the two of us for identification duty. The only prisoners in Newgate now are men on remand or awaiting trial. We have to check ’em for previous convictions. Strictly it’s a sergeant’s job, but there aren’t many sergeants with an eye like yours for a jail-bird.’
Thackeray was flattered. Sergeants often complained about the burden of identification parades at Newgate and Clerkenwell. But their boasting when they had spotted an old lag was something to be heard. The lower ranks were encouraged to think sergeants alone were capable of such feats of recognition.
‘You’ll need your own identification,’ Cribb cautioned, as he knocked at the door of the governor’s office. It was opened by a uniformed prison officer, who glanced formally at their papers and admitted them. They waited inside with a clerk who took one hard look at each of them and then returned to his work of sealing envelopes. Above him a clock of a type issued and withdrawn by the Home Office a decade earlier ticked with an occasional snuffle.
In a few minutes the officer returned with two black-uniformed attendants. ‘Warders Rose and Whittle will accompany you, gentlemen. Would you kindly sign the book first?’
They were then escorted through the lodge, which served as a macabre museum, with death-masks of some of Newgate’s more notorious former guests and a wall-display of body irons. A turnkey unbarred an iron-studded oak door and they were led down stone steps into a cavernous passage that Thackeray estimated ran parallel with the Old Bailey. Their steps echoed ahead of them.
The warders, accustomed to this ritual, which took place with different police and prison officers three times a week, were disinclined to talk. They walked a few yards ahead of the two detectives, unlocking gates at frequent intervals and slamming them closed when the party had passed through. Once or twice there was a barred window on the left wall, through which Thackeray saw paved yards and the grey walls of the main prison-block beyond.
‘Ten years ago we were told this performance could stop,’ reflected Cribb. ‘Prevention of Crime Act, 1871. Photography, they said! That’s the way to spot your felon. Put every blasted criminal there is in a studio like a maharajah and immortalise him in half-profile. Bravo for science! And what happened?’
‘It cost too much,’ said Thackeray.
‘Dear me, yes. In his enthusiasm the Home Secretary hadn’t done his arithmetic. In no time at all the photographing was restricted to convicts and habitual criminals, and now you need a special application to the Governor to take a camera anywhere near an old lag. Progress, Thackeray! So three times a week the gentlemen of Clerkenwell and Newgate still show their precious monikers to the Law, and the Law scratches its head and goes through its inventory of eyes and mouths and noses and tries to spot its old acquaintances. Sounds like a parlour-game and ain’t so far from being one.’
Another door was unlocked by a bored turnkey and they emerged blinking into daylight, and crossed a deserted exercise yard, where a circular track of polished pavement had been worn by generations of shuffling boots. The walls bordering the yard looked massive and impossible to scale, but as a precaution iron spikes projected inwards from the top.
The warders approached the building at the top end of the yard, mounted its stone steps and knocked at the entrance. Before joining them, Cribb drew Thackeray’s attention to the gigantic drumlike contraption built on to the top of the block. ‘Revolving fan,’ he explained. ‘Put there by Mr Howard, the reformer. Ventilates the whole interior of the jail.’ His eyes travelled slowly up the full height of the building. ‘Not many windows, you see.’
The unlocking and unbarring completed, they mounted narrow stone stairs and were greeted unexpectedly at the top with, ‘Damn my eyes, it’s Sergeant Cribb!’ from a uniformed warder with a style and presence that wanted only a row of medals and a yard of gold braid to be worthy of the doorman at the Cafe Royal.
‘Cyril Blade!’ responded Cribb. ‘Now where was it last? Don’t speak.’ His fingers snapped. ‘Got it! Holloway, the year before last.’ He turned to Thackeray. ‘If you think Irving’s got a voice, listen to this. What did they inscribe on the foundation-stone at Holloway, Cyril?’
Mr Blade drew a deep breath. ‘May God preserve the City of London, and make this place a terror to evil doers.’
‘Carries conviction, eh?’ said Cribb, savouring the performance. ‘No treadmill here, though, Cyril. Your vocal powers are wasted.’
Mr Blade disagreed. ‘I carry the sound of that blasted shin-scraper in me head to this day, Sergeant. Uncommon cruel, subjecting a man’s ears to that racket twelve hours a day. I asked for a move to the oakum-shed in the end, but they sent me here instead. And the shock I got, Sergeant!’
‘Not so harsh as Holloway?’ suggested Cribb.
Mr Blade clenched his fist eloquently. ‘This is a better home than my old mother made for me, Sergeant. They’re in clover here, I tell you. In clover.’
‘They should be, Cyril. They’re not convicted yet. Are they lined up?’
‘Like a guard of honour!’
‘Good. We’ll see who you’ve got, then.’
Mr Blade ushered them through an open door into a whitewashed room the size and shape of a hospital ward. The difference was clear in the positioning of the beds: sets of bunks in tiers of five were ranged head to foot along the length of the wall facing them. A row of well-scrubbed deal tables and benches had been pushed against the parallel wall to make room for the inspection.
Thackeray realised with misgivings that the hundred and twenty prisoners parading before them in three motionless ranks must have heard everything that was said. They were sized and spaced with military precision, but the effect was spoiled by the uniform: each wore the clothes in which he had been brought to Newgate, so a shooting-coat stood between a greasy spencer and a fustian jacket, and well-shod highlows lined up with clogs and naked feet. Yet there was a uniformity in the eyes of the prisoners, a glassy indifference, a torpor that had brutalised all but a handful.
‘All yours, Sergeant,’ said Cyril expansively. ‘Nobbiest parade in London after the Lord Mayor’s. Cracksmen, sharpers, screevers, macers, murderers and a few doubtful parties that might just be honest gentlemen, or might be as bent as bicycle-wheels. Take a long squint at ’em, and if you can’t find two or three you know, why Lord bless you.’ As Cribb started along the line, Mr Blade added confidentially to Thackeray. ‘-’E’s a very knowing card, is Sergeant Cribb.’
Thackeray followed a yard or two behind Cribb, conscious that the inspection was not the main purpose of the visit. The sergeant stopped briefly three times, putting questions to men he knew well enough to name. Satisfied, he completed the formality and thanked Mr Blade, adding in an undertone, ‘The red-haired customer in the last row wants watching. What does he call himself?’
‘The tall ’un? That’s Percy Crichton-Jones. Arrived this morning.’
‘Is it now? I’ll lay a guinea to a shilling it’s Albert Figg and if it is he’ll be working the three-card trick before the gas goes out tonight. There’s not a smarter broadsman in London. Anyone else arrive this week?’
Mr Blade reviewed his platoon in a parade-ground voice. ‘Them two in the front row came in together: pickpocket and his stall. Him in the second row, four along, is the Bethnal Green killer. That one moving his head—stand up there!—is a blooming magician, if you please. We have to watch him real sharp in the exercise yard in case the bugger flies over the wall.’
‘Magician? What’s the name—Woolston?’
‘I believe it is, Sergeant, though what he calls himself on the stage—’
‘I want to talk with him.’
‘You do?’ Mr Blade quite superfluously raised his voice. ‘Woolston! Two steps forward, march!’
‘In private,’ said Cribb.
‘You shall have a cell to yourselves, Sergeant. Woolston! Step out here at once and fall in behind me. And if anyone else stirs a sinew . . .’
Cribb fell in smartly behind Woolston, and Thackeray behind Cribb, leaving Warders Rose and Whittle facing the ranks. The quartet marched the length of the ward and into a narrow passage flanked by the open doors of a dozen small cells.
‘This one,’ indicated Mr Blade. ‘Sit yourself there, Sergeant. I’ll fetch another chair for your companion.’ When Thackeray was seated, the warder gave Woolston a threatening look, and added, ‘I’ll leave you with him, gentlemen. If he gives trouble, I’m within call.’
The potential source of trouble stood before them in a once-white tie and dusty tails, an expression of mild bewilderment on his face. A slight man in every sense, he was impossible to imagine working miracles at the Royal, in spite of his conjurer’s costume. Possibly the witchery of limelight might have transformed him, but in the harsh illumination of a whitewashed cell he was pallid, pinch-cheeked and about as mysterious as the asphalt floor.
‘On your feet, Thackeray,’ ordered Cribb. ‘Mr Woolston needs the chair more than you.’
The prisoner thanked Thackeray in a thin voice and sat facing Cribb across a small hinged table, supported in drawbridge fashion by two chains attached to the wall. The impedimenta of prison life—Bible, prayer-book and hymnbook, gas-pipe, basin and mug, tin panikin and wooden spoon—were ranged on shelves around them. With some difficulty Thackeray edged into a comfortable standing position at the cell’s end.
‘Mind your elbow!’ cautioned Cribb. ‘If that bedding’s disturbed, Mr Woolston will have the job of folding it all again.’
Thackeray jerked his arm away from a pile of folded matting, rugs and mattress. The cell-beds at Newgate took the form of hammocks slung between rings projecting from the walls. It was a matter of deep concern to warders that the beds were unhooked each morning and folded in the only acceptable manner, square as postage stamps, with straps and hooks arranged ‘Newgate-style’. This and other practical hints on prison life were explained in the Sheriffs’ Code of Discipline on the back of the door.
‘D’you sleep here?’ Cribb asked without much interest. You couldn’t really begin a conversation with a prisoner by talking about the weather.
‘No. In the ward. I spent the first night here, but I got cold. It’s warmer in there with the others.’
‘Says in the Code here that you can regulate the temperature of your cell.’
‘Yes,’ said Woolston. ‘That’s the ventilator on your left. You get three grades of temperature—cold, very cold and who’s for skating?’ The music hall patter, unfunny and expressionless, drew a timely smile from Cribb. There was a momentary flicker of gratification in Woolston’s eyes.
‘Now listen to me,’ Cribb said, the formalities over. ‘I’m a detective. That needn’t mean trouble, though.’
Woolston shook his head. ‘No good. I’ve given all the money I brought to the warders.’
‘Damn you, man, I’m not asking for bribes,’ ejaculated Cribb. ‘I want you to tell me what brought you here.’
‘A police-van.’ Cruelly on cue. The conversation was fast becoming a double act.
‘Very well,’ said Cribb. ‘Let’s begin again. I don’t think you’re a jail-bird.’
Woolston turned his eyes to the wall, like a cow uninterested in the attentions of its milker.
‘Put your hands on the table!’ Cribb ordered. The prisoner obeyed, conditioned to respond to that tone of address. Thackeray looked on in mystification. ‘Neat set of fingers,’ Cribb continued, keeping his temper well in check. ‘I dare say there’s a few miracles you can work manipulating them. What do you call it—legerdemain, ain’t it? I wonder what sort of legerdemain you’ll be doing in Wandsworth if they convict you. Might see what you can do with a pump-handle, of course. Most men manage about five thousand revolutions a day—before the blisters slow ’em down, that is. Then they get a turn at oakum-picking by way of variation. Now there’s an occupation for a man with supple fingers! The blisters you get in the pump-house’ll heal beautiful. It’s your nails and finger-tips that go in the oakum-shed. I remember a violinist. Wonderful player. Had a touch like Paganini—’
‘What do you want to know, for God’s sake?’ blurted out Woolston.
Cribb changed tack at once. ‘What went wrong with your trick at the Royal?’
‘A mechanical failure, pure and simple,’ admitted Woolston. ‘Have you ever seen the trick? It’s a perfectly simple idea.’ As though a spark had been fanned, Woolston’s vitality was kindled as he spoke. His features became animated, his voice earnest and expressive. ‘The woman in the box, you know. You show the audience a large empty box standing on its end. Then you invite your shapely assistant to stand inside. There are openings at the top and the bottom for her neck and feet, so that the audience can study her reactions. You close the box and show them a set of half a dozen or more sharpened swords, weapons that chill their spines just to see them. You then proceed to plunge these vigorously through a number of small holes in the front of the box. It seems impossible that you have not harmed your assistant. One sword would appear to have penetrated her chest, another her middle, another her upper legs and so on. But she does not scream or show any pain whatsoever. So you withdraw the swords and open the box and out she steps as exquisite as when she went in.’ He almost took a bow in the cell.