Governing Passion (3 page)

“She could be an important witness if she’d
been anywhere near Devil’s Acre.”

“Well, I’ll rack my brains, such as they
are.”

“Thanks, Edgar.”

Cobb went back the way he had come. He
examined again the spot where the bootprints vanished. The snow was
messed up considerably just inside the alley. Had the killer
lingered there? Strangely, Cobb had found no star-shaped print on
the Church Street sidewalk. It was as if the fellow had disappeared
into thin air. Cobb arrived back at the crime scene to find Wilkie
standing there with a nervous-looking, respectably dressed man at
his side.

“This is Mr. Gavin Scott,” Wilkie said. “He
found the body.”

“I’ll have the undertaker remove the body to
my surgery,” Withers said, pulling his scarf more tightly around
his neck. He nodded goodbye to Cobb and left.

“Now, Mr. Scott, tell me how you came to find
the body,” Cobb said.

“Well, sir, I was at the bootlegger’s at the
other end of this alley and was on my way home when I almost
stumbled – over her. Then I seen the blood.”

“This would be about an hour and a half ago?
About ten-thirty?”

“That’s about right.”

“Did you check to see if she was dead?”

“Yes. I felt for her pulse. I didn’t turn her
over, like she is now. I just reached down and felt her wrist.
There was no sign of life.”

“Was the blood here still fresh?”

Scott thought about this. “I believe it was.
It looked like it had just dropped into the snow. It wasn’t
thickened or frozen or anything.”

“Then we can be sure she died shortly before
you found her. You saw no-one about?”

“No, I didn’t. I ran back to the
bootlegger’s, and they sent a fella out to look for a policeman. He
came right away.”

“I’ll need your address, sir, in case we need
to talk to you again.”

“You don’t think
I
did it?”

“Not really. You’d hardly report it, then
hang about fer the police, would you?”

At this point Wilkie let out a gasp. He was
standing beside the body, looking down at her face for the first
time.

“What is it, Wilkie?”

“I know the girl,” he said.

“You do?”

“Yeah. It’s the little singer from Madame
LaFrance’s place.”

Oh dear, thought Cobb. A woman of ill
repute.

TWO

Cobb began walking back towards the brothel. At the
end of the alley where Sally Butts had been brutally murdered, Cobb
saw something lying in the snow. He picked it up. It was a leather
glove, for the right hand. A gentleman’s glove, no doubt. Could it
be the killer’s? Dropped here when it was pulled off to allow a
better grip on the murder weapon? Cobb put it in his pocket.

He went up to the door of the brothel and
rapped loudly. No-one answered his knock. He rapped again, more
loudly this time. Still no answer, though he thought he heard
someone shuffling behind the door. Then he realized that the
gentleman callers would likely have a coded knock to be let in.

“It’s the police, Madame LaFrance. Open
up!”

After a brief pause, the door was eased
open.

“Whaddya want?” Esther La France barked.

“I got some bad news, I’m afraid.”

“A policeman in a brothel is always bad
news,” she said, stepping back to let him into the warm
interior.

“Yer singer, Sally Butts, was just found in
an alley near here with her throat slit. She’s dead.”

Madame flinched. “Oh, my. I did warn her
about walking home alone,” she said, her face revealing both shock
and anger. “I offered to let Johnny walk with her, but she said she
felt safer in Devil’s Acre than she did on King Street.”

“Well, somebody didn’t like her and wanted
her dead.”

“She wasn’t carrying any money tonight,”
Madame said, turning to spot Nell nearby in her kimono, her face
white and her lip trembling. “She was sick and left early.”

“Oh, poor Sally,” Nell cried. “I’d better go
and tell the other girls.”

“Break the news gently,” Madame said.

“I need to ask you some questions,” Cobb
said.

“There’s nothing to tell. Sally was running a
fever. I let her go off about ten o’clock.”

“You didn’t see anythin’ funny goin’ on here
before she left?”

Madame’s gaze narrowed. “Whaddya mean, funny?
I run a respectable house here.”

“Did any of yer gentlemen do or say anythin’
to her durin’ the evenin’?”

“They sat and listened to her sing – like a
bird – that’s what they did. And behaved themselves, as I
insist.”

“Sally Butts was not one of yer regular
girls, I take it?”

“No, she wasn’t, though she had plenty of
offers. She was a good girl who took her pay straight home to her
parents.”

“Did anyone make an offer tonight?”

”They did not. We had the usual gentlemen
here tonight. They all knew her.”

“Did any of these gentlemen happen to leave
shortly before or after ten o’clock?”

The gaze narrowed further. “You don’t think a
gentleman killed her? Surely it was some cutthroat.”

“With what motive, ma’am? The girl wasn’t
molested. And she had no money, as you said.”

“Perhaps he didn’t know that.”

“But we have plenty of robberies in town and
seldom does the victim get his throat slashed – from behind. It
looks like murder was the motive here, by someone who knew who she
was.”

“Well, now, there were three of my gentlemen
who left just a minute or two after poor Sally.”

Cobb smiled and said, “Odd, don’t you
think?”

“Not odd at all. They had come to hear her
sing, and when they knew she was finished for the night, they
naturally decided to go home.”

“Did they usually walk together?”

“I wouldn’t know that, would I? Though I once
saw them split up after they left my stoop.”

“But you can tell me who they were?”

Madame heaved a big sigh. “You know perfectly
well I can’t do that. My gentlemen have wives.”

“If you know who they are, you’d better tell
me.”

Madame LaFrance laughed, a coarse caw of a
laugh. “You don’t understand, do you? I don’t even know or want to
know who these people are. Here we use pseudonyms or pet names. The
three gentlemen who left at ten o’clock were called the Cavaliers –
Gawain, Lancelot and Galahad.”

Cobb was taken aback. “Well, that ain’t much
help, is it, unless I can find me a Round Table somewheres
nearby?”

“Well, that’s all I can tell you.”

At this point Nell came back into the room
with Sarie and Blanche, all three of them crying.

“Quit your bawling,” Madame snapped. “You’ll
scare away our customers.”

“You don’t seem too broken up about losin’
Sally Butts,” Cobb observed.

Madame took umbrage. “Of course I am. Where
am I gonna get another singer with a voice like hers?”

***

Cobb spent the first half of the next morning
dictating his report to Gussie French, the police clerk. About
halfway through, Angus Withers poked his head into the constables’
room that Cobb was using as an office, and announced that he had
completed his examination of the body and had sent someone to
inform the parents of Sally Butts’s death.

“What’d you find, doc?”

“Well, the knife used had a serrated blade,”
Withers said. “I’d hazard a guess that it was some kind of skinning
knife. The slash was from left to right, so if the killer was
right-handed, I’d say he came up behind the victim, grabbed her to
hold her steady, and then, quick and vicious, slit her throat.”

“I found a right-handed glove near the
scene,” Cobb said, taking the written report from Withers, “so if
the killer removed it to get a firmer grip on the knife, he was
certainly right-handed.”

“There were no bruises or blood or skin under
her fingernails, so she didn’t put up any sort of struggle. She
didn’t have time, poor thing.”

“Nothin’ else of interest?”

“That’s it. I’ve jotted down the details for
you in that report.”

Cobb thanked him, and he left.

When Cobb was finished making out his own
report, he took it next door to the Chief’s office.

Without looking up from his desk, Cyril
Bagshaw said curtly, “Just leave it, Cobb. I’ll call you in when
I’ve read it.”

Cobb gave a small sigh and retreated. It was
no skin off his nose if he sat in the anteroom by the pot-bellied
stove and wasted his time. He had been relieved of his daily patrol
in order to play detective, so detective it would be. Ten minutes
later Bagshaw called him back in.

“Why do you mention these gentlemen at Madame
LaFrance’s?” he said, motioning Cobb to a chair opposite him.

“They left the premises right after Sally
Butts did, sir. And they went their separate ways, I was told. So I
figure we got three men, who seemed to have an interest in the
girl, wanderin’ about Devil’s Acre in the dark.”

“Wielding skinning knives?” Bagshaw said with
heavy sarcasm.

“Easily hidden in a coat pocket.”

“So you think a gentleman is capable of
acting like a common cutthroat?”

“I found a right-hand glove at the entrance
to the alley.”

“I can read, Constable.”

“It was an expensive glove, a gentleman’s
glove. Would you like to see it?”

“I would not. For God’s sake, Cobb, Devil’s
Acre is a den of thieves and scoundrels who’d slit your throat as
soon as look at you, and you’re pursuing three nameless gentlemen
out for a diverting evening’s entertainment!”

“And the boots, sir?” Cobb persisted. “I’ve
sketched the odd pattern for you there in my report. That
star-shape should make them easy to identify.”

“And you think they’re gentleman’s boots? A
giant
gentleman at that?”

“Well, it is a fancy pattern, ain’t it?”

“You don’t even know if the footprints
are
the killer’s, do you?”

“They led away from the body, sir, out to
Church Street. And they were snow-filled, meanin’ they’d been made
some time before any of us got there.”

“But you say the footprints leading
up
to the body were all messed up by others who came after the killer
– like the gambler who found her, the coroner, Wilkie and you?”

“That’s right.”

“So how do you know the killer didn’t retreat
instead of going on ahead? If it was one of the denizens of Devil’s
Acre, he probably sneaked off to his hidey-hole somewhere in that
garbage heap – not out to Church Street.”

“It’s possible, sir. But how do we account
for them big bootprints?”

“Someone who left the place
before
the
murder? Or just after? Someone who didn’t feel like reporting it?
You see, there’s no way we can connect them definitely to the
murder.”

“I suppose so, sir.”

“I do. And I must say, I’m not overly
impressed with your detecting skills on the basis of this first
report. Why didn’t you and Wilkie knock on doors to see if there
were any witnesses to the crime?”

“Nobody up there ever sees or hears
anythin’,” Cobb said rather defensively. “We were lucky the gambler
decided to report finding the body, or it could’ve been days before
she was found or missed.”

“Well, you ought to have tried. I think you
were taken too much with boots and gloves and gentlemen.”

“I could try now, sir.”

“Don’t bother. It’s not as if Sally Butts was
a wholly respectable girl doing a wholly respectable job.”

“She was just singin’ in the whorehouse, not
whorin’.”

Bagshaw grunted an acknowledgement and said,
“What do you propose to do now? With the time I’m so generously
giving you?”

“I’m going to visit Sally Butts’s parents.
It’s likely she was killed by someone who knew her, so I’ve got to
learn more about her.”

“And you’re going to leave Sir Gawain and his
friends out of it?”

Cobb had no intention of doing so, but he
said, “For now, sir.”

***

Cobb found the split-log cabin that housed the Butts
family on Newgate Street near Simcoe. He knocked on the door and
waited. A minute or so later it opened to reveal a small,
middle-aged woman whose red and swollen eyes indicated a serious
bout of weeping.

“You’ve come about Sally, then?” she said in
a hollow voice.

“I have, madam. I’m Constable Cobb, the
detective assigned to find your daughter’s killer.”

“We told her not to work in that evil place,”
Mrs. Butts said, stepping back and letting Cobb enter the modest
interior. It was simple, neat and clean. A bald-headed man sat at a
table with his sleeves rolled up and his head in his hands.

“This is Constable Cobb,” Mrs. Butts said to
him. “He’s from the police.”

“You should be in Devil’s Acre,” Butts said
with a feeble attempt at anger. “That’s where her killer is,
amongst that riff raff.”

“That’s quite possible, sir, but I’ve come to
ask you a few questions about yer daughter.”

Butts looked up, the anguish stark in his
face. “She was our only child,” he said.

“I’m terribly sorry fer yer loss, and sorry
to intrude like this – ”

“When will we be able to have the body?”
Butts said.

“Right away, I should think. The coroner has
finished his examination.”

“Did she suffer?” Mrs. Potts said, coming to
stand behind her husband. Cobb stood with his helmet in his hands.
It was at times like this that he thought plainclothes made
sense.

“She did not, ma’am. Death was quick and
painless.” He only half believed this, thinking of the girl lying
there waiting helplessly for her blood to run out.

“Thank God.”

“What do you need to ask?” Butts said
wearily.

“Did yer daughter know anyone who might wish
her harm?” Cobb said.

“Not unless it was someone working at that
whorehouse,” Butts said bitterly.