The Devil's Ribbon (10 page)
There was an odd calmness to Grey’s voice, and a thick, pungent aroma in the air, which Hatton knew well, along with the sound of buzzing.
The blowflies and bluebottles hovered over a body cleaved through the middle by a spade, veins and intestines spilling like worms from the yellowing flesh. The spade glittered silver and shiny in the throw of the lamp and all about the corpse was scattered money.
‘He’s sliced in two, Professor.’ The inspector was leaning over the body, his kerchief pressed close to his mouth. ‘And the punishment’s been delivered on collection day, so we have a building full of suspects. This is the umpteenth butchering in these quarters, although none done, I think, with such ferocity.’
Behind the Professor, a laugh from the Italian and the sound of guts coming up, which Hatton presumed to be the landlord, Mr Brown, delivering the contents of his stomach to the floor.
Hatton caught sight of the dead man’s supper. A chipped plate of bread and a morsel of cheese, two tin mugs and a roach which had been flattened to the plate, its wings broken off.
Disgusting creatures,
thought Hatton to himself, smelling the mugs to detect that it was definitely
potheen. Hatton didn’t know which he cared for least – the roaches or that devil of a home-brewed drink. One of the mugs had been drained to the dregs, the other, untouched. The man’s skin was dung-coloured, thin as parchment, the torso severed by the spade. Hatton looked at the dead man’s hair, threads of tawny brown.
‘His hair is dyed,’ said Hatton.
The inspector nodded. ‘Indeed, and alopecia, too, which is not a pretty sight. His face … what do you make of it? It has terror upon it, but there’s also something else … like he’s seen a ghost …’
Hatton didn’t reply, but instead set to work as best he could. The body hadn’t just been hacked in half – around the crotch, there was too much blood. Swallowing a slight gob of nausea caused by the wine, he used the tips of his fingers to tug at the sodden rags of the man’s breeches and saw that the man had been mutilated. ‘They’ve cut off his testicles, Inspector. Someone has neutered him.’
‘Neutered?’
‘Yes, neutered like a dog, with scissors or maybe a surgical knife.’
Hatton started on the basics, measuring the length of the body, but stopped in his tracks when he came to the dead man’s hands. He examined them more closely, in particular the nails, thinking to himself,
Veal, this corpse is veal
– a term he’d coined for labelling abnormalities. The hands were deformed in a way Hatton had never seen before. Under his breath, he muttered, ‘Gold dust …’
‘I beg your pardon, Hatton?’
‘Nothing, Inspector. Only that the violence of this crime surpasses anything I’ve seen before. I need the body back at the morgue, but first of all I need Roumande.’
‘Monsieur Roumande, at this hour? For a rent collector? My dear Professor, you are over egging the pudding …’
‘This is not just any kind of killing. Look.’
Hatton crouched down among florins, pennies, and glints of silver. ‘I make this thirty pieces. Thirty pieces of silver, Inspector. Count them yourself, but please, whatever you do, don’t touch them.’
The inspector crouched down as well. ‘So, a little touch of religious mockery, here?’
‘Judas Iscariot, Inspector. A traitor to his own kind, and I wonder what else we’ll find?’ Never without his medical bag, Hatton bent down and undid its little padlock, smoothing on a pair of well-worn gloves, and began to look under the tables, the edges of the bed, opening cupboards and drawers to see crumbs, rat droppings, rusty cutlery, and … ‘A prayer book’; he blew off the dust. ‘Hasn’t been used for a while but there’s an inscription in here.
On Receiving His First Holy Communion, Gregory Michael Mahoney, 1792. Our Lady of Sorrows, Ardara, Donegal
.’
‘Ardara, Donegal, you say? Isn’t that the very place where Mr McCarthy’s from?’ The inspector turned around to look at Mr Brown, as Hatton’s eyes followed him. ‘What do you know of this man, Mr Brown? He was a rent collector, a usurer, a gombeen man. Anything else we should know? Who else did he work for, apart from you, I mean?’
‘Mr Hecker, the mill owner. I’ve already told you so. He has a number of ventures along the river in Limehouse – a biscuit factory, a flour mill, shipping interests and land abroad, as well, I think.’
Grey got his notebook out and, with a tongue as pink as a cat’s,
licked the end of his pencil. ‘I know him, of course. In fact, I’m doing a little job for him because a friend of his is missing. Monsieur Gustave Pomeroy?’
The John Bull man shrugged.
‘Do you happen to know if Mr Hecker has any connection to Donegal?’
Was the Inspector on to something? Hatton’s eyes narrowed, as he watched a little closer.
‘If you know him, why don’t you ask him?’ said Mr Brown. ‘He’s always at the mill, rarely leaves his office. Busy is as busy does, Inspector. You don’t get rich by digging potatoes, do you, Grey? That’s what we English understand, but these Irish are lazy good for nothings. I heard Hecker laid off his whole workforce yesterday. About time. Maybe he’ll give the jobs to some desperate English boys and show a bit of patriotism.’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more, Mr Brown.’ Another lick and then the Inspector said, ‘Do you know if the gombeen man brought his family to London? Or were they left behind in Donegal?’
The landowner wiped his puke-smeared mouth, his voice thick with spittle. ‘There’s no one. No family at all. He was universally loathed. Why, even his own church rejected him. The local priest had excommunicated him years ago. Mahoney was sobbing like a big, blabby baby when it happened. Said the local priest had written to the Vatican …’ Mr Brown hoicked up a great gob, spat, and wiped his mouth again. ‘Thirty pieces of silver, eh? Sounds fair enough for a wretch like him, but I still want my money.’
‘Not so hasty, Mr Brown.’ The inspector blocked the way. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard the term
forensics
?’
‘Can’t say that I have …’
‘Well, we’ve an expert in our midst and police work takes precedence over greed. All that money is evidence.’
‘The devil it is. You’ll answer for this, Grey, sure as eggs is … urggghh … get him off me, you great Italian lump …’
Mr Brown promptly dispatched, Hatton sent a message to Spitalfields and waited for Roumande, who burst in half an hour later with, ‘I came as quick as I could, Adolphus,’ before looking at the body and giving a long, low whistle.
‘That’s exactly what I thought, Albert. I wanted you to see him fresh. He’s been sliced in half, like a knife through butter, and there’s exactly thirty pieces of silver here. And there’s more still. Grab a lantern, Albert, and then pay attention to the money …’
Roumande held the lantern aloft. The room was a dark cavern, a void of low-flickering candles, dark shadows on the wall, but as the light grew stronger, he saw pools of silver, lucent and shimmering.
Roumande rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘Is it glitter?’
‘I’m not sure, but keep the flame well away from the spangles, Albert. I think it might be some sort of chemical. I’ll check when we get back to the morgue. Look about you …’
Roumande spun on his heels, holding the lantern higher. ‘It’s everywhere …’
Hatton nodded. ‘We need to seal the place off till we know exactly what it is. It’s on his prayer book, in the drawers, on the bed, the table, all over the corpse. I didn’t notice it at first, being too busy looking at specifics, but when I stood back a little and
really
looked …’
‘It’s almost beautiful …’
‘It is, Albert. Like a kind of fairy dust, and look, there’s more here …’
Hatton handed him the prayer book. ‘A definite link, I’d say. Grey thinks so as well. The inspector plays his cards close to his chest, but I could see it in his eyes. Both victims are from the same place in Donegal.’
‘So Grey should ask the wife. Did this moneylender work for the McCarthys? Did the victims know each other? Did they help each other? We know already that the MP had debts. Maybe this gombeen man loaned McCarthy money, dirty money, and this is some kind of gang thing …’
Hatton shrugged. ‘That’s a line of enquiry for The Yard to follow, but I’ll give Grey a prompt when I get him alone. He’s upstairs talking to the tenants, but our priority is Mr Mahoney here. He needs shifting.’
Roumande was by now bending under the table to double-check the blood splatters. ‘Impossible, Adolphus. It’s the first Monday of the month. Payday, so there’s no collectors anywhere. Not even the grubbers tonight. They’ll all be dead drunk by now, in a flash house, the lot of them.’
‘First light, then. What do you think? Pretty clear I’d say.’
Roumande emerged from underneath the table. ‘A whack with considerable force, for the blood to travel that far, Professor. These splatters are dense and show quite clearly the murderer hit the victim from the left, and as there are no splatters directly behind you, so he must have stood exactly where you stand now, his body acting as a shield.’
‘Exactly. He stood directly by this wall and raised the spade thus, and he must have been right-handed, wouldn’t you say?’
‘The tilt of the spade and the splatters would suggest so, Adolphus. And what about hair, footprints, tufts of fabric?’
‘Nothing. I’ve drawn a blank, which in itself is odd, don’t you think? This glitter is everywhere and yet not an alien mark, not a whisper of anyone here at all.’
‘But this place is drenched in blood, Adolphus, so you’d think there’d be a print somewhere. Outside, perhaps along the corridor?’
Hatton shook his head. ‘There are no smears leading away from the body, so we know the killer’s taken his time after the butchering and cleaned it up. Cleaned himself up, too, most likely. I’ve already been down the corridor with a lantern and out into the yard. Of course, we’ll need to double-check when it’s light, but I can find no handprints, footprints, or drenched clothes anywhere. The killer must have stripped, washed, and then disposed of his clothes. You’d think the other tenants would have heard the screaming. Or seen something.’
Roumande gestured towards the tin mugs. ‘Maybe they don’t care who did it, or are not inclined to say? And he wouldn’t have howled after drinking a mug of that stuff. A quart of potheen, a shove, and an old man like this, who weighs what? Less than a feather? He would have gone down like a ninepin. But as unpopular as he was, he’s definitely had a visitor. Two mugs, Professor.’
‘Well spotted, Roumande.’ It was Grey, back again. ‘A man with no friends, no priest, no wife, no children, no styling advice, and yet … like our Unionist MP, a visitor and both from a place called Ardara. All grist to the mill. And speaking of mills, seems Mr Mahoney here worked for Mr Hecker up in Limehouse. I’ll pop up there tomorrow. I need to talk to him about the lack of progress I’m making on this damn Pomeroy case. Good job it’s not payment by results, eh? Anyway. God …’ The inspector stifled a yawn. ‘What a night. Are we done here? Had a good poke around, have we?’
‘As much as we can for now, Inspector. But I’ll require the body first thing tomorrow. There’s a clear link, don’t you think?’
‘Donegal, you mean? Possibly. I’ll ask the wife, but,’ the Inspector stifled another yawn, ‘we all need some shut-eye. Monsieur, have you done the fingerprinting thing?’
Roumande shook his head. ‘Alas, no. I cannot just “do it”, Inspector. There are a number of tools involved. Charcoal, a fine brush, sticky paper. I came straight from Fleur de Lys in Spitalfields …’
‘Tomorrow is another day. There’re a couple of cabs outside.’ Grey ushered the men away from the room. ‘Mr Tescalini will board the place up. Call it a policeman’s hunch, but if these murders are connected, the timing’s worrying. This could be related to the anniversary of Drogheda, which means the killer or killers aren’t finished yet. If it’s a crescendo they’re after, we have twenty-four hours until …’
Hatton didn’t like the look on Grey’s face. ‘Twenty-four hours, Inspector? Twenty-four hours, till what?’
The inspector didn’t answer, only turned to his assistant with a glib smile. ‘Signore, take heed of our professor here, which means no burning of candles, no flames, matches, or lanterns anywhere near that glitter stuff. Bolt down the door and seal it. Goodnight, gentlemen.’ The inspector raised his hat, shutting the door firmly behind him, but didn’t move from his spot, only stood firm, his back pressed flat against the door, waving them off. ‘
Buona sera
, the lot of you. Until tomorrow.’
Hatton had a fitful night of dreaming, a terrible thirst, and a digestive problem so acute he had to reach for his chamber pot, so when his bedside clock said five o’clock, he decided to rouse himself and head for the morgue. The dawn was painted with a criss-cross of coral-tinted cirrus. A sharp chorus of gregarious sparrows made Hatton’s head pound, but he managed to stumble along and, arriving at the mortuary room, found the door to be ajar.
‘Good God. You almost gave me a heart attack. What on earth are you doing here?’
‘
Excusez-moi
…’ Patrice muttered, springing up from the bed he’d made on one of the dissection slabs. Had Hatton not been so weary, he would have rounded on their apprentice, but he only said, ‘Tell me, Patrice, that you’ve not been here all night?’
‘
Non
,
non
, monsieur …’
Hatton embarked on a lecture about hospital standards, but the angst-driven sentences only made his head pound and the boy was clearly not following, so he simply said, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, go and find a coffin for Mr McCarthy. There’s an ebony one right at the back of the store cupboard. The best one, do you hear me?’
Hatton walked over to the main dissection slab and pulled back the shroud. Gone was that look of terror, and instead the MP seemed at peace, and on his face, a kind of sereneness. Hatton leant a little forward, thinking to himself, what was this look? A dead man’s blessing? Hatton pushed the image of Sorcha McCarthy away as unpalatable, but there she was, the image of her back again. And he remembered what Roumande had said to him a while ago, hunched over late-night drinks in a nearby tavern.
‘You say you are made of stone, but no man is made of stone, Adolphus. So, you can honestly say, no woman has ever stolen your heart?’
Hatton’s defences, so carefully constructed over the years, had started to fracture a little. His father had recently died. He’d felt stripped bare to the world as he said, rather bitterly, ‘I have little time for such trifles. I cannot talk of frivolous things.’
Roumande swirled his double brandy, looking into its amber glint, as if the secrets of the world might be contained within. ‘Love is far from frivolous,’ he said.
Hatton had moved uneasily on his chair, as he’d answered, ‘Work takes precedence. I had a sweetheart once, but it was long ago.’
Roumande smiled, leant forward. ‘You never told me you had a sweetheart. I’m all ears, Adolphus.’
Hatton had had more than a couple of drinks that night and was on the verge of confessing but what was the point? It wouldn’t bring her back. Instead, he felt his eyes prick but swallowed hard and only said, ‘I’d rather not talk of it if you don’t mind, Albert.’
Looking at Hatton’s face, all twisted up, Roumande had known better than to ask any more but simply said, ‘It’s etched on your face, Adolphus, whatever you say. Mark my words, friend. If you can love that hard, it will happen again.’
Was it a warning?
Or a tempting of fate?
‘Monsieur? Are you sure you are quite well? You seem a little pale, as if you have a malaise, Professor?’
Patrice’s words jolted him back to the present.
‘Get on with your chores, Patrice. The walls need washing, the floor needs scrubbing. Then go to Smithfield and buy two new blood buckets. These others are cracked and we’ve another body on its way, so be quick, and before you go, put some more of that flypaper up.’ The boy grabbed a flyswatter and wacked three fat bluebottles, and then with a leap in the air, smashed a flurry of mosquitoes. ‘Good work,’ said Hatton, impressed.
‘They’re coming off the river, Professor, and the rotting meat of Smithfield. The Board of Work should do something. I cannot keep the numbers down and we’re infested with body mites.’
‘A good lashing of chloride of lime will work. Make sure you do all the corners, around the windowsills, and seek out any eggs under the tables, behind the specimen jars. Be vigilant, Patrice. We need to keep on top of it.’
‘But surely, monsieur, it’s also the responsibility of the state and the work committees, but they do nothing to help us. The stall traders and costermongers talk of nothing else. The boards are overpaid bureaucrats, do-gooders but do-nothings, lining their own pockets and it’s we, the people, who are suffering in this terrible stink …’
Hatton laughed to himself. This lad was spending too much time with Roumande. Hatton was a dissenter when it came to science, religion, and politics, but in his humble opinion, all the great thinkers were forced to stand alone – Thomas Beddoes, Galileo, John Hunter, Edward Jenner, but as to Roumande?
Roumande was a different fellow altogether.
A Frenchman for a start, Catholic by birth, a Huguenot by nature, a revolutionary sympathiser, a self-improver, a believer in The State. But this was England not France. Boards of this and boards of that were all very well, if they got the work done quicker, but it was the power of free speech and free will that made the greatest advances for society. The rest was just … piffle. On that thought, Hatton picked up his pen, dipped it in his trademark indigo ink, and was just beginning to write up his notes, such as they could be after a night fuelled by too much rich food, champagne, and—
‘The air is cooling a little. Clouds are rolling in. Jean-Paul – you will remember, he’s my eldest, Patrice – has constructed the most wonderful barometer made with a jam jar and a slosh of red wine. The wine rises, as the air density increases, thus telling us there’s a storm brewing. He’s a clever boy. Takes after his father, I’m told!’
Roumande had burst through the door, slightly bedraggled and unshaven, but with the huge tidal wave of energy, which was his particular trademark.
‘So what are we doing here? The ribbon from yesterday, Professor? Or shall I go straightaway and get the gombeen man?’
‘How are you feeling, Albert? After last night, I mean?’
‘Full of vim, Professor. Whereas you, Adolphus? You don’t look too well.’
Hatton struggled up from his desk. ‘Nothing another shot of powders can’t sort, but enough of me. Did Madame Roumande have an opinion?’
‘Factory made, she said. The weave is even, the length and breadth completely uniform. Indian silk, she says, and as to its green? I checked last night before I left the morgue.’
‘You move way ahead of me, Albert. That was my job,’ Hatton said, a little testily.
‘Verrey’s called you, Adolphus, and the Zeiss called me. It’s high levels of arsenic, as you would expect, that lends the silk such vibrancy. A very nice colour, Sylvie says, but nothing special. You can pick it up anywhere, apparently.’
‘Hmph,’ said Hatton, and then added, ‘Very well. But I want to do the coins before you go, Albert. Patrice, what are you doing standing here like a dolt? Go and get the buckets like I asked you to.’
‘
Oui
, monsieur.’
Roumande cleared his throat.
Hatton sighed. ‘Yes, Albert?’
‘Learning and erudition, Professor?’
‘Oh, very well, he can watch, only for a bit, mind. So …’
The coins were florins, crowns, and guineas – thirty in all. Hatton turned the viewing columns, increasing the aperture so the glitter burst
into a universe of stars. ‘It’s a dusting of silver firmament, like a meteor shower scattered across these larger molecules, which are some sort of acid, I think. I studied chemistry, of course. But this combination is odd … and I’m not sure where it could have come from. Was it scattered for some reason? Was it dropped? Silver nitrate is normally used by artisans, mirror makers, druggists, and the like.’
Roumande spoke, ‘Maybe the killer brought the traces in with him on his shoes or on his coat? But if the killer is Irish, they tend to be costermongers, not artisans.’
Hatton bit the top of his thumb. ‘Quite possibly, but there are a number of Irish bookbinders, aren’t there? And I know for a fact that there’s a pharmacopoeia off Soho Square which is called O’Reilly’s, in great big lettering, so I presume they’re Irish, too. We must keep an open mind as to the nature of the killer. But this combination of acid and firmament … I’ve never seen it before. However, I know just who to ask. There’s a brilliant chemist, name of Meadows, who I studied with at Edinburgh. He’s in London, now. Where are the back issues of … ah, yes … I remember …’ Hatton rushed over to one of his shelves, jumped on a stool, and grabbed a huge pile of scientific periodicals. Flicking through a tatty copy of
The London Chemical Gazette
, he smacked a page with the flat of his hand. ‘I have it! Professor Andrew Meadows, recently made a research fellow at University College. An excellent chemist but a notorious drunk, and word is he experiments on himself, like many of his ilk.’ Hatton pulled out his filigree pocket watch. ‘He shan’t be up at this hour though, and it’s been a while since I visited him. The poor man has been treated shoddily over the years, moved from pillar to post, city to city, basement to basement. He explodes
things and experiments on puppies, upsetting everyone. But science is science. Truth is what we seek, not approval.’
Silver nitrate, he thought. Some sort of acid? But what’s this got to do with a gombeen man? And an MP? There seemed to be a link, but what was it? Perhaps another dead man from Donegal was just coincidence, after all? There were thousands of Irish in London making a sheer fluke entirely possible. He wracked his brain. Silver nitrate was used for cauterising bullet wounds … eye drops for blindness … making mirrors … photographic images … silver ornament and artistry …
Outside the morgue, somewhere down a hallway, a clock struck nine.
Patrice, who had been watching all the time, stepped back from the Zeiss and muttered, ‘Mr McCarthy’s coffin needs to be put upon a wagon, monsieur. We need to make haste to Highgate …’
Roumande turned to the boy. ‘Go to the market, get the buckets and return quickly, then. Make haste. I’m going to the slums.’ He caught Hatton’s eye. ‘The gombeen man is
veal
, Professor. Did you spot it?’
Hatton allowed himself a smile. ‘I most certainly did.’
‘Then I’ll be off. Oh, and Adolphus, if I may be so bold, it’s a lady you’re visiting, remember? A very pretty one, I’ve heard and—’ Roumande pointed hastily at Hatton’s tie.
‘Thank you, Albert,’ Hatton answered, rushing to their only mirror, pasting down his hair and hastily reknotting the tie and quickly adding, ‘You’re a true friend. By the way, Albert, a quick word please, now the boy has gone.’
Roumande put up his hands. ‘Before you say anything, I gave permission for the lad to stay. Not my best decision, I admit, but the
lad had nowhere to go last night. He’s hardworking, well-mannered, and intelligent. We’re damn lucky to have him. One night only, I said. But he’ll stay at Fleur de Lys tonight and the next, till he finds a suitable lodging house. Sylvie likes him and my girls, when I introduced them to him, dear oh dear.’ He shook his head in a fatherly but disapproving way. ‘It’s true to say, they were all over Patrice like flies on … hmphf …’
‘You took him to your house?’
‘For cherry cake and coffee, a few days ago. I felt he needed a little French hospitality, being so far away from home. Of course, I shouldn’t say such things about my own darling daughters, but the fussing and the giggling at everything he said verged on hysteria. I can see he’s a handsome lad, but I’ve told them, a couple of nights at Fleur de Lys and then, as charming as he is, he has to go.’
‘And stay well away from your daughters?’ Hatton smiled.
Roumande opened the door of the morgue. A crack of lightning burst across the sky. The diener pushed his derby down. ‘My dear Adolphus, you can read my mind.’