Tom All-Alone's (21 page)

Maddox, meanwhile, has settled more comfortably in his chair. ‘Perhaps I might join you in a brandy, Charles?'

‘Of course, Uncle,' says Charles, getting quickly to his feet. He pours the brandies and when he hands Maddox the glass his grasp is firm.

‘I agree,' Maddox resumes, ‘that it is a reasonable hypothesis to presume, until contradictory facts intervene, that these killings were each the work of the same perpetrator. Our next task, therefore, is to ascertain what these crimes tell us about the man who committed them. There is one fact, of course, that obtrudes immediately on our notice.'

He looks at Charles, who takes a sip of brandy in an endeavour to buy time. Maddox smiles, and continues, placing his fingertips carefully together.

‘Perhaps “fact” is too strong, since the available evidence is not extensive enough for a robust deduction, but I posit that the individual with whom we are dealing is a swift, skilled and ruthless killer. Of
men
. He is, by contrast, a slow, cruel and utterly depraved murderer of
women
. A man who takes his time to inflict the utmost pain and degradation on his female victims, and who clearly derives an intense and degenerate gratification from so doing. That, to me, suggests a man who has – to say the least – an unhealthy relationship with the fairer sex. A relationship founded on the desire to dominate, and humiliate. Further investigation of Sir Julius' habits and history might, therefore, be instructive, especially as—'

He stops, and frowns, then waves a hand quickly back and forth in front of his face, as if swatting a fly. But it is winter, and there are no flies. Charles sits forward and puts a hand on his arm. ‘Uncle? Is everything all right?'

‘I was about to say something, but it is eluding me.' He raises his hand again and covers his face, as if the light is dazzling him. ‘What was that? Who's there – I know there's someone – show yourself – damn you –
show yourself
—'

He reaches blindly for his cane and makes to seize it, but Charles forestalls him, then moves quickly to the bell and rings for Stornaway. By the time he arrives, Charles can barely keep Maddox in his chair. The old man is kicking and biting and bawling profanities so disgusting Charles can hardly believe he ever knew such words, far less used them. He's almost embarrassed to have Stornaway hear all this, but apparently with no reason: he's either heard it all before, or can dissociate it entirely from the man he has served and revered for over half a century. It's a lesson, of a kind, and despite being in no fit state to fend off the vehemence of his uncle's blows, Charles does what he can to help, and they finally manage to bring Maddox back to some sort of calm. Stornaway silently motions Charles away and kneels down in front of his old master.

‘There now – is that better for ye? Would ye like me to bring ye anythin'? Some water perhaps?'

Maddox eyes him with a leering look, then nods and slips his gaze away. Stornaway looks up at Charles. ‘I've noticed he's allus worse as the day draws on. But I think we'll be a'right now, Mr Charles, if ye have other things to do.'

It's the gentlest, most courteous dismissal you could ever devise, but it's a dismissal all the same. Charles nods and is turning to go when Stornaway calls to him.

‘Mr Charles, ye've dropped some'at here.'

‘I don't think so, Abel.'

Stornaway bends down behind Maddox's chair and hands Charles a slip of twisted paper. It's in his uncle's handwriting. Not, alas, the confident flowing hand of his maturity, but the weak looping scrawl that's a sad gauge of Maddox's deteriorating grasp – both of his pen and of his mind. This scrap certainly seems to have been written from a clouded place: as far as Charles can see it's nothing more than a string of random numbers and letters.

‘Do you know what this means, Abel, if it means anything?'

Stornaway takes the paper and looks at it, then nods. ‘Aye, it does. It's a reference to one of the newspapers in those boxes downstairs. He devised a system a' his own for organisin' 'em. He'd have me file anythin' as might prove to be useful. And many's a time it was.' He sighs. ‘There's a pile down there I never got round to doin'. Don't suppose I ever shall now.'

‘Can you find it for me – this newspaper?'

‘I'll do me best, Mr Charles, but it looks to me that there's some'at missin' here. There should be seven figures, not six. But I'll go see if Billy's back and can sit with the boss, and then I can get to it rightaway.'

Narrowing the reference down to one of the boxes in the office proves to be fairly straightforward; working out what, in all the solid stack of newsprint it contains, Maddox wanted Charles to see is quite another. Stornaway can give him no further guidance, beyond saying that the papers have not been logged in chronological order, but according to the nature of the crime as Maddox defined it. Charles is left with the prospect of a dreary evening that may, in the end, lead him nowhere. Nonetheless he has the fire lit in the room, and asks Billy to bring up a decanter of wine and his dinner, when
it's ready. Then he brings down a more comfortable chair from the drawing-room and settles himself by the oil-lamp to read. As he makes his way through the box, page by page, he finds he is confronting the painful reality of his uncle's slow and painful descent into the dark. The sheets are covered with annotations in black ink, but as with his uncle's handwriting, so with his subject matter: there is a terrible distance between the confident magisterial comments that mark the older newspapers, and the impenetrable scratchings on the more recent ones. In consequence it takes longer than it should to decipher exactly what crimes this box records, but when he does, Charles' heart starts to beat a little faster and he grips the page he's holding until the elderly paper crackles in his hands.

The date at the head of the page is August 1817 – far too early to have any bearing to the Cremorne case, but it's the theory, the
thinking
, that has Charles turning up the lamp and emptying the box on to the floor. He's sure now that this is what his uncle was trying to tell him – that a crime so elaborate as the murder of Lizzie Miller cannot possibly be a single unique act. That it must, in fact, have been preceded by other similar outrages – killings that display some of the same characteristics, if not the same degree of premeditated cruelty. Now he knows what he's
looking for, everything suddenly accelerates. Within minutes he has the pile of print in two groups – those too old to be relevant, and those recent enough to be plausible. He rearranges the latter heap chronologically and works backwards in time – six months first, then ten, a year. And then he finds it. No more than a paragraph, at the bottom of a column entitled ‘Accidents, Inquests, &c'. The story in question clearly sits under the third of the three categories, though a mere ‘&c' hardly seems strong enough to contain it:

Were it not for Maddox's notes, Charles might never have noticed it – there's nothing, after all, so very unusual about this report, which resembles a dozen others appearing in the London press every day. Though there is perhaps a coded message here you would not habitually find – the writer is clearly signalling that this was no common streetwalker, and words like ‘mutilated' are rare, even for the more sensational papers. It's irritating not to have the name of the officer who found the body, but that's an omission that can soon be remedied. But what was a respectable woman doing in that part of town in the first place, and what link can there possibly
be between her and a whore like Lizzie? And what can either of them have to do with the strange persecution practised by William Boscawen, and the violent death meted out to him by way of retribution?

C
harles fights up to consciousness, beating the dream back, forcing himself awake. It was the same dream, the same nightmare he'd had ever since he was a child. It was never monsters or ghouls that terrorized him – he'd never had that sort of imagination – this dream's terror lies entirely in its mundanity. Just his small self, his five-year-old self, following his mother through the garden of the house where he was born. He could tell he was just a little boy because the plants and flowers were taller than he was. There were huge furry bumblebees and bright butterflies as big as his small fat hands. It was always the same, always identical. The sky as blue as cornflowers, the huge white clouds billowing like yeast, and up ahead of him, his mother, walking gaily, and holding his baby sister nestled in her arms. He could see her pretty print dress and the red hair coiling in ringlets down her back and lifting lightly in the warm breeze. And he wanted so much to walk with her – to have her turn and see him – take him by the hand – but however hard he tried to catch her up, she was always just too far away – however loudly he cried out, she never acknowledged he was there, never took her eyes from her tiny sleeping daughter. He knew she could hear him, but she wouldn't turn round, he called to her again and again but she never looked back, never turned her head—

He sits up, sweating despite the cold. It's still dark outside and the fire died hours ago. At his side Molly stirs, and whimpers, then falls silent once more. Charles slips from the bed softly, so as not to wake her, and goes to the window. The sky is clear and the moon full and bright, ringed with a thin greenish edge like the peel on a fruit. Ice is already starting to cloud the glass. He breathes on it and rubs it with the sleeve of his nightshirt. Anything –
anything
– to dispel the image of his mother's face. Not the face he'd longed to see in his dream, the beautiful face of the mother of his infancy, but the face he last saw more than six years ago. The face he has tried ever since to forget.

His wound is throbbing and he loosens the dressing, concerned still about infection. He goes to the washstand and slowly unwinds the lengths of cloth, clumsy and left-handed, before sinking his arm into the basin. The shock of the cold water against his skin is raw, but then soothing, and the pain ebbs gradually down. He's still sitting there at five, when Molly wakes and helps him change the bandage before going downstairs to stoke the kitchen fire and clear the hearths. Charles is just about to leave an hour later when a note is delivered from Mr Chadwick. It's in reply to Charles' own letter of a few days before, enquiring whether his client can think of anyone who might have taken his daughter from the workhouse. The response is concise, and characteristically curt.

‘I've told you already, I don't know, and even if I did, I couldn't tell you.'

We are now at the desk of the police-station in Bow Street, in front of a hefty constable Charles doesn't know, and who clearly doesn't know who he is either.

‘Look, sir,' he says with a practised theatrical sigh, ‘you
say
you know Inspector Field, and that may very well be so, but he's not
my
inspector, and
my
inspector would take a pretty dim view of me divulging anything in our files without the proper authority. So until you can show me such authority, then I'm afraid the answer is going to remain the same: no.'

Charles stands there, drumming his fingers on the desk, but he's beaten and he knows it. The constable now makes a great show of ignoring him and carrying on with what he's doing, and summons a pink-faced young man from the back of the office to collect a stack of paperwork. Charles turns away, only to find himself face to face with the sergeant he met at the graveyard. It seems weeks ago, but it's actually barely two.

‘Maddox, isn't it?' says the man. ‘What can we be doing for you?' He's eyeing Charles' bandaged hand with some interest, but he conforms exactly to our previous experience of him by pointedly refusing to ask.

‘He was enquiring about the Cass case, sir,' interjects the constable. ‘You remember – about a year ago. That woman we found up at Church Street – had been cut up good and proper.'

The sergeant nods. ‘I remember,' he says slowly. ‘You seem to take rather an unhealthy interest in that part of town, Mr Maddox, if you don't mind me saying so. What's got you poking around in that old case?'

‘I was wondering which of your officers was first on the scene.'

‘And why should that concern you?'

Charles wonders for a moment if what he's about to do is all that well advised, but decides he has little real alternative. He takes a deep breath. ‘I believe the man who killed Abigail Cass may have struck again. But I cannot be certain of that until I know more about the first attack.'

‘Struck again, you say?' This with a frown. ‘And where was this, precisely?'

‘Near Golden Square, on Sunday night. Woman by the name of Lizzie Miller.'

‘Can't say it rings any bells. Whore, was she? Must be, in that neighbourhood. Street robberies like that – ten a penny.'

‘But this one wasn't a street robbery. She was killed in her own room. I think she knew the man who killed her, and I think Abigail Cass may have known him too.'

The sergeant manages a thin smile. ‘Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that these two crimes have very little in common. What makes you think there's a connection?'

‘The newspaper report of the Cass death mentioned a “frenzied attack”. It sounded unduly brutal for what you appear to be dismissing as a petty alleyway assault.'

If he was hoping that would draw the sergeant out, then he's misjudged his man; he's far too wily for that.

‘This other girl – Lizzie Miller – was practically eviscerated. Breasts cut off, heart cut out, face removed. Does any of that sound like Abigail Cass? I can't believe you wouldn't remember something like that, if it happened on your patch.'

Is it Charles' imagination, or was there just the merest flicker – the merest trace of a flicker – in the sergeant's eyes? But it's not enough – not on its own.

‘Can you look at the file for me? Or better still, let me look at it? It would only take a minute.'

The sergeant is no longer meeting his eye, ‘That's not possible, I'm afraid, as the constable here has no doubt already informed you. Police files are confidential – you should know that better than anyone. Was that all?'

Outside, the sky is clear and bright and the street is heaving with traffic, both on foot and on wheel; Covent Garden is creating its usual gridlock. There are greengrocers' vans, costermongers' carts, and row upon row of donkey-barrows backed up all the way down Bow Street to the Strand, while their owners wait their turn to unload. The men are catching a last coffee from nearby stalls, and groups of women in rough shawls are sitting on the kerbs, smoking pipes. The smell of cheap tobacco is layered with the earthy aroma of fresh-dug vegetables, and the stronger wafts of scent from wagons laden with oranges. Some of the costermongers' carts are bright with new brass, but most are drawn by cowed and miserable animals, the barrows patched together with pieces of sacking and bits of old rope. On both sides of the road the pavements are stacked with sacks of produce – cauliflowers, carrots, swede, turnips – and shreds of cabbage are being trodden slippery underfoot in the mud. Women have baskets of apples balanced on their heads, and some of the men are managing whole stacks of them, so that from a distance a squadron of wicker giants seem to be lurching and swaying up the street. Charles' eye is caught suddenly by the sight of a girl in a thin print frock weaving her way through the crowd, a basket of violets over her arm and auburn curls under her velveteen bonnet. He's sure it's Sarah – how many girls have hair that shade? – but when she turns in his direction he realizes his mistake at once. This girl must be at least fifteen and the hair, now he sees it against her face, is far too garish to be natural. He looks away, anxious not to catch
her eye and have her misinterpret his interest, and finds himself feeling a vague sense of disappointment. Which is, of course, ridiculous. He has no interest in Sarah – no desire whatsoever to see her again. He's so absorbed in reminding himself of this fact that he starts like a gazelle when someone touches him on the arm.

‘Mr Maddox, is it?'

It's the thin little constable who was loitering at the back of the police office. He looks painfully young, his skin blotched with pimples. His collar is at least one size too tight and is chafing his neck, much as his presence there appears to be chafing his conscience. He looks round furtively before speaking again. ‘Percy Walsh, sir. Constable Percy Walsh. Look, I probably shouldn't be talking to you. The sergeant would have me strung up.'

‘Is it about Abigail Cass?'

The lad's eyes are flicking from Charles to the crowd to the door, and back again. ‘You were asking which officer found the body? Well, it were me. I can tell you what you want to know.'

Charles tries to disguise his sudden rise of excitement. ‘Can you spare me ten minutes? It won't take long.'

Walsh nods. ‘Wait for me by St Paul's, in the piazza – I'll be with you as soon as I can.'

In the piazza business is already brisk and the air is thick with costers' cries: ‘Three a penny, two shillins the lot'; ‘Best quality leeks, just look at the shine on these beauties'; ‘Fine apples, mister – 'apenny each – you won't get no gawfs 'ere.'

Some of the market lads are washing themselves at the pump and others are gathered round the birdcatcher's pitch, poking fingers in the cages and whistling at the merchandise.

Charles buys a coffee from a stall under the colonnade, and after a moment's reflection buys another for Walsh. It seems
the least he can do, and he even goes as far as to buy a piece of seedcake from an old woman with a face as brown as a walnut. He eventually spots the young constable weaving his way through the crowd, and smiles to himself at the combination of aversion and abuse his starched uniform provokes. Walsh narrowly escapes being pelted with overripe fruit, and when he makes it to Charles' side he suggests they go into the churchyard, where they will be out of sight – and out of shot.

‘So,' says Charles, once they've found a bench, ‘you were the one who found Abigail Cass.'

The constable takes a gulp of coffee, and nods. ‘It weren't my usual patrol – I were covering for another lad who'd got his leg broke following a thief through Rats' Castle. Fell into one of them traps they lay for us and ended up half-drowned in a vat of sewage.'

‘So what happened – what did you see?'

The lad's face veers from red to pale. ‘I ain't never seen nothing like it, I can tell you. First up, I thought it was something off a Smithfield cart – some sort of animal carcase with all the guts spilling over the road. But straight away I knew I was wrong – there's no butcher as would take his wagon up that route. And the closer I got, I could see it was a woman, despite the wreck he'd made of her. There was blood everywhere.'

‘He
? Who? Did you see him?'

Walsh shakes his head. ‘Not me. All I saw was what he'd done.'

‘Go on.'

Walsh takes another noisy swallow of coffee. ‘I tell you one thing, I ain't never seen the inside of a human body like that before. He'd cut her wide open and thrown her innards across her face. What there was left of 'em. Doctor told me afterwards that half her organs were gone, and we never did find 'em. He also said the man must 'ave known what he was doing, because
it'd have taken him at least an hour to take a body apart like that.'

‘What was missing, exactly, do you know?'

Walsh fishes in his pocket and gets out a small black leather notebook. ‘Uterus and its appendages, upper portion of the vagina, posterior two thirds of the bladder. But that weren't what killed her. She'd had her throat cut. Ear to ear.'

He mimics the action, left to right. Charles notes it and wonders if it was deliberate.

‘And what pose was the body in?'

Walsh frowns and looks again at his notes. ‘I'm not sure I follow?'

‘On her back, on her face – what? Did it look as if he'd arranged the body in a certain way?'

‘Oh, I see,' he says, his face brightening. ‘Well now you come to mention it, it did look a bit odd. A bit
artificial
, if you take my meaning. She was on her back, like you said, but her knees were up, almost as if—'

He blushes suddenly; he is, after all, very young.

Charles saves him further embarrassment. ‘As if she was having sexual relations?'

‘Exactly, sir. That was what struck me. That and the blood. Like I said.'

Charles nods grimly. The constable's experience is a mirror image of his own.

‘Were there no reports of people hearing her cry out?'

The constable shakes his head. He starts on the seedcake with what is – in the circumstances – commendable enthusiasm.

‘No one heard nothing,' he says, his mouth full of cake. ‘But the doctor thought she'd been gagged, which might account for it – her tongue was twice its normal size. Seems he probably killed her quick, then took 'is time with the rest of it.'