Murder by Ghostlight, page 21
‘Tell your men, Mr Sands, that if anyone knows anything about Frederick Clarke, he must tell me. The man is dangerous. And I will pursue him – to your country, if I must.’
‘Surely will, Superintendent.’ Sands held out his hand. Sam gave him his. They shook.
In the street outside two constables waited. The search was still going on down by Lambeth Palace and the riverside gardens, but nothing had been seen of the suspect. Sam was not surprised. He hadn’t enough men to make a thorough job of it. But he must go to the Police Station in Lower Kennington Road. Strictly speaking, this was M Division’s territory. Thankfully, he knew Superintendent Brannan very well, and Inspector Peters. If neither was there, he could leave a message, explaining the events of the night and asking that a lookout be kept for Bell. It wasn’t far to the station – afterwards, they could walk over Vauxhall Bridge, take a cab up to Devonshire Terrace and Norfolk Street. Neither Brannan nor Peters was there, but Sam met an old acquaintance, Inspector Wells, a stoutly built man with a listening face and a knowing eye who promised he would ensure that the beat constables would look out for Bell. He, Inspector Wells, was about to leave the station on some business of his own, and he would listen and look for the wanted man.
‘It’s a beautiful case, I’m about, Mr Jones, and pretty well complete – only a little wanting to complete it which I intend to find out this very night.’ He looked at Dickens with a smile. ‘A lady in the case. A missing lady.’ He placed a fat forefinger to his nose. ‘But I shall look out for your man just the same.’
‘I am much obliged,’ said Sam, but Inspector Wells was gazing at Dickens as if he might be thinking of taking his portrait. Wells’s forefinger tapped at his nose then at his mouth after which he smiled his knowing smile.
‘A lady in the case, as I said. I know you, sir, that I do, but no name tonight, I daresay.’ With another tap of his nose, Inspector Wells went off into the dark in search of his lost lady.
‘A rum cove,’ murmured Dickens.
‘Known for it – deep, they say, very deep.’
‘As a well. Though not so wide as a church door – stout enough, though,’
‘And sharp. No name, forsooth, but a subtle reference to David Copperfield, I noticed.’ Sam was laughing.
They walked over Vauxhall Bridge, and stood for a moment looking at the black water of the Thames. Dickens remembered the night they had stood on Waterloo Bridge when they were searching for Mrs Hart, a woman whose only son had been murdered. He had thought then of the dreadful silence down there under the swell.
‘Has he crossed over, do you think?’ he asked Sam.
‘I think so. Those clothes … what was missing?’
Dickens thought. ‘The clergyman’s collar, the false beard – some sort of greatcoat, surely. The greatcoat that Mrs Ginger said he wore when he left for the theatre.’
‘He had that lodging in Cloth Fair …’
‘But he would not go back there – he must know we have found Clement. The newspaper report said an unidentified man, but he will know.’
‘He could have taken another room in another lodging, in another disguise, in an abandoned house … by God, Clement Bell’s house is shut up! Mrs Stark has gone and taken the maid with her. He could be there – let’s get a cab. Bow Street first. I’ll need some men.’
They left the police wagon in Powell Street and entered King Square on foot, where the Bell house was in darkness. Sam deployed Constables Dacre and Semple under the command of Inspector Grove to go round the back. Grove was armed. He was to wait in the garden in case Bell tried to escape. Sam and Constable Rogers, also armed, and two other constables took the front. Another two stayed on the opposite side of the road where Dickens waited in a cab just outside the portico of the church of St Barnabas. Sam did not want to take any chances.
Rogers tried the front door – it was locked. Sam went down the area steps. The kitchen door had been forced. They crept in. Rogers shone his bull’s-eye lamp to show where the door was that led into the hall. The house was silent and cold. They went into the corridor. Looking left, they saw the back door of the house. He hoped Grove would have the wit to stay where he was.
They crept into the hall, standing at the bottom of the staircase where poor Mrs Bell had fallen. The parlour door was open, but there was no light. Sam signalled to Rogers that they would go upstairs. Then he motioned him to stop. He had a sense someone was there. He heard the faintest sound – as if someone had paused in mid-step. Someone was listening.
The noise was deafening. A sudden flash of light. The smell of cordite. Rogers falling. The back door bursting open. Footsteps running. A door slamming shut. Sam charging upstairs. Into Mrs Bell’s room. Too dark to see. The next room. A rush of feet on the stairs. Inspector Grove going up another flight followed by Dacres.
Sam rushed after them. Too many rooms. And then the open window. The fire escape. Grove fired into the garden, but the figure darted behind a tree. Impossible to see. Semple was coming through the garden door – unarmed.
‘Semple! Get back!’ Sam shouted. Semple vanished into the trees.
The figure ran. Someone else was after him. Rogers without his pot hat. Another shot, and another as Bell returned the fire. They saw him dart through the garden door and slam it shut. They heard running feet down the alley. Rogers ran after him, stumbled, righted himself, struggled with the door and was out.
Sam charged back down the stairs. Dickens was there with a pot hat in his hand. Sam ran out into the garden, the others following. They heard another shot. Whose? Bell had a revolver – six bullets – three left, perhaps. Rogers had a police issue flintlock – two bullets. If he had fired that last shot then he was now unprotected. Another shot – the revolver, thought Sam.
‘Dacre, stay with Mr Dickens!’ Sam shouted. ‘Get into the parlour.’
Outside in the alley, Sam directed Grove to the right. ‘Take Semple. Shoot Bell if you have to.’ They had three shots to Bell’s two. That gave them a chance. Sam had not fired – two left. He turned left, keeping close to the back walls of the garden.
A figure came back into the alley. Sam raised his gun. Rogers.
‘Vanished, sir.’
Another shot rang out. Sam and Rogers ran back. A voice high and urgent. Dickens shouting.
‘At the front! He’s out there!’
Sam and Rogers dashed back through the garden, into the hall to the front door. One of the constables was lying on the opposite pavement. The other stood gaping at the disappearing cab. They stood frozen, watching it turn into Powell Street, hearing the rush of the hooves on stone – a cabman held at gunpoint, driving too fast down towards York Road.
Sam turned back to look at the constable lying on the ground. His eyes were closed and there was blood on the pavement, a black pool in the light of his lamp.
28
HIGHGATE CEMETERY
‘He’s alive,’ Sam said wearily in answer to Dickens’s question, ‘no thanks to me.’ They were in the office at Bow Street. The morning was a sullen grey. Rain threatened, and they had the funeral to attend.
The constable had been taken in the police wagon to the nearest hospital – St Luke’s on Old Street. The bullet had grazed the young man’s shoulder. Sam had waited until the constable was cleaned up and bandaged. The doctor had assured him that the wound was superficial – the constable would live.
But he might not have. That was the refrain sounding through Sam’s head. He had gone home, but had hardly slept, tossing in the bed, getting up to doze on the sofa, then dreaming fitfully – dreams in which a man on horseback rode at him. He could hear the thunder of hooves, wild whoops from invisible riders, and then he was in a dark house, and a woman was lying at the bottom of some stairs that led up to a stage. Charles Dickens stood looking at him, his face livid in the gas light, and he held a gun. In the dream, Sam opened his mouth to shout, but no sound came. A terrible noise. A flash. Then he woke.
‘No, Sam. Bell is responsible. You told me that in Manchester when I—’
‘I was angry, Charles, and anger clouded my judgement. I took you – you of all people – to a house where we knew there might have been an armed man. I took Rogers in …’
‘But you took all precautions. Grove was meant to stay outside. You told him. If he had obeyed your order, he could have shot him as he came down the fire escape.’
‘I know, but he heard the shot and thought Bell was downstairs – he thought he was helping. And I was the commanding officer. Questions will be asked.’
‘But I am here, and, like Sam Weller, as lively as a live trout in a lime basket. Your constable will recover. This is not like you, Sam.’
Sam smiled at him. ‘No, it is not. It’s time I pulled myself together.’
‘Did you find anything at the house?’
‘The cavalryman’s uniform, and a pair of boots, and that coat.’
‘The coat he wore when Mrs Ginger saw him last,’ nodded Dickens.
‘Pity he wasn’t in it. Grove looked in what he thought was Clement Bell’s bedroom. Someone had been in the wardrobe. I bet Austin Bell took some of Clement’s clothes. That’s what he went to the house for.’
‘Ironic. Impersonating his brother, again. What about the cab?’
‘It came back, or, at least, one of my constables met it in York Road – Bell was gone. The cabman wasn’t injured, apart from his feelings, that is – Wot woz the perlice abaht lettin’ willuns loose on a cabman wot woz jest doin’ ’is job? Someone owed ’im two fares – dint serpose ’e’d get paid, neither.’
‘Rig’larly done over and robbed of me stumpy.’
Sam grinned. ‘Something like that. Toby Tickit, his name was.’
‘Tickit! Suited him – little clockwork sort of fellow. And he’ll come for his money, no doubt.’
‘They generally do. Pity Bell didn’t ask for a ride to his lodgings.’
‘Yes, and what lodgings, I wonder? He must have found somewhere to hide out. Would he go back to that house by St Bartholomew’s Church?’
‘He’d know we would look there – I’ve already sent two men in plain clothes.’
‘There’s still the post office.’
‘True.’ Sam looked at his watch. ‘Time we were going to Crown Street. I will be very glad when this funeral is over.’
Robert Brim had wanted the simplest possible funeral. It was in the nature of that quiet, unassuming man. He wished to be buried with his wife in Highgate Cemetery, and from the shop in Crown Street, a hearse and two mourning carriages – no plumes, no professional mourners – went up Tottenham Court Road, away from the city at a smart trot up Hampstead Road to Highgate Hill where the carriages slowed to a dignified pace. In the first mourning carriage were Dickens and Sam with Mark Lemon, Constable Rogers and Scrap. Sam had not wanted him to come, but the boy had insisted.
‘Wot am I ter tell Miss Nell? Am I ter say I dint go ter see ’er pa, ter say goodbye for ’er? Me wot’s known ’em all – longer than you, Mr Jones. I’m their best friend, I am.’
Sam had seen the tears in his eyes. He had got it wrong, he had thought, so wrong, and he had apologised, trying to explain that he had wanted to protect him. Scrap had been implacable: ‘It’s them wot needs protection, wot needs me ter tell ’em it woz awright. Dint go to me ma’s funeral. Don’t even know where she is. ’Tain’t right. No one telled me. Dint think I knowed, but I did – knowed she woz dead.’ He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
Sam wondered, not for the first time, what had been Scrap’s life before. He rarely spoke of his pa – only once before of his ma. Scrap had his own secrets, dreadful memories, and no one in whom to confide them. The boy was looking at him, his expression stern.
Put in his place, he had gone into the bedroom and brought out a black armband which he had offered to Scrap, who took it with a smile. ‘Ta. Knew yer’d see I woz right.’
In the second carriage were Matthew Tape and Ambrose Tiplady, and Mr Brim’s neighbour, Daniel Mills, who once played the violin for Mr Brim at the shop.
The carriages turned in through the grand Tudor style entrance flanked by the mortuary chapels, the Anglican on one side and the Dissenting Chapel on the other. Dickens thought of his sister Fanny who had died of the same dreadful disease as Mr Brim, and who was buried in the Dissenters’ ground. He would go to see her grave after the burial.
The carriages turned into the south-west path, away from the Egyptian Monument, winding through the tree-lined lanes to the quiet place where Mrs Brim was buried. The grave was ready.
They stood under the grey sky while the clergyman read the burial service. Dickens could see the cloud-crowned city in the distance below. It was quiet here, peaceful. Mr Brim would sleep well, and his children would come some day when they were old enough to look at the grave. He looked at Sam, who had stood at the grave of his only daughter. He thought of Fanny again, and the little crippled boy who had pined for his mother, and who was buried with her. Scrap looked determined, like one who had steeled himself to courage. And little Ambrose Tiplady, his face was so unusually solemn that he looked suddenly older. He remembered Kettle in Manchester, and how he had seen that boy’s face overlaid for a moment with the face that would be his in later life. That’s what life did, he thought. It wrote its sorrows on the youthful face. The battle of life. Well, they would have to hide their hearts, he and Sam, and turn back to the city where Austin Bell waited, and must be found.
While Sam spoke to Matthew Tape, Dickens walked to the Dissenters’ ground. He stood, thinking about Fanny and their childhood, the times when he had walked from his lodgings to fetch her from the Royal Academy of Music in Tenterden Street so that they could spend Sunday in the Marshalsea Prison with the rest of the family. He had envied her education when he had none, but he had loved her. She had been a good wife and mother. Loving and loved, her bright example shone – the words of Douglas Jerrold’s poem came back to him suddenly. Thoughts on Visiting Highgate Cemetery. Time to go.
He walked away past the quiet graves. Jerrold was right. It was a place of pleasant walks, and grassy slopes, and girt about with trees, but he was right, too, when he had written of it as the shrine of blighted hopes. Blighted hopes – that was what Austin Bell had done, destroyed the hope and promise of innocent lives. His deeds had created ripples across the still water of quiet, unremarkable lives so that the survivors could never be the same again: Oriel Greenwood’s mother, Edwin Bell’s wife, Mrs Stark, Dora Bell’s father, old Mr Richardson, all their lives cruelly rent. Even Marion Ginger – gone to Penrith, Sam had said, to be a widow’s companion. Memories stained with the blood spilled by a man who thought only of himself, of his own desires, who nursed his own anger and resentment until they filled him with a poison so corrosive that he must sweep away everything in his path.
Sam was waiting by the entrance. Dickens would go to Wellington Street to immerse himself in the work that would take his mind off the case. Rogers was to take Scrap to meet Mollie Spoon at the shop so that he could show her around. It would be good for him – he would relish the responsibility, and then he was to go back to Sam’s house in Norfolk Street. And Sam? He would go back to Bow Street and deal with his paperwork. He had already put another man at the post office.
‘I am going to the Punch dinner tonight at the Crown in Vinegar Yard. Harry Wills is coming with me straight from Wellington Street, and I’ll take a cab home.’ Dickens wanted to reassure Sam that he would not be taking any chances. The Superintendant had enough to worry about.
‘Still,’ said Sam, ‘I’ll make sure one of my men watches your house – I need to be sure after last night’s business.’
29
SCRAP
Mollie Spoon was becoming anxious. It was growing dark. There were candles, no doubt, in the parlour at the back of the shop, but it would be too dark to see her way. She went to the door which led to the parlour and the stairs. She looked up and thought of the man who had died up there. Poor man. It was creepy being alone here – his ghost upstairs.
Where was that dratted boy? A few minutes, Scrap had said. It would only take a few minutes. That was nearly an hour ago. Wandered off, she supposed. Met some other lads. Boys was like that. Didn’t she know it. Walter, her brother – ’e’d been in trouble a thousand times for not comin’ home when ’e should. Pa ’ad leathered ’im often enough, but it ’adn’t done no good.
She couldn’t understand it. A man had come to the shop. Clergyman with a bushy beard. He’d asked for directions to St Paul’s. Said he was a stranger, had got lost. Scrap had explained, but the man had said he was late for an appointment. Could the boy go part of the way with him? Perhaps he knew some shortcuts. Scrap had gone willingly, but he ought to be back now.
She went to the door and looked up and down the street, but no sign of either Alf or Scrap. Time was getting on. She heard the church clock strike six. She went back in to stand at the counter. What a thing it was. Alf an’ her, shopkeepin’ – well, she’d be doin’ the shopkeepin’. Alf wouldn’t give up the police. Not he. Not while Superintendent Jones lived and breathed. Alf’s hero. Sergeant soon, ’e’d promised.
There was a noise at the door and it opened to reveal Alf Rogers with his bull’s-eye lantern. ‘What you doin’ in the dark, Mollie?’
‘Scrap left me ages ago – it was too dark ter find the candles.’
‘Scrap left?’ Rogers frowned. ‘Where’d ’e go? It musta bin important.’ He could not imagine what would take Scrap away from his duties. ‘What ’appened?’
‘A man came askin’ the way ter St Paul’s. Scrap went with ’im ter show ’im the way. Said e’d be a few minutes – that were an hour ago.’
‘What man? What was ’e like?’ Rogers asked, his voice urgent.
