Season of Death, page 2
CHAPTER 2
The Dawn Gang was hot as hornets, and we found ourselves in a fight for our lives. The shop was too small to support six men battling at close quarters. Glass broke all around us and jewels danced across counters or were trod underfoot. One of the men pulled me off my feet, then objected when I jammed a thumb in his eye. A second tried to get his arm around my neck, but I slid under it and booted him in the stomach. The first returned and clouted me on the ear. The Marquess of Queensberry Rules had no part in this fight.
When I glanced over, I saw Cyrus Barker banging two men together as if they were cymbals. He smacked one facedown on the counter and watched him slide off onto the floor. The other, who outweighed the Guv by two stone at least, charged him. I sensed something odd here. We’d been in dozens of skirmishes over the last ten years together, but this one was different. The men seemed frantic over and above the general possibility of being caught. The one I’d kicked came off the floor with a knife and lunged at me, but I was prepared. My partner and I ran an antagonistics school in Glasshouse Street twice a week. I slapped the blade hand away and jabbed the man in the throat with a knuckle. He dropped the knife and went down with a hoarse rasp.
“Thomas!” Barker bellowed, pointing toward the door, where one thief was escaping. I ducked as a half dozen sharpened pence flew over my head with a ringing sound, some embedding themselves in the poor blighter’s back and arms, others clanging against the doorframe. They are my partner’s weapon of choice, an odd affectation he’d acquired in China. The man staggered but I pulled my Webley from my waistband and followed him out the door. He fell in the street, and I clapped the pistol to his head.
Having made short work of the Dawn Gang, Barker stepped out into the night and raised an Acme bobby’s whistle to his lips. I’ll wager he awakened a hundred sleepers at least. He blew loud enough to wake the dead.
“What in hell?” the man at my feet asked, lifting one of the bloody pennies he’d plucked from his shoulder. I pushed the short barrel of my pistol against his neck.
“Shut it, you,” I said. “You’re the reason I’m not tucked in bed right now.”
Within a few minutes a dozen constables arrived. Scotland Yard had been after the Dawn Gang as we had, and extra patrols had been engaged to apprehend them. I pocketed my bulldog pistol and tried to look innocent, something I’m good at.
An inspector from “H” Division arrived a few minutes later, and what was now a fully assembled squad stepped through the broken door and took the other three men into custody. Even with their wrists locked in darbies, the thieves were not inclined to give up the fight. The one I’d stopped was being carried away by three constables and still struggling to escape, despite his wounds. The fellow was nearly frothing at the mouth in panic. The patrolmen didn’t have sharpened coins, but they did have truncheons. One tap and it was all over. As violent as the altercation had been in those crowded moments, I cringed a little at the brutality of it. I’d been clouted once or twice myself. I wouldn’t recommend it.
The night inspector in charge was a man named Dew. Though only a detective constable, he was the most senior officer at “H” Division at that moment. He looked too young for the duty. The rest of his men were hunting for the gang now in his custody, a fortunate set of events for him. He would eventually get the credit for the arrests. Save for advertisements in The Times, the Guv prefers to keep our names out of the newspapers.
“You must be Barker,” Dew said, glancing at the sea of shattered glass strewn along the aisles of the narrow shop. “I recognize you from the descriptions I’ve heard at the station. I wasn’t aware you were involved.”
“We were hired a few days ago,” the Guv explained. “We have been patrolling the area since three o’clock this morning.”
“How did you manage to track them down when half of the Met has been out looking for them for over a week?” the detective constable demanded.
“We found an informant at the Shoreditch workhouse, a beggar named Dutch.”
“We’ll have to speak to him after you’ve answered some questions at ‘H’ Division,” Dew replied. “I presume you don’t mind.”
“Inspector!” a voice shouted from the next room.
The Guv and I looked at each other. What had we missed?
“No inspectors here, Constable Beeching,” Dew barked. “I’m a workingman. What have you found?”
“Body, sir!”
We stepped over the shattered glass and through a beaded curtain into the back room, which was a workshop. There were scarred tables with vises, hammers, and tools in neat rows against a wall, beside a smelter. Ahead of us was a door which opened into a vault. From where I stood near the entrance to the storeroom, I could see a pair of boots motionless on the floor. When we filed into the small room, a man lay prone, a sturdy safe open beside him. Dew rolled him onto his back and went through his pockets for a card or some kind of identification. From where I stood, I could see his bloodstained shirt.
“Mr. Ibraham Hesse, the man who owns this establishment,” the detective constable said. “He must have been protecting his interests. The Dawn Gang will swing for this. It’s been all larks and skittles until now. Sergeant, collect a barrow and bring the victim to the station.”
Barker and I looked in every direction, making observations. It is a habit people in our occupation develop. Nothing seemed out of place, but then we had not seen the body closely enough to determine how the man had died. We later learned he had been stabbed under the rib cage. We stepped back through the curtain into the front room again.
“Crikey,” Dew remarked, looking about at the devastation. “You ain’t half left a mess!”
“They were … what would you call them, lad?” Barker asked, turning to me.
“Spirited, sir,” I said, ever helpful.
“Aye,” Barker replied. “They were spirited. We’ll meet you at the station, Detective Constable.”
“No, sir,” Dew stated. “I can’t take that chance. I’m afraid you must come with us now.”
Dew was very earnest. He was trying to ape his superiors, not only in manner, but in appearance. He had a short mustache, which would need a few more years’ growth to be as thick as those of the Criminal Investigation Department, or of Barker’s own, for that matter. Dew seemed to know what he was about, however, and I thought it likely he would do well. For one thing, he’d challenged my partner without his voice quavering.
Dew left two constables in charge of the premises, so that his superiors would see the scene in situ in a few hours’ time, after they’d had their tea and boiled egg. This might even bring the commissioner from his office. On the way to “H” Division by the Embankment, I found a diamond in the cuff of my trousers. I thought how my wife would look with a new ring or necklace but knew she would be prouder of an honest husband, so I gave it to one of the constables. Goodness knows what happened to it afterward.
Cyrus Barker and I were well acquainted with “H” Division from our investigation during the Whitechapel Murders a half dozen years earlier. That’s what we called them, both Scotland Yard and the Barker and Llewelyn Enquiry Agency. It was the press who tagged them the “Jack the Ripper” murders. We had tracked the killer to his lair and seen him carted off to Colney Hatch, but the powers-that-be had swept the matter under the mat and sworn us all to silence. I’ve heard the decision went as high as Queen Victoria herself, but you can’t believe what you hear nowadays, or don’t hear, as the case may be.
The constabulary hadn’t changed since we had seen it last. Battered and scarred wooden benches in dire need of paint flanked the entrance under the eye of a sleepy-looking sergeant who was not a patch on the one we knew in Great Scotland Yard Street. “H” Division is not a plum assignment, but Dew looked keen. Keen and ambitious, I thought to myself.
The interrogation room wasn’t much larger than a closet, and Barker’s presence seemed to fill it. Dew sat and began to write on a form. They had typewriting machines in Scotland Yard now, but few inspectors felt comfortable enough to use one. I reckoned this constabulary wouldn’t see a typewriter until the dawn of a new century.
I hoped we wouldn’t be arrested, but that decision was up to the night inspector. As far as I knew, our agency was considered competent and honest. However, we were also known to be stubborn and crafty. Barker works to his own timetable and his own code of ethics and devil take the hindmost. We’d warmed many a cell cot in the districts and divisions of London Town, but I had no wish to do so that morning. We were at the mercy of this green detective constable. We’d done nothing wrong, I told myself, but when has Scotland Yard ever taken my word for anything? I was a former convict myself. I’d gone straight from Oxford University to Oxford Prison for theft. I was innocent, of course, but I suppose everyone says that.
Dew was completing an incident report in our presence. This was done in a leisurely fashion, as if we weren’t even in the room. He sighed. He coughed. He crossed out a word or two and wrote others in the margins. It was just the sort of thing that gets right up my nose. He was trying to stall, to break us down, hoping we’d confess, when we hadn’t done anything of which to confess. It was mere routine for Dew. Nothing personal, you understand, just duty. Yes, I told myself, this tyke would make a fine inspector someday. That was not a compliment.
“Tell me, gentlemen, are you armed at the moment?” Detective Constable Dew asked.
My partner and I looked at each other. Of course, we were. We were private enquiry agents, not tobacconists or bakers. We nodded.
“Would you be so good as to place your weapons on this table?”
Barker shrugged his wide shoulders. He pulled a Colt Single Action pistol from inside his coat and set it in front of Dew. He reached into his sleeve and retrieved a knife he carried in a sheath strapped to his wrist. Meanwhile, I pulled my Webley bulldog pistol from the waistband of my trousers. Dew examined the knife, knowing Hesse had been stabbed.
“That was fine work, tracking down the Dawn Gang,” he said at last. “How did you happen to become involved?”
Cyrus Barker coughed. “We were hired by an organization of merchants to find the gang and stop them.”
Dew raised an eyebrow. “Was Mr. Hesse a member of this organization?”
“He was not among the men who hired us,” the Guv admitted. “He must have preferred to guard his premises himself.”
“Have you ever seen this before?” Dew continued, holding up a penny.
“If it is sharpened, it is mine,” Barker replied.
“Have you any others?”
“Detective, you know I haven’t. You told me to put my weapons on this table.”
Dew frowned. “Do you always carry sharpened pennies about with you?”
“Not to church, of course, but generally speaking, yes.”
“What is their purpose?”
“To slow or stop a suspect from escaping without the need to shoot him. It is a scatter weapon, like a rifle filled with buckshot.”
We were staring at the top of Dew’s head. He’d removed his helmet and was writing laboriously, like a child forming his letters. His hair was parted perfectly, each to its own side. A precise man was our detective constable. Precise and careful. Barker would approve.
“I see,” he answered. “How came you to know where the thieves would be?”
“As I said, we came upon a beggar in front of the Shoreditch workhouse,” the Guv replied.
“How did this beggar know where the gang would be?”
Barker shrugged his burly shoulders. “I did not ask, but I assume it was a matter of self-preservation. Do you mind if I smoke?”
The detective constable shook his head. The Guv retrieved a sealskin pouch from his pocket and began to stuff his personal blend into a meerschaum pipe carved like the head of a Zulu warrior. It must have been white as ivory when he’d purchased it, but time and smoke had turned the figure into a realistic shade of yellowish brown. Lighting it, he blew a large plume across the table. Dew’s incident form rustled, and the detective constable coughed. As I said, it was a close room. I was accustomed to the smell, but our captor would be choking soon. It was Barker’s way of encouraging the fellow along. The Guv never does anything randomly.
“Did this beggar approach you or did you approach him?” Dew asked.
“As a matter of fact, I saw someone perching on the steps of the workhouse and asked a question. Money changed hands, just a penny or two. We received the information and went on our way.”
“He knew where to go, then?”
“Aye, he did.”
“Do you suppose he’s still there?” he asked.
Barker shrugged again. “I don’t know. There was food and drink nearby, and Dutch looked starved.”
“As well as parched,” I added.
“You were there, Mr. Llewelyn?” Dew said, looking at me. “Can you elaborate on what Mr. Barker has said?”
“Just that Dutch was in rags and needed a bath as much as a cup of tea. The beggar also had a bum leg.” I turned to Barker. Had it been right to mention the limb? He gave the smallest of nods behind the smoke.
“Did you proceed directly to the jewelers?” Dew asked.
“We did,” Barker replied.
Dew consulted his paper. “When you arrived, you broke right through the door?”
“We feared they would escape otherwise,” I answered.
“Just the two of you, against four men?”
“Mr. Barker prefers those odds.”
The detective looked me in the eye as if I were joking, but of course I wasn’t. One of Barker’s dictums is that the truth makes the best lie.
“Did you have to bust the place to pieces?” Dew asked.
“That wasn’t our plan,” Barker stated. “They were very intent, weren’t they, lad?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Very intent. But we’ve already explained that.”
“In-tent,” Dew muttered as he wrote.
“Everything they did was unorthodox,” I added. “That’s u-n-o-r-t–”
“I’ve heard of you as well, Mr. Llewelyn,” Dew added, pointing at me with the blunt end of his pencil. “Someday someone’s gonna smack that mouth clean off your face.”
I smiled. Discretion is the better part of valor.
“Have you any further questions, Detective Constable?” my partner asked. “We’ll need to open the doors of our agency soon.”
“No, sir, but I’m certain my superiors will have a few.”
He glanced at me to make certain I had no remark about the word “superiors” on my tongue. I had five, in fact, but I chose not to use any of them. He was the wrong audience. Metropolitan constables are not issued a sense of humor.
When he was done questioning us together, he separated us and questioned us individually.
“Tell me more about Mr. Barker,” he said. He had left the door open, but our eyes were still stinging from the smoke.
“He is a private enquiry agent,” I replied. “He has chambers by Scotland Yard.”
Dew frowned.
“I know that!” he said. “What are his antecedents?”
I smiled. “You’ve been wanting to use that word for a while, haven’t you? I suspect you’re using it wrong. However, an—”
“Shut your gob, Llewelyn, or I’ll shut it for you.”
I put up both hands. If he wanted silence, silence was what he would get. I refused to answer another question after that.
Barker went into the interrogation room. A smoke-filled room is his natural habitat. I took a seat by the constabulary door and traded banter with the desk sergeant while Dew tried to crack the hard nut that is my partner. If he thought the man would open himself to a jumped-up detective constable, he was sorely mistaken. The Guv didn’t even grin as he came out. Defeating low-level officials was a matter of course.
“May we go, Detective Constable Dew?” he asked.
“First you’ll follow me to the workhouse and point out this beggar to me.”
Dew opened the front door of the constabulary. We were marched to the Shoreditch workhouse. From time to time, he shot me a cautious eye. I seem to have a knack for vexing authority figures. And vice versa.
However, Dutch was no longer there on the steps. Dew looked disappointed. I presumed he wanted to present the wretch to his inspector as a fait accompli. However, we’d given him enough to get a pat on the back, and possibly a promotion. He looked satisfied enough when he left us.
“We’ll have to find Dutch before the authorities do,” my partner said after we left. “She can’t have gone far. Some questions are in order.”
“A bath wouldn’t go amiss, either,” I suggested.
CHAPTER 3
“She could be anywhere by now,” I complained as we left the steps of the wretched workhouse. A long line of vagrants stood where Dutch had been. The day had dawned in one of the largest and busiest capital cities on earth. The street in front of us was choked with vehicles. Men were pushing street carts along, women opened stalls to sell their meager wares, and children larked about in the cold morning air with few garments and even less supervision. The East End hadn’t changed since Dickens wrote of it in his first book, Sketches by Boz. Unlike Whitechapel, however, Shoreditch had a certain Old World charm. One could picture Boz himself wending his way along these stalls and purchasing a bag of hot chestnuts.
“She can’t have gone far,” the Guv reasoned. “She doesn’t have the energy.”
“Do you suppose she can walk at all?” I asked. “What I saw of her boot was oddly twisted.”
“I cannot begin to imagine what horrors that woman has faced, Thomas. You noticed the grime on her face?”
“Of course, I did,” I said. “One could hardly miss it.”
“It has a purpose, and she won’t say thank you if we remove it. Crawlers are helpless against lecherous men, so she does her best to look undesirable.”
“What a way to live,” I remarked. “It’s worse than dying.”
“Aye,” he admitted. “But it’s remarkable what one will do to survive. You lived nearby after your release from prison, didn’t you, Thomas?”
