by Evelyn James
“Don’t Annie, I just want to be left alone.”
“And what good will that do?” Annie asked him sternly. “You will lie in this bed moping, trying to piece together what happened that night, hating yourself for being unable to remember and then hating yourself for having these problems in the first place. I won’t allow that.”
“I’ll tell the hospital I don’t want visitors,” Peterson said sourly.
“You try that young man and I shall contact your mother immediately,” Annie said, refusing to give in.
“Don’t do that,” Peterson said hastily. “I don’t want her to know about what happened.”
“Nothing has happened,” Annie reminded him. “Except some horrible person stabbed you, and we are going to find who they were and why they killed that woman too.”
“And if I really did it?” Peterson asked her with his voice trembling with fear.
“At some point you are going to have to take a leap of faith,” Annie squeezed his shoulder. “You will need to trust not in Clara, or in me, or in Captain O’Harris, but in yourself. I can’t make you believe in yourself, no one can. That’s a decision for you to make, and you alone.”
Peterson said nothing. Annie had to leave, she wished she could stay, she wished she could heal the young man in the bed. But what she had said she knew to be true; the only person who could truly help Peterson now was himself.
Chapter Eighteen
Clara returned to the alleyways. She had Sarah with her, dressed in plainclothes rather than her uniform. Sarah had her truncheon concealed up the sleeve of the big overcoat she was wearing. They walked to the backyard of Robert Hartley’s house and let themselves in. There appeared to be no one around to witness their arrival. It was dark, the autumn nights folding in fast. The alley was filled with deep shadows that could conceal anything, as it was, they did not even conceal a cat or mouse.
Clara knocked on the back door and imagined the sound caused consternation to the residents inside. After a long pause, which almost suggested the house was empty, the door was tentatively opened by Robert’s wife. Her eyes widened as she saw who was outside.
“Sorry to disturb you so late in the evening, Mrs Hartley,” Clara said, “but, I would like to speak to your husband again.”
Mrs Hartley clearly did not know what to say. She stood in her hallway, glancing between the two women, before finally retreating inside. She left the back door open, enabling Clara and Sarah to hear the fraught conversation that now took place between her and her husband.
“That woman is outside again!”
“What woman?”
“The one who came earlier asking about that lad who was stabbed.”
“I told you not to interfere with that, Robert!” That was the fearsome voice of Robert’s mother.
“What does she want?” Robert asked in a more cautious tone.
“Does it matter? I’ll get rid of her!”
“Mother!”
The senior Mrs Hartley appeared in the hallway and marched towards Clara and Sarah with a face like thunder. She was a stout, powerfully built woman, the sort who spent her days performing manual tasks, some of them quite unpleasant. She was not to be argued with in a hurry.
“You can clear off!” She told Clara with a wave of her hand.
Clara did not move.
“I need to speak to Robert,” Clara insisted. “Something is happening in this neighbourhood which is more than just the petty crime everyone is used to. This is serious and I need all the information I can get. Else a young man may be accused of a murder he did not commit.”
“What does that matter to me?” Mrs Hartley demanded. “I don’t have time to trouble myself with the problems of strangers. You have to look after yourself and your own in life, that’s it.”
She said her statement with finality, intending that to be the last word. Clara refused to accept it.
“I am doing exactly that, looking after myself and my own. The young man who was stabbed in the alley is my friend, and my own life has been threatened in this affair. I take a very dim view of such things,” Clara folded her arms, she could be as stubborn and fierce as the next woman. “Someone has caused me a lot of trouble and they are about to discover that I don’t like that. They hurt someone I care about, they came after me, and that makes me all the more determined to deal with them. I shan’t stop until I know exactly who is behind this crime and what has been going on.”
Robert had appeared in the hallway. He was standing back from the doorway and as there was no light in the corridor, he was almost hidden in the shadows, but he was there.
“Mother, let them in,” he said calmly.
“We don’t need any trouble,” Mrs Hartley turned around on her son and barked. “You don’t need trouble.”
“We are already in trouble,” Robert said without any hint of regret in his voice. “The moment I went out into the alley, we were in trouble.”
“I told you not to go outside!”
“I was tired of hiding!” Robert snapped at her. “I was tired of this fearfulness. I was never afraid of anything and I am not now! That lad needed help and I was damn well going to give it. Never let it be said that old Robbie was one to let a boy die behind his house without trying to save him.”
“You are a fool,” Mrs Hartley wailed at him, her ferocity disappeared in the face of her anguish. “You will be the end of us all!”
“I’m not going to hide anymore,” Robert said quietly, and there was to be no arguing with him, that was plain.
“You always were selfish Robert Hartley!” His mother snapped at him, before storming back into the kitchen and slamming the door behind her.
Robert stood facing his unexpected guests solemnly.
“You better come in.”
He showed them into the only other room on the ground floor. Had the house been in full use, it would have been a parlour, but the Hartleys (like so many in the neighbourhood) could not afford to rent an entire house and so they existed in two rooms. The kitchen at the back and the parlour at the front, which served as bedroom and sitting room to them. They were luckier than those living on the other floors, as they did have a kitchen. Robert’s mother had insisted on it. The people living further up had to make do with cooking in their fireplaces or eating all their meals cold.
The parlour contained a double bed with an iron frame squashed against the back wall and parallel to the fireplace. A second, smaller bed, was set against the wall near the door and partly obscured the front window. There was little room for any other furniture, though a chest of drawers was wedged into a corner and there was a wooden chair by the fireplace, shrouded in discarded clothes. Robert walked to the fireplace and turned around. He motioned for his guests to sit on the bed, if they wished. Clara preferred to stand, and Sarah was loitering in the background as a watchdog for trouble.
“Thank you for speaking to me again,” Clara said to Robert, wanting to get him on her side first.
“So, you’ve been threatened?” Robert asked her.
“Yes. Earlier today I went back into the alley to see where the murder of that poor woman occurred. I was accosted by a brutish fellow who threatened me if I failed to leave at once.”
“This is a dangerous business, you should not get involved,” Robert said.
“On the contrary, it is for that reason I intend to become involved. Someone is making life a misery for the people around here and they have caused harm to my friend, now they have threatened me and that is like a red rag to a bull,” Clara said staunchly. “I don’t like bullies and I don’t like being threatened.”
“I would call you a fool, but maybe you have more backbone and sense than the rest of us,” Robert gave a weak laugh.
“What of you? You were prepared to defy them to help my friend,” Clara pointed out.
“Well, I am still waiting to see what comes of that,” Robert said with a tense smile.
“I went to the police after I was th
reatened,” Clara explained to him. “I was shown a book with photographs of convicted criminals in it, in case the man who threatened me was in there. I didn’t find him, but I came across your picture. You were with the Seashore Boys.”
Robert gave a snort of laughter.
“For my sins,” he said. “They cost me years of my life, rotting away in prison while my wife and mother did the best they could to survive without me. I only ran with them because it was safer to work with them, than stand against them.”
“You know about gangs, Robert,” Clara said quietly. “You know how they operate. Why aren’t you working with this new gang?”
“Because I am honest now,” Robert said with a growl. “I learned the hard way where gangs take you. I don’t intend to ever go back to prison.”
“But you know about this new gang? You are prepared to defy them.”
Robert turned his head away and stared at the bed, as if there was something there that had caught his attention. When he looked back his face was grim.
“I keep out of their business, that’s for the best. They want the alleys to themselves, so be it.”
“What do they want the alleys for?” Clara asked.
Robert shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t ask, and I don’t look.”
“Then why did you go out the other night and help my friend?” Clara demanded. “You must have known he had stumbled onto the gang’s turf and paid the price?”
Robert had crossed his arms over his chest and hunched his shoulders. He was a man who was used to keeping quiet and minding his own business, but something had come over him the other day, some element of pity and empathy that had forced him to face his own anxieties. He had been holding his tongue and staying out of the way, but it had tested his patience and pride. It had rankled to be obeying some gang, most of whom were too young to remember the Seashore Boys and what they stood for. Robert might have his regrets, but he had never forgotten how it felt to have that power behind you, to be part of something that others feared and respected. Now he had no power and it nipped at him, nipped like the cold of a January morning and sapped his soul.
“Sometimes, you have to do things,” he said. “It was a split-second decision.”
Robert huffed.
“I had a brother, you know? Younger than me. One day he stumbled onto a rival gang and they went for him. He never was the brightest, always in the wrong places at the wrong times. They beat him up and left him for dead. He crawled along the ground down an alley, calling desperately for help. But no one came out to him, they were all too afraid to interfere,” Robert met Clara’s eyes. “He was just alive when a police constable heard him calling and found him. It was too late. He died on the way to the hospital. The doctors said to my mother, if only he had been found a little sooner they might have saved him.
“Do you know what a cruelty that is to say to a grieving mother? The Seashore Boys took it as an insult against them and a few nights later we raided our rivals’ territory and wiped them out. It was revenge, but it did not bring my brother back. It did not make me feel any better. I just kept thinking, if someone had had the guts to step out of their house and help him, my brother would have lived. He had done nothing, he was not even a part of the Seashore Boys. We never did figure out why he was in that alley that day.
“When I heard someone calling for help, it made me think of my brother. My mother said don’t go, and I found myself imagining that all those years ago, some other fellow was told the same by his mother or wife and left my brother to die. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t be that man and so I went outside.”
“You have earned my everlasting gratitude for that act of kindness,” Clara said, meaning every word.
Robert shrugged.
“Maybe I repaid a little debt to my brother that night. Maybe I salvaged a piece of my soul, or maybe I’ve sentenced us all to death.”
“These gangsters know you helped my friend?” Clara asked him.
“They saw me,” Robert answered, without appearing to be bothered by this statement. “When I went out my yard gate, one of the gang was coming towards your friend. He wasn’t hurrying, because his victim could not get away. I figured he was after the knife in your pal’s back. He stopped when he saw me. We met eyes and there was this moment he didn’t know what to do.
“You see, they know I was in a gang, they’ve heard whispered stories. They know I was in prison and that gives me a little clout around here. I keep out of their business and they leave me alone. In that instant, I was more of a problem than that knife in your friend’s back. I didn’t move or back down, and the other fellow did.”
A slight smile curled Robert’s lips.
“There is a rumour around the neighbourhood that I killed the leader of a rival gang back in the day. They say it was because he stopped my wife and threatened her. It was never proved I did it, but everyone knows. Actually, I’ve never killed anyone and that’s the truth.”
“But the rumour keeps you safe,” Clara understood.
“Yes,” Robert grinned at her. “It’s why I started it in the first place.”
Clara was amused at his cunning.
“Can you tell me anything about this gang?” She asked.
“Nothing, really,” Robert shook his head. “I have been keeping out of their way. I don’t need trouble and, on the whole, they have caused no real harm. People are scared, but people are always scared. This murder, that was different…”
Robert’s grin had gone.
“They had never killed before, at least, not in such a cold-blooded fashion. This takes things in a new direction and one I don’t like,” Robert became maudlin. “Once the killing begins, then no one is safe. This can’t go on, something must be done.”
“Are you aware that a number of individuals who used to live in this neighbourhood and who were known to the police for minor criminal offences, have disappeared?”
“No,” Robert replied. “I don’t mix with those people, but it doesn’t surprise me. Whoever runs this gang is paranoid about being seen and about being caught. Makes sense he would get rid of anyone who might grass on him, given the chance.”
“What of the woman who died? Has anyone said who she was?”
Robert sucked in his lips and became quiet. Clara guessed he knew something, but he was debating what to say. He finally spoke up.
“There are always rumours, but you can’t rely on them being true. You might like to ask at a boarding house down by the docks called the Sailor’s Rest. People say the woman was known there, that she went by the name Rose Red, but that’s all. What she was doing here I don’t know.”
“Thank you,” Clara told him warmly. “You have been of far greater help than you realise.”
Robert snorted.
“Let’s hope we both don’t come to regret it.”
Chapter Nineteen
Clara decided to take some time in the morning to go back to the Institute and interview some of the academics. She had considered passing the task to Tommy, he was keen to keep on the case, but she wasn’t sure Professor Montgomery would be pleased if he discovered she was not personally questioning his colleagues. Clara compromised by promising Tommy that once she had finished at the Institute, they would head together to the docks to track down the Sailor’s Rest. There was still no news from Colonel Brandt on the possible owner of the knife, which meant they had only one lead in the matter of the murder in the alley.
“I’ve spoken to the bursar and the librarian,” Clara explained to Tommy as she left for the Institute. “They both firmly believe in this box containing prophecies. Professor Montgomery said he would compile a list of other members of staff who were contemporary with Professor Lynch and leave it for me at the porter’s office. After twenty years, the list is not likely to be long.”
Clara was right. When the porter grudgingly moved from his chair in his office and retrieved the list, it contained only two extra names. One was for a
lecturer and the other for the head porter at the Institute. Clara decided to start with him first.
“Where would I find the Head Porter?” She asked the ordinary porter in his office.
“This time of day, probably doing his rounds of the staff quarters, ensuring all is well,” the man said. “What do you want with him?”
“Just a quick word,” Clara said. “Shall I just pop upstairs?”
She knew the presumptuous remark would instantly ruffle the porter’s feathers.
“Certainly not! Staff quarters are off-limits to anyone who is not a staff member!” He said fiercely. “I shall let the Head Porter know you wish to see him. Professor Montgomery has said I must accede to your every request, more’s the pity.”
“Really?” Clara said in delight. “Every request?”
The porter narrowed his eyes at her, indicating what he thought to her jest and reminding her she wasn’t to take liberties. He was like so many low-level little men who worked in colleges and universities – given an ounce of power, he clung to it vehemently and with a pugnacious dedication. It made him slightly obnoxious.
However, the porter did manage to get a message to his superior and half-an-hour later he appeared to talk with Clara. He motioned for her to join him in an empty side-room where they could speak in peace.
“How may I help?” He asked Clara.
“I am talking to everyone who knew Professor Lynch,” Clara explained. “I believe you were a porter here in his day?”
“I was,” the Head Porter admitted. “I was just a young man then. Is this about his box?”
“It is,” Clara said.
“Everyone has been talking about a young lady going about the Institute, asking questions concerning the box that has just appeared in the library,” the Head Porter replied.
“What do you make of the box and its supposed contents?” Clara asked.
The Head Porter became stoical.
“It is not my place to question what the senior staff do,” he said, slightly snootily.
