by Alex Reeve
For Seth and Caleb
ALSO BY ALEX REEVE
The House on Half Moon Street
Contents
Also by Alex Reeve
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Author
Also available by Alex Reeve
1
I met Dora Hannigan just once, on a Saturday afternoon in March, when the rain was coming down so hard outside I could barely see across the street. She pushed open the door of the pharmacy and came in, ushering two soaked and shivering children in front of her, their clothes clinging to their skin. The boy knelt by the hearth, his jacket sleeves rucked up on his wrists like an accordion, and his younger sister copied him, her fingers wriggling in the warmth.
I went back to my book, not paying them much attention, assuming they were simply sheltering from the weather. But after a while, I noticed the mother throwing glances in my direction. She produced a hand mirror from her bag, turning from side to side and straightening her hat, but I could see her face reflected and that meant she could see mine too.
‘Let me know if you need any help,’ I said.
‘I will,’ she replied, with a hint of an accent I couldn’t place.
The little girl grew bored and clambered on to the dentistry chair, picking at the leather with her fingernails and surveying the room like a queen who’d inherited the throne too young.
‘What’s this for?’ she asked.
She couldn’t have been more than seven years old, but she was unusually confident, demanding answers from an adult man she didn’t know.
I put down my book and came out from behind the counter. Her mother’s gaze followed me.
‘You see this?’ I crouched down and indicated the pump mechanism. ‘It makes the drill go round and round, so you can mend people’s teeth.’
The little girl grinned, showing me her own, milky white and missing a couple at the front. She slid off the chair and started pushing on the pump with her foot, giggling as the drill danced and rattled in its holder.
I could understand her curiosity – I would have been the same at her age – but Alfie wouldn’t thank me if he came home to find his precious chair damaged, so I steered her back next to her brother.
‘Don’t be difficult,’ he hissed at her, his mouth fixed in a hard line.
He shared his sister’s shock of black, curly hair and dark eyes, but not her pleasant disposition. The little girl made a face at him and squirmed closer to the fire, blowing on the cinders to make them glow and crackle.
Their mother watched them with a thoughtful stillness. A drop of rainwater fell from the hem of her sleeve on to the floor. She shook herself – a rapid, impatient movement – and turned to me.
‘I’d like some bromide, if you have it,’ she said. ‘But I can only afford sixpence. How much will that buy?’
I searched along the shelf until I found a half-full jar of the stuff: bromide of potash. I was no expert. It looked exactly like salt to me.
‘One ounce.’
I was weighing it out when she spoke again. ‘If I might have four ounces, or five, I’ll return tomorrow with more money.’
‘Do you have credit here?’
She shook her head. ‘Not at present.’
‘Then I’m afraid I can’t make that arrangement. You’ll have to come back later and speak to the owner.’
I was only filling in as a favour to Alfie, my landlord and the proprietor of the establishment, who was out with his friend, as he described Mrs Gower. He’d said he would be back shortly after lunch, but the clock had already struck three and there was no sign of him. I didn’t mind. I had nothing better to do, and his twelve-year-old daughter Constance always remembered a pressing engagement whenever he wanted to spend time with Mrs Gower.
‘If you would be prepared to extend me credit on your own authority, I’ll pay you double tomorrow. That’s a profit of two and six. You’d have the option of keeping it for yourself, of course.’
I must admit I was surprised, and considerably insulted. Did she really think I would betray Alfie’s trust so easily?
‘No, I can’t do that. Would you still like the one ounce?’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Yes please.’
I put her sixpence into the money drawer and thrust the bromide into her hand. She took it with a nod, which I didn’t return.
As they were leaving, she looked back, meeting me straight in the eyes. ‘You’re an honest person,’ she said.
I wasn’t sure whether she meant it as a compliment or not.
I gave them no more thought for the next few days. Every morning, I went to work as a porter at St Thomas’s Hospital and every evening I came home. Once a week I played chess. Some might call it predictable, or even monotonous, but I was content. I had experienced excitement before and wanted nothing more of it.
I was therefore quite perturbed when, arriving back from work on the following Thursday, I was met at the pharmacy door by Constable Pallett. He was younger than me, but larger in every dimension, with a soft, gentle face and fists like the great, iron cleats on the docks.
‘Mr Stanhope,’ he greeted me, with his usual unbending courtesy, like a bank manager about to foreclose.
‘What can I do for you, Constable?’
I was keeping my voice steady, but it was always in my head, that thought: am I discovered? Is this the moment?
I unlocked the door and he followed me inside, removing his helmet, which would otherwise have scraped the ceiling.
‘It’s a delicate matter, sir. We’d like your help, if you don’t mind.’
‘With what?’
I was watching him carefully. His boots were caked with mud and his jacket was streaked as if he’d wiped his grubby hands down it. But he was perfectly at ease, idly rocking Alfie’s new scales with one finger.
‘It’s a curiosity and no mistake.’ I had the feeling he was quoting someone else. ‘Detective Inspector Hooper’s in charge.’
‘I don’t know him. Is he a good man?’
‘He was hoping you might be able to shed some light on an occurrence.’
I noted that he hadn’t answered my question. And an ‘occurrence’ could mean almost anything: a ship sunk, a loved one murdered, a brawl in a bar, a pair of gloves borrowed and not returned.
‘What’s happened?’
‘He asked me not to divulge any details, sir. He said he wants to see your natural reaction without the benefit of prior notice, as it were. He was very insistent on the point.’
‘And if I refuse?’
He looked surprised. ‘A crime has been committed. It’s best you come with me.’
We headed north through Soho, Pallett striding resolutely along the pavement and tipping his helmet to the people we passed. I noticed them eyeing me, probably wondering why I was scurrying along behind a policeman. Was I a victim or a suspect? I couldn’t have told them. I had the urge to slow down, take a side street and run. I had done it before.
‘Where are we going?’<
br />
‘Rose Street, sir.’
I knew it a little from the pub at the entrance, which had been built around the street and over it, creating a passageway through the building itself. Alfie drank there often and had once persuaded me to join him and his old army comrades. They welcomed me warmly and wouldn’t permit me to buy a round, gathering together so tightly our shoulders were touching. They took turns telling stories, which they clearly all knew by heart, of their time overseas, and then laughed and threw back their ales.
I left early. I didn’t want any new friends.
Pallett and I reached Rose Street and instinctively ducked as we entered the passageway, stepping between the drunks and vagrants crammed in like baby mice. On the other side, the sunken road was flooded by a brown, muddy lake that seeped into my socks through the holes in my shoes. High on one wall, an artisan’s symbol had been sculpted in metal, a man’s arm holding a hammer, threatening to crush anyone who dared pass.
I couldn’t imagine why I had been brought here. With a cramp in my stomach, I wondered if I was being called upon to identify the body of someone I knew, and immediately thought of Alfie and Jacob and then, because my mind always turned towards the blackest of outcomes, Constance.
It couldn’t be so. Why would any of them be here, in this street? And if they were, why would I be called upon first? They had families of their own.
Pallett stopped at number 6, an unremarkable door, slightly ajar, next to a shuttered window. I could hear noises within; the hushed, insistent tones of people who were frightened and trying to decide what to do about it.
He pushed open the door and went inside, but I hesitated on the step, my palms itching.
‘Mr Stanhope?’ he called over his shoulder. ‘This way, sir.’
The narrow hallway was dark and crowded with people, mostly tradesmen and a few women, dressed simply and respectably. The wall was hung with advertisements for events and speakers, but I couldn’t read their names in the half-dark. We passed rooms on the left and right, one filled with beds and another laid out for a meeting, the table piled with papers and pamphlets.
At the end, a back door opened into a sheltered courtyard where oil lamps had been hung from wooden stairs, hissing and flickering. It wasn’t raining, but everything was wet, as if the sun never found its way down between the buildings.
A group of five or six men were standing in a circle, and one of them, with his right hand in his baggy suit pocket and the other scratching his unkempt beard, squinted in my direction. His face was ashen. Another fellow touched his elbow, an attempt to comfort him, but he barely seemed to notice. I realised with a prickle of blood in my cheeks that I knew him. Or I had known him, a long time ago. I had no desire to meet him again.
Of course, he couldn’t possibly remember me; I was so changed.
‘Over here, Mr Stanhope,’ said Pallett, and led me towards the centre of the courtyard.
A tall fellow with a long nose came towards us, picking his way through the shallows like a fastidious heron.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Hooper,’ he said, in an accent that one born in the slums might consider upper class, but, to one familiar with the upper class – my father’s small-town ministry reached all kinds – sounded merely affected.
I glanced at Pallett, whose expression was blank.
‘Why am I here?’
‘A tragedy, a crime and, may I say, a curiosity.’ Hooper rubbed his hands together and grinned, showing me an expensively assembled row of teeth. ‘Come and see for yourself.’
I followed him towards the gaggle of men, who dispersed as we approached. One of them, with heavy whiskers and a blunt, bullish face, was writing in a notebook. He nodded to me, but I took no notice. I was more concerned with what they had been looking at.
It was a grave, of a sort, but no more than two feet deep, dug roughly out of the earth and sodden. A woman was lying within, eyes closed, her hair fanning out on the surface of the water. Her lips were dark, and her skin was grey and bloated. At her chest, an inch below her breastbone, a fierce rip in her blouse was marked by a bloodstain blossoming like a red water lily. I recognised her at once as the woman who had come into the pharmacy, who had purchased bromide but had seemed more interested in me.
Having spent two years as the secretary to a surgeon, I had seen hundreds of corpses – crushed, knifed, poisoned, beaten and drowned – but it was still shocking to see someone in death whom I had met in life.
‘Stabbed in the gut,’ stated Hooper in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Her name’s Dora Hannigan. Did you know her?’
‘No. Why have you asked me to come here?’
Of course, I didn’t know her. Not really. Meeting someone once isn’t knowing them, and I didn’t want anything to do with this. I wanted to go home and eat Constance’s attempt at stew and sip a glass of Alfie’s whisky and read my book by my bedroom window. Even so, something chafed inside me. My denial somehow made her seem more dead.
‘Interesting.’ He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘This was in her purse.’
He turned it round to show me, and I was amazed to read my name and address, written in a neat, flowing hand. Apparently, this woman, Dora Hannigan, hadn’t come in simply to buy an ounce of bromide or escape the storm; she had sought me out by name. And yet she hadn’t given me any indication of it at the time; she hadn’t introduced herself or asked who I was.
Why had she walked through my door that day, so shortly before her death? No, before her murder.
‘I told you, I don’t know her.’
Hooper nodded. I had the impression he wanted me to think he believed me, though I was certain he didn’t.
‘Have you been here before?’
‘No, never.’
He sniffed and surveyed the courtyard, which was narrower than the buildings were tall, lending it an ecclesiastical air.
‘These people call it a club,’ he said with a sneer. ‘They’re radicals and anarchists, planning an end to all that’s proper and industrious. Scoundrels, the lot of ’em.’
He didn’t seem to care that the men sitting on the steps were well within earshot, hats in their hands and heads lowered, or that the woman leaning on the balustrade above us was humming ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’, her expression peaceful even as her tears fell.
There was no sign of Mrs Hannigan’s children. I wondered where they were. But I couldn’t ask Hooper about them now, not after saying I didn’t know their mother.
I felt another pinch of guilt.
‘It doesn’t look as though anything was stolen,’ I said. ‘She still has her necklace and shoes.’
‘Nothing was stolen as far as we know,’ Hooper admitted. ‘If you don’t mind me making the observation, Mr …’ He waved a hand trying to remember my name. I didn’t help him. ‘You don’t sound very shocked. Most people would be highly disturbed to see something like this.’
I realised why he’d brought me here with such secrecy. He thought Dora Hannigan and I had known each other, that I had killed her and, on seeing my handiwork so exposed, would break down in tears and admit my guilt. He was disappointed by my sanguinity.
‘I work in a hospital. Not much disturbs me any more. Can I go now?’
I was regretting coming to this place with Pallett. I risked a glance towards the man I had recognised from before, but he had his back to me, fidgeting and moving his weight from foot to foot as if unable to keep still. I was still staring at him as he turned, and I only just averted my eyes in time. Had I learned nothing?
‘She was unmarried,’ Hooper continued, not answering my question. ‘But she wasn’t a prostitute as far as we can tell.’
‘Why would you think she was?’
‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ He scowled at the men on the steps, and one of them, with a bald head and hard eyes, scowled right back, unblinking. ‘If it’s not robbery, it’s usually the other thing. Maybe she’s someone’s mistress. Crime of passion. Are you married?’
‘No. And crimes of passion are generally more …’ I struggled for the word, staring down at her. In the meagre lamplight she looked as if she’d been set in amber. ‘They’re more savage. They’re messy and it shows on the deceased. This is too clean. Will you be sending the body to a surgeon?’
Hooper smoothed his moustache. ‘What’s the point? The cause of death is obvious.’
‘Perhaps. Is there blood on her back as well?’
The detective nodded at Pallett, who sighed deeply and crouched down beside the hole, collapsing its edges and submerging his boots in mud. He took her arm and pulled her on to her side, so her face lolled under the water. I had the urge to beg him to let her fall back, so she could breathe, but of course that was foolishness.
Her dress was torn to the right of her spine. Whatever had been used to stab her was long and sharp, going all the way through.
‘A sword perhaps,’ said Hooper. He made a thrusting motion with an imaginary weapon. ‘Do you own a sword?’
‘No, of course not. Is there another way into the courtyard, other than the way we came?’
Pallett pointed towards the darkest corner. ‘There’s a back gate.’
‘Why do you want to know?’ asked Hooper, with a note of irritation.
‘She may have been killed somewhere else and brought here.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I doubt that. Someone in this midden is the killer. Stands to reason.’
I fetched one of the lamps and squatted beside her, studying the tiny lines around her eyes, the long-healed scar on her jawline. I couldn’t understand how anyone could take another person’s life this way. Still, I told myself, I had examined hundreds of corpses before, and always with the same aim: to find out how they had died. It was all I could do for her now.
Her clothes were all in place, so she was spared that, at least. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, memories pulling at me. The courtyard spun and slowly settled.
‘There are no signs of a struggle,’ I said.
Hooper pursed his lips, embarrassed to be hanging on the words of a man he’d brought here as a suspect. ‘She couldn’t fend him off, could she? Just a woman.’
