Last Nocturne

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The constable remembered in the nick of time to keep his voice down. ‘He was wet, sir, and partially clothed …’

  ‘Having dragged a body from the lake.’ Metcalfe still was moderately patient, but Barnes knew this wouldn’t last much longer.

  ‘Well, yes, but …’

  Metcalfe decided to jump a stage or two. ‘So, as you were in the station, filling out the form to explain why you have arrested a perfectly innocent – nay, I would go further, unusually altruistic – member of the public, a Mrs Penrose of Cheyne Walk, finding the gate of the Gardens inexplicably unlocked, decided to go for a late-night stroll to ameliorate her incipient indigestion, stumbled upon – and I use the phrase advisedly, you understand – a dead body lying halfway across the path around the lake.’

  Barnes looked with sympathy on the bobby standing there. When Metcalfe’s sentences became as involved as this, with long words thrown in for good measure, someone’s head was going to roll.

  ‘Well?’

  The policeman had forgotten the question, but was pretty sure what answer was expected. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right.’ Metcalfe relaxed his fingers and flexed his elbows. ‘Now bugger off and ruin someone else’s night.’ He sighed. ‘Barnes, is anyone there with the body?’

  ‘Sergeant Simmons, sir.’

  ‘Of course. Does that man never sleep?’

  ‘He likes the overtime, sir, as I understand it.’

  ‘Overtime?’ Metcalfe did a double take which would have got a round of applause in any music hall in the city. ‘We get overtime?’

  And reaching for his hat, he left the room with Barnes in hot pursuit.

  Sergeant Simmons was standing like an ox in the furrow on the path by the body. Harry Brownthorne was sitting on the nearby bench, soaked from the waist down but now at least reunited with his coat, socks and shoes. He was shivering in the little wind which he had welcomed earlier but now wished in Hell. Simmons was rocking back and forth, toes to heels, and was humming a little tune to himself under his breath. He actually didn’t like bodies very much, but they seemed to be everywhere he went just lately.

  ‘So,’ he turned his head towards the park keeper, ‘you just found her, then. On the bank.’

  ‘No, I did not!’ snapped Brownthorne. ‘She was in the water, wasn’t she? Thought she was a swan, didn’t I?’ He was getting tired of telling it and the knowledge that his bubble and squeak would now be just a fragrant memory – eaten by his wife as vengeance for his late arrival home – only added to his annoyance.

  ‘So, you dragged her to the bank?’

  ‘Of course I did. Look.’ Brownthorne was as fed up as a soaking-wet park keeper still at work four hours after he clocked off could possibly be. ‘I’m not saying another word until a proper policeman gets here.’

  Simmons had no argument with that. He did his job, put in his time and had an eye on a nice little pub somewhere in the country when it was all done and dusted. Mrs Simmons’s dad had one, out in Kent, and that would do nicely. He carried on rocking back and forth and could have gone on all night, had Metcalfe and Barnes not loomed out of the dusk.

  ‘Simmons.’ Metcalfe didn’t waste much time on subordinates. ‘What have we got here, then?’

  ‘A body.’ Simmons didn’t waste much time either. ‘Sir.’

  Metcalfe narrowed his eyes, a wasted gesture in the almost total dark. ‘Anyone we know?’

  Simmons shuffled his feet. ‘She does look a bit familiar, sir, but it’s hard to tell, with the wet and the duckweed and all. I was wondering … the Halls, perhaps?’

  ‘Well, with the Cremorne’s reputation, I would say she is a tart, surely?’ Barnes was getting quite au fait with the jargon. ‘Have you checked for …’ He paused. He would never forget what he found up the victim’s skirt last time.

  ‘I have,’ Simmons said. ‘All present and correct and nothing up there that shouldn’t be up there, if you follow. Her clothes are a bit’ – he waved a hand – ‘a bit arty. A bit farty, know what I mean? Not what you’d find on a lady of the night, nor a lady either. Just a bit …’

  ‘Calico,’ Brownthorne said. ‘Her dress is calico. And the lace is home-made. Tatting.’

  ‘You’re very well informed on ladies’ fashions,’ Barnes put in quickly. He was alert for this kind of thing now.

  ‘My missus works in Debenhams, sir,’ the park keeper said. ‘She works in the alterations department, but she sometimes brings work home when they’re busy. Calico and cotton tatting is all the rage, apparently, with what you might call the “arty set”. Some of them make their own, but them as can’t, well, my missus and the other girls at Debenhams does it for them.’

  ‘I see,’ Metcalfe said. ‘The arty set, you say. Not tarts, then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say so, sir. It comes a bit expensive; bespoke, you know. And I wouldn’t say that your average tart could be doing with all those frills and layers, would you?’ He gestured to where the body lay, in a positive tangle of fabric. ‘Not much chance of a quick over the head and do your business, is there?’

  Metcalfe looked at him suspiciously. ‘You sound a bit of an expert, lad,’ he remarked.

  ‘I haven’t always been married to Mrs Brownthorne,’ he said, drawing himself up. ‘I was quite active, back in the day.’ He looked at Simmons. ‘He knows,’ he said. ‘Perks.’

  Metcalfe and Barnes looked at Simmons, who examined the dark horizon with great concentration.

  ‘And another thing,’ Brownthorne continued, ‘I reckon I know her as well. I’ve seen her face somewhere and if you give me a while, I’ll remember it, I’m sure. Got that kind of memory. Well, you have to, working the Gardens, keeping an eye out for troublemakers, that sort of thing. She’s not a tart, though, that I do know.’

  ‘You said.’ Metcalfe was bending over the body, looking at her with his head turned this way and that.

  ‘Because this is her book, I reckon.’

  Metcalfe got up slowly and turned, with Barnes and Simmons, to look at the man holding the volume out to them.

  ‘Book?’

  ‘Yes.’ Brownthorne looked from one face to the other. ‘Why? What?’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘Here, on this bench. It’s got a hankie in it, same tatting as on the bodice.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Simmons said to no one in particular. ‘I think they should bring in a law. Everybody finding a body ought to be an expert on tatting.’

  ‘That’s enough, Simmons.’ Metcalfe reached out for the book. He turned it into the beam of Simmons’s bullseye. ‘King of the Golden …’ He peered closer. ‘I can’t read this last word. The writing’s all curly.’

  ‘King of the Golden River,’ Barnes said. ‘I had a copy when I was very young.’

  Simmons thought to himself that that could have been as recently as last week.

  ‘It’s a children’s book, but quite hard to understand. My sister liked it more than I did.’

  Metcalfe was leafing through the book, peering at the rather scratchy illustrations. ‘Who’s it by?’ he asked.

  Simmons tried to look intelligent, but Barnes beat him to the tape.

  ‘John Ruskin,’ he said.

  ‘But I still don’t know why you’ve sent for me, Tom.’ Inspector Daddy Bliss wasn’t often to be found on dry land. The experience unnerved him.

  ‘Surely, I don’t have to paint you a picture, Dad.’ Metcalfe topped up Bliss’s rum toddy, early though it was. ‘The deceased was found in the water. Drowned. So naturally, I thought of you.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Bliss circled the body again, squinting down at the serene face before folding back the shroud. ‘But there are two things wrong with that. One, I am an inspector of the River Police, there being no such thing as the Lake Police. And two, she didn’t drown.’

  Metcalfe frowned. ‘She didn’t? What have I missed?’

  Bliss yawned. He didn’t know how long Metcalfe had got, so he came straight
to the point. ‘Look at the hands,’ he said. ‘No cadaveric spasm. No weed between the fingers or under the nails. When and if a doctor ever gets here, he’ll be able to check her lungs, but I’d be prepared to bet there’ll be no water in them.’

  ‘Oh.’ The nice little scenario that Inspector Tom Metcalfe had invented to explain away the latest problem had just floated out of the nick window and was, even now, drifting all the way down Walton Street. ‘What, then?’

  Daddy Bliss waggled his toddy glass to show that it was empty and Metcalfe did the honours. He checked the eyes, peeling back the lids and looked into the mouth. He ran his fingers through the hair. ‘No obvious signs of strangulation,’ he said. ‘At least not by ligature. The neck is bruise-free, although of course the water does funny things.’

  ‘How long had she been in the lake, would you say?’ Metcalfe asked.

  ‘About an hour, give or take.’ He lifted up the dead woman’s left arm. ‘Starting to stiffen,’ he noted. ‘Allowing for the action of the water, which interferes with the cooling and also the rigor mortis, she could have died as early as nine or ten last night. Or four hours ago. Whatever fits with the facts, really.’ Time of death was never an exact science, and Daddy always used to tell his rookies that the only way you could ever be sure when someone died was if you had shot them in the head yourself and then checked your watch immediately. He peered at the head again, lit as it was by Metcalfe’s desk lamp, brought down to the makeshift mortuary for the purpose. ‘No contusions. So, no ubiquitous blunt object.’ He turned the girl over onto her side. ‘Bruising here,’ he pointed to her ribs. ‘Where was she found, again?’

  ‘In the big lake at the Cremorne.’

  ‘The one with the jetty, pond yachts for the use of?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That’s a squarish bruise. I’d say she hit the jetty on her way in.’

  ‘Still alive?’ Metcalfe checked.

  ‘Marginally,’ Bliss said. ‘But I doubt she gulped any water. As I said, the doctor can tell you.’ He rolled the woman back on the table that doubled as a makeshift mortuary slab and, as gently as he could, prised open her legs. ‘Nothing obviously untoward down there,’ he said. ‘So, not a sex fiend.’

  ‘Could be poison, then?’ Matcalfe queried.

  ‘Could be,’ Bliss nodded. ‘Not exactly my area of expertise. Have you had others, then?’

  ‘We have,’ Metcalfe told him. ‘Cyanide, to be exact.’

  Bliss nodded.

  ‘What do you make of this, Dad?’ Metcalfe passed Bliss a piece of paper with three book titles written on it in Barnes’s best copperplate.

  Bliss looked at it and handed it back. ‘What is it?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Book titles,’ Metcalfe said. ‘One was found near bodies in the Cremorne recently – the first one eighteen months ago, the second just the other week and the final one last night, near this poor girl.’

  Bliss read them aloud. ‘Moby Dick, Fruits of Philosophy, King of the Golden River.’

  ‘Do you know them?’

  ‘Nah,’ Bliss shrugged. ‘To be honest, Tom, if it’s not tides and wind velocity, I’m not that interested. Let me have another look.’

  Metcalfe passed it back.

  ‘First one’s about a whale, isn’t it?’

  Metcalfe nodded.

  ‘Mrs Bliss gave me a copy, now I remember, one Christmas. I suppose she thought I would be interested, what with there being boats and all. But I couldn’t get on with it.’

  Metcalfe had tried a few pages with the same effect. ‘Somebody’s sending a message, Daddy – I just don’t know what.’

  ‘It’s a mystery all right,’ Bliss agreed. ‘Funny it’s her, though.’

  ‘What is?’ Metcalfe blinked. ‘Who is?’

  ‘The deceased,’ Bliss said, as though to the village idiot. ‘The lady in question.’

  Metcalfe still looked nonplussed.

  ‘This one,’ Bliss pointed at her. ‘She’s that woman – you know, off of the soap advertisement.’

  Mrs Rackstraw sometimes wondered where it would all end. One thing she had always been able to say about her gentlemen was that they always made a good breakfast. She had always maintained that it was the most important meal of the day and she made sure it was substantial; kedgeree, kippers, kidneys – all the kays were the secret of a happy day. And now, twice in a few days, they had gone out without so much as a kup of koffee. She wouldn’t mind, were it not for one thing; her hatred of waste meant that nothing went in the swill bin that could be eaten. And so, she and Maisie sat forcing down a breakfast meant for two working gentlemen. As Maisie ate approximately enough to keep a very slender sparrow alive, Mrs Rackstraw was finding the going tough. She had already had to let her stays out a notch; this couldn’t go on. She would either have to cut down on the breakfast comestibles – and something deep in her soul made that next to impossible – or she would have to speak to her gentlemen. They needed to be told.

  Speaking for herself, Maisie blamed that Lady Caroline, stuck-up madam. When Mr Matthew saw sense and recognized Maisie’s inner beauty and married her, then all would be well. Until then, she picked at a kipper and wished the entire Arbroath fishing fleet to hell.

  Grand and Batchelor had just turned the corner into Walton Street when they almost collided with a very large policeman they thought they knew.

  ‘Mr Grand. Mr Batchelor.’ He tipped his hat.

  The pair did likewise. ‘Inspector Bliss,’ Grand said, ‘You’re a long way from the river.’

  ‘Ah, no one’s ever that far from the river,’ Bliss smiled. ‘Not in London.’

  ‘What brings you to Chelsea?’ Batchelor asked.

  Bliss looked at him. The simple answer was a cab. The complex answer was that his old mucker Tom Metcalfe had called him in to discuss nefarious activities in the Cremorne. Neither of these concerned Grand and Batchelor, enquiry agents of the private persuasion as they were.

  ‘Nefarious activities in the Cremorne,’ Bliss said. To his dying day, he didn’t know why he had blurted that out, but he did.

  ‘Told you,’ Grand said to Batchelor. ‘Wouldn’t have anything to do with a potential madman running around barefoot, would it?’

  Bliss narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you boys know?’ he asked.

  ‘Buy us breakfast and we’ll tell you,’ Batchelor said.

  ‘No,’ Bliss insisted. ‘You buy me breakfast and I’ll tell you.’

  So, the Inglenook it was, an elderly chophouse off the King’s Road that had seen better days, but their bacon and sausages were to die for. Because of their differences over scrambled eggs, Grand and Batchelor opted for the poached. The aproned waitress who served them was fairly appalled that Bliss had both, with a hard-boiled one on the side for afters.

  ‘You first,’ Bliss said, piling sugar into his tea.

  Grand and Batchelor looked at each other. Then Batchelor shrugged and took up the tale. After all, the agents knew no more than the reporters who had covered the crimes and probably a great deal less than the average London bobby.

  ‘Two women and a man,’ he said, ‘all found dead in the Cremorne, one eighteen months ago, the others in less than two weeks.’

  ‘So I believe.’ Bliss was dunking his toast into the poached egg.

  ‘The women were ladies of the night. The man was …’

  ‘… also a lady of the night,’ Bliss finished the sentence for him.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Grand said, sipping his coffee.

  ‘Cause of death, we’re not sure at the moment, but it looks like cyanide poisoning.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Bliss had waited for more, but nothing was forthcoming.

  ‘More or less,’ Batchelor said. ‘Except that the man – Anstruther Peebles – obviously doesn’t fit the pattern, being of the male persuasion, I mean.’

  ‘Dressed as a harlot, though,’ Bliss commented. ‘Why was that, do you reckon?’

  ‘Peculiar,
’ said Batchelor.

  ‘Not as other night-walkers, that’s for sure,’ Grand nodded.

  ‘So, was he killed as a case of mistaken identity?’ Bliss asked.

  ‘Unlikely.’ Grand chewed his toast. ‘If the modus operandi was different – if our boy, if it is a boy – struck from behind with a knife or a blunt instrument, I’d say, yes, maybe. But poison … that takes a little while, if only to be administered.’

  ‘So the motive’s different,’ Bliss ventured.

  ‘We’d say so.’ Batchelor called the waitress for more tea.

  Again, Bliss was waiting for more information. There wasn’t any. ‘What is it, then?’ he felt obliged to ask.

  Grand leaned forward. ‘What if … what if our friend is some sort of glorified park attendant, cleaning the Gardens up, not of litter or leaf mould but what he sees as human detritus?’

  ‘Funny you should bring up park attendants,’ Bliss said. ‘When we met half an hour ago, Mr Grand, you mentioned a barefoot lunatic. I assume you saw such a person.’

  ‘I did,’ Grand assured him. ‘I was, as you guys say, walking in an easterly direction when he came hurtling out of the Cremorne. Rattled the lady I was with.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Bliss said. ‘Metcalfe tells me his name is Brownthorne and he’s one of the Cremorne groundsmen.’

  ‘What was his problem?’

  ‘Touch of arthritis, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Daddy Bliss knew all about the risks of working in a damp environment. ‘Scooping up leaves in all weathers. But specifically, in this instance, he’d found a body.’

  ‘Aha!’ Batchelor clicked his fingers.

  ‘It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. In the case of the Standard, this evening.’

  ‘Come on, Daddy,’ Batchelor growled. ‘We haven’t forked out a small fortune on your breakfast to get the fob-off. You’ll be telling us next you couldn’t possibly divulge.’

  Bliss laughed, a rare sound for him as it turned out. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘To quote what I suspect will be the Standard’s headline “There’s been another one”.’