Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders

by Mick Finlay

  She took in a big draught of air. ‘Because we’re Africans, Mr Fowler,’ she said in a great outbreath.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said the guvnor.

  ‘Don’t you know what happens in your empire, William?’ she demanded.

  ‘Well… I—’

  ‘Every year the government of Natal gives your people more of the good land so there’s less for us. Not enough for all of us to live on – us, who were there before you came, and that’s on top of all the problems with rinderpest and locusts we’ve had over the last few years. Every year more of our men must leave their homesteads to find work. Most of the jobs are in the mines, and who owns those?’ She paused for a moment, looking back at Fowler. ‘Your people. Many men die there. The pay’s low, the hours are long, and the workers must live in compounds with guards. If they want to leave they’re arrested. If an African breaks a contract or refuses when a white man offers work, he’s put in prison. S’bu was five months in Cinderella prison because he wouldn’t take a job in the mines when an agent asked him. He’s fourteen, for goodness’ sake! Senzo’s been in that prison three times. Musa was flogged for not giving the Bayede salute to a road inspector.’

  The guvnor shook his head. ‘Is it really that bad?’

  Musa nodded. ‘Very bad,’ he said softly.

  ‘You don’t know the native laws, do you?’ asked Thembeka. Senzo and S’bu were watching: they could see from her face and the quiet anger in her voice she was talking of home. ‘British laws that are only for Africans. The Masters and Servants Laws. The Pass Laws. The Compound Laws. The authorities love to make laws for us. Half our men have been in prison, and most of them more than once. Some of our men have been flogged so many times their backs are like lizard skin. Why would we want to go back? What life is there ahead for a boy like S’bu? We’re slaves in our own land. Here there are no Pass Laws, no Servant Laws. It doesn’t make any sense, but we’re more free here than in Africa.’

  ‘But life’s hard here too,’ said Fowler. ‘Life’s always hard when you’re poor.’

  Thembeka just stared at him.

  ‘Where’s your homestead?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘Now? On a scrap of poor land in a place called Lower Tugela. The authorities moved us from our place and gave it to white settlers. Half of my people had to leave to find work in the mines and docks.’

  Senzo and Musa stiffened, their eyes growing cold as they watched her.

  ‘In Zululand?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘In Natal. We’re amaQwabe. On the other side of the river.’

  ‘Why does it say in the paper you’re Zulus?’

  She clicked her tongue. ‘We’re all Zulus to you.’

  ‘You said before that you were six when you left?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘Six, yes. Could I ask for some of your tobacco, William?’

  The guvnor held out his pouch and she packed her long-stemmed pipe. He lit a match for her. ‘Why so young?’ he asked.

  ‘My family needed money, so an agent brought me and my sister to Johannesburg to serve with the Sinclairs, the family I told you about.’

  ‘And you left that job to come here?’

  She shook her head. ‘When Mistress Ann died, the master had a new wife. She took against us and turned us out. We found work selling beer.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Sixteen, seventeen. We did that for a few years, then we started brewing our own isishimiyana. We didn’t like working for other people.’

  ‘Isishimiyana,’ said Musa softly. His eyes gleamed.

  ‘It’s beer and sugarcane liquor,’ Thembeka explained. ‘I don’t think you have it here?’

  ‘No,’ said the guvnor, ‘though I’d certainly like to try it.’

  ‘You’d like it,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘He would,’ I said.

  ‘You left your sister there?’ asked the guvnor.

  Thembeka swallowed, then quickly took a draw on her pipe. She shook her head, her eyes rising to the ceiling. ‘Cholera took her two years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She seemed to lose herself in thought for a few moments. Then she asked: ‘What about you, William? How long have you been an investigative agent?’

  ‘Only seven or eight years. I was a newspaperman before that. I must say I’m sorry to hear about your homestead, Thembeka. I truly am.’

  ‘It’s a crime,’ she said, blowing out a deal of smoke. Her brow drew down. ‘But they wouldn’t make a colonial law to stop that, would they? Don’t you read about what they’re doing in the newspapers?’

  ‘The Society tries to keep up,’ said Mrs Fowler. ‘But the empire seems to keep getting bigger every year.’

  ‘We do write reports,’ said Mr Fowler.

  ‘Ah,’ said Thembeka, raising her lip. ‘Reports.’

  After a few minutes, the guvnor turned to Fowler. ‘Will you continue to help them when we leave?’

  ‘I’m not, ah, at, at liberty to make any decisions without the committee,’ said Fowler, his eyes resting on S’bu, who was aiming his pistol at a pigeon outside the window. ‘I oughtn’t to have brought them here, really. Not, not without a full meeting.’

  ‘Then perhaps you could assemble the committee and decide,’ said the guvnor.

  As they talked, S’bu stared at his pistol. The pain that was in his eyes the first time we met was there, but his neck was taut, his hand shaking. Sensing me, he looked up. He put the gun in his pocket and smiled.

  ‘They’re busy gentlemen,’ said Fowler. ‘Some live a day away.’

  ‘Perhaps you could pay us for a few more days, then, sir,’ I suggested, putting my hand on S’bu’s hot shoulder.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly use more money without full committee consideration. Perhaps…’ He looked at his wife. ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘Perhaps you could go home and return tonight, Mr Barnett,’ said Mrs Fowler. ‘I assume the danger is at night rather than the day when the Capaldis would be seen? If you only come at night, might the two-day fee stretch to three nights?’

  The guvnor looked at me and shrugged.

  ‘Well, I suppose we could do that,’ I said, giving S’bu’s shoulder a squeeze and stepping away.

  ‘Yes, what a good idea, Margaret,’ said Fowler eagerly. ‘That would give the committee time to assemble.’

  ‘In that case we’ll go now,’ said the guvnor, collecting his hat and coat from the hooks by the door. ‘We’ll return at half-past five. Now remember, keep the door locked. Only let in members. And summon the committee immediately.’

  As I got on my coat, I met S’bu’s eyes. He raised both hands to show me they were empty; the pistol was back in his pocket.

  ‘Goodbye, sir,’ he said, and, with a smile, saluted.

  After arranging to meet later that day, we parted company at Trafalgar Square and I wandered back over Blackfriars Bridge. It was dry, a cold wind running up the brown river and filling the rusty sails of the barges as they cut through the water loaded with cargoes of coal and dung. I’d slept a bit on the Quaker floor, but my bones ached and I needed more. I turned down Southwark Street, heading to my new room.

  ‘Is that you, Norm?’ came a voice from the doorway of a pub on the corner.

  I turned.

  ‘It is you, mate,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Molly,’ I said, giving her a hug. ‘I thought you were living up north.’

  ‘I’m back now,’ she said, her smile falling away. She rubbed my arm. ‘I heard about Rita, Norm. I’m real sorry. I would’ve got in touch but I didn’t know where you were.’

  I nodded, watching the tears fill her eyes. Molly was my wife’s oldest friend: grew up in the same building with her in Bermondsey, went to school together and started work in Potts Vinegar factory the same day too. First time I met my Rita she was with Molly on a night out. But Rita had been dead a year and a half now, and I was about to face a second Christmas without her.

  ‘Whe
re are you living?’ I asked her.

  ‘Tabard Street with my sister. Working in here,’ she said, nodding at the pub behind her. She put a pipe to her mouth and took a puff. ‘Why don’t you come in and have a drink, eh?’

  The Pelican wasn’t a place I’d been in much. It was a bit bigger than a lot of them around the Borough, with a long counter and benches along the walls. A little coal fire heated the room, and keeping near it for warmth a good dozen men and women watched a game of dominoes. Molly got behind the bar and poured me a porter. I bought her a gin and water and we spent the next hour or so talking over old times. Though she was shorter and thinner, there was so much about her as reminded me of my Rita: the way she spoke, the things as made her laugh, the way she set her hair and flipped her fingers at me when I got saucy. After a couple of drinks it almost felt as if my old darling was there with us, and we began to talk about her passing, how it happened all of a sudden when she was away visiting her sister.

  ‘You’re still sad, mate,’ she said, with a gentle frown. ‘I can see it.’

  ‘Just don’t get the chance to talk about her much. Except with Sidney sometimes.’

  She smiled. ‘He still with Pearl?’

  ‘Still is.’

  ‘You two was suited better’n anyone back then. Everyone said so.’

  ‘We got on.’

  She laughed. ‘You got on. I was jealous of you two, d’you know that?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Thought I’d never find a bloke suited me so well as you and her. Least not from round here.’

  ‘That why you left?’

  She sighed and pushed her hair back. There was a little nick at the side of her nose that I was pretty sure wasn’t there back when I knew her. Like something done by a knife. ‘No,’ she said soft. ‘Just had an urge for going. See something new, you know?’

  I nodded, looking at her kind face and feeling warmed by it. ‘So, you got a bloke hanging around? You never had a shortage, did you, Molly?’

  She laughed and turned her head away.

  ‘Nobody special, Norm.’

  Her voice wavered, and I wondered what she was hiding. I bent over the bar and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

  ‘I got to go and get some kip afore work. It’s good to see you, Moll. Perhaps I’ll drop in here again, eh?’

  She tipped the gin down her throat and took a tankard from a woman who’d come over. ‘You better, Norm, else I’ll track you down.’

  ‘Might drop in tomorrow, then.’

  ‘You do that,’ she said, smiling to herself as she pulled the pump and the gush of black ale filled the woman’s battered tankard.

  Chapter Five

  It was six o’clock, and night had fallen over London. St Martin’s Lane was part blocked by two fire wagons, the buses and cabs toe to tail trying to get past. A smell of burning filled the air. An old fellow watching from the other side of the road told us there’d been a fire about midday.

  ‘Flames come out over the top there,’ he rasped, pointing at the printworks about two hundred yards down the road from the Quaker Meeting House. ‘There was an explosion like you never heard. Made the bloody ground shake and they all come rushing out, all a-screaming and a-whooping. Like the Great Fire, it were.’ He shook his head. ‘Twelve of them never got out. Last count was twelve anyways. Might be more.’

  The guvnor was staring at the crowd on the other side of the road. In the middle of the confusion, a woman was weeping, her face red and twisted. An older man held her to his chest. Another was arguing with a fire officer, pointing at the ruined entrance of the printworks. In the dark sky, you could just make out ribbons of a lighter dark rising to the clouds. A stream of people moved through the gaslit street, others stood about, getting in the way of the horses, their faces blackened, eyes wide with shock, asking questions to others who just shook their heads, their arms folded across their chests as the river of folk in thick coats and scarves surged past to the station. The guvnor took my hand as we moved through the mêlée to the Quaker Meeting House.

  ‘No lights, Norman,’ he said, hesitating before we crossed the road.

  ‘Maybe they’ve been moved.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  He let me step up to the door before him. It was only then I saw that one of the glass panes was bust, the broken pieces scattered on the floor inside. When I pushed at the door, it swung open. There was no sound inside. I took out my pistol and entered the dark lobby. There was just enough light from the street to see the long row of hooks held two coats: Fowler’s and his wife’s. A table on the other wall was stacked with tracts.

  Quiet as we could, we walked forward to the closed doors of the main meeting room, where we stood for a moment, listening. All we heard was a gurgle of pipes and the mutter of the street behind us.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked, looking back to make sure the guvnor had his gun.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  I raised my pistol and we stepped in.

  In the dim light of a single gas jet, I could see the blankets laid out where our friends had slept the night before. An overturned chair lay by the far window. The table stood in the middle. Then, in the shadows behind the chairs, I saw something else on the floor.

  We hurried over.

  It was Fowler, lying on his belly, his arms and legs out like a star.

  The guvnor dropped to his knees.

  ‘Sir!’ he said, shaking the man’s shoulder.

  The body barely moved. He turned Fowler onto his back, and we saw that his mouth was open, his eyes shut. ‘Sir!’ exclaimed the guvnor again.

  I felt for the pulse. Though his wrist was warm, there was nothing. The guvnor put his ear above the Quaker’s mouth, listening for life. Shaking his head, he checked the pulse in his neck, then sat back on his haunches. I moved around the room, turning on the other gas jets while the guvnor searched Fowler’s body. He found a bloody hole through his jacket and into his chest. ‘Looks like a bullet,’ he murmured.

  The basement door was ajar. Inside was a small, dark stairhead. I picked up a storm lamp from a corner and when I’d lit it the guvnor followed me down the stone steps to the little basement.

  It was there we found Musa. He lay sideways across a mattress on the floor, his head bent back, his mouth a mess of blood and bone. On the floor next to him was a hammer.

  ‘Musa!’ cried the guvnor, pushing past me and hurrying over to his friend. He fell to his knees, feeling for a pulse. ‘Musa, wake up!’

  The old fellow’s eyes were open. His lips were mangled and torn, his teeth shattered and broke. His wrists were tied behind his back with a cord, another binding his ankles and knees together.

  I undid his clothing, searching the body for more wounds. I found them on his neck: finger marks and bruising.

  ‘Been strangled,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘They hurt him first.’

  The guvnor took Musa’s hand and straightened the astrakhan coat he’d swapped with him. ‘Oh, what have they done to you?’ he said, brushing some mess from the lapels.

  For some time, he kneeled next to Musa’s body. I lifted the lamp and looked around the tiny basement. It was being used for storage: there was a pile of old curtains, a few broken chairs, a shelf of mouldy books and a stack of crates filled with empty bottles. Musa’s blankets were on the floor, next to a pickle jar full of dark piss.

  ‘We’ll find who did this to you, Musa,’ said the guvnor at last. ‘I promise.’

  We climbed back up and had another quick look around the meeting hall, then went out the side door. There was a small kitchen, a toilet, and another, smaller meeting room. All were empty. A door opposite the kitchen was locked.

  ‘They might be upstairs,’ whispered the guvnor, pushing me forward. We waited at the foot for a few moments, listening for sounds on the floors above. When we were sure it was quiet, we climbed. On the first floor were two locked doors. We rose to the next level. Another two doors. One opened into a room with a polish
ed table and twelve chairs, a smell of cigar smoke and furniture oil. Books ran along one wall; a window looked down onto the dark back yard. The next door also opened, this time to a small office. Nobody was there either.

  We climbed back down to the ground floor. In the lobby, the guvnor picked up a basket that was under Mrs Fowler’s coat. In it were two loaves, a packet of beef, four onions and four bottles of porter. In the umbrella stand was her violet umbrella.

  ‘What does that tell you, Norman?’ asked the guvnor, his voice hard and angry.

  ‘They were about to eat.’

  ‘And Mrs Fowler left without her umbrella and coat. She must have run off.’

  He picked up the umbrella and ran his finger over the fabric. ‘Wet. When did it stop raining?’

  ‘About two.’

  ‘So the latest time she arrived was perhaps two thirty or three.’ He shoved the umbrella violently into the stand and searched the pockets of her coat, pulling out her gloves, a silk hanky, a poke of acid drops and a pamphlet. ‘Left her gloves, but not her scarf or bonnet. That’s queer. Go and find a constable. I’ll take another look around.’

  I found one walking the beat on New Oxford Street. He sent a boy for a detective and followed me back to St Martin’s Lane. There, the guvnor showed him the bodies and explained what we’d found. The copper, a young fellow with over-wet lips, wrote in his notebook.

  ‘Stay here and look after the bodies,’ he said. ‘I’ll search the building. If I call, come and help me please, sirs.’

  We sat down in the circle of chairs and watched as he carefully checked the corridor, his truncheon tight in his hand. When he was sure there was nobody hiding in the shadows, he moved on.

  ‘Fowler’s purse is gone,’ said the guvnor, getting to his feet and pacing angrily to the window. ‘And Musa had a letter in his pocket. I’ve copied the words, but we’ll need to get a translation. All the pistols are missing too.’

  ‘You think the others ran off?’

  ‘Either that or they were captured by Capaldi’s men.’ As he marched back across the meeting hall, he pointed at a bench by the wall: Musa’s Italian hat decorated with ribbons, Thembeka’s coachman’s gloves and Senzo’s feather necklace were still there. ‘They left in a hurry.’