Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders

by Mick Finlay

  ‘D’you think it was one of the Africans, marshal?’ asked Sylvia.

  ‘I’m a detective, not a marshal, ma’am,’ said Napper. ‘The Africans could only have done it if they went out of the building or if Mrs Fowler came here. Do you think either could have happened?’

  ‘Well, they were alone for most of the day,’ said Sylvia, ‘but…’

  ‘But they’d never do that,’ said Leonie.

  ‘No, never,’ said Gisele. ‘It must be the lunatic, tying her to a chair with ribbons and all.’

  ‘The murderers could come back tonight,’ whimpered Sylvia. She wiped her nose. ‘You got to move us, Dave.’

  ‘I won’t let anyone hurt you, darling,’ said Dave.

  ‘You saw what they did to that lady,’ pleaded Sylvia. ‘They’ll come for us next.’

  ‘Take something for your nerves, girl,’ said Dave. ‘That’ll sort you out. Leonie, you got any pills?’

  ‘I’ll give you something,’ said Leonie, getting to her feet.

  ‘D’you think Mr Capaldi could have done this?’ asked Napper.

  ‘Well…’ Leonie frowned. ‘Thembeka and Senzo were afraid of him.’

  ‘He says he kill them for not going on stage,’ said Gisele. ‘And Thembeka says his men killed Mr Fowler.’

  ‘Mr Capaldi weren’t behind the murders,’ said Dave, dropping his fag to the floor and putting his heel on it. ‘And he won’t be too happy to hear you saying he were.’

  ‘We didn’t say that,’ said Gisele. ‘The detective asked.’

  ‘Best you watch how you answer then, girl.’

  ‘Don’t call me girl, you big pillock.’

  Dave’s jaw clenched. He stared at her hard for a few moments, then shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ he said at last. ‘Gisele.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We searched the pantry and cupboards in that part of the building, the room upstairs, the dark attic space where the wind squeezed and whistled through the tiles. There was no trace of any other ribbons or feathers, nor were Mrs Fowler’s bonnet or scarf or Lewis’s missing pistols anywhere to be found. The police surgeon, a tall grey fellow called Bentham, arrived about an hour after Senzo and Thembeka had been taken away, McDonald following him in with a gurney under his arm. They both wore rubbers shiny with rain.

  ‘Ha!’ said the old surgeon when he saw us. ‘It’s you two again. Still at it, then?’

  ‘Yes, doctor,’ said the guvnor, holding out his hand. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

  ‘I heard you were involved with those bodies pulled from the river this summer.’ His back was bent from so many years peering inside bodies, and he had to look up at Napper from under his tangled eyebrows. ‘They’re not as bad as people make out, you know.’

  ‘Could we get on, sir?’ asked Napper, opening the door to the hall.

  The surgeon grunted and shuffled through. When he’d been shown poor Mrs Fowler, he asked the two coppers to lift her and her chair out into the main room. He took off his raincoat, then pulled over another chair and began his inspection, starting with an examination of her scalp, her ears, and her nose. He poked her eyeball with his finger, pulled back her lips and inspected her teeth. When he’d noted his findings, he felt around inside her mouth and assessed her violet cheeks with a magnifying lens. Mrs Fowler sat with dignity throughout it all.

  ‘Did you get the prisoners back safely?’ Napper asked McDonald as the surgeon did his work.

  ‘Yes, sir. Desk sergeant received them.’

  ‘Where’s Mabaso?’

  ‘He’s there with them.’

  ‘Good lad. I’ll show you how to do a proper interrogation later.’

  Bentham made more notes, then moved his lens to her neck. There he found the bruises.

  ‘Finger marks,’ he said. ‘Her face is slightly livid and tumescent, although not a great deal. Veins in the eyes are visible, swelling at the back of the tongue, all consistent with asphyxiation. I’ll need to open her up to be certain.’

  The surgeon untied her wrists and ankles from the chair and tried to move her limbs. He shook his head. ‘Her muscles have set in a seated position.’ After recording more observations, his fingers approached the buttons of her blouse, and I was surprised to see a little tremble there. At first, he had some trouble undoing those buttons. He shook his hands out and tried again. This time he got them open, exposing her vest. Still sitting before her, knee to knee, he bent down further, lifting the vest and examining her sagging belly. Her skin there was browner than her face, and I realized she was wearing something to lighten her skin. Somewhere in her line there was blood from the colonies.

  ‘How long’s she been dead?’ asked Napper.

  ‘Between six and forty-eight hours, I’d say. The cold complicates it, but there are no signs of putrefaction. We can move her now.’

  ‘Right,’ said Napper. ‘Let’s get her to the van, McDonald.’

  ‘Any idea where she was killed, Bentham?’ asked the guvnor as we watched Napper and McDonald lift Mrs Fowler onto the gurney. Her body was bent stiff at the waist and knees like a number four, and it didn’t lie proper on the narrow stretcher.

  ‘It’s obvious where she was killed,’ muttered Napper, trying to straighten her legs. ‘Give me a hand, lad,’ he barked at the PC. ‘Hold her ankles.’

  ‘Don’t do that, please,’ growled Bentham, looking up from his notebook. ‘She’ll loosen up in time.’

  ‘She’ll fall off,’ said Napper. He put his hands on her knees and tried to push them down.

  ‘Stop it!’ barked Bentham suddenly, a fury in his eyes. ‘She’s not yours to interfere with!’

  McDonald stood back, looking from the surgeon to Napper.

  ‘Well, don’t blame me if she falls off,’ said Napper, standing up.

  ‘Turn her on her side.’

  ‘What d’you think, Bentham?’ asked the guvnor. ‘Where was she killed?’

  ‘I’d assume it was in the chair,’ said Bentham.

  ‘Why else would they tie her to it?’ said Napper.

  ‘Why else, indeed, detective,’ said the guvnor with a nod. ‘Why else?’

  ‘If you have something you want to say then say it, Arrowood,’ snarled Napper.

  The guvnor stepped over to where Mrs Fowler lay on the gurney.

  ‘Look at the skin around her mouth. D’you notice anything?’

  Napper bent forward. ‘A rash?’

  Bentham used his thumbnail to scrape something from her cheek. ‘Keratoses. She’s been using arsenic to lighten her skin.’

  ‘And do you see how she tries to disguise the blemishes with that zinc powder?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘What of it?’ asked Napper.

  The guvnor pointed at her cheek. ‘You see that there? What looks like a channel through the powder, from the corner of her mouth straight across about two inches toward the ear? And that dark dot at the end?’

  ‘Get to the point, for God’s sake.’

  ‘When a person’s throttled, is it likely that fluid would fall out of their mouth, Dr Bentham?’

  ‘It’s quite possible, yes. They gargle and retch. The saliva can’t pass down the throat.’

  ‘Well, here the spittle has rolled down the cheek, absorbing the powder as it went. Would you say, doctor, that the dark dot at the end of the trail is blood?’

  ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘She has an infection of the gum. It would cause blood in the saliva.’

  ‘I see. Now, I assume that for the spittle to run down her face in the direction of her ear, she must have been lying on her back when she was throttled. If she was sitting up straight, the way we found her, the spittle would have rolled down her chin. But there’s no evidence of a track below her mouth, so she must have been tied to the chair after she was killed. A very strange thing to do, don’t you think, gentlemen?’

  Napper thought for a moment. ‘There’s another possibility. Maybe the killer ties her to a chair a
nd then in a fit of rage he knocks the chair over. Then he strangles her before righting the chair.’

  ‘Yes, that is a possibility,’ said the guvnor slowly, scratching his chin. He looked at Bentham. ‘Would there be bruising to the back of the head in that case, sir?’

  ‘I think so,’ said the surgeon. ‘If she fell backwards, her head would probably have struck the floor before the chairback. Let me have another look.’

  He took out his magnifying lens, turned her on her side, and examined the back of her head again, pulling her hair this way and that to see the skin. ‘There’s nothing here to suggest she’s fallen backwards. No contusions.’

  ‘What about the rigor?’ asked Napper.

  ‘Usually within six hours, but can be longer in asphyxia,’ said the surgeon as I helped him to his feet. ‘The lady could have been tied to the chair up to twenty-four hours after being killed.’

  ‘Now, why d’you think she was tied to the chair after death, Napper?’ asked the guvnor, stroking his chin. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘To throw us off the scent, Arrowood. Don’t talk to me like I’m a fool.’

  The guvnor crossed his arms and watched the copper for a few moments. Finally, he sighed and said: ‘Yes, but more specifically, if you believe she was killed while tied to this chair, you’ll assume she was killed here. Our minds try and create coherent stories of the world we encounter, and the details we perceive in a situation are interpreted in such a way as to fit into those stories. William James has said it all. A dead woman tied to a chair triggers a story of her being killed while tied to that chair. It also makes us assume that she must have been killed in the place she was found, because if you wanted to move her body after death, you’d likely cut her off the chair. Far easier to transport that way. It’s a trick to make you think she was killed here, Napper. A trick to make you arrest Thembeka and Senzo, and a clever one at that.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, please, Arrowood,’ said Napper. He turned to the PC. ‘You’ll have to come back when we’ve delivered her to the mortuary, McDonald. I want you to call on every building in this street. Find out if anyone’s seen anything.’

  They carried her out the front door and loaded her into the Black Maria. As we watched them roll away through the rain, the guvnor turned to me.

  ‘He’s got the evidence to hang them for this, Norman,’ he said. ‘And I’m afraid that’s exactly what he’ll do.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was about three that Saturday when we reached St Martin’s Lane. The place was busy with families coming out of the Christmas pantomime, the children of clerks and shop owners jabbering and quarrelling and getting in the way of horses and costers trying to get through. A crowd of women were leaving the Friends Meeting House, severe and silent as they tied their bonnets and pulled on their gloves. We squeezed past them into the vestibule, where the door to the office was open. There, a round fellow with a broad smile and a stiff collar gave us the name of a missionary in the Aborigines’ Protection Society who’d served time in Natal. The address was back over the river in Camberwell.

  We stopped in a coffee shop for some soup, then walked down to Blackfriars, where Madame Delacourte had her office. It was above a bicycle shop, where a giant yellow-and-blue sign cried DELACOURTE’S PRODUCTIONS. Silver stars flew out from her name and grew till they reached the eaves; elephants and crocodiles, monkeys and snakes curled round the words and spilled out over the brickwork. The street door was silver too, the frame blue. It was open. We went in, along an unlit corridor and up some thin stairs to a landing with three doors. The one ahead was open.

  ‘Come in,’ came a woman’s voice as we reached the stairhead.

  The room ran the width of the building, with three big windows looking onto the street. A long marble desk was to our left, stacked with ledgers and letters, a dirty pink blotter, a set of inkwells. Carved African men stood in a row holding spears and arrows, their heads over-large like poor Joe Merrick. Paintings of jungle scenes, of bright fruit and fire-eyed tigers, of waterfalls and half-dressed ladies hung from the walls. And over by the crackling fire stood a long white couch, on which lay Madame Delacourte.

  ‘Madam,’ said the guvnor, bowing with a sweep of his arm. ‘I’m Mr Arrowood. It’s a great pleasure to meet you.’

  She looked at him for a few moments, her face absolutely still. Then her eyes turned to me. I nodded. ‘Mr Barnett, ma’am. Assistant.’

  She was a beauty, all right. A painted, lacquered beauty. In her long, pale fingers was a long black cigarette, its rosecoloured smoke curling up to the ceiling. Her hair was swept tight over the ears, bunched at the back, with a rising bun over her forehead. Her nose was sharp as a chisel, upturned, her nose-holes lying flat like apple seed. The skin of her arms and face was a deathly vinyl white, her lips a shining vermilion, while the veins of her neck, her arms, her hands, were painted the faintest blue. Around her throat was a green bow tie.

  She sat with her legs up on the seat, her back propped against the arm, and it seemed to amuse her to watch us there, taking her in. She put the black cigarette to her lips. The end blazed; smoke drifted from her mouth. She nodded.

  ‘So, gentlemen,’ she said, her voice deep and lovely and not at all French. ‘What are you here for?’

  The guvnor bowed once more for good measure. When he spoke, his voice had deepened too. ‘We’re private investigative agents, madam, working on the Zulu case. We’d like to ask you some questions, if we may?’

  ‘Well, what would the harm be in that?’ she answered.

  ‘What indeed?’ answered the guvnor.

  ‘What indeed?’ came another voice from behind the sofa. And who should pop his head up but Polichinelle. His face paint was scrubbed off revealing a bloke with pitted grey skin and a weak chin, the red-and-yellow three-pointed hat replaced with a brown fedora, the padded shoulders and horned midriff given way to a linen shirt and striped lounge suit.

  He stood, a small white Pekingese in his hand that he dropped into the lady’s lap. ‘Hello, Mr Arrowood,’ he said like they were best of friends. He winked at me. ‘Mr Barnett. I hope you’ve been drinking that fennel tea?’

  I smiled at him, holding my arms out. ‘Can’t you see me blooming?’

  He laughed.

  ‘You know these gentlemen, Cobbie?’ asked Madame Delacourte.

  ‘They work for Capaldi, dear heart.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said the guvnor, a little anxiety breaking through his words from seeing the famous clown again. He dabbed at his brow with his belcher, his hands aquiver. I remembered him being just the same when he found himself sitting next to Mrs Beeton in a train carriage the year before.

  ‘We work for the Aborigines’ Protection Society,’ I said, giving him time to collect himself. ‘We’re trying to find the missing Zulu.’

  ‘Only one?’ asked she, moving her legs to allow Polichinelle to sit, while we remained standing in the middle of the room. ‘I thought there were three.’

  ‘The police have the others,’ I told her. ‘We’re looking for the boy.’

  ‘Then you should ask Bruno Capaldi.’

  ‘He says you know where he is,’ said the guvnor, putting his belcher away. The strength had returned to his voice. ‘That you were responsible for the murders.’

  She drew from her cigarette and thought. ‘Why does he think that?’

  ‘Because you’re exhibiting some tribesmen from Borneo and don’t want the competition.’

  ‘Of course. Well, what a good reason to kill two people.’

  ‘Three.’

  Her eyebrows shot up. ‘The papers said two.’

  ‘Another body’s been found. It’s Mrs Fowler, the wife of the man who was shot at the Quaker Meeting House.’

  ‘Where?’ asked the clown.

  ‘Brixton.’

  ‘Well, it was nothing to do with me,’ said the lady. ‘It’s just my friend Bruno making mischief. The police have been here already.’

  ‘
You’ve a reputation for violence, madam,’ said the guvnor.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ She moved the dog off her lap and adjusted her dress. Outside on the street we heard a cobbler’s gong. ‘I am aware of you, Mr Arrowood. You’re not so clean yourself.’

  ‘Who d’you think killed them?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘Bruno.’

  ‘Why would he kill his own performer?’

  She passed her cigarette to the clown, who took a puff. ‘Bruno can be his own worst enemy. He has too much pride and doesn’t like to be crossed. And that wife of his makes sure of it. Did you know he killed a waiter in France for bringing him a mushroom?’

  ‘I heard it was a snail,’ said the guvnor, lighting his pipe. ‘D’you have any idea where he might be holding the boy?’

  ‘I think he’s probably floating past Foulness on his way to the Channel.’

  ‘You think he’s dead?’

  ‘If Bruno’s men killed the others, then the boy’s a witness.’

  ‘And if he’s not dead, where would they hold him?’

  ‘They use a place called Gresham Hall in Brixton for rehearsals.’

  The guvnor nodded. ‘That’s where the body was found.’

  ‘Then it was Bruno’s men who killed her,’ she said.

  ‘Does he have any other places?’

  ‘They also use a boarding house in Vauxhall and a warehouse by Lambeth Potteries.’

  ‘How do you know this, madam?’

  She smiled. ‘I need to know what I’m competing with.’

  ‘Do you know the address of the warehouse?’ asked the guvnor.

  She looked at Polichinelle, who passed the black cigarette back to her. ‘It’s on the high street, opposite the park,’ he said. ‘Between a tea merchant’s and a chandler’s.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the guvnor. ‘Now, may we search your rooms, ma’am? Just to be complete, of course.’

  ‘It’s time for you to go, my darlings,’ said the pale lady with a wave of her hand. And with that the tiny Pekingese leapt off the couch and began to bark at us with a mastiff-sized fury.