Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders

by Mick Finlay

  Ettie pulled a chair to the fire and led the lad over. ‘Oh, my dear, you’re cold. Warm yourself up. I’ll get you a blanket.’

  ‘They had him locked up in a warehouse,’ I said.

  ‘The poor soul,’ said Ettie, sitting him down.

  S’bu glanced at Isabel again, who looked at him in silence, her face hard.

  ‘How are the babies?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘What do you care?’ snapped Isabel.

  ‘Isabel, I had to go out. S’bu was being held prisoner.’

  ‘You care for him, then?’ she asked, scratching her face. ‘Did you get the forty shillings? Did you ask Lewis?’

  ‘He doesn’t have any money. I’m trying to get the Quakers to pay us.’

  Isabel looked at him in silence, her cheeks hollow, her eyes full of hatred. ‘They need it now, William,’ she said at last.

  ‘I’m trying, Isabel,’ he whispered.

  ‘She’s upset, brother,’ said Ettie, covering S’bu’s knees with a blanket. ‘Leo had a convulsion.’

  ‘Oh, my Lord. How is he?’

  ‘They’re both sleeping upstairs,’ said Ettie. ‘Flossie’s there too.’

  ‘Have they eaten?’

  ‘Leo took some broth. Mercy still won’t have anything. It just spills out of her mouth. She’s very weak.’ She blinked and peered at her brother. ‘What in God’s name have you been doing? Oh, my goodness. Get changed, will you!’

  The guvnor looked down at his coat like he’d forgotten what the women had done to him when they escaped. With a sigh he climbed the stairs. No sooner had he gone than Isabel jumped up and rushed through the parlour door to the outhouse.

  ‘She’s been vomiting,’ said Ettie. ‘I hope she’s not caught it.’

  ‘Have you told her about the scholarship?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘They’re sure to make an announcement.’

  ‘I’ll tell her soon. It’s just such a terrible time.’

  A sharp pain made me grip the table edge. Ettie noticed the blood on my hand. ‘What’s that?’

  Holding my side, I lowered myself onto a chair. Ettie was already unbuttoning my waistcoat and shirt. I reached for the chloridine as she examined me.

  The wound wasn’t too deep, so she cleaned it with iodine and lathered it with Whelpton’s. I grit my teeth, waiting for the medicine to dull the pain and watching the whorl of hair on the top of her head as she worked. I still couldn’t get over the matter-of-fact way she’d told me what she’d done with the bloody Reverend Hebden. I wondered what she thought of me now. Her belly grumbled as her cold fingers spread the balm over my wound. Her woman smell surrounded me. I sensed she was angry, and it partly answered my question.

  ‘You hungry, S’bu?’ I asked, remembering he was there too. I made an eating sign. ‘Food? Eat?’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Eat. Yes.’ He nodded with each word. A dog barked just outside the window and he jumped.

  ‘You’re safe, lad,’ I said.

  He nodded, but I didn’t know if he understood.

  ‘Thembeka?’ he asked.

  ‘The coppers have her.’

  ‘Coppers?’ His face didn’t change.

  ‘Did they hurt you?’ I asked.

  He screwed his eyes up, held his hands out to the fire.

  ‘Did they hurt you?’ asked Ettie.

  He glanced at her, but it was clear he didn’t know enough words to do any more. ‘Thembeka,’ he said again.

  She got him a mug of ale and a bit of bread and cheese. He ate quick, his eyes on her and me, a sheen of fear still there. He gulped down the beer.

  From outside, we heard Isabel puking.

  ‘What does the doc say about the kids?’ I asked.

  ‘He doesn’t know, Norman,’ said Ettie. ‘They’ll either recover or they won’t.’

  The guvnor came down the stairs holding Mercy wrapped in a blanket. He’d washed his head and hands and put on some eau de Cologne. He wore his yellow summer suit.

  ‘Let her sleep, William,’ said Ettie.

  ‘She needs to be fed,’ he whispered. ‘Look at her.’

  The little face, swaddled in tartan wool, was a pitiful sight. The bones of her skull were almost visible through the tight, grey skin.

  ‘She won’t take anything, William. I’ve been trying all day.’

  ‘She’s burning up. At least wet her mouth.’

  Isabel returned from the outhouse, a hanky held to her lips, and sat at the table next to me. Ettie brought through a cup of water and a cloth, which she dabbed at the little baby’s lips.

  Arrowood’s eyes glistened as he looked down on the child’s face. Isabel, turning to the window, began to weep too. S’bu watched them both, pain replacing the fear in his eyes.

  Without looking up, the guvnor whispered, ‘Norman. Go to Scotland Yard and fetch Delphine. We need to talk to S’bu.’

  Ettie’d bandaged my wound and the chloridine was doing its work, so I found I could walk easily again. I got a hot spud from the potato man outside the station and crossed Waterloo Bridge, reaching Scotland Yard about ten minutes late. Delphine was waiting at the front, trying to ignore a weaselly fellow who was telling her a story.

  ‘You don’t mind helping us?’ I asked as she limped along with me back to Coin Street.

  ‘I’m happy to do it,’ she said, though she didn’t look or sound it. ‘I get blue staying in the house all day. It’s good to have a reason to go out.’

  ‘You been in England long, miss?’

  ‘Only a few months. I don’t know anyone here.’

  ‘You haven’t any friends in London?’

  She shook her head and said nothing more for the rest of the walk. That was fine by me: my head was drifting with chloridine, and I was carrying the sadness of the scene I’d just left heavy in my heart. By the time we reached the guvnor’s rooms, Mercy was back upstairs and S’bu had on the guvnor’s fair isle jumper and a pair of his britches, the legs too short, the waist too loose.

  Arrowood got to his feet. ‘Miss Delphine. So good of you to come.’

  She nodded at S’bu, then peered at Ettie and Isabel as the guvnor introduced them.

  ‘We wondered if you could ask S’bu a few questions?’

  ‘Mr Barnett explained that already.’ She turned to the lad and spoke the language that we were beginning to feel was familiar. He stood and offered her his seat. She refused, turning to the guvnor. ‘Yes, Mr Arrowood, we can speak in Fanakalo. He’s from Lower Tugelo, the same part of South Africa as we lived.’

  ‘Ask him if he’s hurt.’

  They talked, both stood stiffly by the table. Isabel and Ettie watched from their chairs in silence.

  ‘They didn’t hurt him, but he’s very thirsty,’ she said.

  I rose to get him another drink, while the guvnor continued. ‘What did they do to him?’

  Again, they talked. Delphine’s face was pale and without emotion, S’bu’s intense and anxious.

  ‘They asked him questions, but he didn’t understand. Then they left him in the room. He tried to get out, but they wouldn’t let him. He wants to know if his friends are safe.’

  When I gave him a mug of milk, he smiled for the first time since we found him. He drank it down in one.

  ‘Tell him they’ve been arrested for murder,’ said the guvnor. ‘We’re trying to help them.’

  As she told him, S’bu was silent and still. He put the mug on the table. When he talked again, he held the guvnor’s eye.

  ‘It wasn’t them,’ Delphine translated when he’d finished. ‘There were two white men. They had guns. Senzo took out his gun, trying to frighten them away, but they started shooting. They hit Mr Fowler. S’bu couldn’t make his gun fire so he tried to run away. They caught him.’

  ‘What about Musa?’ asked the guvnor.

  Delphine spoke. S’bu shook his head, raised his palms.

  ‘He wants to know what you mean,’ said Delphine.

  ‘Did they kill
Musa?’ asked the guvnor.

  Delphine spoke. S’bu swallowed. He asked her a question. She replied. His head moved slowly, a look of horror on his face. He spoke again.

  ‘He’s asking if Musa’s dead,’ said Delphine as S’bu sat heavy on the chair, his eyes fixed on the guvnor.

  ‘Tell him yes,’ answered the guvnor softly. ‘Ask him who killed him.’

  She sat at the table and asked him. His answer was muffled and low.

  ‘Musa was asleep in the basement when the men came. He never came up. He wasn’t there when they were shooting.’

  ‘So when S’bu ran out, Musa wasn’t there?’

  Delphine spoke. S’bu shook his head. He pointed at the floor. ‘Down. Down,’ he said, the words broken by tears. He rammed the heels of his hands in his eyes.

  ‘Did the white men go back to the Quaker Meeting House?’

  ‘They put him in a carriage and took him to see Mr Capaldi, and from there to the place they kept him,’ she said after asking him. ‘He doesn’t know if they returned later.’

  The guvnor looked at me. ‘So it was Capaldi’s men, just as Thembeka thought. Ask him if there was a Chinaman there.’

  Delphine spoke to S’bu. He nodded, uncovered his tear-wet face, and pointed at something on the bookshelf.

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘He says yes, like that.’ Delphine stepped behind the sofa and took down a tin of rat poison from the shelf. She held it to the guvnor. It was red, with the name ROUGH ON RATS. On the tin was a picture of a Chinaman with his mouth open and a big black rat in his hand.

  ‘My Lord,’ murmured the guvnor, taking the tin. He examined it carefully. ‘Look at this, Barnett!’

  The Chinaman wore a red smock and short yellow trousers to his knees. On his head was a golden turret, out of which flowed a long pigtail like a snake. I looked at the guvnor’s excited face.

  ‘He’s wearing almost the same clothes as Polichinelle,’ I said.

  ‘And Polichinelle was managed by Capaldi,’ he said slowly. ‘Well, that seems to seal it for Mr Fowler’s killers.’ He turned to Delphine. ‘Ask him if he thinks Senzo or Thembeka killed Musa.’

  As she translated, S’bu drew his head back. ‘No!’ he said, then spoke in Fanakalo again.

  ‘He says they couldn’t have,’ said Delphine. ‘Musa was Senzo’s uncle. Thembeka’s cousin.’

  ‘Thembeka and Musa argued, didn’t they?’

  ‘She didn’t want to come to London,’ said Delphine after she’d asked S’bu. ‘She wanted to stay in Paris. It was only that.’

  The guvnor pulled out his pipe and got it going, the smoke drifting from each side of his mouth. It was packed in that little parlour. I stood by the wall, the guvnor in the middle of the room. S’bu, holding his head in his hands, was in the good chair by the fire, while Delphine, Ettie and Isabel sat at the table. Above, one of the babies coughed and began to cry. Isabel patted Ettie’s hand and climbed the stairs.

  Arrowood took out his notebook and showed Delphine the message he’d found in Musa’s pocket. ‘Can you translate that?’

  ‘Meet at hotel York. Thursday at two.’

  ‘Hotel York? Not Arch of Triumph?’

  ‘Hotel York.’

  ‘A hotel in York?’ The guvnor looked at me. ‘So Thembeka deceived us. I wonder who she knows in York? Ask him, Miss Druitt.’

  S’bu shook his head. ‘He doesn’t know,’ said Delphine.

  ‘Maybe it’s the York Hotel, in Waterloo Road,’ I said.

  ‘Good Christ, Barnett!’ He turned to his pile of newspapers. ‘Isn’t that where the Zulu Princess is staying? What day was that report?’

  A few moments later he found the article he’d shown me the day before in the coffee shop. He was right. The Zulu Princess, Nobantu, was staying in the York Hotel with two companions, a woman and a man.

  ‘Ask S’bu if he knows about the Zulu Princess staying in London.’

  As Delphine spoke to him, his gaze fell to the floor. He sniffed, wiped his eyes, and replied in a low voice.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  The guvnor took up his coat and hat. ‘Let’s get over there,’ he said, wrapping his scarf around his neck. He looked at Ettie. ‘Will you watch him?’

  ‘What d’you mean, watch him?’

  ‘If he wants anything. More food.’ He pointed at the mattress against the wall. ‘He can sleep on my bed.’

  Ettie sighed and nodded. ‘Tea?’ she said to S’bu, miming drinking from a cup and saucer.

  He shifted his head just slightly, but didn’t answer. The fire held his gaze.

  Chapter Thirty

  The York Hotel was opposite the nurses’ home on Waterloo Road. It wasn’t a grand, chandelier-type affair, just a pub with three floors of rooms upstairs. Not really the place you’d stay in if you were a princess, but not too poor neither. The bloke at the bar gave us a watery smile, his eyes narrowing in what he must have thought was a welcome. He told us that last Monday the princess had gone to Edinburgh, where she was being introduced to the Duke of Fife.

  ‘Could you tell us if anyone came here to see them?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘Plenty of newspapermen. A few youngsters who’d read about them, you know the type.’ He wiped down the counter with an old cloth. ‘Three or four at a time, trying to impress their young ladies.’ He glanced at Delphine, who stood next to me, her hands in her coat pockets. She glared at him.

  ‘Any Africans?’

  He nodded. ‘There were a couple a week last Friday. No… Thursday. The twelfth it would’ve been.’ He looked over the guvnor’s shoulder at a lady who’d just arrived. ‘Miss Walser, good to see you again. I’ve got you in number two at the back. You won’t be woken by the carts again this time. Will you be eating?’

  ‘I’d like to go straight up, Mr Deakin,’ said the lady.

  The guvnor turned to old Miss Walser. ‘If you don’t mind, ma’am. This is a matter of life and death. We’ll only be a minute.’

  ‘Well, if—’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Walser. I knew you’d understand.’ He turned his earnest face back to the barman. ‘We’re working with Scotland Yard on the murders in the Friends Meeting House earlier this week, Mr Deakin. What did these Africans look like? It’s very important.’

  ‘Well… black-skinned, both of them. The man wore earrings and feathers round his neck. Big, strong fellow. From the circus or something, I suppose. The woman did the talking. Spoke like a bloke, though. Shortish, I suppose. We thought they must be Zulus, just like the princess and her party.’

  ‘Did they go up to her room?’

  He shook his head. ‘She’d gone to Canterbury. Overnight, like, to see the Cathedral. She was due back that day, but there weren’t no trains. Broken rail or something. The two of them sat around all day over there in the corner, drinking away. Blimey, could they drink! Didn’t believe me about her not coming back till gone nine in the evening, and my Lord they were jiggered by then. I told the princess when she got back the next day. She said I must show them straight up when they returned, but they never did come back. That’s the strange thing. After waiting all that time, they never come back. Must have forgot or something.’

  ‘Is she returning here after Edinburgh?’

  ‘Twenty-third,’ said the fellow. ‘In the evening.’

  ‘What day is it, Barnett?’ the guvnor asked me as the three of us left the hotel.

  ‘Twenty-first. She’ll be back in two days.’

  ‘Will you meet us at Scotland Yard tomorrow at ten, Miss Druitt?’ asked Arrowood. ‘I’ve an idea.’

  ‘If it will help,’ said the young lady, pulling on her gloves.

  ‘But you mustn’t tell anyone about S’bu. Will you promise me that? The police believe the Africans are the murderers. If they discover where S’bu is, they’ll arrest him too.’

  ‘Do you believe his story about what happened?’

  ‘It fits what we know, and it’s the same story as the other t
wo told us. They had no opportunity to concoct it.’

  Delphine rubbed her pea-sized eyes. ‘If you want me to help you again, I do need to know if I’m helping the correct people. You said they’re with the Ninevites. That’s a bandit gang, Mr Arrowood.’

  ‘You know about them?’

  ‘Everyone in Natal knows about them. They steal from everybody, from white and black. The authorities believe they’re rousing the Africans to revolution. They’re showing the natives they can organize themselves and live without the whites.’

  ‘Well, that’s a different matter, miss.’

  ‘I know, but the African officer said they’d killed a child.’

  ‘They swear it was someone else.’

  ‘But how can I be sure that’s the truth?’

  He pressed his lips together and studied her. ‘You can’t,’ he sighed at last. ‘Miss Delphine, do you believe that all of those African children you taught were savage killers?’

  ‘Of course not. They were children.’

  ‘Or that they’d grow up to be savage killers?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘That’s because you know them. But all the people of this imperial city understand about Zulus is that for twenty years since Rorke’s Drift we’ve fought battle after battle with them. The newspapers and story books and exhibitions tell us only that they’re a savage, warrior race. That they fight and kill. Rider Haggard said that Zulu history is one of superstition, madness and blood-stained pride.’

  ‘That isn’t true,’ said she. ‘He knows nothing about the people of Natal.’

  ‘Neither does anyone else here. Nothing but the sort of thing Haggard says. Don’t you think that’ll influence the jury? The judge? Will they be free of those beliefs when presented with a Scotland Yard detective committed to the idea that Senzo, Thembeka and S’bu murdered three people?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Delphine, raising her hand to a hansom approaching from Westminster. ‘But I give you my word I won’t tell the police about S’bu unless they ask me directly.’

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ said the guvnor as she climbed into the cab. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow.’