Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders

by Mick Finlay

  ‘Miss Kunene has told us something about it,’ said the guvnor with a frown. ‘My father saw Mr Douglass speak, you know. He was a great orator. It’s hard to imagine how a man like that could be a slave.’

  ‘But easy to imagine how others could be?’ asked Mabaso quickly. He stifled a cough by clutching his chest.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Say, constable,’ said the detective on the other side of the room. He wore a dusty suit, his hair greased down over the shiniest forehead I’d ever seen. ‘From Natal, are you? Are you behind the Boer or the British?’

  ‘The Zulus,’ said Mabaso.

  ‘The Zulu war was over fifteen years ago, lad,’ laughed the detective. ‘Keep up.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So, the Boer or the British?’

  Mabaso continued to hold the shiny detective’s eye, but said nothing more.

  ‘So did your little trick work?’ asked Napper, pulling out a chair for Delphine to sit. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Miss Kunene told Mr Nyambezi that you knew she’d deceived you about the letter.’ Her face was its usual stony self now: Miss Whitehead had truly gone home. ‘He said Constable Mabaso had probably looked at it. He wanted to know if you suspected anything. She said she wasn’t certain but didn’t think so. Then he said they had to get out before you talked to the princess. She told him he had to forget about the gold, and that they needed you, Mr Arrowood, to prove they didn’t kill anyone or they’d be hung.’

  Mabaso pulled his hanky from his pocket, covered his mouth, and began to cough again.

  ‘Did you try liquorice like I told you?’ asked Napper.

  Mabaso shook his head as he hacked away. His eyes were going pink.

  ‘Brown’s Bronchial,’ said the guvnor. ‘That’s quite good.’

  We watched as the coughing went on. When he finally pulled his hanky away, there was no missing the blood in it, and for a moment none of us spoke. Mabaso shoved the cloth back in his pocket and stared at the floor.

  ‘Brown’s Bronchial,’ said Arrowood again. ‘Try it, constable.’

  I didn’t reckon it would do much good. Seemed like the poor bloke had consumption. He was thin enough.

  ‘Thembeka mentioned the gold?’ asked Napper, turning back to Delphine. ‘From the raid in South Africa?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. She only said “the gold”. That was all.’

  The guvnor was thinking, his stubby finger tapping his hooter. Napper leant back in his chair, smoking a cigar and revolving his marbles in his hand. His face was split in a great, ugly grin.

  ‘I told you they were up to no good, Arrowood,’ he said with a triumphant waft of out-smoke. ‘Didn’t I tell you that?’

  ‘Yes, Napper,’ said the guvnor, looking puzzled still.

  ‘And didn’t Constable Mabaso also tell you that?’

  Mabaso sat upright, his back arched. He gave a sharp nod.

  ‘Yes, Napper,’ said the guvnor. I could see from his cloudy eyes that he was somewhere else.

  ‘You’re a treasure, Miss Whitehead,’ said Napper, getting to his feet. ‘I think you might just have helped us solve this murder.’

  ‘I’m glad I could be useful,’ she said. ‘Can I see her, Detective Napper? I want to apologize. I was rude.’

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ said Napper. ‘Don’t you worry about it. There’s a reward, you know. Twenty pounds. Mrs Fowler’s family have just posted it.’

  ‘Well, a reward would certainly be useful.’

  ‘Really?’ said Napper, perplexed. ‘Don’t you…’

  She frowned. ‘Have you forgotten I’m not Lord Whitehead’s daughter, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ He laughed. ‘By jiminy, you’re a good actress.’

  She smiled for the second time that day, revealed a dimple that had no business on her face. ‘Thank you, detective.’

  ‘It would have to be divided, of course.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, her face falling again.

  ‘Would you mind if I questioned Senzo and Thembeka again, sir?’ asked the guvnor, coming out of his daze. ‘Separately this time, and would you mind helping once more, Miss Druitt?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Napper before Delphine had a chance to speak. He rose from his chair and collected his overcoat from the hook on the wall. ‘If anyone’s to question them it’ll be us, but there’s no point. They’ll only make up another story. Now we know there’s a connection between them all, we’ll call on the princess and make her think her lover has already told us about the gold. Then, when we have more information, we’ll interrogate the prisoners again. Come along, Mabaso. You’re about to meet a princess.’

  ‘The hotel said she’s not back until Christmas Eve,’ said the guvnor. ‘She’s in Edinburgh.’

  ‘What time?’ asked Napper, halting in the doorway.

  ‘She’s arriving on the evening train.’

  Napper thought for a moment, then looked at the African. ‘You might as well have the rest of the day off then, Mabaso. Take in the sights, or something.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Napper turned to the guvnor. ‘I suggest you find something else to do now. I’ll call you if I need anything. And I don’t want to see you at the hotel when the princess returns. Leave this to us. Understand?’

  ‘I understand what you’ve said, detective,’ said the guvnor.

  ‘And you agree?’

  The guvnor took a packet of mints from his pocket and popped one in his mouth.

  ‘No,’ he said, and walked out the office.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  It was a bit of luxury taking the Druitts’ carriage to Elephant and Castle. When we reached Lewis’s house, Willoughby let us in, happy as always to see us. S’bu sat in the parlour in front of the fire, wearing one of Lewis’s silk dressing gowns. He smiled to see us, but it wasn’t a strong one. The boy needed to get back with Thembeka and Senzo.

  ‘Good day, ma’am,’ he said, getting up and giving Delphine a bow.

  ‘Good day, sir,’ she replied, bowing back.

  ‘Good day, sir,’ said S’bu to the guvnor and me.

  ‘Good day, sir,’ said Arrowood, taking his hand. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Very well, sir. How are you?’

  ‘I taught him that,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘Why aren’t you at the stables, mate?’ I asked him.

  ‘All the cabs out,’ answered Willoughby. ‘Sidney says I got a holiday.’

  ‘You being lazy, then?’

  He laughed his wide mouth, tight-eyed rumble. ‘Being lazy, Norman. Being sleeping. Being snoring!’

  We laughed some more. What a joy it was to be around old Willoughby.

  ‘Where’s Lewis?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘At the shop,’ he answered. ‘He just gone.’

  ‘Right, Miss Druitt,’ said the guvnor. ‘Tell S’bu we’ve been to see Princess Nobantu and we’ve spoken to Senzo and Thembeka. Ask him why he didn’t tell us about the gold.’

  She talked to him, then turned back to us. ‘He asks what Senzo and Thembeka said about the gold.’

  ‘No, we’re asking him what he knows. Tell him if we don’t find who killed Musa, Senzo and Thembeka could hang. We need to know about the gold because the killer might have been trying to get the information from Musa.’

  Again, she asked him. As he spoke, he jerked his hands in the air, staring hard at her: it was clear he was frightened.

  ‘He thinks the Ninevite officers took the gold.’

  ‘Why did Senzo and Thembeka visit the princess?’ asked Arrowood.

  Again, they talked.

  ‘She’s a prostitute from Johannesburg,’ said Delphine when they’d finished. ‘He says Senzo’s in love with her and she used amandiki on him to make him follow her. It’s a type of magic.’

  ‘Was S’bu also on the raid?’

  He shook his head when she asked him.

  ‘Then wh
y was he fleeing with them?’ asked the guvnor.

  For some time, they talked. Delphine nodded, asking for more details. Finally, she turned back to us. ‘When he was in prison he joined the Ninevites. It was the only way for a boy of his age to be safe in there. After he was released, he went to live in their city in the caves. He looked after the horses.’

  ‘I do!’ said Willoughby. ‘I look after Sidney’s horses. Tell him, miss!’

  Delphine explained this to S’bu, who smiled and shook Willoughby’s hand.

  ‘Go on, Miss Delphine,’ said the guvnor. ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘One of the lieutenants wanted to lie with him,’ she said, no trace of embarrassment in her face at all. ‘S’bu refused. The man started to cause him trouble, bullying him. One day, S’bu broke a bottle in the man’s face. He knew he’d be punished, so he ran away. Thembeka gave him shelter, but the Ninevites came looking for him. It was the same time Thembeka was hiding Senzo and Musa after their raid on the Kruger compound. The Ninevite leaders blamed them for the death of Zixuko. They were both being hunted, so they took S’bu with them when they fled.’

  ‘And Thembeka? Why did she flee?’

  There was more talking.

  ‘She’s his aunt. She thought she had to look after him.’

  Willoughby brought through mugs of porter and handed them round. The guvnor had a long swallow and a longer think.

  ‘So, perhaps the person who took a hammer to Musa’s teeth was one of them?’ he said at last. He looked at Delphine, who was wearing a moustache of beer foam above her lip. Her eyelids twitched, one after the other, then she swallowed the whole mug in one long gulp.

  ‘Are the Ninevites all black?’ asked Arrowood.

  ‘Most, but not all. I’ve heard they’ve a Scottish bookkeeper.’ Delphine looked into her empty mug, then tipped it over her mouth for the last couple of drops. ‘You know that’s a traitor punishment?’

  ‘A traitor punishment?’ repeated the guvnor, holding out his mug for Willoughby to refill.

  Delphine did the same. ‘It’s what they do when someone betrays the gang, they knock out his teeth. It’s a Ninevite punishment.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She nodded. ‘Other times they slice open the throat with a knife. It’s a warning to others.’

  ‘So Musa was killed by a Ninevite for something he did.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Thembeka didn’t tell us it was a traitor punishment. Is it possible they didn’t know, Miss Druitt?’

  She shook her head. ‘Everyone in Johannesburg knows what it means. You see these men without teeth pulling rickshaws, doing laundry, working on the railways.’

  ‘Then why didn’t she tell us?’

  Delphine shrugged and took in more porter. Arrowood shook his head, not wanting to admit what now seemed all too possible: that Senzo and Thembeka were involved in Musa’s death.

  ‘I suppose it could have been someone in the princess’s party,’ he said at last.

  ‘You got a horse, miss?’ asked Willoughby, wiping the beer from his chin.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I have a bicycle.’

  She said it with such anger that Willoughby flitched. He looked at her, his eyes wide with fright. Then, for the first time, Delphine laughed, and I saw she had a little evil inside her. She laid her hand on his arm. ‘Do you have a horse, Mr Willoughby?’

  He stepped away from her. ‘We got fourteen. At the stables. I look after them.’ He looked at me again, not knowing if he should keep talking.

  ‘He’s good with them,’ I said. ‘He works with my brotherin-law.’

  ‘Precisely,’ she said, as if confirming it was true.

  The guvnor looked at S’bu and smiled. S’bu finished off his beer and smiled back. He nodded, then his face became serious. He spoke again to Delphine.

  ‘He wants to know about Senzo and Thembeka,’ she said, getting to her feet. It was clear the two mugs of porter had made her tipsy. ‘Then I must go. Father’s arranged a blooming dancing lesson for me.’

  We stopped in the Hog on the way back to Coin Street. Betts stood at the bar, a torn dressing gown over her corset, a pipe in her mouth. The lascar Hamba was sitting against the wall, chatting away in his broken English to her, while Old Loyle sat in his usual table in the corner, a flask of red wine before him. One of his Pomeranians had died a few weeks back, and its empty collar still hung from the leather strap that tethered the other three lying on the floor at his feet. It was mid-afternoon, and a few dockers were finishing up their ales afore stumbling off to their evening shifts. We shared a bowl of oysters at the counter, but he said nothing more as we ate. It was usual for him to keep his mouth shut when he was working on a case in his mind, but the death of Leo and the way Isabel’d spoke to him had dulled him. I finished off my porter and took out my gloves.

  ‘We doing anything this afternoon?’

  He shook his head. ‘Let me think.’

  ‘Don’t stay here long. Your wife needs you.’

  ‘Does she?’ he asked, banging his mug on the counter. Betts filled it from the barrel and swept the shells into a bucket.

  I patted him on the back and left him there.

  The landlord of the Pelican was sorting the fire out again, while the old regulars sitting around the hearth moaned and grumbled about the cold.

  ‘In the kitchen,’ he said, digging out the coal.

  Molly was cutting up carrots and dropping them into a vat of boiling water.

  ‘Where you been, Norm?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘Been looking for you.’

  ‘My sister told me you was around.’

  ‘Where were you last night?’

  She didn’t reply, and I watched her get a handful of spuds from a basket and start cutting them up, skin and all. They still had mud on them from the fields.

  ‘You don’t wash them?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t do the punters any harm.’

  ‘You got another job?’

  ‘I do.’

  I took a crust of bread from the table and had a bite. She dumped the rough choppings in the water: she wasn’t going to tell me what she was doing last night lest I prised it out of her.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  She wiped her brow, moving a bit of hair out of her eyes. ‘You sure you want to know, Norm?’

  ‘Reckon I’m going to have to.’

  She turned and looked me full in the face, the knife in her hand. ‘When I need a bit extra, I go to a house on Bankside.’

  I looked at her for some time. ‘A baudy house?’

  ‘You got a problem with that?’

  I reckon I knew already, but hearing it made me go cold.

  ‘But you got this job.’

  She nodded. ‘And a mountain of debt to clear.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that.’

  She put the knife down and stepped toward me. ‘We haven’t done much talking yet, have we, mate?’ She was speaking soft now, her eyes damp, and it seemed she wanted to touch me. I stood back.

  ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ I said.

  I turned and walked out.

  Chapter Forty

  I’d been sitting in Mrs Butterworth’s beer-house for half an hour when Neddy burst in. He grinned when he spotted me, a little dog following him on a bit of string. He’d picked up a scar on his forehead since I last saw him.

  ‘I forgot you moved, Mr Barnett,’ he said, grabbing the last bit of cheese off my plate. ‘I been in all the pubs on the High Street.’

  ‘This is my local now, mate.’

  He nodded, looking around. It was an ordinary place, the front room of Mrs Butterworth’s home with a hole knocked in the wall to her kitchen where she sat doing her knitting. The floorboards were bare, the fire warm enough, the punters friendly. I’d spent a lot of time here since I moved.

  ‘What happened to your face? Not those lads from Broadwall again?’

  ‘They was waiting for me when I picked up my money. D
idn’t get it, though. Here.’ He pulled a muffin out his pocket.

  ‘Thanks, mate. You want a drink?’

  ‘Mr Arrowood wants you to meet him at the Town of Ramsgate in Wapping. He already left.’

  I finished off my mug and stood. The little dog stared up at me with shining black eyes.

  ‘Whose is that?’

  ‘Mine,’ said Neddy. ‘He ain’t got a name.’

  I buttoned my coat and put on my gloves. ‘You coming? It’s a bit of a walk.’

  ‘’Course I am,’ said Neddy.

  I ate the muffin as we walked up Red Cross Street toward the river. There we crossed London Bridge, the boats packed so tight in the Pool you could hear their sides scraping and knocking in the wind. The pub was on Wapping High Street, down the road from the River Police building. It was a place I’d known too well when I was younger, but it had changed: they’d knocked through the back wall and added another room, toffing it up with long mirrors and glass lights. They’d even nailed a bit of canvas to the chairs. The punters hadn’t changed though, mostly Russians and Spaniards, spending their earnings afore the next boats sailed. Ladies and young blokes were there to help them spend that money, either latched on to their sailor for his whole time ashore or floating, hoping to pick up a bit of company for the day.

  The guvnor sat alone reading the Daily News. He still wore his black tie, his Sunday best.

  ‘They’ve got all the details of Mrs Fowler’s death already,’ he said. In front of him sat a bottle of Vin Mariani and the knotted ends of a few saveloys. ‘They’re not questioning Senzo and Thembeka’s guilt.’

  ‘How’s Isabel?’

  ‘She hasn’t risen from bed.’ He shook his great, swollen head to dislodge the dirty tear gathered in the corner of his eye. ‘Are you coming to the funeral tomorrow? Christmas Eve, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said, laying my hand on Neddy’s shoulder.

  The guvnor nodded. Bit his wet lip. When he spoke again his voice was urgent. ‘Something occurred to me that should have occurred before. You know I wondered why Thembeka hadn’t told us that Musa’s death was a traitor killing?’

  I nodded.