‘But what were you doing there in the first place, you stupid boy! You knew how angered the police were by our coverage of the servant girl murders and the deaths at Boston Place! They said we made them look incompetent and they barred us from any further involvement. Why were you there?’
I nervously straightened myself in my seat.
‘I went because Abe asked me to go,’ I answered.
‘But he was most probably drunk! What were you thinking?’
‘I was thinking that Abe Thomas was one of our most trusted associates and that if he saw fit for me to attend a scene, then go there I would. I wish that I had never been, if it makes you feel any better. I had no wish to see my friend – our friend – die in such a horrible manner. It is something that will always be with me.’
Purkess could see my upset at Abe’s death and his face softened a touch. He took his seat again, shaking his head, and opened his cigar box, snipping the end of a cigar before lighting it.
‘Well, I think I put them off your scent,’ he said quietly. ‘I swore blind that you were with me. Even Mr Cope, someone whom I would have thought would have relished your downfall, backed up my story. I think that they believed us. However, I have agreed that we will hand over all sketches and drawings done by you relating to the servant girl murders, and that is not negotiable – it is the price for your head being off the block.’
I nodded my newly saved head and agreed; the thought of giving over any of my works to the police abhorred me, as I knew that they would be lost forever, but I had enough that I could keep back.
‘What about the sketches I made last night?’
‘I will keep them. In my safe. Let us call it a bargaining tool to keep you straight in the future.’
I pulled them out of the satchel and handed them over. Mr Purkess placed his glasses on his nose and looked through them; the horror was clear upon his face.
‘Such a terrible thing to do to someone, especially a girl so young,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I hope never to see such murder upon our good streets again.’
‘But what about the next time?’ I asked. ‘There will be more deaths, more girls murdered before this is all played out, you know. It will not stop.’
Purkess looked up in surprise and removed his glasses.
‘Oh, but it has,’ he said, the hint of a smile on his lips. ‘Have you not heard? They caught the killer last night, shortly after finding the bodies of Inspector Thomas and the young constable. Chased the killer across London they did, until they finally caught up with them. The murderer was brought in, although I hear he suffered grievous injuries in the arrest.’
‘He?’ I exclaimed. ‘Did you say he?’
Mr Purkess looked a little shocked at my outburst but continued all the same. ‘Yes, “he” – as if it would be anyone other than a man who committed these crimes. He was a tinker from a camp just outside Belsize Road. They caught him by the railway line up at St John’s Wood. He had a set of tools, including a large knife, a hammer and a bag with railway spikes in it, like those used in the murders. Feathers his name was, Jack Feathers; the police say they knew him as a thief who specialised in scrap metal and the like, but they are sure it was him.’
I thought of Abe’s final words, how he had said that it would be brushed away, made to be forgotten by those who wanted to make it disappear. Anger boiled inside of me and I thought of telling Mr Purkess about the Golden Woman, of how I had seen the true killer up close, but I did not. Mr Purkess had obviously been given the hard word by his visitors that morning and it would be useless to try to persuade him otherwise. I thought of my good humour after Frederick Draper’s visit the previous evening, and of how I had envisaged striding into the office today and amazing Mr Purkess with my story of Draper’s reappearance and of the Dolorian Club’s involvement in the Darke murders; but again this was only suspicion and accusation. In truth I had no real proof that the club was anything more than a group of respectable gentlemen terrorised by a child-killing cannibal. There would be no way forward with either the Golden Woman or the Darke cases without further investigation into the club and its apparent benefactor, Lord William Falconer. I decided to stay quiet.
I left the offices with promises of good behaviour and a solemn oath to my employer that I would lay low for the foreseeable, in terms of my involvement with the police.
Henry Cope, his face as smug as I had ever seen it (I am quite sure that he eavesdropped on conversations between Mr Purkess and myself, from the other side of the door), told me as I left that he would be sure to contact me if there were any stories abroad regarding lost dogs or broken windows. I thought of parting from him with a cutting remark, but bit my tongue and stepped out onto the street without a word.
***
That afternoon I accompanied Alice to the employment agency; I wished to meet this Mr Tandry for myself to ensure that the agency was as above board and reliable as Alice had described it. Benjamin came with us also and, as we walked along the Marylebone Road to the agency’s offices, he continued to pester me about my work, wanting to know if he could attend scenes of crime with me. I knew that murder cases would be off the menu for a while – a fact that I was quite grateful for, following my brush with death. And so I agreed that, should I receive the call, and should the work be appropriate for a young lad to attend, then I would of course allow him to shadow me. I just hoped that I was not assigned court duty again, as it would be interminably dull, as well as sullying the heroic ideal that Benjamin had of me.
The offices of the Marylebone Service Agency appeared nothing more than a sparse-looking shop front and it was obvious that they were a new enterprise. Alice led us inside to what appeared to be a simple office arrangement. There were two desks, both unmanned as we entered, and a tall lockable wooden cabinet. There was little decoration other than a number of certificates framed upon the wall, a tall shelf upon which sat a solitary large ledger and a very sickly plant, which stood behind one of the desks. While Alice called out into a room at the back for Mr Tandry, I decided that the agency had obviously not had the benefit of a woman’s hand in its layout and presentation.
When Tandry appeared I found him to be a very odd fellow indeed; small and weaselly, he gave the impression of someone who had been dressed by a blind man with access to a theatre’s costume box. His trousers were a pale yellow, bright and gaudy and were a good four inches shorter than they should have been. His jacket, made from velvet which had never seen a brush in its life, was a colour that could only be described as a ‘dirty orange’ and bore on its lapel a cloth flower, which may have intended to represent a carnation, although this would have been many years ago. Tandry’s face was round and shiny, as if coated in a thin layer of wax, and his lips were thin to the point of invisibility, dancing around his mouth in a nervous manner as if by their own accord. His hair was red and curled, although not natural in either respect, and seemed to be rigidly held, as if by some sort of lacquer.
He came bustling out of the back room all of an angered dither, a presentation which immediately changed when he noted that Alice had company with her.
‘Miss Griffiths, Miss Griffiths, thank you for returning today, ha ha!’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Very prompt, very reliable and I see that you have brought someone with you, Mr…?’
‘Weaver,’ I said, shaking his outstretched hand, which was limp and cold to the touch. ‘Mr Samuel Weaver. I am a close friend of Miss Griffiths.’
‘Of course!’ he said, waving his arms in the air in a most extravagant manner. I stepped backwards a little and bumped into one of the desks, making Benjamin snort and dissolve into giggles. I glanced at Alice, who gave a tight smile, which I returned. ‘We are new of course,’ Mr Tandry continued. ‘Only set up in the last month, but business is glorious and we are always happy to take on such quality as Miss Griffiths here.’ He turned quickly to Benjamin and gripped him by the shoulders. ‘And I see that you have returned to me once again, young man. Are
you ready to take up my offer of work? Ha ha! I am sure we can find a little something for you.’
‘That will not be necessary,’ I cut in, and pulled Benjamin towards me. ‘Young Benjamin here will not be entering the employment market for a few years yet; he has school to attend.’
Tandry did well to hide his obvious annoyance. ‘School, yes, a man needs an education, of course he does. Oh well, if school should not work out for you, then you know where we are. And you, sir!’ he exclaimed. ‘I take it you are a working man. What industry is yours?’
‘Journalism,’ I replied. ‘I am a writer and artist for the newspapers. You will probably have seen some of my work; it is widely read.’
‘Oh I am sure,’ he said, turning back to Alice. His expression had dropped at the mention of my work; he had obviously lost interest. ‘Now then young lady, I told you that work would arrive for you and arrive it has; good work, in a respectable house, yes, yes. Ha ha!’ His eyes flickered wildly and his voice became quite excited. ‘I have need of serving staff for a ball this evening, Knightsbridge. Does that take your fancy? I take it you feel confident in serving, of course you do, of course you do, ha!’
Alice made to answer but he walked away from her and into the back room, returning seconds later with a large brown paper package, which he said contained two sets of uniform in her size, one standard linen dress for kitchen work and one smarter black uniform which she was to wear that evening. He gave her the time and the address scribbled on a piece of paper; she was to go to the rear entrance of the house and introduce herself, giving Mr Tandry’s name.
Without allowing us scarcely another word, he ushered us towards the doorway and out into the street. We took his cue and left, barely containing our mirth at this strange little man, who lingered in the doorway, waving to us until we were fully out of sight.
***
Over the next two weeks Alice gained a flurry of work from Tandry’s agency, which left me spending a great deal of time alone with her younger brother. I found myself enjoying the opportunity to get to know Benjamin. There were no further reported murders of servant girls; however, this was not proof that the killer had indeed been caught, and in fact I knew full well that this had not been the case.
Surprisingly enough, after my meeting with Mr Purkess, work did not completely dry up for me and I was able to allow Benjamin to accompany me on a couple of assignments. As promised by Mr Cope, they were of low quality. For the most part, I mainly worked from home on ‘second-hand stories’: these were the dire pittance of artwork for the newspaper, where the complete written account would be purloined directly from a rival publication or one of the dailies, and I would be expected to conjure up suitably evocative images to match. Unlike me, Benjamin seemed to enjoy this work, as it gave him the opportunity to sit at my desk with me, and draw his own interpretations of the stories. His imagination was a wonder to see and I even found myself including some of his ideas in my own drawings, which pleased him greatly.
I had been in touch with St Stephen’s School on Westbourne Park Road, and had even visited the premises with both Alice and Benjamin. They had both found the school to be agreeable and it was decided that Benjamin would start his classes in the new year. For Benjamin it was an exciting time: a new school, the opportunity of making friends and, to cap it all, time spent with me. To any outsider, life appeared to be heading in the right direction for all of us.
Constant in my mind, however, and taking up all of the hours that I did not spend either working or with Alice and Benjamin, were my investigations into the Dolorian Club and Lord William Falconer.
Falconer was not a difficult personage to track down, being well known throughout London society. A relatively young man, he had inherited his estate from his parents, who had died under most unfortunate circumstances whilst visiting lands purchased by them in the Cape Colony. Falconer’s father, Lord Arthur Sedgewick Falconer, was an avid game hunter who had become entranced with the Cape during a trip to Southern Africa in his youth. As soon as young William was old enough to be shipped off to preparatory school, his father had acquired ten thousand acres and taken his wife, Lady Edith, with him to view their lands, shoot some big game and generally lord it up over the local population, a state of affairs which came naturally to them both. Indeed, their maltreatment of those in their employ was often decried by the more liberal-thinking commentators, one of whom famously stated: ‘The Falconers seem to be most careless in the number of staff who pass through their houses, and it is a lucky whelp who survives the process.’
Like her husband, Lady Edith was said to be very fond of shooting and killing wild animals. Some even dared to announce her the better marksman of the two, a claim which she neither denied nor hid from. She positively revelled in all types of blood sport and even employed a photographer to accompany them on each of their trips to record her victories over Mother Nature and her fauna.
The couple’s unfortunate demise occurred during one such trip into the veldt, when their shooting party was set about by elephants, who for some reason had taken exception to being fired upon. How they had ended up being led into such dangerous paths remained a mystery. In fact, the only survivors of the incident were their native porters, who claimed that the Falconers had refused their warnings regarding the minimum safe distance to be maintained between a large group of gun-happy aristocrats and a herd of protective and angry pachyderms.
Young William then found himself, at the age of eight, an orphan and the proud owner of unimaginable wealth and lands both in Britain and elsewhere in the Empire. It appears that he coped with his parents’ death well and took to the job of ownership and dominion over all he surveyed with great aplomb, removing himself from school immediately and employing private tutorage, which was conducted at his estate in Hampshire. As he grew into a young man, he was surrounded by his father’s most trusted confidants, who helped him to manage his inheritance. He was a confident young man, one who learnt early how money brought power – and how power in turn brought in more money. This is not to say that Falconer was a man who greedily amassed wealth only to sit atop his piles of money; far from it, he was well known for his lavish spending on parties and social occasions, as well as his generous outpourings to charities of his choice. In fact, he was well known about town and the entertainment establishments of London fought for his approval and attendance, whether they be restaurant, drinking club or theatre. Theatre, in particular music hall with its singers, comic acts and magicians, was his one great passion. He had been known to involve himself financially in such establishments as The Canterbury and The Old Mo, paying for repairs and refurbishments and even sponsoring acts that he enjoyed and in which he saw potential. He kept an open-ended reservation for a private box in each of the main music halls in London, and would often be seen at more than one in an evening.
Although in his thirties and London’s most eligible bachelor, he had never married. There were, of course, rumours of lady friends and illicit liaisons, of beautiful women kept in lodgings of various degrees of grandiosity throughout the city, but that is all they were – kept women, playthings and ever-hopeful dreamers, who waited for the door to knock and hoped that, when it did, it was not a messenger telling them that their time was up and a new edition was waiting to move in.
Often Falconer would disappear, sometimes for weeks at a time. There was talk of travel abroad in Africa and across Scandinavia; but, of course, as with everything else about the man, while facets of his life were known, the whole picture was never revealed.
Of his associations with the Dolorian Club, even less was known. I sought out each of my ‘people in the know’ – cab drivers, barmen and society watchers – and none of them knew anything further of his involvement other than that he had joined the club at a young age, was a regular visitor and that he often spent the night there; although of course, now that the club was run from what had been his main London residence, this was hardly surprising. The club was situa
ted in Marylebone, Cavendish Square to be precise, and I visited the area often following the death of Abe Thomas and in light of my new-found interest in Falconer. I took up a regular spot in the square, where I watched the daily comings and goings whilst posing as a pavement portrait artist.
I had been given a description of Lord Falconer by a hansom driver who had carried him in his cab on more than one occasion. He was said to be a tall man with pale, well-groomed hair and piercing ice-blue eyes. He would generally, according to my source, be impeccably dressed and carried a cane topped with an ivory carving of an elephant, presumably in memory of his lost parents.
I counted myself as most unfortunate, in those first few visits to scope the club, as I did not see him either arrive or leave. However, I saw plenty of other men enter and exit the doors, a great many of whom I hastily sketched. I planned to take these sketches to my contacts once my surveillance was completed, which I told myself would be upon my first sighting of Falconer. I could then attempt to create a list of Dolorian Club members.
During the second week as a surveiller I even began to expand my search for Falconer, attending the music halls in the evening. For these excursions I took both Alice and Benjamin with me, as it gave me an additional layer of disguise to be seen as a member of a family on a night out. Of course, the other effect of these night-time entertainments was that my ‘family’ also got to benefit from an evening out, and the entertainment provided by all manner of singers, comedians and magicians. It was the magicians who provided Benjamin in particular with the most joy. He stared open mouthed at their illusions and apparent enchantments. (I had a passing interest in magic myself and had attended the Egyptian Hall, a theatre in Piccadilly, on many occasions upon first coming to London.)
Despite our trips to the theatre and my attendance in Cavendish Square in between work assignments, no sighting of Lord Falconer was evident; it would seem that he himself had conducted his very own disappearing act.
Domini Mortum Page 15
