The Ring

by M. J. Trow

  Batchelor knew exactly where to find him, especially as the clock of St Dunstan’s chimed four. It was tea-time and Dyer was sitting at his favourite corner table in the Cheshire Cheese, pouring gin into his afternoon Darjeeling.

  ‘Hello, Edwin,’ Batchelor slapped the man’s back. ‘It’s been a while.’

  The man nearly died then and there from juniper inhalation and croaked hoarsely, ‘Jim Batchelor, you complete bastard!’

  ‘I’ve missed you too, Ed,’ Batchelor said. ‘But it’s James these days.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ Dyer let his throat come back to normal. ‘The private detective business.’

  ‘Enquiry Agency,’ Batchelor corrected him.

  ‘Whatever.’ Dyer signalled to a waiter for a second cup. ‘How is that going? Beats working, I expect.’

  ‘Well, funnily enough,’ Batchelor sat himself down and leaned closer, resting his elbows on the table, ‘that’s more or less why I’m here.’

  ‘Tchah!’ The journalist threw back his head in mock disgust. ‘And here’s me thinking you just wanted to catch up with an old friend.’

  ‘Oh, I do, Ed, I do. It’s simply delightful and all that. But I need a favour.’

  Dyer raised his hand and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, as if feeling pound notes. ‘That’ll cost, I’m afraid,’ he said.

  Batchelor sighed. ‘Do you remember, Ed, that little business with whatsername? You know, the Bishop of Islington’s daughter? Let me see, that was back in ’sixty-five, wasn’t it? You were quite smitten, I seem to remember, writing that piece on the historic churches of London. She was hugely helpful, I seem to remember, closeted away with you in that prebendal stall, all that time. What was her name, now? Yes.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Dorothea, wasn’t it? And wasn’t she fifteen at the time?’

  ‘You’ve always been a shit, Batchelor,’ the journalist said, ‘but now you’re more of a shit than you used to be. What do you want to know?’ He could feel the hot breath of the vengeful Bishop of Islington on the back of his neck.

  ‘Knowes. K-N-O-W-E-S. Is that name familiar?’

  Dyer twisted his face in an effort to remember. ‘No, it doesn’t ring any … wait a minute. Yes, Richard.’

  ‘Richard?’ Batchelor blinked. ‘Dick Knowes? Surely not.’

  ‘I wouldn’t let him hear you call him that if I were you. He could buy both of us with his back-pocket change.’

  ‘Really?’ Batchelor frowned. ‘Why haven’t I heard of him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dyer smirked, ‘you being in the enquiry business and all. He lives in Eaton Square, the shady side, naturally. Import/export.’

  ‘Is he straight?’ Batchelor asked.

  ‘You know we don’t ask that kind of question in Fleet Street, Ji … James. It’s not seemly.’

  ‘I mean, can we assume that his residence is the result of honest toil?’

  ‘You can assume what you like. Let’s just say the Telegraph was going to run a piece on him last year. Rumours of insider trading and decidedly dodgy dealings in Sumatran rubber.’

  ‘Going to?’ Batchelor picked up the key clause of the sentence.

  ‘My editor called me into his office one day and told me to drop it. “No story there,” he said. “Move on.” When I pointed out the public’s right to know, he mentioned, as you did, the Bishop of Islington and his wretched daughter.’

  ‘Tcha!’ it was Batchelor’s turn to say. ‘And I thought I was the sole proprietor of that little gem.’

  ‘James.’ Dyer suddenly clutched at his sleeve. ‘If you’re going after Richard Knowes, for whatever reason, you look out for yourself. There’s an ugly rumour that the man is an extortionist.’

  Batchelor shrugged. An extortionist held no fears from him; apart from a few clothes and his granny’s cranberry glass, he didn’t have much to extort.

  Dyer laughed wryly. ‘Or if that doesn’t scare you, then the other rumour is that he likes to hurt people. For fun and profit.’ He raised an eyebrow and Batchelor looked at him more seriously. Edwin Dyer, though in many ways a rat, a weasel and several of the less fluffy rodents, knew his stuff and if he said be careful, careful he would be.

  It was going to be a busy day. Grand would have his hands full, out on the Regent’s Canal, checking up on all the barges. He didn’t know how many there were, but he imagined a fair few. Batchelor had two tasks and he wasn’t relishing either. In the morning, he was taking a very reluctant Selwyn Byng to view the dismembered body in William Kempster’s basement. It seemed pointless to both enquiry agents, but it had to be done; actually, Daddy Bliss’s acid note found in the letterbox by Maisie late the night before used language rather stronger than ‘had’ and ‘done’. The threats were vague, skirting around being thrown into chokey for the rest of your natural and perverting the course of justice but they did the trick. Whoever their client was, he was to view the remains, sharpish. So Selwyn Byng received a note at his place of work, similar in general content but shorn of the police hyperbole. He was waiting anxiously on the pavement that morning; he had become rather chary of Mrs Rackstraw and so now he hung around outside until someone noticed him, rather than risk her wrath.

  The door hadn’t even swung shut behind Batchelor before Byng was complaining. His interview with his father and all subsequent conversations with him since Batchelor’s visit to the timber warehouse had not gone well and he was a man who tended to bear a grudge. Batchelor was left in no doubt that it was all his fault; Byng stopped just short of accusing him of actually kidnapping his wife, but it was, Batchelor felt, only a matter of time. The rode in a cab – Batchelor ended up paying and made a note to add it to expenses – to Kempter’s house in Battersea and rang the bell.

  Nancy Kempster answered and recognized Batchelor at once. She smiled vaguely at Byng; she had a special doctor’s wife expression which gave away nothing but was yet friendly and helpful.

  Batchelor helped her out. ‘This is Mr Byng, Mrs Kempster,’ he said. ‘He has been asked by the River Police to …’

  ‘… come and view the body,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll just put you in here, Mr Batchelor. Someone is with … her … at the moment.’

  Byng was immediately aggrieved. ‘If someone else has already identified—’

  ‘No, no, Mr Byng,’ Nancy Kempster said, quickly. ‘Nothing as definite as that. I did start to keep count, but gave up after a couple of dozen. My husband is taking names and details, but really; it is getting a bit much. The poor woman should be given a decent burial. Apart from anything else, she isn’t getting any fresher. I’ll have to charge the police for the cost of the disinfectant I have had to buy.’ She sniffed. ‘It still comes through, though, don’t you think?’ She suddenly stopped, stricken. This could be the woman’s nearest and dearest, after all.

  Batchelor took a deep breath and almost gagged. ‘Come through’ was a bit of an understatement. ‘Not at all,’ he reassured her. ‘Just a nice whiff of pine.’

  ‘Really?’ She was doubtful. ‘I’ll check with Felix how things are going with the current viewer and I’ll let you know in a minute.’

  In the mortuary, the atmosphere was rather thicker than in the sitting room above and Felix Kempster stood with his arm around the shoulders of a frail old man. He hadn’t troubled him with the torso. It was the head which would give the positive identification, if one was to be made. He had come because he suspected it might be his daughter, who he had last seen a few years ago. She had been brought up nicely, as nicely as he could manage on a Billingsgate’s porter’s pay. She had married young and had a couple of children, who lived now with their father and came to see their old granddad at Christmas and on his birthday, which was all he could expect. Joe, his son-in-law, had another woman now, not married, of course, because they didn’t know whether his Maggie was alive or dead, but a nice woman, couple of children; he was lucky they still kept in touch. But he thought about his Maggie every day, where she had gone, why she went. He knew she had
taken to drink, hung around with sailors, lumpers; well, that’s all there were around here, didn’t Dr Kempster agree? And she wore wigs, had done since a girl. She didn’t like her curly hair, wanted to look a bit more sophisticated, she used to say, though who looks sophisticated when her wig is hanging over one eye and the gin is on her? But … and the stream of words had stuttered and died for a moment and Felix Kempster couldn’t help but put a comforting arm around the old man. But … his wife, Maggie’s mother, had gone to her grave crying for her girl and so he thought he had better … he should come and see …

  Kempster moved closer to the shrouded head, his arm still round the old man. He had warned him it wasn’t a pretty sight, but he hadn’t been able to talk him out of it. He had had lots of sightseers since the posters had gone up and not a few journalists posing as bereaved husbands, sons, brothers; anything to get them through his door. But no one who had affected him as this man had. He didn’t know whether he wanted it to be his Maggie or not; to stem the pain and let him bury his girl, or to leave him looking, wondering, hoping every day she might come back.

  ‘Ready?’ he said and the old man nodded, an almost imperceptible movement of an already tremulous head. He took off the cloth with as much reverence as he could muster and he felt the man flinch. The time since the mudlark had fished this gruesome mask from the river had not been kind. Formaldehyde or no, it was beginning to sag even more and the skin around the empty eyesockets was now so thin that the grain of the oak block below showed through clearly, making a mockery of any crow’s feet she may have had in life.

  He felt the man gulp, forcing down the bile which rose to the throat of any normal person. Then the movement of the head.

  ‘I shall have to ask you to answer this question,’ he said. ‘Is this your daughter? I need you to say yes or no, for the records.’

  The old man took a deep breath and held it for what seemed like eternity. The room held its breath too; the woman on the block seemed to be asking to be found, to be allowed the peace of a name and a burial. Finally, he spoke.

  ‘No,’ he said, on a sob. ‘No, that’s not my Maggie.’

  The door at the top of the stairs opened and Nancy Kempster took in the situation at once. Maternal instincts in full flow, she came down the stairs in a rush of compassion and swept the old man into her arms and away to the warmth of her kitchen. Kempster smiled; Nancy could mother anything, from a chick fallen out of its nest to an old man in search of peace. She would have made a better doctor than him but whoever heard of a woman doctor?

  She turned at the top of the stairs. ‘I’ll send the next one down, Felix,’ she said. ‘It’s nice Mr Batchelor and a Mr Byng.’

  Kempster was puzzled. If this was a follow-up to the finger, they were wasting everyone’s time. He had told Batchelor from the start that when the finger had been lopped off, this body had already been fished out of the Thames. But he fixed his expression to one of formal professionalism as they clattered down the stairs. He had covered up the head in the nick of time; after one near-accident, he had avoided anyone catching a glimpse while they were still descending.

  ‘Dr Kempster,’ Batchelor said, making the introductions. ‘I hate to bother you, but Inspector Bliss asked that we call by.’

  Kempster inwardly called Daddy a few choice epithets that only doctors used; some parts of the body lend themselves particularly well to curses. But he said, ‘Thank you for offering to help, Mr Byng. I’ll make this as quick as possible.’ Because this was a husband, viewing the body parts was more relevant and he whipped off the cloth with little ceremony. Byng looked briefly and then shook his head. He was almost as white as the corpse and his eyelids were fluttering alarmingly.

  He licked his lips and regretted it. He could taste the corpse with the tip of his tongue and thought he would never be rid of it. Kempster didn’t like his colour and felt for his pulse, which was racing like an express train.

  ‘Would you like to sit down, Mr Byng?’ he said. ‘I am a little concerned …’

  ‘No,’ Byng said. ‘Let’s get on with it, if you please.’ He straightened his shoulders and turned to the other bench, where the shrouded head stood.

  Kempster did his big reveal again – he knew that this wouldn’t be a positive identification, but like his wife, he was getting tired of this woman’s company.

  Byng pressed his hand to his mouth and rushed over to the corner, where there was a sink. He threw up everything he had eaten in the last six hours, and then some more. Batchelor and Kempster looked anywhere but at him; after a grown man crying, the next most embarrassing thing had to be a grown man throwing up. After a while, Byng rejoined them, wiping his mouth on a handkerchief.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I wasn’t really …’ he stopped and pointed. ‘Is that Emilia’s finger?’ His own finger trembled and his voice broke. Kempster had partially dissected it and it was pinned out on a board like a schoolroom project.

  The doctor threw a hasty cloth over it. ‘Um … I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I needed to investigate …’ he stuttered to a close. In all the difficult conversations he had had as a doctor, telling a husband that he was checking whether his wife’s finger had been cut off before or after death had never been one had that cropped up.

  Batchelor came to his rescue. ‘If you could just put that in a report for us, Dr Kempster?’ he said, briskly.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Kempster grasped the straw as any dying man will. ‘Here is it, Mr Batchelor.’

  ‘And your invoice?’ Batchelor sounded a businessman to his fingertips.

  ‘In the envelope,’ Kempster said. He had just plucked a figure out of the air; he had no idea if there was a going rate for identifying the details of a finger’s disarticulation nor what it might be, should it exist. But he had remarked to Nancy that it was a shame these private cases didn’t come around a little more often.

  Byng was first up the steps, desperate for fresh air away from Kempster’s charnel house. Batchelor turned on the first tread and raised an interrogatory eyebrow.

  ‘Alive,’ Kempster mouthed, pulling a rueful face. The conundrum of the finger didn’t really have a right or wrong answer, but in the scheme of things, probably alive was better than the alternative.

  Outside on the pavement on Lockington Street, Byng looked marginally better.

  ‘I suggest you go home and have a rest,’ Batchelor said. Even without the stress of the encounter, the vomiting would have made him feel wretched, he was sure.

  ‘No,’ Byng said. ‘I must go in to work.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘You do remember my father?’ Byng asked, with almost a ghost of a smile crossing his face.

  Batchelor could only nod and smile back. Selwyn Byng was between the devil and the deep blue sea – the only question was whether he would burn forever in hell fire or drown.

  Eaton Square could almost be called the natural habitat of Grand and Batchelor, Enquiry Agents. There was hardly a front door which didn’t hide marital disharmony or a daughter who was consorting with men not deemed good enough for his little princess by a doting father. But Number Twenty-three had never sent their man round with a discreet billet-doux asking that they should attend at their earliest convenience, as long as that time came in the hours of darkness and began with a complex and secret knock at the front door.

  It didn’t look any different, though, from all of the many front doors already knocked on by Grand and Batchelor, either alone or in tandem. It had no brass plaque announcing that it was a business premises, it had no discreet second bell, for callers In The Know. In fact, as Batchelor knocked briskly that afternoon, it basked quietly in the warm late September sun just like its neighbours, almost purring in contentment. Batchelor and Grand had talked over their next steps that morning over breakfast – which had remained wonderfully lunatic-free – and the consensus had been that subterfuge was likely to be pointless. Dyer’s advice to be careful had gone home; although annoying in ma
ny ways, he was a fearless journalist, with the missing teeth to prove it, so if he advised caution, caution it would be. A straightforward request for information would have to be the method; as a professed import/export agent, it was likely that he knew the tea and timber business inside out. An innocent enquiry about how the extortion racket was going would probably not go down quite as well.

  Batchelor’s first knock went unanswered and he was just about to repeat it when the door swung silently inwards. A man stood there, dressed in a perfectly cut tweed suit and a shirt so white it all but shone.

  ‘Yes?’ While waiting for a reply, the tweedy gent pulled on a large cigar. Batchelor was not an enquiry agent for nothing; this was probably not the butler. Apart from the cigar, the suit, though wonderfully tailored, could not conceal the rippling muscle beneath.

  ‘I’m here to speak to Mr Knowes, if he is available,’ he said, proffering his card.

  The man leaned forward to read it, but made no attempt to take it from him. ‘Enquiry agents?’ he asked, an eyebrow rising sardonically. ‘Enquiring into what?’

  ‘The wife of a client of ours is currently missing,’ Batchelor said, ‘and we are making general enquiries.’

  ‘And your client is …?’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly divulge,’ Batchelor said, descending to cliché. ‘All of our clients rely on our discretion.’

  ‘Well, then,’ the tweedy swell remarked, taking the card and stowing it neatly in a waistcoat pocket, ‘how can Mr Knowes be of any help? If you can’t tell him who you are asking about, I mean. If you ask in general terms whether he knows any women, the answer will obviously be yes. If you ask if he knows any missing women, I would imagine the answer will be no.’

  ‘My questions were more to do with a couple of firms in the import/export business,’ Batchelor said. ‘But it would be much simpler if I could speak to Mr Knowes.’

  ‘I’ll see if he’s free.’ Tapping the ash from his cigar into an aspidistra pot at the foot of the stairs, the man bounded up the stairs and disappeared along a landing which doubled back to the left.