Sinistrari

by Giles Ekins

  The research had only served to strengthen his opinion that Sinistrari was a powerful and ruthless follower of the Occult and Satan. The significance of the dates of the killings only helped to confirm this belief: Mary Margaret Hopwell had been killed on or about the 30th April, Alice Newton had died on or about 30th June and Susan Siddons on or about October 31st. Katie Cornfields had died on or about April 30th of the following year. All these dates coincided with the most important Satanic festivals, Walpurgis Night (April 30) Beltane (June 30) and Hallowe’en (October 31), simply too much of a coincidence to be ignored.

  He rubbed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose to ease the strain from reading too much small print in poor light; laid down his report and leaned back in his chair, hearing the ancient leather creak under his weight as he did so. Gimlet was still scrabbling about the floor picking up files and papers and placing them upon his desk in haphazard piles every bit as precarious as the edifice that had tumbled down before.

  Reaching into his jacket pocket Collingwood pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch and placed them on his desk. From another pocket, he produced a small silver coloured penknife and opened up the smaller of the two blades before also laying it on the table. Pulling open the tobacco pouch Collingwood slid out a thick plug of black tobacco, tobacco so dark in colour and texture it could have been mistaken for a lump of twisted tar soaked rope. Holding the dark tobacco against his thumb, Collingwood picked up his penknife and began to slice away thin curls from the end of the plug, the pad of his thumb heavily stained black from many years of self-same ritual. When he had shaved off enough of the tobacco, he rolled the thin black curls between the palms of his hands to shred and loosen the densely packed tobacco. He then tamped the lot into the bowl of his cherry -wood pipe, again using the much stained and scarred ball of his thumb. Clamping the pipe firmly between his teeth, he struck a long match, allowing the phosphate and sulphurs to burn away before bringing the flame to the tobacco. He pulled rapidly onto the smoke, making sure the tobacco was well ignited before extinguishing the match into an astray made from the brass casing of an artillery shell.

  Gimlet pointedly waved away at the thick clouds of choking blue-black smoke with the papers he was holding, trying not to cough from the noxious fumes that threatened to engulf him. From where he sat, Collingwood’s head had completely disappeared into a seething, writhing mass of blue-tendrilled smog. ‘Might as well be oakum he smokes, Gimlet grumbled to himself, ‘certainly couldn’t taste any worse than his bloody tobacco’.

  Collingwood smoked a special mixture, a potent concoction of Russian, Balkan and Turkish tobacco especially blended, pressed, and twisted for him by his tobacconist, the appropriately named Mister Horace Pipe of Russell Square. Collingwood had brought the recipe back from the Crimea, where he had briefly fought as a very young Ensign before being wounded and invalided out. Should’ve left it there, Gimlet thought, by no means for the first time, ‘let it poison the bleedin’ Russkies rather than me!’

  Gimlet picked up the last few scattered files and papers and spread them out on his desk. He picked up each piece of paper in turn and tried to match it against a file or docket, but even with the aid of references numbers and dates, he found it almost impossible to find homes for the myriad of stray documents. With a sigh, he tossed aside the last document he had picked up, a telegraphed report from Inspector Hector of H Division advising that the body of another young girl had been recovered from the River Thames in a condition similar to that of other recent victims.

  With an even deeper sigh, he picked up another report and then shuffled amongst the manila dockets and files in the rather vain hope that report and docket might somehow recognise each other and claim residence. He tossed the papers down onto his desk and gathered another armful of paper and rather more methodically now, laid out the dockets in date order across his desk, building together little piles of manila files that spread across his desk like weather worn stooks in a cornfield.

  Collingwood smiled indulgently at Gimlet, confident that his sergeant had now decided upon a system for refiling the papers. Even so, it would take him some considerable time to complete the task. He decided to take pity on him.

  ‘Get Miggs in to help you, Gimlet, he can do the general sorting. I want you to concentrate now on finding me the victim files; we have to go back to the beginning, Gimlet. Back to the very genesis of this whole ghastly affair and we must follow his bloody trail from there. And somewhere along that trail, we hope to find the spoor that will lead us to him. Pass me the file, or at least as much of it as you can find, of the killing of Mary Margaret Hopwell.’

  Chapter 6

  DRURY LANE, LONDON,

  FRIDAY APRIL 28th, 1887 11.30PM

  MARY MARGARET HOPWELL, BETTER KNOWN AS BLACK EYED MARY, was bitterly cold, shivering in the bleakness of the numbing night air. Even though it was early spring, the night air was chill and layered with gusting rain. Bright puddles in the potholed road shone silver in the gaslight.

  She slowly walked up the pavement again, patrolling her patch, looking for custom; any custom, a late diner or theatregoer; custom enough to buy her a gin or two to ease the chill in her bones and still have enough to satisfy her bully. Not that Razor George was easily satisfied. Not by a long chalk.

  Mary huddled deeper into her woollen shawl as the shrill wind-blown rain plucked at her again. She used to have a bonnet, a dark green bonnet, fringed with black velvet and tied with ribbons, ever so pretty; about the only item of pretty clothes she had ever owned. The bonnet would have kept the wind and rain out but it had been stolen along with some other ribbons, her comb and a small hand mirror from a small box she kept in the lodging house she shared with all of Razor George’s other girls.

  It must have been Long Liz who stole her things; Long Liz who said she was from Sweden, or somewhere. Mary didn’t know exactly where Sweden was, somewhere outside London, that was for sure, across the river maybe. She had stolen things from some the other girls as well before disappearing into the night. Rumour was that she was working down Spitalfields or Whitechapel, if so, Razor George would find her and then she’d better look out. George did not like for his girls leave ‘the tender bosom the famb’ly’ as he called it. Especially when they owed him money!

  Black Eyed Mary tried stamping her feet onto the stone flags of the pavement in a vain attempt to warm them up but even that simple action hurt too much. Her shoes, ankle high side stretch shoes stolen from the corpse of woman found in an alley off Fetter Lane, were too tight – much too tight – pinching and scraping at her heel and toes like saw-toothed vices, making walking an agony. Otherwise, she would have gone looking for trade in Covent Garden or the Strand. Not that standing in the rain was any less painful but the skin had been stripped so raw from her heels that she could hardly walk at all.

  Another scurry of wind swept a tumbled clot of wet paper into her legs, the paper briefly clinging itself around her legs like a demanding infant before she kicked it aside. She shivered again, desperately wanting to step back into the shelter of the doorway, if only for a moment or two to get out of the wind and rub some feeling into her and arms. Or better still to hobble across the street and into the warmth and comfort of ‘The Three Blind Mice’ public house for a gin and hot water – but she dared not. Razor George would beat her for sure if her caught her – even as the thought came into her mind she felt a shudder of fear and she glanced around anxiously, as if expecting Razor George to suddenly materialise at her side like a pantomime demon, leather razor strop to hand, ready to lay it hard across her face and back – and not for the first time.

  Or cut her, she would not be the first girl George had cut if she got wrong side of him, especially when he had been at the gin or pale brandy. He kept his cut-throat razor, nicknamed Jenny-No-Nose, in the pocket if his silk paisley weskit, his hand never straying far from reach. Razor George could whip out Jenny-No-nose and have your nose off or lay your cheek open to the bone a
nd have the razor back in his pocket and a glass of gin in his hand before you even knew you’d been sliced.

  Another shudder, from cold or fear, she did not know –or care, knowing only that she dare not seek shelter – and dare not return to the nethersken1 she shared with George’s other girls empty handed again. She could still feel the bruises and welts from the last beating he gave her and she gingerly prodded at the tenderness around her eyes with the tips of her fingers. She wasn’t called Black Eyed Mary for naught, she bruised so easy and the lightest slap from Razor turned her eyes as black as a chimney sweeps climbing boy.

  Mary knew, just knew, that she dare not go back to her rooms without a crown or two, Razor George might just be angry enough to use Jenny-No-Nose on her, he had threatened to often enough.

  ‘One day, my girl,’ he would say as he honed Jenny-No-Nose on the leather strop, the blade flashing back and forth, glinting in the yellow glow of the gas lights, repulsively hypnotic, the razor dancing before her eyes with all the fatal allure of a swaying cobra about to strike. ‘One day soon, girl, you don’t start treatin’ yer Uncle George right and smart, I reckons my lovely Jenny’s be givin’ you a little kiss,’ his eyes never leaving her face, as if marking the site for Jenny’s kiss, his terrifying words spoke softly and all the more frightening for it, a smile playing across his face as he did so but the smile never reaching his eyes.

  Mary had seen George cut one of his other girls – Cast-Iron Peg – so called because she had once hit Gimpy Leggs, her common law husband, over the head with a cast iron cooking pot and squashed the left side of his skull to the shape of a turnip with a slice cut off. She’d served a six -month sentence in Brixton Jail for that – and as for Gimpy, the shame of the assault and his flattened skull had been too much for him to bear and he had left the area – to where no one knew or cared. After coming out of Brixton, Cast Iron Peg had the options of either starving to death in the streets or whoring for Razor George. Or the workhouse! Starving or whoring was preferable to the workhouse, even though whoring for George was only marginally better than starving.

  Peg had owed money to Razor for a loan she took out before going to jail and she could never repay even the interest, never mind the principal. And so she walked the streets of Smithfield Market and Covent Garden, where-ever she could find trade, hawking her only asset, poxed and grungy as it was, up against alley walls or in dark doorways, all her earnings to be handed over to Razor George, ‘and never even think, my girl, of holding back on me’.

  But Cast-Iron Peg forgot that simple lesson. She had stolen four lucky mint gold sovereigns from a customer. She had felt the coins though the cloth of his jacket. They were in a red leather purse in the inside pocket and she had lifted them as he grunted and thrust at her in a ‘soot-arse fuck’, as if trying to batter her through the wall, scraping her arse against the cold damp brickwork of a Covent Garden alley.

  It had been a long time since Cast-Iron Peg had had so much money in her hand, a long time since she had felt the slightly greasy lustre of gold in her palm. Not since long before she took the pot to Gimpy’s balding head and ended up in Brixton Prison for her troubles could she say that she had a couple of sovs to call her own.

  She had hidden the sovereigns in her corset, tucking them up under the tight material, wedging the coins up high where she could feel them pressed against her outer hip. If she had kept quiet, all would have been well, but she could not help but brag about it to the other girls. Which one of them gave Razor George the blow about the coins, Cast Iron Peg never knew; all she knew was the terrible consequences of her moment of foolish greed.

  Razor George slapped her but once as he marched into the back room of the lodging house where he kept his girls as they slept, eleven of them to a single room. Four lucky ones shared two single beds; the other five girls, including Black Eyed Mary, made do with vermin-ridden straw filled mattresses on the floor.

  There was not much to Razor George in size, but there didn’t need to be. The threat of his razor and the menace of Sealskin and Boiler, his two minders, were enough to cow anybody. The most foolhardy of West End gulls, realising too late that he had been gammoned at cards, quickly backed down to the threat of Jenny-No-nose and the two thugs.

  Razor George did not use his girls himself, he preferred street boys, the younger the better, seven, eight or nine – at the most ten. He’d use them hard, very hard, and when tired of the boys he sold them on to Darlow Jiggs, a dealer in Aldgate who arranged for the broken battered youths to be shipped to a brothel in Hamburg; a brothel that specialised in the torture and brutalisation of children. George’s discards did not live long once they had been delivered to that dread place. Not that George much cared. As he put it – ‘a costermonger don’t care what ‘appens to his apples once he’s sold ’em – he ain’t got no caring whether you eats ’em whole, skin an’ all, else makes apple sauce of ’em or leaves ’em to rot in the bowl. Same wi’ me’ precious boys, goin’ to a good foster ’ome, is ’ow I was told it and who’s to say otherwise?’

  Cast iron Peg rubbed at her bleeding mouth, the cascade of rings on George’s finger had split open her lip, and she spat out blood into a grubby laced handkerchief that might, many months ago, have once been white.

  ‘A little bit of news has just ’appened upon me, Peg,’ he whispered, barely deigning to look at her, his voice carrying a palpable menace that despite the softly spoken tones chilled Peg’s spine like a block of ice laid across her back. She shivered in fear, watching his hands all the time as he paced around her. His hands were so quick her nose could be on the floor before she knew it. The other girls cowered against the wall. Pearly Pearl, Pall Mall Sal and Black Eyed Mary began to sniffle, the others rendered mute with terror. Razor George’s rage was terrible to behold, and when one girl transgressed, all were likely to feel the weight of his fists, or boots or leather strop.

  ‘Peg, my lovely, I’se a hopin’ you’ll give me the lie of it, tellin’ me it ain’t for real wot I ’eard, but either way it’s goin’ to go hard on one of you moggin’ sows,’ he said, glaring at the cowering whores. ‘Bad, real bad.e. Ei’ver one of yer’s stealin’ from yer Uncle George, perish that the thought should ever cross my mind. Or else someone’s givin’ me the lie, spreadin’ discord and dis’armony h’amongst our cosy famb’ly. And I don’t like discord and dis’armony, it upsets the balance of me blood and waters.’

  All the girls were petrified, but none more so than Cast Iron Peg. She slowly backed up into the corner as George followed her, his expressionless gaze boring into her like the heat from an open furnace door.

  ‘Word has it, my girl, is that you bin holdin’ back on me? A golden sovereign or two of Her Most Gracious Majesty’s currency h’of the Realm; is as ’ow I ’ears it. Tell me, I’m mistook, girl. Tell me I bin grievous misled.’

  Cast Iron Peg tried to speak, tried to find the words that could divert the wrath about to descend upon her, but her fear was so great that she could only mumble in terrified squeaks.

  ‘Boiler, the box,’ Razor George said, snapping his fingers with a sharp crack that echoed around the room like a pistol shot. Boiler expressionlessly carried over a wooden beer crate and laid it upside down on the floor in front of Cast Iron Peg. ‘Upsidaisy girl,’ George said, pointing at the box. ‘Ups ya gets, jump down ’ard.’

  ‘Wha …’ Peg stuttered, unable to think, to terrified tears beginning to roll down her face.

  ‘Up on the box, girl. Then jump down, jump down as ’ard as ya can, see if’n we can’t shake loose a lie or two. Else a sov or two. Mary, give ‘er a hand to get up.’ Mary took Cast-Iron Peg’s trembling hand and almost dragged her up onto the box.

  ‘Jump girl, jump,’ ordered George, an expectant smile on his face. Peg half stumbled off the box, stepping down as lightly as she could, but even so felt the traitorous slide of the coins as they slithered down inside her corset, perilously close to escaping.

  ‘Now that ain’t ‘ardly a j
ump, now is it girl? Gets you back up there again, then I wants to see you land four square and plumb, good and ’ard, and don’t let me ’ave to be tellin’ you again. Unner’stand?’

  Peg nodded and mumbled, but Razor George was enjoying himself, wanting to drag out every ounce of torment for the wretched Peg.

  ‘I h’asked if you understand me, girl. You says, yes, Uncle George, I h’appreciate and fully cognisate wot you tells me. Up on the box and tells us all lard and clear of your cognisating. Mary,’ he added, nodding at her to assist Peg back up onto the box. In the end, Pall Mall Sal (so called because of her airs and graces – even though she came from the vilest slum in Limehouse Wharf) had to help as well, for Peg could not have been more unsteady on her feet if she had been climbing the scaffold.

  ‘Speak the words of h’immortal understandin.’

  ‘Yyyyyyesssss, Unc … Uncle George, I understand …’ she said, gulping heavily as she spoke, ‘Understand what you said.’

  ‘The meat upon the bones of is?’

  ‘I got to make a jump.,’

  ‘A big jump. Landin’ four square and plumb.’

  ‘LLLLLandin’ four square and plumb.’

  ‘So let’s be a havin’ of it.’

  Cast-Iron Peg closed her eyes and lurched forward, as if stepping over the edge of a cliff; hardly a jump as such but she landed heavily enough to unloose the sovereigns. With a sickening sense of despair, she grabbed at her hip, but the coins were loose. One of them tangled up in the uppers of her shoe before falling free to slither over her instep and gently to ground, the others spun and rolled away, bouncing and careering across the uneven timber floor.