Blackstone and the Rendezvous With Death (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 1

by Sally Spencer

  The sergeant was smoking his fifth cigarette as the bus, with the cab keeping a discreet distance behind it, crossed Southwark Bridge. It was a good sign that the girl had not got off the bus yet. It was good that she was going to Southwark, because the anonymous, teeming backstreets of the borough were just the sort of place that a man on the run—as Thomas seemed to be—would choose to hide.

  The bus stopped at the corner of Quilp Street, and the girl in the cotton dress and feather hat got off. Patterson banged on the roof of the cab, and had opened the door and climbed out even before it came to a full stop.

  The girl was heading up Quilp Street, walking faster than she had been when she’d left the Montcliffe mansion. Why the change of pace? Patterson wondered. What had happened to her on the omnibus to make her suddenly want to hurry?

  But whatever the reason for her change of speed, it didn’t really matter, did it? Even if she failed to lead them to Thomas, she had no excuse for being in Southwark. That fact, in itself, was enough to pull her in for questioning. And even hardened criminals found it difficult to keep their secrets locked in their breasts once they were inside the confines of Scotland Yard.

  The girl crossed Marshalsea Road, paying scant attention to the traffic, and continued on along Quilp Street. As Patterson and Dickens crossed the road themselves, she turned right up Dorrit Street.

  They had lost sight of her, and that was not good, Patterson thought, as he dodged between the buses, cabs and carts. But she was not so far ahead of them that it should cause real concern.

  It came as a shock, when he turned the corner of Dorrit Street himself, to discover that there was no sign of Molly.

  ‘Where the bloody hell could she have gone?’ asked Dickens, who was just behind him.

  A good question, Patterson thought, as he felt the sweat break out on his brow.

  Though what he really wanted to do was to roar with frustration, he forced himself to calm down and consider the possibilities. There were only two as far as he could see. The first was that Molly had disappeared into one of the houses on Dorrit Street. The second—almost too awful to contemplate—was that once she’d turned off Quilp Street she’d put on an extra spurt of speed, and was now somewhere on Peter Street.

  Even as these thoughts flashed through his mind, he had broken into a sprint. He stopped, gasping for breath, when he reached the corner, but when he looked hopefully up and down Peter Street, he could see no woman in a striped dress.

  Behind him, he heard Sergeant Dickens come to a puffing halt. ‘What do we do now?’ Dickens asked.

  ‘Now we go knocking a few doors to see if anybody knows what’s happened to her,’ Patterson said grimly.

  It did not take long to establish that the servant girl had chosen to run rather than hide. Two dirty urchins sitting on a doorstep said they had seen her dashing down the street. A costermonger pushing a barrow load of vegetables swore that, in her haste, she had almost crashed into him. A door-to-door brush-seller was positive she’d taken a left turn on Peter Street.

  ‘Your boss isn’t going to be very happy about this, is he?’ Dickens said unhelpfully.

  Not very happy? Patterson repeated silently. Yes, that was one way of putting it! He could almost hear the words Blackstone would fire off at him later—‘I gave you a simple job, and you made a complete pig’s arse of it. You let yourself be outwitted by a simple parlour maid. And you call yourself a detective!’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Dickens said.

  ‘We keep on looking,’ Patterson told him. ‘There’s still a chance that even if she’s reached Thomas Grey’s bolt-hole by now, we’ll catch her when she’s leaving it again.’

  But he did not sound very convincing—even to himself.

  They trudged dispiritedly up Disney Street and crossed George Yard. They questioned the workers who were just leaving the jam factory and fur warehouse on Marshalsea Road. When they had no luck there, they expanded their search, checking out Harrow Street and Vine Yard. With every step he took, Patterson felt a little more of his remaining hope drain away, and by the time they had reached the pub next to the cart and wheel works on Lant Street, he had just about given up.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ Dickens suggested, looking thirstily at the pub door.

  Patterson sighed. ‘Bearing in mind what Sam Blackstone’s going to put me through later, I think I’ll need one,’ he said.

  He pushed the main door open, and was about to head for the public bar. Then he saw something in the parlour that stopped him in his tracks. Sitting at one of the tables was a woman wearing a striped cotton dress and an extravagant hat of lacquered bird feathers. She might have been pretty quick on her feet earlier, but now her head was slumped forward, and there was an empty gin glass in front of her.

  Patterson offered up a silent prayer to whatever guardian angel had saved him from Blackstone’s wrath, and strode over to the table.

  ‘Well, you’ve led us a merry dance, Molly,’ he said, ‘but now it’s all over, and I’d advise you to come quietly.’

  The woman looked up. ‘Don’t know what yer talkin’ about,’ she said, slurring her words slightly.

  She was older than Patterson had expected her to be—perhaps as much as thirty. She was wearing more make-up than most servant girls did, even when they had escaped the watchful, ever disapproving, eye of the housekeeper. And now he was close to her he could see that the dress and hat—while very similar—were not exactly the same as the ones he remembered Molly wearing when she left the Montcliffe house.

  ‘I said I don’t know what yer talkin’ about,’ the woman repeated.

  And suddenly—while his stomach was doing a sickening somersault—Patterson realized what must have happened.

  *

  It had been a stupid idea to go to the inquest, the valet told himself as he paced the nearly empty room. Very stupid. And yet he had felt that he’d owed it to his kind and generous master—had felt that Charles Montcliffe was entitled to have at least one person there who knew him and cared about him.

  He stopped pacing, and looked around him. In one corner of the room was the heap of rags on which he slept, in the other the bucket that he used as his lavatory. A small paraffin stove stood in the centre of the room, on which, if he wished, he could have cooked a simple meal. But he hadn’t felt like eating much at all for days, because his stomach was filled with a terror that seemed to grow with each passing hour.

  He wondered when exactly things had started to go wrong—when Charles Montcliffe’s great adventure had turned into his darkest nightmare. Was it when Charles had first begun to follow the Russian aristocrat? Or when he had learned about the Empire Living Pictures Company, and understood for the first time the true nature of the diabolical plot that was afoot?

  Thomas shivered, then hugged himself tightly. It was pointless to try and pick out one incident, he thought. Though neither he nor his master had known it at the time, it had been a nightmare from the very beginning.

  His heart jumped as he heard an urgent knocking on the front door.

  The police?

  Or them—come to silence him as they’d silenced Charles Montcliffe?

  The front window was boarded up, but there was a small gap between the boards, and by twisting his head at an awkward angle, he could just see the woman in the striped cotton dress on the doorstep.

  Molly! Standing out there on the street—as bold as brass—for any bugger to see.

  The parlour maid knocked again—even louder and more insistently this time. Thomas rushed into the hallway, flung open the door and pulled her inside.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doin’ ’ere?’ the valet demanded angrily.

  ‘Let go of me arm, can’t you?’ Molly protested. ‘You’re really ’urtin’ me, Thomas.’

  The valet looked down at his hand, as if he were surprised it belonged to him, then released his grip on the girl.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he moaned. ‘It was insane to
come.’

  Molly looked hurt and disappointed. ‘I’d thought you’d be pleased to see me,’ she said. She stepped around him, entered the parlour, and sniffed. ‘Crikey, it pongs a bit in ’ere, don’t it?’

  ‘It’s the bucket,’ Thomas explained. ‘I don’t dare empty it in the daytime. I only go out when it’s dark. Do you understand what I’m sayin’? It’s too dangerous for me to go out when it’s light—an’ it was too dangerous for you to come an’ see me in the light.’

  ‘It was as safe as anyfink,’ Molly said complacently.

  Thomas ran his hands through his hair in desperation. ‘How do you know the police weren’t followin’ you?’ he demanded.

  ‘They were,’ Molly told him. ‘But I lost them.’

  ‘You lost them!’ Thomas repeated in a voice that was verging on a scream. ‘How do you know you lost them? You’ve not been trained like they have.’

  ‘So what?’ Molly said. ‘I had help.’

  ‘Help? What kind of help?’

  Molly slowly shook her head, as if she were amazed he’d taken so long to catch on. ‘You’ve got more friends than you know about, Thomas Grey,’ she said. ‘Friends who’ll—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Thomas said hysterically.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I think there’s somebody at the back door.’

  Molly laughed. ‘You’re imaginin’ things,’ she said.

  And then she heard the unmistakable sound of splintering wood.

  Twenty-Two

  Being brought to Scotland Yard had been enough to make the woman in the cotton striped dress suspect she was in serious trouble, and the expressions on the faces of the two men facing her across the desk turned that suspicion into a certainty. ‘What’s your name?’ Blackstone demanded.

  ‘Nellie.’

  ‘Nellie what?’

  ‘Nellie Weeks, sir,’ the woman muttered.

  She had sobered up somewhat since Patterson arrested her, so she was no longer slurring her words—but it was obvious from the lines on her face that she was a habitual heavy drinker. ‘What do you do for a living, Nellie?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘A bit o’ this, a bit o’ that.’

  ‘In other words,’ Blackstone said, ‘you’re a prostitute.’

  ‘No, I ain’t!’ the woman protested.

  The Inspector sighed. ‘Come on, Nellie. If you’ve ever been nicked—and I’m pretty sure you have—we’ll have a record of it. So why don’t you stop wasting my time and just admit to the truth?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘Well, you know ’ow it is, sir—a girl ’as to eat.’

  ‘And a girl has to drink! How was it you happened to be on that particular bus?’

  ‘I’ve already told yer sergeant the answer to that.’

  ‘Well now you can tell me.’

  ‘I was takin’ a walk...’

  ‘You were out looking for customers.’

  ‘I was takin’ a walk,’ the woman said firmly, ‘an’ this gentleman come up to me an’ asked me if I’d like to earn some money.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A guinea.’

  ‘And what do you usually charge?’

  ‘A guinea.’

  Blackstone shook his head, almost despairingly. ‘If anybody normally offered you more than a shilling, you’d think Christmas had come early this year,’ he said. ‘So what did this gentleman say you had to do to earn his guinea?’

  ‘’E ’ad a brown paper parcel in one ’and an’ ’n ’at box in the other. He said there was a dress in the parcel, an’ I was to put it on.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I was ter travel up west an’ get on a certain bus at a certain stop at a certain time. Anuvver woman would get on at the next stop. She’d be dressed just like me—well, near enough, anyway—but I was to ignore ’er. I was ter stay on the bus till it got ter Quilp Street, then I was ter get off.’

  ‘And make a run for it,’ Patterson said ruefully.

  ‘The gen’leman said ’e was playin’ a joke on one of ’is friends,’ Nellie Weeks said. ‘’E told me this friend would probably be follerin’ me, but I wasn’t to worry ‘cos there was no ’arm in ’im.’

  ‘And you believed him, did you? It didn’t bother you that there’d be a man on your tail?’

  ‘When yer’ve been out lookin’ for business on a dark night in Whitechapel, yer fink nuffink about bein’ follered by a bloke in broad daylight.’

  ‘What else did he tell you?’

  ‘That I shouldn’t let ’is friend catch up wiv me for at least ten minutes.’ Despite her situation, she grinned at Patterson. ‘Took you a lot longer than that to catch me, didn’t it? An’ if I’d ’ave been able to stay away from the drink, yer’d probably never ’ave caught me.’

  Thanks a bunch, Patterson thought. That little comment will certainly make my life a lot easier.

  ‘What did this man who gave you the clothes and the money look like?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘’E wasn’t what yer might call a big bloke, but ’e looked like a very ’ard case.’

  ‘And did he have a foreign accent?’

  ‘Yes, ’e did,’ Nellie said. ‘’Owever did yer know that?’

  Because the description perfectly matched the two men Blackstone had seen acting as bodyguards to Count Turgenev at the archway boxing match.

  ‘Did he give you half the money then, and promise you the rest later?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘No. ’E gave me all the money right then, an’ said I could keep the dress an’ ’at as well.’

  Of course he did, Blackstone thought. These were careful men. Meeting Nellie again—with the possibility of falling into a police ambush—was not a chance they’d be willing to run.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘is why you went along with the ruse after you’d been paid.’

  ‘I beg yer pardon?’

  ‘You’d got the money—why bother to take the omnibus ride?’

  ‘Because I’m an honest woman, I am,’ Nellie said, without much conviction. ‘Besides...’

  ‘Besides what?’

  ‘’E said that ’im an’ ’is mates would be watchin’ me.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  Nellie gave an involuntary shudder. ‘Oh yes, I believed ’im all right. ’E was a pleasant enough bloke on the surface, but then there was ’is eyes.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They said that ’e’d kill yer soon as fink about it.’

  *

  Lord Dalton, sitting opposite Blackstone, took his time lighting one of his expensive cigars and then said, ‘I’m not at all happy with the way things have worked out, Inspector.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ Blackstone admitted.

  ‘I had to use considerable influence in order to get the Earl to persuade the Home Secretary to let Molly leave the house. It will be a long time before I can ask for another favour. And what was the result of all my efforts? Within an hour, your men had lost her.’

  ‘They didn’t lose her,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No! They didn’t lose her—she was stolen from them.’

  ‘I think you’d better explain yourself,’ Dalton said.

  ‘She could never have escaped on her own. She had help from someone inside the house.’

  ‘One of the servants?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Blackstone said, noncommittally.

  ‘Or are you suggesting it was one of the family?’

  ‘That’s possible, too.’

  Dalton laughed. ‘You’re not seriously putting forward the theory that the Earl bought a dress like Molly’s and then hired a prostitute to wear it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘That part of the operation was handled by a man called Count Turgenev.’

  ‘Count Turgenev!’ Dalton repeated.

  ‘You know him?’

  Dalton shook his head. ‘No. But I assume from the name that he belongs to the R
ussian aristocracy?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What business would a Russian aristocrat have with an English parlour maid?’

  ‘What business would have an English aristocrat have which could get him brutally murdered in the East End of London?’ Blackstone countered. ‘But that’s not really the point, is it? What matters is that Turgenev could not have set up his operation without knowing when Molly would be leaving the house, what general direction she would be going in, and what she would be wearing.’

  ‘I see your point,’ Lord Dalton conceded.

  ‘Was there anyone else there when you discussed the matter with the Earl?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Yes. The Countess, Hugo and Emily were also in the room.’

  I hate all this pussyfooting around! Blackstone thought. I hate having other people doing the work I should be doing myself.

  ‘You didn’t think it might have been wiser to have a word with the Earl in private?’ he asked.

  ‘It didn’t occur to me that any of the family might be suspects,’ Lord Dalton said. ‘As far as I am concerned, they are still all above suspicion.’

  Blackstone shook his head. He felt, he thought, like a man who was conducting major surgery in the dark, without even knowing the nature of the instrument he was holding in his hand.

  ‘Which of the servants knew what was going on?’ he asked.

  ‘The butler had to know, of course. Ever since the servants have been confined to the house, he’s been acting more as a warder than anything else. And Mrs Whitely...’

  ‘Mrs Whitely?’

  ‘That’s the housekeeper. She had to be told because she was the one whose job it was to send Molly out on her fictitious errand.’

  ‘So they both knew she’d be followed by the police?’

  ‘No, that’s not the case at all. I just told them that they should invent a reason for Molly leaving the house.’

  ‘And they didn’t wonder why?’

  Lord Dalton laughed again. ‘It is not a servant’s place to wonder why, especially in the Montcliffe household.’

  ‘But they could have worked it out, couldn’t they?’

  ‘Hoskins probably could have. He’s an intelligent man—he wouldn’t be much good as a butler if he wasn’t—and he keeps his finger on the pulse of the house. Yes, I think it’s perfectly possibly that he could easily have worked out what we were doing.’