The Detective Branch pm-4

by Andrew Pepper

  There was room for five hundred prisoners and, if the inmates showed a willingness to embrace the opportunities that were available to them, he claimed, the emphasis was on rehabilitation rather than punishment.

  The cells were arranged over two floors; half opened directly on to the ground floor; half on to the iron gallery above. The floors, made of asphalt, were smooth and spotless and the painted brick walls were similarly bare. It was, Pyke thought, like walking into a brand-new factory before production had started, the clean, sterile lines of the building conjuring an image of utter hopelessness. Felons would come here as men and leave as machines.

  The cell itself was thirteen feet long, seven feet broad and nine feet high. It had a window cut into the back wall, filled with glass and crossed with iron bars. In the cell there was a stone water-closet pan with a cast-iron top, supplied by a cistern above the cell, and a copper basin. There was also a small table, a stool, a shaded gas burner and a hammock slung across the width of the room. The men usually worked in their hammocks, the warder explained, but slept on mattresses and blankets that, during the day, were folded up and put away.

  If Pyke had been expecting a monster, he was disappointed. In his stockings and flannel shirt, and with his cropped hair, Druitt might have looked just like all the other inmates. In fact, close up he was quite a handsome man. His sculpted cheekbones, lantern jaw, pale skin and piercing grey eyes would have set him apart in respectable company. But it was his voice which really caught the attention; words rolled off his tongue as if individually polished and his soft, mellow tone made you want to listen to him.

  ‘I thought the winter would be much colder but warm air seeps in here through these.’ He gestured to the perforated iron plates in the floor. ‘I’m told the heat is supplied by flues connected to stoves in the basement.’ He sounded like a man showing off his new home.

  Pyke took another step into the cell.

  ‘So how can I be of assistance?’ Druitt smiled.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Pyke.’

  ‘Then can I welcome you to my humble abode, sir, and offer you a place to sit.’ He gestured at the stool.

  ‘I want to talk to you about your time at number twenty-eight Broad Street.’ Pyke elected to stand but almost immediately felt this had ceded a nameless advantage to Druitt, who was languishing in his hammock.

  ‘Oh?’ Druitt was apparently intrigued by Pyke’s reference to his former address. ‘And what exactly do you want to talk about?’

  ‘For a start, I’d like to ask you about your dealings with Brendan Malloy and Sarah Scott.’

  Druitt nodded, as though he’d already guessed this was the reason for Pyke’s visit. ‘So what would you like to know?’

  ‘Let’s begin with Malloy. Would you say you and he were friends?’

  ‘At one time, perhaps.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Living in close proximity to others can tell you more about them than you might have wanted to know.’

  ‘And what did you find out about Malloy?’

  ‘Brendan is a deeply disturbed man. I wouldn’t care to imagine what passes as thinking inside his head.’

  ‘You would say that, of course. After all, it was his testimony that put you in here. It’s revealing that the jury chose to believe him over you.’

  ‘Yes, that was unfortunate,’ Druitt said, as though describing a simple mishap.

  ‘What about Sarah Scott?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘How would you describe your dealings with her?’

  ‘Before or after her child fell to his death?’ Druitt’s pink tongue glistened behind a row of white teeth.

  ‘Fell? You mean you didn’t drop him?’

  ‘The jury ruled that I did, even if no intent was ever proven.’

  ‘And they were mistaken?’ Pyke asked sceptically.

  Druitt’s stare wandered around the cell. ‘I was expecting much worse, to be honest. It’s really not too bad. Beef or mutton on alternate days, gruel for dinner, the best bread I’ve eaten, cocoa sweetened with molasses in the morning. I’m kept occupied by my work.’ He gestured to the mat he was weaving. ‘I am allowed to exercise twice a day in the yard; I bathe once a week; my clothes are changed once a week and the schoolmaster regularly brings me books to supplement the rather dreary offerings provided by the chaplain.’ He gestured to the small row of books on his shelf. ‘I would hazard a guess that I’m rather more comfortable and well provided for in here than a pauper or a soldier.’

  ‘I asked about your dealings with Sarah.’

  Druitt’s smile broadened. ‘It’s Sarah now, is it? Then I presume you’ve had the pleasure of meeting her. She’s rather a comely creature, isn’t she?’

  ‘She was less generous in her assessment of you. In the circumstances that’s hardly a surprise.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. But it wasn’t always so. In fact, I suspect that our… friendship… was one of the reasons behind her separation from Malloy.’

  Pyke felt his throat tighten and his stomach muscles contract: he hadn’t been in the cell for more than a few minutes but already he felt uncomfortable and agitated.

  ‘Would you care to elaborate?’

  Druitt had noticed the imperceptible shift in his demeanour. ‘Does it upset you, Detective Inspector? The notion that Miss Scott was, at one point, rather taken with me?’

  ‘Were the two of you attached?’

  ‘ Attached?’ Druitt was grinning. ‘Now there’s a word to stand in for all manner of sins.’

  ‘Did the two of you ever sleep with each other?’

  ‘Better, Detective Inspector. Much better.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I rather think the lady should be the one to answer that question.’

  ‘Was the child Malloy’s?’ Pyke asked, biting back the urge to grab Druitt by the neck and squeeze.

  Druitt didn’t answer immediately. Instead he rocked himself back and forth for a while in the hammock. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment on the child’s parentage.’

  Pyke waited for a moment; he heard footsteps pass by the cell. ‘You intimated that the child fell to his death; that it had nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Druitt said, matter-of-factly. ‘That’s exactly what happened.’

  ‘Then why did Malloy take the stand and tell the court that you deliberately dropped the boy?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him. I wouldn’t care to speculate on what may or may not go on inside his head.’

  ‘I’ve read his testimony. He claimed he saw you drop the baby. I asked him about it. He said you were looking at him when it happened. He said he saw you smile.’

  Druitt wasn’t the least bit concerned by this accusation. ‘As I said, Brendan’s disturbed. She is, too. Perhaps she told you that she employed my services to soothe her nerves?’

  Druitt almost seemed to be enjoying himself. Pyke sat down on the stool and let the silence take root. Lying back in the hammock, Druitt started to hum.

  ‘When you were living at number twenty-eight, did you ever come across a man called Isaac Guppy?’

  ‘Guppy?’ Druitt rubbed his chin. ‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘He was the rector at St Botolph’s, Aldgate. He’s dead now. Murdered.’

  Druitt sat up in the hammock. ‘I see. And you’ve been prevailed upon to find the killer?’

  ‘Guppy was wearing a surplice when he was killed. This same garment turned up a few days later in one of the upstairs rooms at number twenty-eight.’

  ‘I find all of this fascinating, of course, Detective Inspector, but I don’t quite see what it has to do with me.’

  ‘A note was sent to me, at Scotland Yard, with the Broad Street address scribbled on it, together with a few lines from a poem by William Blake.’

  ‘How delightfully mysterious. Which poem, if I may be so bold? You see, I’m rather an admirer of Blake.’

  ‘ The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.’r />
  Druitt nodded briskly. ‘Ah, Blake’s response to Milton’s Paradise Lost. And the line?’

  ‘“Now the sneaking serpent walks / In mild humility / And the just man rages in the wilds / Where lions roam.”’ Pyke paused. ‘I mentioned the letter to Sarah. She told me it sounded like your handiwork. That you liked to play games with people.’

  But Druitt seemed not to have heard what Pyke had just said. ‘Minister Beale said that Milton was, and I quote, “too full of the Devil”. Likewise, in the poem you just quoted, Blake described Milton as “a true poet of the Devil’s party without knowing it”. Blake, of course, was paying Milton a compliment.’

  ‘Let me ask you a direct question.’ Pyke removed the letter from his coat pocket and handed it to Druitt. ‘Did you arrange for someone to deliver this letter to me at Scotland Yard?’

  Druitt gave it a cursory glance and let it drop to the floor. ‘No, Detective Inspector, I did not.’

  ‘You don’t recognise the handwriting?’

  ‘No, sir, but if it would make you sleep easier in your bed, I’ll scribble a few lines in my own hand, so you can discount me as the phantom author.’

  Pyke went to pick up the letter from the floor. ‘Brendan Malloy told me he’d visited the murdered rector, Guppy, in the spring. He said that you’d had a premonition that Guppy was going to die and that he’d gone there to warn Guppy.’

  ‘He told you that?’ For the first time, there was a hint of what may have been concern on Druitt’s face. ‘I can assure you he’s lying. I possess certain gifts, it’s true, but I’m afraid prophesying the future isn’t one of them. Would I be here if it were?’

  Pyke tried not to show it but he felt there might have been some truth in what Druitt had just said. ‘ Something compelled Malloy to go and see Guppy. Part of me thinks you know what it was.’

  ‘Until you came here to see me, I’d never heard of this rector’s name.’

  ‘Malloy owns a book, Malleus Maleficarum. It literally translates as “The Hammer of Witches”.’

  Druitt looked at him, seemingly bored now. ‘I don’t remember such a tome, I’m afraid, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘What if I were to tell you that Guppy was beaten to death with a hammer?’

  A flicker of interest passed across Druitt’s slate-grey eyes. ‘And now you’re wondering whether Brendan may have had something to do with it?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Druitt shrugged. ‘To be perfectly honest, I can’t imagine Brendan picking up a hammer with genuine malice aforethought. A bottle of gin perhaps.’

  Another silence fell between them.

  Pyke stood up and stretched his legs. Sitting on the stool for too long had made his leg go dead. ‘How would you describe Malloy’s sentiments regarding the Devil?’ He was thinking about the accusation that the former priest had made in the cell: that Druitt wasn’t simply evil but was the Devil incarnate.

  Druitt fell back into his hammock and contemplated the question. ‘Brendan sees Satan everywhere, in everything and in everyone. A harsh interpretation would be that he had long since surrendered his mental faculties. A kinder one would be that he does so because he wants to; because it suits his view of the world. Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil, good and evil. There are no shades of grey in Brendan’s world. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that if Satan was ever proved to be a fiction, there would be no reason for Brendan to exist.’

  Pyke found it hard to disagree with Druitt’s candid assessment of the former priest.

  Druitt climbed out of the hammock and stretched his limbs. ‘To say I’ve enjoyed our conversation would be an understatement. It’s been a while since I’ve talked for this length of time, but I’m afraid it’s left me feeling rather worn out. If you don’t have any further questions, perhaps you might permit me to get on with my work.’ He gestured down at the half-woven mat on the floor.

  ‘I’d like to think I won’t bother you again, but somehow I suspect I’ll be back.’

  ‘I’ll be ready for you, Detective Inspector,’ Druitt said.

  Pyke banged on the door and the peephole opened almost immediately. ‘Are you ready to go?’ the warder asked. A few moments later, the door swung open. But Druitt hadn’t quite finished with him.

  ‘Tell me one thing, sir. What date exactly did this murder take place?’

  Without having to consult his notes, Pyke said, ‘The third.’

  ‘Of December?’

  He nodded. ‘Is that significant?’

  Druitt yawned, but when he looked up, his eyes were glistening. ‘I’d say you were better placed to answer that question than me.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘The problem of Milton’s poem isn’t Satan. It’s God,’ Druitt said, calmly. ‘Because why else would the poem need, or even desire, to justify the ways of God to men?’

  By the time Pyke returned to the Detective Branch, it was late, well after ten, and the rooms were occupied by just Whicher and Shaw. While he removed his greatcoat and hung it on the stand, Whicher explained that he’d been to see the constable who’d arrested Egan, but that there was seemingly no connection between the matter he’d been arrested for, the theft of a few crates of wine, and the Saviour’s Cross. Pyke asked him whether he’d managed to question Egan himself, but Whicher shook his head and said it hadn’t seemed to be worth his while.

  Frederick Shaw was sitting at his desk surrounded by stacks of papers and reports. His sleeves were rolled up and an ink pen was tucked behind his ear.

  ‘Found anything interesting?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to reacquaint myself with that investigation I was telling you about,’ Shaw said, pointing to the reports on his desk.

  ‘And?’

  ‘The first boy, Johnny Gregg, was beaten to death with a hammer, as I said.’

  Pyke pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘And this other boy was crucified?’

  ‘Stephen Clough. His hands and feet were nailed to a door.’

  ‘Where?’

  Shaw took a few moments to find the right file. ‘Cambridge Street.’

  ‘Soho?’ Pyke felt a jolt of excitement race up his spine.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But I thought you said the bodies were found in St Giles.’

  ‘The first one was.’

  Pyke could feel the blood pumping in his chest. ‘Do you know where on Cambridge Street?’

  Shaw had another look at the report. ‘An old stables, I think.’

  ‘That’s where Brendan Malloy used to perform mass each Sunday.’

  Shaw looked up from the report, confused. ‘Malloy?’

  ‘The priest. The one we had in our custody until Wells, in his wisdom, persuaded Mayne to release him.’

  This was an important piece of information. It suggested that Malloy knew or at least knew of the man hanged for killing Johnny Gregg with a hammer and for crucifying Stephen Clough. If Morris Keate was as plagued by Satanic visions as Shaw seemed to think he was, and in view of the location of the second murder, it was almost inconceivable that he hadn’t met Malloy and perhaps even asked for an exorcism.

  ‘When did all this take place, Frederick? I know you’ve mentioned the date already but remind me again.’

  ‘Eighteen thirty-nine.’

  ‘Which month?’

  ‘December. The first boy, Gregg, was found on the morning of the fourth.’

  Pyke felt another rush of excitement. ‘So he would have been killed some time on the third?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Shaw looked up and must have seen the heat in Pyke’s face. ‘Why’s that significant?’

  ‘Guppy was killed on the night of the third of December, too. And as far as we know, a hammer was used on both occasions.’

  Shaw looked at him, dumbstruck. ‘I thought there was a connection. I just didn’t think to check the dates…’

  ‘Frederick, don’t feel bad. You’ve just broken this whole thing wide open. Now, I need you to tell me e
verything you know about the old investigation.’

  Shaw’s hands were trembling slightly. ‘Do you really think there’s a connection?’

  ‘Just take your time,’ Pyke said, pulling his chair up to Shaw’s desk. ‘And start from the beginning.’

  The first body was found by a crossing-sweeper early on 4 December at the crossroads of Tower and Little Earl Street in St Giles. The boy was soon identified as Johnny Gregg and was believed to be part of a gang of pickpockets that operated among the theatre crowd in Covent Garden and Drury Lane. From there, it was always easy to slip back into the rookery and relative safety. Gregg had been beaten to death with a hammer or some other blunt object but no family had come forward to claim the body. According to Shaw, no one had been especially concerned to find the boy’s murderer, at least not initially, presuming, rightly or wrongly, that, as a petty thief, he had stolen from the wrong person and had got what was coming to him.

  But when a second body was found two weeks or so later, this time on the other side of St Martin’s Lane in Soho, people sat up and took notice, not least because of the gruesome nature of the death. Stephen Clough had been pinned to the door of a stable on Cambridge Street, six-inch nails driven through his hands and feet. He had also been stabbed in the stomach, and it was this wound, rather than the nails in his hands and feet, which, according to the coroner, had killed him.

  Again, few people either in Soho or St Giles volunteered information beyond confirming that Clough, like Gregg, had been part of a gang of pickpockets that worked in the district. Nonetheless, this second murder had sent sections of the city into panic. The fact that children were being murdered, even if the children in question were dirt poor and belonged to the criminal classes, turned the story into a sensation. Rumours began to circulate about witchcraft and an underground coven of Devil worshippers. No one, it was said, was safe. The sales of pistols and knives soared and self-appointed constables joined the official police in patrolling the lanes and back-alleys of St Giles and Soho. In this febrile atmosphere, Shaw told him, the pressure to find the murderer had been intense, so when a man called Keate was brought to their attention, everyone, Shaw included, pounced on him. A night-soil man by trade, Keate lodged in one of the houses on King Street, St Giles, close to where the first body had been found. According to the men he worked with, Keate was a loner who, at nearly forty, was still under his mother’s thumb. He was also a deeply religious man, a Roman Catholic, and was troubled by visions of Heaven and, more often, Hell. Other lodgers reported that Keate had not been seen at the house on the night of the murders. His tool-chest was searched and a hammer was found, together with a distinctive hat that was later proved to belong to one of the boys. The hammer had traces of blood on the handle. Keate was arrested and taken to Bow Street police office. At his hearing, it was decided that the evidence against him was sufficient to warrant a trial, and at the trial, in spite of entering a ‘not guilty’ plea, Keate was found guilty. Two weeks later he was hanged in front of a crowd outside Newgate prison.