Constable Mull can’t help laughing. ‘How’s that?’
Charley shrugs and says, around a bite of bread, ‘Some of them are sweet, some are sour; some are hard, some soft; some are green, some – I won’t say rotten, but overripe. This bread isn’t so bad. Or it could be I’m just too starved to care.’ Despite all the cadavers he’s encountered over the years, seeing Rosa’s body was like being punched in the gut by Bendigo Thompson. But his appetite has never deserted him for long. Maybe his sudden hunger springs from the same source as the jury members’ mirth: Relief that – for the moment, anyway – he’s not the one lying stiff and cold on a tabletop.
He wishes he’d done more for Rosa while she was alive – found her and Audrey a better flat, found a buyer for her paintings, something. All he can do now is find out who killed her and why. ‘Did you pry anything more out of the orderly?’
Mull pulls out his nearly pristine notebook and examines it earnestly, as if it contains a wealth of damning evidence, then admits, ‘Eh, not much. He mostly wanted to know who you were, and why you were asking so many questions. You think he has summat to do with her death?’
‘I never rule anyone out, but I doubt it. Those fellows are in the business of saving lives, not taking them.’
‘So you dunnot believe it was suicide, either?’
‘Either?’
‘I’m no detective, sir, I know that. But I’ve been thinking about what the other constable told me.’
‘The other constable?’
‘Before the inquest, I dropped in at the Hyde Park station and talked to the men as were on duty night before last. The station house is right nigh the bridge, so I thought they might have heard or seen summat.’
‘And?’
Mull blushes a bit. ‘Eh, most of them just told me to run along like a good boy and stop bothering them and that. But one fellow – Spills, his name was – said that, around one or two in the morning, he went outside to … you know, relieve himself, and he thought he heard somebody cry out – a woman’s voice, he thought, but he couldn’t say for sure, because it was very quick-like. Then he heard a splash.’
‘Just a single splash?’
‘’Tis what he said. I specifically asked him, because I thought that a person who jumped in of their own accord would likely do a bit of thrashing around before they … um, went under.’
‘You’re right. Good thinking.’
‘Thank ’ee, sir. Anyway, whenever he headed for the bridge to investigate, he saw two fellows approaching from the other end. They said they’d heard the splash, too, and were afraid someone had jumped off. The constable told them they mun go alert the Rescue Society, meanwhile he would see if he could spot a body. He said that, if it’s a woman, oftentimes the air in their clothing will keep them afloat for a while.’
‘Yes, I know,’ says Charley impatiently. ‘Go on.’
‘Sorry. He couldn’t see naught, so he waited for the Rescuers, only they didn’t come; he had to go roust them out himself. The fellows he’d sent to do it had never showed up.’
‘Did he give a description of the men?’
‘I guess it was too dark. He did say one of them was tall and thin and the other one shorter and stouter.’
‘That’s all?’
Mull glances at the notebook. ‘Eh, wait, now. He said one had a sort of a high-pitched voice – he thought it might have been him that cried out. The other one sounded kind of hoarse, like he had a bad case of the ague.’
‘Neck,’ murmurs Charley. ‘And Neckless.’
‘Necklace?’ echoes the constable.
‘Neck-less. It’s what the coppers call this burly bloke whose real name is—’ Charley consults his list of Wrongdoers Who Got Away. ‘Hoggles. He’s got a head like pumpkin and it sits right on his shoulders. I arrested him half a dozen times, but never could get anything to stick. He’s been seen keeping company with a thief and arsonist known as Neck. I’d bet a crown they were the coves your Mr Spills saw on the bridge. And I’d bet a week’s wages – which at this point isn’t much more than a crown – that they weren’t there to save anybody.’ Charley downs the rest of his bread and coffee and gets to his feet. ‘You’ve been a great help, Constable. If I can ever return the favor, don’t hesitate to get in touch.’
Now Mull’s face truly turns red. ‘You mean it?’
‘If I didn’t, I wouldn’t say it.’ He tosses a shilling on the table. ‘Get yourself some bags o’mystery or something, will you? You’re a growing boy.’
‘Bags o’mystery?’
‘Sausages, in the Queen’s English. Now, if you see or hear anything of our Mr Neck or Mr Neckless, you’ll let me know?’
‘That I will, Inspector.’ As Charley is leaving, Mull calls after him, ‘Just one more thing, sir, if you dunnot mind. You asked the orderly how much water came up when they tried to resuscitate her, and he said there wasn’t much. Is that a clue?’
‘It could be. If Rosa was conscious when she went in the river, her lungs should have been full.’
‘Aha. It didn’t look as if she’d been struck or aught. You think she might’ve been drugged?’
‘Well,’ says Charley, ‘with any luck, we’re about to find that out.’
His friend’s training as a chemist has proven valuable more than once. When Charley wanted the bottles of Dr Benjamin’s Panacea tested for poison, he took them to the Scarecrow. The former counterfeiter also concocted a chemical compound for testing the ink on suspect banknotes. And he once helped Charley nab a kidnapper, by booby-trapping the ransom money: He filled a flask with red ink, sugar, and German yeast and concealed it inside the satchel; when the bag was opened, a clamp was released and the foaming brew drenched the kidnapper, who was caught not only red-handed but red-faced.
The procedure the Scarecrow is undertaking today – testing a sample of Rosa’s blood for the presence of chloroform – is considerably more complicated. Though the compound has been in use for less than a decade, it’s become the anesthetic of choice for dozens of prominent physicians. Earlier this year, the Queen herself partook of it, to ease the pain of giving birth to her eighth child, little Prince Leopold.
It’s also become the drug of choice for thieves, abductors, and killers to subdue their victims. If Rosa was dumped unconscious into the river, chances are she was chloroformed – perhaps twice, if she recovered from the first dose enough to cry out.
Though Charley is a clever fellow, he can’t begin to grasp the intricacies of chemistry, even when the Scarecrow explains each step in detail, and what it’s meant to accomplish. Several times, Charley has watched him prepare his photographic plates and develop the resulting portraits, and each time it flabbergasts him; the man might as well be performing magic.
The same applies to the task at hand. The Scarecrow squirts the blood into a glass flask and heats it over a gas flame, creating a vapor that he catches in a second flask, which is coated with nitrate of silver. The chloroform is magically transformed into chloride of carbon, carbonic acid, chlorine, and hydrochloric gas, which magically combines with the silver nitrate to form a white powder – silver chloride. The amount of silver chloride powder gives a rough measure of how much chloroform was in the victim’s blood. ‘A lot,’ says the Scarecrow. ‘She must have given them quite a struggle.’
‘She would,’ Charley says softly. ‘She was a strong woman.’
The meticulous photographer sets about testing the residue with ammonia and nitric acid, to make sure it is indeed silver chloride. ‘The thing I can’t understand,’ he says, ‘is why. Surely what little money she had on her wouldn’t be worth killing for.’
‘I have a theory about that,’ says Charley. ‘I’d spent some time with Rosa earlier that evening. So, apparently, had our old acquaintance Mr Neck. She said he’d been boasting about some scheme that he was involved in and that promised to be very lucrative. She wouldn’t go into detail, but I have no doubt it was also very illegal. If so, he may well have regrette
d his rashness and decided to shut her up.’ Without warning, the analytical part of him, which so far has had the upper hand, is shoved aside by the emotional part. He slams a fist on the photographer’s worktable, making the glassware rattle. ‘Damn! If only I’d questioned her more closely when I had the chance! If I’d stayed with her, if I’d walked her home—’ His voice breaks, and he smacks the table again.
The Scarecrow lays a bony hand on his arm. ‘Don’t be blaming yourself, Charley. You couldn’t know. Any idea where to look for this Neck fellow?’
Charley shakes his head. ‘But I expect he won’t be hard to find. Though he may lie low for a little while, criminals are like corpses – eventually they always float to the surface. If he’s making money hand over fist, he’s not prudent enough to put it in the bank; he’ll go out and spend it. All I have to do is wait until he turns up.’
Normally, Charley is a patient man. To his fellow coppers, he was known – among other things – as the Ferret, not only for his ability to ferret out the truth but because, once he’s sunk his teeth into something, he won’t let go. Some of his cases have required him to hang on for years; he’s determined that this won’t be one of them. He doesn’t want to just hang on, he wants to seize the villain by his stiff, stretched-out neck. He wants to be a lion, not a ferret.
Luckily, another case turns up to keep him occupied, so he doesn’t spend all his time seething and stewing. Late that afternoon, as he sits drumming his thick fingers on his desk and trying to decide where to have his supper, there’s a soft rapping at the door. ‘Please come in!’ he calls.
From the delicate nature of the knock, he’s expecting a woman. But the visitor is in fact a rather robust fellow of thirty or so, with a distinctly Bohemian look about him, from his unfashionably long locks and sparse beard to his colorful frock coat – the fabric of which would make a fine carpetbag if it weren’t so worn – to his trousers, which are tight enough to reveal the outline of the few coins in his pocket, not to mention his family jewels.
He also has that distinctly melancholy look so prevalent among poets and dramatists and painters, which may be attributed to despair and slow starvation, but just as often to the notion that struggling artists are expected to look melancholy. Since this fellow’s fingers are flecked with ink and not paint, and since no dramatist he’s ever met would deign to sport a beard, Charley pegs him as a poet, and a poor one at that – in terms of income, that is; he wouldn’t presume to judge the fellow’s work solely from his appearance.
Well, the poverty part goes without saying; all poets are poor, with the exception of Mr Tennyson. But this one is likely worse off than most, since his lodgings are somewhere near the glue and bone works, judging from the bone dust that clings to his boots – boots that are in much better condition and of far better quality than you’d expect on a Bohemian – and the sickly smell of boiling horse carcasses that lingers on his clothing even after the long hike here. There’s no question that he walked all the way; he clearly can’t afford a cab. Not a good sign, for how will he afford a private enquiry agent’s fee?
Still, Charley can’t afford to turn anyone away. ‘May I help you, sir?’ he says, as brightly as possible given the air of gloom that the young man spreads about him, like the scent of the glue works.
‘I doubt it,’ moans the poor poet. He slumps down in the client’s chair and sinks his head in his ink-stained hands. ‘I think I’m going mad.’
SEVEN
‘I’m afraid,’ says Charley, ‘that insanity is a little outside my area of expertise.’ He could suggest consulting a mad-doctor, but he has a feeling the fellow is exaggerating just a bit. Maybe all he really needs is a good cup of tea. As Charley fills the teakettle from his ewer and puts the kettle on the hob, he says, ‘Why bother to come all the way from Bermondsey if you don’t think I can help you?’
‘I didn’t know who else to turn to, and Mr Dickens says that, when it comes to solving mysteries, you’re the best. But—’ He raises his head and stares at Charley, blinking in puzzlement. ‘But how on earth do you know where I live?’
‘I’ll explain it sometime. Right now, it’s you who needs to do the explaining, Mr—?’
‘Mumchance. Geoffrey Mumchance.’
‘And you’re a friend of Mr Dickens?’
‘Not a friend, no. I’ve submitted a few poems to his magazine, that’s all.’ Aha, just as he guessed – a poet; Charley mentally chalks up another point in his own favor. ‘Well,’ says Mr Mumchance, ‘more than a few. He’s turned them all down.’
As the man seems about to break into tears, Charley quickly diverts his attention. ‘I can’t promise anything, except that I’ll do my best.’ He knows what the fellow will say next, and he heads him off. ‘We won’t worry about fees and such things yet. For now, why don’t you just tell me the nature of this mystery you mentioned?’
Mumchance gives a melancholy sigh. ‘It involves a betting shop.’
‘Hmm,’ says Charley. Stories involving betting shops seldom turn out well. They also tend to be quite long, full of excuses and rationalizations. Taking out his meerschaum, he fills it and lights it from the fireplace.
‘At least,’ continues the poet, ‘I think there was a betting shop. There are times when I’m convinced that I imagined the whole thing.’
‘May I suggest, Mr Mumchance, that you begin at the beginning, and go straight through to the end? Stories generally make more sense that way.’
‘All right,’ says the young man dubiously, as if poets are not normally required to make sense. ‘I’ll try. It started with this idea I had, of buying a really special gift for Emmeline.’
‘Your wife?’
‘No. Well, that is, not yet. Someday, I hope. This idea of the present was part of my plan – to win her over, you see. Well, it’s more her parents that need winning over, actually.’
Charley almost says, ‘Have you considered a snuffbox?’ but he doesn’t want to distract the fellow just as he’s getting started, so he simply nods.
Emmeline, at least according to Mr Mumchance, is the sweetest and loveliest creature ever to walk the earth. Unfortunately, her parents are determined to marry her off to the wealthiest prospect they can find – another familiar tale that seldom ends well, except in novels of a certain sort. As far as the parents are concerned, Mr Mumchance would more aptly be called Mr No Chance.
As poets will do, he supposed that he could change their minds, or at least get their attention, with some grand, romantic gesture that would reveal what a splendid chap he really is. Seeing how envious they were of the fashionable ladies and gentlemen who ride in carriages and on horseback through Hyde Park each Sunday, he settled on the very thing that would impress them the most: He would buy Emmeline a horse. The problem being, of course, that he had scarcely enough funds to buy a picture of a horse.
But then he came upon the betting shop. Curiously enough, though the shop lay on the route he often took to the newspaper offices in Fleet Street, he couldn’t recall ever seeing it before. And yet there was nothing temporary or fly-by-night in its appearance; in fact, there was quite a large, expertly painted sign above the door that read THE ARISTOCRATIC CLUB. Wagers accepted all races.
‘At first,’ says Geoffrey, with an embarrassed laugh, ‘I couldn’t make out the meaning of that. I thought it meant that anyone was welcome there – Chinese, Ethiopians, Aborigines …’
‘Irish,’ suggests Charley, which draws another laugh from his client. He hands the fellow a cup of freshly brewed tea. ‘Go on, please.’ He takes out his notebook and lead pencil and reluctantly dons his spectacles.
The races referred to were, of course, the kind involving a track and horses. Geoffrey wouldn’t have given the place a second thought except that, a few days earlier, one of his literary friends was boasting that he had won several pounds betting on the ponies. Of course, the friend had an advantage Geoffrey did not – a modicum of money to make a wager with. Still, the poet was intrigued eno
ugh to press his face to the window and peer inside.
The walls were hung with half a dozen large portraits. They were not the likenesses of famous politicians and military figures that are so common in public houses, but portraits of horses – presumably famous ones. There were also several even larger chalkboards with the names of racetracks at the top – Aintree, Ascot, Epsom Downs, Beverley – and beneath that a list of other names: the ponies entered in each race, Geoffrey assumed.
At the rear of the room was a fancy divider made of wood and wrought iron, with two openings in it, like the tellers’ windows in banks. Half a dozen people – working men, mostly – were lined up at each window, putting down their money. A voice spoke almost in Geoffrey’s ear, startling him. ‘Ever bet on the nags, lad?’ The speaker was a slight, respectable-looking fellow with a knowing smile. ‘It’s tempting, ain’t it? But let me tell you, it’s a fool’s game. Don’t try it.’
Geoffrey thanked him for the advice and was about to move on when the man caught him by the sleeve. ‘Unless,’ he said. ‘Unless you happen to have inside information. Now my problem is, I’ve got the information, I just can’t do nothing with it.’ To illustrate his point, he turned his pockets inside out. He moved closer and said quietly, confidentially, ‘I was a horse trainer, you know, up until a few weeks ago, when one of our nags went lame. It wasn’t my fault, but of course I got blamed for it, and sacked. I haven’t had a day’s work since. But—’ He tapped his head with a forefinger—‘I still have my knowledge of horses. I know which ones just look good, and which ones have what it takes to win.’
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