To his surprise, halfway there he crosses paths once again with young Constable Mull. ‘Well, lad! You’re coming up in the world; they’ve put you on day patrol already?’
Mull gives a sheepish grin. ‘Only because ’tis the holidays, and all the married men are out sick.’
‘Hmm, yes. I’ve pulled that one myself a time or two.’
The constable eyes the bundle of clothing. ‘Still no clients to speak of, then?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Eh, no offense, sir, but if you’re reduced to pawning your clothes …’
Charley laughs. ‘A sharp observation, Mr Mull, but unfortunately quite wrong. These were left at Madame M’Alpine’s by the notorious Mr Neck, who fled the scene wearing nothing but a shirt. Well, actually, he also had my handcuffs. And a bullet in his back.’
‘You shot him?’
‘Not fatally, I’m afraid.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Good question. I’m hoping Dr Smoot will have the answer.’
‘Do you need any help, Inspector? I’ve naught else in particular to see to.’
Though Charley would, of course, be fine on his own, he can see how eager the boy is to do some real policing, to get his hands dirty, to make a difference. He remembers that feeling, as vividly as if it were yesterday, and he misses it. ‘It wouldn’t hurt,’ he says. ‘You never know what we might find.’
What they find is, indeed, something they never counted on.
At first, there’s no indication that anything is amiss. The entrance door is locked, just as before, and Charley deals with it in the same fashion. Constable Mull watches, fascinated, as Charley plies his picks. Wistfully, he says, ‘Could I learn how to do that, do you suppose?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ says Charley. ‘There’s just one problem.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, if you get good at it, you’ll have to change your name.’
‘Change my name?’
‘Coppers are fond of nicknames, you know – particularly ones involving bad puns. I can almost guarantee they’ll dub you Unlockin’var.’ Charley begins singing softly, so as not to alert anyone within, ‘Oh, Unlockinvar is come out of the west/Throughout all the city, his skills were the best/And save his good lock picks, he weapons had none—’
Lochinvar has to cover his mouth with one hand to stifle the snickers. Grinning himself, Charley slips through the door and into the entryway, where he pauses, sniffing the air. Someone’s been burning something – a roast, it smells like. A pity; the sort of folk who live here can scarcely afford to ruin a good chunk of meat. But when he eases open the door to the doctor’s office, he discovers the source of the smell. It’s not a cut of beef or lamb that was left on the fire too long. It’s a human body, burned to a crisp.
Charley is aware of Constable Mull bursting out through the entrance door and vomiting violently in the street, but he pays little attention. He’s focused on the room, watching and listening for any sign of another presence. As before, the only thing moving is a mouse, heading for some sanctuary within the walls; it strikes Charley that there’s something odd about the creature’s appearance, but before he can decide what it is, the mouse disappears beneath the baseboard.
The charred corpse is sitting upright in a chair. Though it’s burned beyond recognition from the waist up, from the knees down it’s unscathed, and there’s no mistaking the colorful but soiled Berlin wool slippers on the man’s feet.
Constable Mull moves hesitantly up behind Charley. ‘Who–who is it, Inspector?’
‘Dr Smoot, I’m afraid. He’s the one Neck came to, to have his wound treated.’
‘Could Neck have done this to him, then, to shut him up?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him, I know that. But it doesn’t look like murder to me.’
‘Eh, sorry, sir, but – I mean – what else could it be? Surely no one commits suicide by burning himself to death?’ Mull moves closer to the blackened body and, though he looks ready to upchuck again at any moment, forces himself to examine it. He turns to Charley, his eyes wide with astonishment. ‘You dunnot think – it couldn’t be—’
‘What?’
‘Well, sir, you recall what became of Mr Krook in Bleak House.’
‘You think it was spontaneous combustion, do you?’
‘I dunnot know. ’Tis possible, isn’t it?’
‘Hmm. You said you’d seen quite a number of dead bodies, Mr Mull. Were any of them victims of spontaneous combustion?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I thought not. Why don’t we see if we can’t find some more … ordinary explanation? Now, if someone else committed the deed, he’d have doused the doctor with something flammable – say, lamp oil – and the whole thing would have gone up at once, right?’ Clearly determined not to jump to any more conclusions, Mull considers this a moment, then cautiously nods.
One of the many useful items Charley carries in the generous pockets of his greatcoat is a folding knife. Crouching down next to the body, he picks with the point of the knife at the fragile, blackened remains of the doctor’s coat pocket. ‘But it looks to me as if the flames started here, and spread upward. Would you agree?’
‘That would seem to be the case, yes, sir.’
‘So, the question is, what was in that pocket?’ He stands and surveys the room. On the deal table is a tobacco pouch and, next to it, several ill-made cigarettes. The floor is littered with blackened Congreve matches. Lying among them is a silver hip flask, which Charley retrieves and gives a shake – empty. ‘Now, if Neck was here, he wouldn’t have passed this up. It’s worth at least a crown. I don’t think he’d be likely, either, to lock the door behind him when he left.’
Charley hands the knife to Mull. ‘Make a cut in the lining of his coat, near the hem, will you? I dare say that, like most of us, the doctor had at least one hole in his pocket; let’s see whether anything fell through.’ While the constable is busy with this, Charley dons his eyeglasses and inspects the area of the baseboard where the mouse disappeared.
A few minutes later, Mull says, ‘Mr Field? Take a look.’ He approaches, holding out one hand; in the palm are two unburnt matches, a shred of thin paper, some bread crumbs, and several dark objects the size of rice grains.
‘Very thorough, Mr Mull; thank you.’ Slightly embarrassed by the spectacles, he tucks them back in his pocket. ‘Well, it’s pretty clear now what happened here.’
‘It is?’
‘I’m willing to bet that it’s neither homicide nor suicide. I think Dr Smoot was the victim of an unfortunate accident – an unlikely one, I admit, but perhaps not as unlikely as spontaneous combustion. You’re not a smoker, are you, Mr Mull?’
‘No, sir.’
‘But you are familiar with phosphorus matches and how little it takes, sometimes, to get them going?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You think they could be set off by, say, a mouse chewing on them?’
‘I suppose so.’ Mull examines the evidence he holds in his hand. ‘Eh, I see. Those are mouse droppings. The creature mun have been after a crust of bread or something, and while he was in there, he gave the matches a try. But would that be enough to start a fire?’
‘It would if the pocket was full of cigarette papers. And if the fabric of the coat was greasy enough. And especially—’ He holds up the flask. – ‘if the doctor happened to spill some gin on himself. The poor blighter. He was probably too drunk to notice what was going on until it was too late. Apparently the mouse was luckier – though I’d say he got his fur singed a bit, judging from how much scraped off during his escape.’ Charley gestures toward the mousehole and shakes his head ruefully. ‘He and Neck are two of a kind – they wreak havoc, and then just scamper off to their hidey-holes.’
‘At least you singed the villain’s fur a little,’ says Mull.
‘Yes. Maybe if he’s laid up for a while, it’ll give me a chance to track him down. Well.
I suppose you’ll have to write up a report on all this. You want me to come with you?’
‘If you dunnot mind, sir. I’ve never made a report on anything so drastic.’
‘Well, a word of advice, for this case or any other: The less drastic you make it sound the better they’ll like it. I would include the word accidental as often as possible.’ Constable Mull says something in reply, but Charley doesn’t catch it. He’s thinking of Rosa’s death, and how ready the coroner and his jury were to rule it suicide. He’s thinking, too, about the power of words, about the profound effect one person can have on the life – or death – of another just by uttering the word suicide or accident rather than murder, guilty rather than not guilty. It’s so much more simple and satisfying. Call an incident murder or suggest that a suspect may be innocent, and suddenly it requires a lengthy investigation, a trial, and considerable amounts of time and money. And if, in the end, a perfectly good suspect is found not guilty, it means that it’s all been wasted effort; it means that the coppers failed to get their man.
‘Inspector?’ Lochinvar Mull is saying.
‘Sorry. What?’
‘I was just wondering – you said that the less drastic a case is the more they like it. But Inspector Barkley is always keen to have us put the cuffs on someone. He says that the more arrests we make the better it makes our division look.’
‘That’s so – as long as the case is cut and dried; they just don’t want anything complicated. By the way, there’s no need to mention my name in your report. We’ll let them think you cracked the case alone; it’ll earn you points, maybe even a little respect.’
‘Thank’ee, sir. I could use some.’
‘I believe it. It was easier, joining the force when I did, just as it was getting started. We were all fresh fish back then, floundering in the bottom of the same boat.’
‘I suppose your old mates at the station house will be glad to see you.’
Charley laughs. ‘I wouldn’t count on it, my lad.’
The constables who are lounging about the Chelsea Division Headquarters greet him cordially enough, but the reception he gets from the burly, crook-nosed sergeant clerk is as frosty as the weather. As they’re heading back out to Mull’s beat, the boy says, ‘Whatever has he got against you, sir, if you dunnot mind me asking?’
Charley gives a weary sigh. ‘It’s a long story, Mr Mull.’
‘Those are always the best ones.’
‘I’m surprised the other coppers haven’t told you already. But it has been a year and, as Mr Dickens says, people have short memories.’
‘Not the sergeant, apparently.’
‘No. No, he’s still nursing a grudge.’ Charley heaves another sigh. ‘Well, things do look pretty quiet out here; maybe I can relieve the tedium a little.’
If he served up just the meat of the matter, without all the trimmings, he could cover it with very few words: In his usual ferrety way, he had refused to let go of a case, and because of it, he was forced to resign, with ill feelings all around. But he knows the inquisitive Lochinvar won’t be satisfied with that, so he begins his story with the incident that started it all – the poisoning of Mrs Bramble’s husband.
Naturally, he has to recount in minute detail how he and the Scarecrow went about cracking the case, and naturally, Constable Mull is all ears. But the story doesn’t get really interesting until the point at which Charley discovered the reason why Dr Benjamin’s Panacea was so ubiquitous: It had been publicly endorsed by no less a personage than Lord Starkey, whose patrician profile actually appeared on advertising bills for the Panacea. Well, thought the hoi polloi, if it’s good enough for the likes of him, it’s good enough for me.
Of course, Starkey – who had lost nearly all his fortune through bad investments – was paid handsomely for his endorsement. The thing was, the baron’s stern and mustachioed mouth had never actually touched a bottle of Dr Benjamin’s. If it had, he would have suffered the same fate as those he had conned into buying the stuff – at best, severe stomach cramps; at worst, a slow and agonizing death.
Though Charley did his utmost to bring the man to justice, the long arm of the law couldn’t quite manage to reach that high. No matter how strapped a baron may be, he’s still a baron, and his peers will do everything in their considerable power to keep his name out of the courts or the crime columns.
Commissioner Mayne, who was becoming less concerned with crime than with his status in society, instructed Charley’s superiors to muzzle him – which of course was like trying to muzzle a mad dog. When a verbal warning had no effect, the sergeant clerk and two of his cronies cornered Charley in a dark alley. Though they had meant to remain anonymous, it was easy enough to identify them the following day; one was missing a couple of teeth, one’s eye was swollen shut, and the sergeant’s Roman nose now looked more Egyptian – like the Sphinx’s, to be precise.
‘A week later, I was summoned by Commissioner Mayne himself and asked to resign. Well, I say asked, but it was more in the nature of an order. And there you have it. End of story.’
‘But what about Starkey? He got away scot-free?’
Charley gives a sly grin. ‘Not exactly. Like the mouse, he got his fur singed a little. I don’t suppose you’ve been in London long enough to have seen the bills posted all about the city, advertising Dr Death’s Panacea. They featured a remarkable likeness of Lord Starkey in a hooded cloak, with a scythe over his shoulder. We never did find out where those came from.’
‘Eh, I cannot imagine,’ says Constable Mull. ‘But you know, that makes me think – what if we were to post bills like that with Neck’s picture on them, offering a reward for information?’
‘The coppers try that now and again; usually it’s a waste of time. They’re all torn down within a few hours. I’ll probably have better luck talking to my old informants. In fact, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll start right now.’ As Charley heads off down the street, a thought occurs to him, and he turns back. ‘Being fresh fish, I don’t suppose you’ll manage to get home to Derbyshire at all during the holidays?’
‘That I won’t. I’m on duty nearly every night.’
‘Any chance you could raise a glass with me and my wife on New Year’s Day? Something without ardent spirits, of course.’
‘I’d be honored. Only …’
‘What?’
‘Eh, aside from the uniform, I dunnot have much in the way of decent clothing.’
Charley hands over the coat and trousers that have been under his arm all this time. ‘There,’ he says. ‘Now you do.’
THIRTEEN
When Charley first joined the fledgling Detective Division – hard to believe it was over two decades ago – it seemed that nearly every week the names of Neck and his mates turned up in the route-papers that made the rounds from station house to station house. For a time, he and his pack of thieves – those who weren’t incarcerated somewhere – worked out of the area of St Giles known as the Rookery. But then they were uprooted, along with several thousand other citizens – some law-abiding, some not – when half the lodging houses and night refuges were demolished to make way for the construction of New Oxford Street.
As far as the coppers are concerned, ‘improving’ an area in this way is like scratching at a nasty skin eruption; it only serves to spread the infection to other parts of the body. Neck’s tribe became more nomadic, plying their trade in a new neighborhood every few months. As the likelihood of their being caught decreased, the scale of their crimes increased. When things grew too hot, they hooked it to some other town for a while. But, like swallows and spawning salmon, sooner or later they always returned to their breeding grounds.
Though the new thoroughfare cut out a good deal of proud flesh and drained off some of the infection, there are plenty of plague-spots remaining. Two years ago, Charley took Mr Dickens on a tour of the Rookery; the report published by the Great Man in his magazine, Household Words, drew a shocked response from his readers. But, as both
Charleys have recently pointed out, people have short memories. Despite the existence of a Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes and a Society for Improving the Condition of the Laboring Classes, not to mention a Public Health Act and a Common Lodging Houses Act, conditions here look much the same now as they did then. It seems that folk are better at making up lofty-sounding names than at making an actual difference.
The narrow streets and alleys are still strewn with garbage, and the pigs are still rooting through it; the same drunks doze in doorways, the same scrawny, ragged children play an impoverished version of kickball with a rotting cabbage. Well, it’s unlikely that they’re the identical ones he saw two years ago – most of those drunks and many of the children and all of the pigs are no doubt dead by now – but they may as well be; it’s the same little tragedy with a different cast.
The buildings that glower down on them resemble more than ever a ring of death’s heads, with their siding like bleached bones and their windows like sightless eyes or rows of broken and blackened teeth. Though Charley doesn’t venture inside, he’s certain they’re still packed with bodies of both sexes and all ages, curled up on bare floors that sag under their weight and threaten to send them plummeting into a cellar full of seepage from overburdened cesspools.
He wouldn’t be surprised to find that the steep flight of stone steps descending into Rat’s Castle has tumbled to ruin; it’s been on the verge of it for years. But, no, it’s still there, too. Charley makes his way carefully down the stairwell, remembering to duck when he reaches the Castle’s doorway; his head is well acquainted with the slab of stone that perches over the entrance – one of the hazards of being a big man.
Somehow, even though it’s underground, Rat’s Castle has been spared the tide of sewage that has inundated most of the cellars hereabouts; perhaps its walls are better built. If so, they’re the only things about the place that’s well made. The tables and benches are close to collapse, as are some of the clientele – from drink or malnutrition or chronic illness, or some combination of the three. The pewter mugs are dented, the earthenware ones yellowed and cracked and mostly without handles – again, by and large, a fair description of the men drinking from them.
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