Depths of Deceit

by Norman Russell

  ‘This is Catherine Lane, sir,’ said PC Gully. ‘As you can see, it’s got a number of jewellers’ shops, and one or two optician’s premises. This place here, on your right, is Mr Gold’s workshop. He’s a wholesale jeweller. Next door to him we have this grand-looking place, sir, with its fancy redbrick front, and a clock in a kind of gable up there, above the gutters. Hatchard’s Furniture Repository, it used to be. It’s been closed for years. And just further on—’

  ‘Just a minute, Constable,’ Box interrupted. ‘Hold your horses, will you? As I see it, this Catherine Lane is one side of a rough square. The first side we saw was Priory Gate Street, with the archaeological site, and the stationer’s next door to it. This Catherine Lane forms the second side of the square, and you’re going to take us along the remaining two sides. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s like a square, this whole block.’

  ‘And this Hatchard’s Furniture Repository – it looks in very good repair, but you say it’s been closed for years. Curious, that, don’t you think?’

  ‘It is looked after, sir, I’ll admit that. But I remember it being closed while I was still a boy. It’s locked, barred and bolted, and quite empty inside. You can see through some of the windows at the back if you jump up and down, and look through the bars. We used to dare each other to climb up on to the roof when I was a boy. There are skylights up there.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Box. ‘I’m sorry to hear that you had a disreputable past, PC Gully. So it’s been empty for years?’

  ‘It has, sir,’ said Gully, smiling in spite of himself. ‘And we only dared each other. We never actually climbed up there. Now here, beside Hatchard’s you’ll see this narrow back crack, which is called Miller’s Alley. This is by way of being the third side of your square, Mr Box.’

  They followed Gully along a narrow path between the windowless flank of the furniture repository and another dismal blind wall to their left. Miller’s Alley was strewn with the detritus of decay: pieces of blackened brick, the charred remnants of mischievous fires, the yellowing bones and fragments of offal discarded there by some rogue butcher. Rank grass grew long between the uneven flags.

  ‘And this is Miller’s Court, Inspector,’ said PC Gully as they emerged from the alley into a mean courtyard flanked on two sides by derelict slum dwellings. Roofless, and with the window sashes long plundered for kindling wood, the airless cottages looked like the skeletons of human dwellings.

  ‘I wonder who Miller was, sir?’ asked Sergeant Knollys. It was the first time that he had spoken since he and Box had joined PC Gully on their tour of the area, and the constable jumped in surprise. For a sinister, scar-faced giant of a man, he thought, Mr Box’s sergeant spoke very well. He could almost have been mistaken for a gentleman.

  ‘Miller? I expect he was another of those slum landlords who threw up these courts in the forties,’ Box replied. ‘Can you imagine having to live here? Miller’s Court…. Wasn’t this one of the cholera courts, Constable?’

  ‘It was, sir, back in the early sixties. There were still people living here when I was a boy – desperate folk, they were. But it’ll all be gone and forgotten by ’97.’

  Facing the ruined cottages the back wall of Hatchard’s Furniture Repository rose towards the sky. A rear entrance was closed by stout doors containing three mortise locks. The remaining wall of the enclosed court was topped by a line of broken glass cemented into the brickwork. Beyond this wall lay the archaeological site in Priory Gate Street.

  Arnold Box glanced up at the hot sky above them. Not a cloud was to be seen, but suddenly there came a rumble of thunder. A single dark cloud appeared from over the rim of Hatchard’s roof, and Box felt a few drops of rain fall on to his upturned face.

  ‘I don’t like the feel of this place at all, Sergeant,’ said Box, turning towards Knollys. ‘Locked, barred and bolted – it’s what my old pa calls a bag of mystery. Constable, can you show us the fourth side of the square?’

  ‘You’ll have to come through one of these ruined cottages, sir,’ said Gully. ‘Mind how you go! The floors are firm enough, but there’s a lot of rubbish lying about.’

  PC Gully selected a dwelling on the left side of the court, and led Box and Knollys through the doorless entrance. Tramps had lit fires in the building, and what remained of the staircase had been burned into a mound of fine ash. They emerged through a gap in the rear wall into a thin strip of beaten clay bounded by a sturdy wooden fence.

  ‘This is your fourth side of the square, Inspector Box,’ said PC Gully. ‘Beyond this fence lies Priory Gardens, the little park laid out in ’ninety. Very soon now, Miller’s Court will be thrown down, and the gardens extended across the site.’

  ‘What about Hatchard’s Furniture Repository?’

  ‘Well, sir, that’ll stay where it is. So will all the shops and little factories along Catherine Lane. It was just that warren of slum houses called the Rat Run that was to be demolished, so I’ve been told.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Constable,’ said Box. ‘This little tour of yours has given me a lot to think about. Incidentally, why is it called Catherine Lane? Who was this Catherine?’

  ‘Centuries ago, sir, there used to be a church facing on to the lane, and it was called St Catherine’s. And it was just near the steps leading up to Hatchard’s that the famous treasure was found in 1887. The Clerkenwell Treasure.’

  ‘The Clerkenwell Treasure? I seem to remember reading something about that in the paper, Constable. So it was discovered in Catherine Lane?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was in a specially made cavity beneath the porch of the old church, and it had been lost for centuries, so they said. And the funny thing is, sir, that it was found by this same Professor Ainsworth who discovered the Mithraeum last year – just a couple of streets away from here.’

  2

  At King James’s Rents

  When Box and Knollys had taken formal leave of Sergeant French and PC Gully, they walked down Leather Lane and into Holborn Circus, where they hailed an omnibus that would take them to Whitehall. Despite a further episode of thunder spots, Box assured Knollys that it was not going to rain that day. They mounted to the empty upper deck.

  ‘The sky’s all wrong for rain, Sergeant,’ said Box as they settled themselves on one of the wooden-slatted seats. ‘And besides, it would be stifling inside on a day like this. All that straw, and hot bodies. Did you know, Sergeant, that in this great metropolis of ours, nine hundred tons of horse-droppings are deposited on the carriageways every day?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that, sir,’ said Knollys, ‘but I can well imagine it. It’s certainly very olfactory today.’

  ‘Olfactory? What does that mean? Did you invent it?’

  ‘It means smelly, sir. It’s in the dictionary.’

  Box took his notebook from a pocket, and rapidly flicked through the pages.

  ‘Let’s forget all about horse-droppings, pagan gods and temples, Jack,’ he said, ‘and concentrate on the murdered man, Mr Gregory Walsh, B.Sc., Assayer and Sampler, whose home is at 5 Hayward’s Court. Or maybe it’s his business premises. Now, we can leave it to “G” to inform the next of kin, and prepare them for a visit from you, tomorrow. Find out what he was doing at the Mithraeum. Funny name, isn’t it? Sounds like a music hall. See if you can establish any connection between Walsh and this professor – what’s his name? Ainsworth. We’ll have to talk to the professor, too, before many more days have elapsed.’

  The iron tyres of the horse-omnibus screeched as they passed over the cobbles at the junction of Fetter Lane and Fleet Street. Above the all-pervading ring of traffic, they would both hear the menacing roll of thunder.

  ‘What will you do, sir?’ asked Knollys.

  ‘Me? Well, the first thing I’ll do when we get back to the Rents is see if PC Mackenzie’s in his telegraph cabin, and get him to send a wire to young Dr Donald Miller, who’s on duty at Horseferry Road Mortuary today. I want him to perform an immediate post-mortem. You
remember Dr Miller, don’t you? He came out to Corunna Lands last year, to examine the body of poor PC Lane. I’ll call on Miller early this evening, and hear what he has to tell us.’

  They had reached the Strand, and the traffic was becoming very dense. The sky was rapidly blackening, and the hot air of the August day was turning humid.

  ‘And another thing, Jack,’ said Box. ‘I’m going to send Sergeant Kenwright to go through that Mithraeum with a fine-tooth comb. And while he’s there, he can make drawings of that stone reredos, and any other little detail that takes his fancy. You know how good he is at that sort of thing, and— Ah! Whitehall, at last!’

  As Box and Knollys rose from their seats, there came a flash of sheet lightning, followed by a terrifying clap of thunder. The heavens opened, and in seconds both men were soaked to the skin. Clattering down the open staircase, they jumped off the moving vehicle into Whitehall.

  As they hurried down the little narrow street called Great Scotland Yard, Arnold Box could see the old entrance to ‘A’ Division, where, until four years earlier, members of the public had come when they’d wanted to ‘see a policeman’. It was in actual fact the back entrance to Number 4, Whitehall Place, the old office of the Metropolitan Police Commissioners.

  Three years earlier, the Metropolitan Police had removed themselves, lock, stock and barrel, from their festering collection of cramped old houses in Whitehall Place and its environs, and had taken up residence in the gleaming new fairy palace on the Embankment, known as New Scotland Yard.

  Some officers, though, had been left behind, including Detective Inspector Box and a dozen others, shepherded by Superintendent Mackharness, an elderly and often irascible veteran of the Crimean War. It was, they had been told, only a temporary measure, but already the original dozen exiles had swollen to over thirty.

  Leaving the gleaming wet pavements of Whitehall Place, Box and Knollys picked their way over the slippery cobbles that would take them to their headquarters at 2 King James’s Rents. The leaden atmosphere of the hot August day had caused a pall of blue smoke, blown down from a hundred chimney stacks. It covered the battered old building, which was one of the later annexes acquired by the Criminal Investigation Department in one of its frenzies of expansion out of Whitehall Place.

  King James’s Rents, with its labyrinth of connecting rooms on two floors, was reputed to be as old as Whitehall. It got its name from the fact that it had provided lodging for the Scottish courtiers who had arrived in London with James I. That canny monarch had charged them rent for the privilege. The rear portion of the Rents, a former carriage-maker’s establishment, had been acquired in 1845.

  Box and Knollys entered the vestibule of 2 King James’s Rents. The scrubbed wooden floorboards were wet with the drippings from countless regulation cloaks. Ahead of them were the glazed swing doors of Box’s office, a room into which daylight never penetrated with any conviction, and where the gas mantle burned and spluttered for most of the day and night.

  ‘Box, come up here, if you please. I shan’t keep you more than ten minutes.’

  Superintendent Mackharness was standing at the top of the steep stairs that led to his dim, mildewed office on the first floor. He must have seen them crossing the cobbles from Whitehall Place. Leaving Knollys to enter their office, Box hurried up the stairs in obedience to his master’s summons.

  Arnold Box regarded his superior officer with a judicious mixture of affection and apprehension. Mackharness was well over sixty, and afflicted by occasional bouts of sciatica, which had given him a more or less permanent limp. His yellowish face was adorned with neatly trimmed mutton chop whiskers. He was a tidy man, dressed in a black civilian frock coat, which made him look rather like an elderly clerk in a counting-house. Box thought that he deserved better accommodation than the gloomy, lop-sided chamber, smelling of stale gas and mildew, that he was obliged to occupy.

  ‘Sit down in that chair, will you, Box,’ said Mackharness, ‘and listen carefully to what I have to say. You look very damp – positively bedraggled. You’re usually a smart man, Box – well done! – so after this interview, you’d better tidy yourself up a bit. Put a comb through your hair, and so forth. Now, what was it I wanted to say? Oh, yes. I’ve had a communication from an Inspector Perrivale, out at Carshalton. I don’t know him, but he writes very succinctly and well. A man was found murdered there this morning, so he tells me, a man called Abraham Barnes. I have his letter here…. Yes, here it is.

  ‘Abraham Barnes, Esquire, principal of the Royal Albert Cement Works. Apparently he was semi-retired, and his factory was run by a resident manager. This Barnes was sixty-four. He lived with his wife and unmarried daughter in a house called Wellington Lodge, built in the grounds of his works. He was found in the conservatory of this house, and Inspector Perrivale says he was killed by a blow with a sharp instrument to the back of the skull.’

  Mackharness put the letter down on his ornate desk, and smiled rather grimly.

  ‘Perrivale says that this Abraham Barnes was a popular man, esteemed by all, and with no enemies. Well, we’ve heard that kind of thing before. It means little or nothing. Go down there, will you, Box, and see what it’s all about?’

  ‘Why does Mr Perrivale want a Scotland Yard man, sir? Does he say?’

  ‘He says that there were peculiar and sinister aspects to the murder that are beyond his capacities as an investigator. Very honest of him, I must say. Our uniformed friends are usually most unwilling to make any such admission! Go down there first thing tomorrow morning. There are frequent trains from London Bridge Station.’

  It was very hot in Mackharness’s office, and the room seemed to be pervaded by the combined odours of mildew, chimney smoke, and snuff. One of the sash windows had been raised a few inches, and had wedged itself stuck at a drunken angle between the frames. The superintendent handed Box the folder containing Inspector Perrivale’s letter, and then sat back in his chair.

  ‘How did you get on in Clerkenwell this morning?’ he asked.

  Box described in detail his summons to the Mithraeum in Priory Gate Street, and his brief investigation of the murder of Gregory Walsh.

  ‘Assayer and Sampler?’ said Mackharness after a few moments’ deliberation. ‘That suggests that he was a chemist of some sort – perhaps an analytical chemist. Now I wonder what a man like that would be doing in an old Roman vault? Pursue the case by all means, Box, but see if you can clear up this business at Carshalton first. I’d be interested to hear what Perrivale considers to be “sinister aspects”.’

  ‘I’ll go first thing tomorrow, sir,’ said Box. ‘But for the rest of today I’d like to pursue some leads connected with this business of the Mithraeum.’

  Superintendent Mackharness did not seem to hear him. His eyes were narrowed, as though he was recalling some incident in his own past. Presently he spoke again.

  ‘This Mithraeum, Box, will have been concerned with the worship of an old Roman god called Mithras. I remember doing him at school. We did them all: Zeus, Apollo, Minerva…. And then we had Hercules, and Perseus, and Aeneas, and the story of Troy. Did you do any of those things at school?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You were lucky. We did it all in Greek and Latin, Box, from little tattered books with missing covers, and if you dared glance out of the window, you’d see people going about their lawful occasions, their heads mercifully free of all this stuff….’

  ‘It sounds awful, sir.’

  ‘It was. And then I attained my sixteenth year, and rushed off to the Curragh to join the Royal Irish Rangers. No Latin or Greek there! Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes. Go out to Carshalton tomorrow, and find out what’s amiss. I think that’s all, Box. Good afternoon.’

  When Box left Mr Mackharness’s office, he made his way along a narrow windowless passage, at the end of which an iron spiral staircase took him up to the telegraph cabin, a small room that had been built upwards through the roof of 2 King James’s Rents. There was no landing:
you stood on the top step of the spiral staircase, and pushed open the narrow door. The telegrapher, PC Mackenzie, was sitting at his single telegraph engine, reading a newspaper. He sprang to his feet as Box, still standing on the staircase, half leaned into the bright little room. Through the large window he could just see the telegraph wire stretching from its insulator across the roofs of Whitehall.

  ‘Constable,’ said Box, ‘I want you to send a wire to Dr Miller at the Horseferry Road Mortuary. Ready? “Miller – please perform immediate post-mortem on the body of Gregory Walsh. Will call after six this evening. Box. King James’s Rents”.’

  ‘Do you want a reply, sir?’

  ‘No, thank you. Just send the wire, Constable. I’m quite certain that Dr Miller will oblige me.’

  Box closed the door of the cabin, descended the iron staircase, and threaded his way along the maze of passages that would take him back to the first-floor landing. In the fairy palace on the Embankment, he mused, men similar to himself would be hurrying along spacious tiled corridors, lit by the electric light; it was humiliating to know that parts of King James’s Rents were still illuminated by candles and oil lamps.

  When Box gained the ground floor, he pushed open the swing doors of his office. It was a spacious, high-ceilinged room, but very little natural light penetrated into it from the vestibule of the Rents. A rackety two-burner gas-mantle suspended from the soot-stained ceiling hissed and spluttered. On that particular day, the wooden floor had been freshly scrubbed, and the place smelt of carbolic.

  Sergeant Knollys was standing in front of the fireplace, peering at some of the notices that had been gummed to the big flyblown mirror rising above the mantelpiece. Or was he, in fact, ruefully examining the livid scar which ran across his face from below the right eye to the left corner of his mouth? That scar was a relic of an encounter with a gang of vengeful thugs, who had used a length of sharpened iron railing to break his right arm and a number of ribs before disfiguring him for life. Such was a policeman’s lot.