The Slum Reaper: Murder and corruption in Victorian London (Esther & Jack Enright Mystery Book 4)

by David Field

  ‘Esther. I’m only here for the day, doing some sewing work for the family.’

  ‘Would you like some more tea?’

  ‘Thank you, that would be nice. How long have you worked here?’

  ‘About a year now. They’re good ter me an’ the family’s lovely. I never ’ad no bruvvers an’ sisters, yer see.’

  ‘I bet you’d have liked a couple of baby brothers like those charming angels in that photograph,’ Esther ventured.

  Jane’s face fell.

  ‘They was lovely, them two — always laughing an’ chucklin’. I ’ope they find ’em afore much longer.’

  ‘Are they missing?’ Esther asked casually.

  Jane’s face turned a bright red. ‘Forget what I said, please, only we’re not s’posed ter mention ’em, ’cos the Master gets upset.’

  ‘And the Mistress?’

  ‘Not ’er, as far as I’ve noticed. It’s like she don’t miss ’em. But yer won’t say that I mentioned owt?’

  ‘Of course not, and thank you again for the sandwiches.’

  ‘Thank the cook fer them. I’ll get yer that tea.’

  Shortly before five in the afternoon, Esther met the older children of the family as they tumbled into the sitting room, panting and sweating from having run all the way up the road, arguing volubly about who had won the race. The boy was the first to spot Esther in the seat by the window and he smiled condescendingly in the manner no doubt taught to him by his parents.

  ‘Oh, hello there. You must be the new sewing girl. Do you do shirts?’

  ‘I do anything, provided that they’re washed first. You must be Lawrence.’

  ‘That’s me, Father’s son and heir. And this scarecrow who can’t run as fast as me is Lydia.’

  ‘Hello, Lydia,’ Esther said in her most conspiratorial voice. ‘Your mother advises me that you have a school dress with a hem that needs to be taken up.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Lydia smiled precociously, ‘but I’m not taking it off here, so that Lawrence can see my petticoats.’

  ‘Who’d want to see your petticoats?’ Lawrence sneered, ‘and in any case I’m going out to play cricket against the garden wall. I’ll let whatshername fix your dress.’

  ‘My name’s Esther,’ the ‘sewing girl’ advised Lydia. ‘Come closer and I’ll see if I can tack that fallen hem up while you stand there, without any need for you to take the dress off.’

  As she began working on the hem, Esther made a casual enquiry. ‘Who used to do your sewing before I was engaged?’

  ‘That was Emily, our governess and nanny.’

  ‘You’re surely too old to need a nanny?’

  ‘Yes of course, she was really here to look after — well anyway, she did our sewing.’

  ‘There seems to be an awful lot to catch up on. How did this hem get pulled down?’

  ‘That was my friend Lettie. We were racing each other up a wall and she tried to grab me and almost missed. The dress came off second best when her hand slipped.’

  ‘Hardly seemly behaviour for a young lady who’ll one day take her place in society.’

  ‘I know, but I seem to always want to play rough games. My cousins in the country are to blame for that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Older cousins?’

  ‘Yes, by several years. But we only get to lark around with them when we visit them in Windsor, where Aunt Maude has her estate.’

  ‘Your mother’s brother’s wife?’ Esther enquired casually as she cut the end of the thread at the end of her brief task.

  ‘Mother doesn’t have any brothers. Just sisters, like Aunt Maud. Have you finished?’

  ‘Yes. Do you have anything else that needs to be repaired?’

  ‘Probably, but that’ll have to wait. I want to read some more of my novel before supper. Thank you, by the way. Will you be here next week?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Esther replied, well satisfied with her first day’s work.

  By the end of the third week, as they sat around the lamb roast that Jack was carving and that seemed to have become a standard feature of their Fridays, Esther was querying whether or not she was still required to spy on the Mallory family.

  ‘Surely, I’ve got all you need. Millicent Mallory’s in denial that she ever had twin boys, the servants have been sworn to silence, as have their rather over-indulged older children, and the lady of the house attends a bridge club every Wednesday, which can’t be far away, given that the coachman’s always back from delivering her within half an hour.’

  ‘So, fifteen minutes there and fifteen minutes back,’ Percy mused out loud. ‘But how do we know that she’s going to a bridge club?’

  ‘We don’t, clearly,’ Esther conceded, ‘but what are you suggesting? That she’s got a secret lover or something?’

  ‘We don’t know that she doesn’t,’ Percy reminded her. ‘And there’s a railway station not fifteen minutes away by coach. From there she could travel to anywhere in London. I’m just wondering if she’s got the twins hidden away somewhere and is visiting them every week.’

  ‘Well, I can hardly follow her while I’m supposed to be doing her sewing, can I?’

  ‘No,’ Percy said, deep in thought. Then his eyes switched to Jack. ‘Feel like testing the limitations of your leg?’

  ‘Sergeant Ballantyne’s convinced I’m a lead-swinger and if I start taking afternoons off he’ll have me out of the force in no time.’

  ‘You’d only need to follow her once,’ Percy argued.

  Jack shook his head vigorously. ‘Not even once! I’m not going to become your hired sniffer dog. I’m supposed to be on light duties, resting a healing broken leg.’

  ‘And bored to screaming point?’ Percy persevered.

  ‘Of course bored to screaming point, but until they decide that I’m fit enough to resume normal duties, that’s where I’m stuck. And whatever became of my promotion, eh?’

  ‘I can think of no better way of proving your fitness and your suitability for promotion, than assisting in the location and rescue of two kidnapped children,’ Percy persisted.

  ‘Who’re helpless little mites even younger than your own son,’ Esther added.

  Jack glared round the kitchen in search of a suitable response, or — miraculously — a voice in his support. Uncle Percy was bad enough, but when Esther joined in on his side it was like trying to open a parasol in a force nine gale. He shrugged with resignation, then tried one last card as he glared at Percy.

  ‘Why can’t you do it?’

  ‘I’m off to see a man about a jail break,’ Percy replied with a slow smile.

  ‘I still don’t see how I can be expected to follow the woman with a broken leg,’ Jack complained.

  ‘She doesn’t have a broken leg,’ Esther joked, then stopped smiling when she realised that Jack had a point. Millicent Mallory travelled in a coach, whereas Jack would be on foot — and literally, in his case. One foot only.

  ‘Even if I could keep up with the coach,’ Jack added, ‘I’d be pretty obvious, haring down the road like a one-legged racehorse.’

  ‘Then maybe you should take a coach of your own and follow hers,’ Esther suggested half-heartedly, although even she could see the flaws in that arrangement.

  ‘So, I sit outside her own house, in a coach of my own, then when hers comes out I instruct my coachman to “follow that coach”, only to pull up behind it and pay off my coachman wherever we finish up? How do I know she doesn’t always transfer to another coach or something, or take the train?’

  ‘Suppose you were to hitch a ride on her coach?’ Esther suggested.

  Jack snorted in derision. ‘Do you not think the coachman might spot me, sitting on the baggage rail on the roof? Or should I stand at the side of the road with a loaded pistol, flag down the coach and demand a ride in it?’

  ‘How about hanging on to the back?’

  ‘Only naughty children do that sort of thing and sometimes they fall off and get injured. And they have the use o
f two legs.’

  ‘Can you think of a better plan?’

  ‘Yes — that we abandon the whole idea.’

  Esther gave him a look.

  ‘How do I know that the coach has something on the back for me to hold onto?’ Jack said with a sigh.

  ‘Leave that to me,’ Esther replied. ‘And if it does, it’s your turn to play the daredevil. That way, you won’t be shown up by your own wife.’

  The following day, Esther turned up for duty at the Mallory household and smiled with forced gratitude while Millicent counted out into her hand the coins due to her for the garments she’d done work on the previous week, ‘plus a little extra for your trouble in showing Lydia how to stitch up a hem’. Then it was another round of working on a pile of repairs and alterations, smiling and gritting her teeth through Millicent’s condescending drivel, all about herself, her husband’s status in his profession, the older children’s superiority at their private schools, and her own preference for carrot juice for maintaining a youthful complexion. Then the tricky part, once morning tea and biscuits had been consumed and Millicent was about to retire upstairs to beautify herself.

  ‘Since it’s such a lovely day outside,’ Esther asked in a suitably humble voice, ‘would you mind if I took a chair out to that lovely little summer house on the lawn and did my sewing out there?’

  ‘Of course not, my dear, but don’t sit out there for too long, exposed to the heat like that. You have such delicate skin and it would be shame to coarsen it.’

  As Millicent descended the front steps, Esther was already established in the summer house, with a clear view of the coach as it was driven slowly into place. By craning her neck she was able to see round the back of it and she smiled.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘The men are gettin’ restless,’ Percy was advised and he could hardly blame them in the circumstances. This was their fifth night out in the early Autumn chill, concealed in doorways, side alleys and wagons, or hiding around corners, all with a view of the main gate of Newgate Prison. The men had been instructed not to move and were not even allowed to smoke, in case the light from their pipes, cigars or cigarettes gave away their positions.

  ‘Tell them “tough luck” and at least they get the days off,’ Percy muttered, as he grimly anticipated yet another screaming match with Inspector Mitchell the following day, regarding the absence of men on the streets following nights in which their duty hours were wasted watching the jail entrance for signs of an escape bid. Then there were the ‘overtime’ payments to add to the cost of keeping Clara Manders fed, in her ‘special’ cell, with a daily intake of shop-bought meals that were probably of a far higher quality than she could expect to enjoy if she were granted her freedom.

  But hopefully it was all going to be worth it, if only to expose the corruption inside Newgate and the ease with which the regime could be subverted, either if the money was right or those employed inside there had dark secrets that they could not afford to have revealed by those who knew them and could exploit them to their own advantage. They might even be able to buckle some of Maguire’s leading lieutenants and put a temporary stop to some of his more nefarious activities. Then at least Percy would have something to show for the worrying expense he was incurring simply on a ‘gut feeling’.

  Suddenly there was movement at the front gate and the clear moonlight at long last revealed what they had been waiting for all week, as a wagon could be heard rumbling round the corner of Old Bailey. The gate creaked open a little wider and the face of a turnkey could be seen squinting out into the street, almost skeletal in the moonlight as he sought to ensure that all was clear. The wagon came to a halt and a tall man wrapped in a heavy cloak stepped down from the front board and approached the now half open gate, where a short stout figure could be seen just behind the turnkey.

  Percy shook the rattle hard in the pre-arranged signal and police officers in ordinary workmen’s clothes ran in from all directions towards the gate. A hasty attempt to close it was blocked by three officers who held it open while two more seized hold of the two figures just inside it, each man to their pre-designated target. The big man in the cloak had knocked three men down until someone had the presence of mind to whack him on the back of the head with a billy club and he went down like a bag of coal. Percy gave instructions for the other man with him to be buckled, then looked down with a gleeful grin at the unconscious form of Michael Maguire.

  ‘Buckle him at the wrists and the ankles, then throw him into the paddy wagon when it gets here and two of you sit on him all the way back to the shop. One on his chest and the other on his legs. If he comes round and struggles, send him into dreamland again.

  ‘Can we kill ’im?’ one of his men asked.

  ‘Definitely not,’ Percy replied with a vicious leer, ‘I have other plans for him, although the net result will be the same, one way or another.’

  He walked over to where two more of his men had the turnkey and Martha Crabbe firmly held, but still conscious, since neither of them had offered any resistance. He smiled at Martha Crabbe and she spat on the ground at his feet.

  ‘Always the lady.’ He grinned as he stepped backwards. He looked at the constable who was holding her firmly by the arm. ‘Does she smell as bad as I imagine?’

  ‘’Fraid so, Sergeant.’

  ‘Well, you’d better let go of her, before you catch something.’

  ‘But she’ll get away then,’ the constable objected.

  ‘Do you fancy holding on to her all the way back in an already crowded paddy wagon?’

  ‘Definitely not, Sergeant.’

  ‘Then let her go and let’s pretend that she kneed you in the groin.’

  ‘She did, one time, when we was loadin’ her inter the ’oldin’ cell.’

  ‘You must be Constable Preece, that right?’ Percy grinned.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

  ‘Well smack her around the head, then let her go.’

  The constable did as instructed and as Martha picked herself off the ground she made a run for it down Old Bailey.

  Percy grinned as he watched her skid round the far corner and into the cover of darkness, then turned his attention to the paddy wagon that had finally appeared, summoned from where it had been hidden behind a warehouse gate a few streets away.

  ‘Throw ’em in on top of each other,’ he instructed, ‘while I go and get the turnkey.’

  ‘Am I bein’ taken in?’ the turnkey asked.

  Percy nodded. ‘Eventually, but first I think we’ll get the Deputy Keeper out of his bed.’

  Back at the station, at the ungodly hour of three am, Percy made himself a mug of tea and took it back to his office, where he sat waiting, blowing pipe smoke contentedly up towards the ceiling. His patience and foresight were rewarded when a uniformed constable tapped politely on his open door.

  ‘One o’ the blokes yer brought in earlier wants ter talk ter yer. ’E’s down in Number Three.’

  ‘Thank you, Constable,’ Percy replied as he rose from behind his desk with a satisfied grin and tapped out the residue from his pipe bowl into the ashtray in front of him. Two minutes later he was looking intently through a set of bars at the anxious face of an overweight scruff with a large lump forming on his left temple.

  Percy smiled. ‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, Mr ...?’

  ‘Venables. ’Arry Venables. I bin charged wi’ five murders, as well as ternight’s little caper. That can’t be right, can it? Yer gets dropped fer Murder an’ I ain’t done none.’

  ‘That must have been my mistake, Mr Venables. But it was an easy one to make, in the circumstances. You were arrested in the company of a Mr Maguire, also known as “Truegood” and quite rightly also known as “Mangler”. Since I strongly suspect him of those five murders in question — and I think we both know which ones I’m talking about — I can only assume that those persons discovered in his company were also involved.’

  ‘They was all down ter Mangle
r — honest! ’E always liked ter do ’em ’imself, wi’ a sledge’ammer an’ all we did was search out the victims an’ make sure they was surrounded when ’e did ’em.’

  ‘I’m no lawyer, Mr Venables, but in my book that makes you an accomplice to the murders and the hangman makes no allowances when calculating the drop.’

  ‘Can I not “turn Queen’s evidence” or wha’ever it’s called?’

  Percy studied his terrified face for a moment as he appeared to think the proposal over carefully.

  ‘You puzzle me, Mr Venables. In the entire six weeks or so that I’ve been soiling my boot leather in this particular part of our world-famous city I’ve not come across a single soul who was prepared to peach on Mangler Maguire, given his reputation. What makes you so different?’

  ‘It’s better than ’angin’ like a dog. An’ if Maguire takes the drop, there’ll be no more danger from ’im. ’Alf the blokes what runs wi’ ’im — meself included — wanted out weeks ago, but we daresen’t in case we was next.’

  ‘Did you know that Mr Maguire was due to be launched into eternity last year, but managed to bribe his way out of Newgate?’

  ‘So ’e told us, but we wasn’t sure an’ we wasn’t prepared ter risk peachin’ on ’im, in case we was wrong.’

  ‘You mentioned five murders earlier,’ Percy reminded him. ‘It just so happens that I’m investigating precisely that number. Were you present at all of them?’

  ‘Yeah, but like I said, it were Mangler what done ’em. We was only there ter prevent any escape.’

  ‘And you’d be prepared to testify to that in a court of law?’

  ‘If I do, will they ’ang me?’

  ‘Not if you stick to your story and a smart lawyer of my acquaintance — name of Charlie Gill — tells the court that you only did what you did out of fear of Maguire. I believe that lawyers call it “duress” and you might walk away altogether. At worst, probably only three or four years.’

  ‘It’s a deal!’ Venables agreed as the colour began to return to his face. ‘When does I get ter go ter court?’