Striking Murder

by AJ Wright

  That was the problem these days. Public and domestic strife seemed to create a compound of unrest, the one blurred and fuelled by the other, and the only people who stood between the town and anarchy were the police, and the smattering of soldiers who made infrequent appearances on the streets at sensitive times. It wasn’t the most propitious time to be chief constable. Sometimes, he harboured a wish to be back commanding the troops in Limerick, or enjoying a late afternoon’s sailing on the lake at Udaipur, marvelling at the beauty of its white buildings and the magnificent shrine of Jagannath.

  He gave a long, meaningful sigh. He dreaded the consequences of further trouble, although there had been precious little violence so far, unlike the events across the Pennines. He had read with dismay of the way the dispute had escalated in Featherstone, where the reading of the Riot Act had preceded the horror of troops shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. Two miners had subsequently died, and the mood around Acton Hall Colliery was as volatile as a sizzling powder keg.

  His sergeant’s words broke into his thoughts. ‘It’s very early, sir. There’s a lot to …’

  ‘Early!’ He swung round, reminding Brennan of a vengeful gargoyle. ‘He was murdered four days ago. Four days!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And the cells down below are empty, Sergeant.’

  He decided against pointing out the error of the chief constable’s observation: they had several non-paying guests down below. Still, he understood the spirit, if not the accuracy, of his words.

  ‘We are making enquiries, sir. Even as I speak my men are going from house to house in the Scholes area and asking …’

  ‘Do you know how that place has been described, Sergeant?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘The ash-pit of human life. That’s what Scholes is. Scoop your hand into an ash-pit and what do you come up with?’

  Brennan deemed the question a rhetorical one.

  ‘It would do no harm to stir the cauldron a little, Sergeant Brennan. Look at the houses nearest the scene of the crime and examine the list of dwellers. I’m sure more than one name will jump to the surface like a half-boiled toad.’

  As an investigative ploy it left a lot to be desired. Feelings were already running high because of the miseries caused by the strike: hasty and unpremeditated arrests would merely serve to make a bad situation worse and divert anger from the coal owners to the police, who were already regarded as capital’s official arm.

  ‘You may consider that an order,’ said the chief constable, facing his inferior squarely now. ‘I will be able to inform the family – including Ambrose Morris himself who, I hear, has arrived and is already with his bereaved sister-in-law – that an arrest is imminent. I’m sure you can find me a suitable suspect, Sergeant, if only to assuage the grief of that sainted lady.’

  He gave a nod of dismissal, and Sergeant Brennan left the room in search of a suspect.

  Constable Jaggery knew there was no point arguing. There had been a time when an arrest was founded on the firm and irrefutable principle of evidence. Fair enough, sometimes you had to crack a few bones in order to get to the meat of the evidence, a bit like eating rabbit, really, but it made things a damned sight easier when you stood up in court and faced the awesome glare of a magistrate or judge, or sometimes even the wheedling insinuations of a smooth-talking barrister. Evidence was something you could fall back on when you had no answer to withering accusations of incompetence from some bugger wearing a wig.

  ‘But blow me,’ he said, as if Sergeant Brennan had already been privy to his train of thought, ‘this is a bit of a sod, ain’t it?’

  They stood outside the door of number 17, Hardybutts, on the outer edge of Scholes.

  Behind them, lined up along the kerbside in their black greatcoats, five police constables, all hand-picked because of their size, stood with their hands hidden beneath their coats, not, as it appeared to be, a precaution against the bitter late afternoon chill, but in a state of readiness, clutching wooden clubs to ward off any unwanted attention. Every door along the street was open despite the cold they were letting in. Dim shadows were cast from within, flickering oil lamps catching the waft of a breeze as women stood on doorsteps, their arms folded, and their menfolk drifting with an air of disdain towards the centre of the street. The crunch of their clogged feet on the snow carried the steady rhythm of menace. Small, almost ghostly children, their faces smeared with dirt or scabs, clung to their mothers’ skirts, their older siblings strolling alongside their fathers in a sort of familial display of solidarity. There was an unmistakeable mood of resentment in the growing dark.

  There must be thirty of the devils, thought Jaggery.

  A thin, reedy voice broke the silence before Sergeant Brennan could reply. ‘Have I to wait or what? Only me wick’s burnin’.’

  Brennan turned to see a tall, lanky individual, whose face was obscured by a thick woollen muffler and whose eyes glistened beneath a long pole that he held in his right hand. From atop the pole came a tiny glow from the already illuminated wick. The man gave a nod upwards. They were standing beneath a gas lamp.

  ‘By all means,’ said Brennan. ‘Go about your business.’

  Better to allow the man to light the gas, to let the locals have at least an appearance of normality before the arrest was made. With a meaningful sniff, the lamplighter stretched upwards and flipped open the glass door of the lamp, and, with a skilful twist of the wrist, he slipped open the gas valve that, with the application of the flame from the wick, immediately became a bright green light. He gave the row of policemen a lugubrious nod and went slowly on his way.

  Still, throughout the process, not a word came from the crowd.

  ‘Right then,’ snapped Brennan. ‘Let’s have him!’

  There was no knocker, so Constable Jaggery reached forward and rapped loudly on the upper panel with his huge fist. No response.

  ‘Again!’

  Brennan almost spat the word out. He knew full well the man was inside: one glance through the grimy window had shown a grate piled up with coals, and the white smoke that was billowing up the chimney as a precursor to the flames was a clear indication that the coal – probably lifted from the slag heaps near the collieries – had just been placed there, and he was probably ensconced in the bedroom, but he had to go through with the charade anyway. Under less public circumstances he would have ordered Jaggery to smash the door from its hinges, but the presence of an audience brought its own restraint.

  Once more Jaggery hammered against the door, and once again there came only silence from within.

  ‘Looks like he’s out, pal!’ yelled someone from the middle of the street, to a chorus of jeers.

  Jaggery turned round, his face now flushed with a dangerous blend of anger and incipient humiliation. ‘Som’body else’ll be out in a minute!’ he roared back. ‘Bloody well flat out.’

  More jeers.

  ‘What’s-he-called done any road?’ came another anonymous query.

  ‘Nothing to concern yourselves with!’

  Brennan turned fully to face the crowd. Most of them knew him – he had been born not a hundred yards from this very spot – and although these last few months had wrought a bitter deterioration in the relationship between the townsfolk, especially the striking miners, and the forces of law and order, he knew he, at least, still commanded a residue of respect. What happened next would compel him to revise that opinion.

  ‘No, an’ it’s none of thy concern either, Micky lad!’ yelled one.

  ‘We know where tha lives an’ all,’ yelled another. ‘Happen we’ll come an’ pay thee a call, eh? Hammer on thy door.’

  He could sense the mood shift, a dark, brooding malevolence in which even the low hiss of the gas lamp above his head seemed to be a disembodied rebuke. It seemed the silence had become something he could reach out and touch. His men shifted uncomfortably, their breath freezing in the evening air, and their eyes flickering from the crowd of people gath
ering around them in a semicircle to himself, searching in his face for the reassurance of command. He looked down at the clogged feet of the enemy, the studded iron trim above the soles damp with crusted snow.

  ‘Look,’ he said, attempting a conciliatory tone, ‘we just want to ask him a few questions. Nothing important.’

  ‘Why the bloody artillery then?’

  A man stepped forward, a good few inches taller than the rest. His broad shoulders were tense, ready to spring into action. Brennan recognised him. He and Ellen had stood in the market square with over ten thousand others a few months ago and listened to his powerful speech in defence of the miners’ right to earn a decent wage. What was it he had said that stuck in Brennan’s mind? ‘We are the bees that make the honey. We take the risks and they take the money.’

  Frank Latchford, prominent member of the Miners’ Federation, had an almighty way with words.

  The others stepped back and muttered their support. This was their spokesman and their champion.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Brennan caught the gradual closing of ranks, each local moving closer to his neighbour, teeth gritted, like a slovenly but bitterly determined squadron ready to attack. The children adopted the same pose, stern-faced and holding themselves rigid, the inconstant flicker of their eyes the only indicator of youth. He saw the women looking on with cold, resigned expressions on their faces.

  Slowly, with both arms raised, Brennan walked over to Latchford, who now stood on the edge of the kerbstone, the row of policemen watching nervously to his left. ‘We’re investigating a murder, Mr Latchford. A murder that took place here in Scholes. At the rear of this house, actually. Surely it’s best for everyone if we try our utmost to find who did it?’

  For a second, he saw Latchford’s eyes flicker.

  ‘And making a music hall show of paying Jem Muldoon a visit will help, will it?’ Latchford sneered. ‘Because the body was found in the alleyway behind his house? That’s a bit like blaming a lamp post for the dog piss.’

  Brennan smiled and nodded. ‘You’re absolutely right. Perhaps if I sent the uniforms away, and perhaps if I stepped inside to have a quiet word with him, that might calm things down a bit?’

  Latchford looked at him for a few seconds, a flicker of respect on his face. ‘You know I spend a lot of my time negotiatin’, Sergeant?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And I can tell when I’m being flannelled.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Latchford paused then finally gave an assenting nod. ‘You won’t mind, eh, if I come with you?’

  Brennan turned and whispered something to Jaggery, who gave a deep frown and appeared to protest, but who eventually gave a resigned shrug of his broad shoulders and barked out an order for the rest of the constables to make their way back to the station.

  A mocking cheer went up from the gathering gloom, and the combatants gradually dispersed, taking their children and womenfolk with them.

  Jem Muldoon was a small, stoop-shouldered collier, his thick neck and arms a curious contrast with the rest of his body, as if God had changed his mind halfway through. Having been reassured by the voice of Frank Latchford calling up to his bedroom that all would be well, he came downstairs muttering curses and rubbing an unshaven chin as his only acknowledgement of a visitor and was now sitting at a small table in a tiny kitchen, his hands cupped together and continually clasping and unclasping, as if unsure whether to pray or curse. Behind him, with one arm resting reassuringly on his shoulder, stood Frank Latchford, with an expression on his face that betokened both concerned neighbour and resolute advocate.

  ‘But I’ve done bugger all!’

  And Detective Sergeant Brennan was bound to agree with him.

  ‘Well, not since you got fined five shillings last week for being drunk in charge of a horse and cart.’

  ‘That’s what you get for doin’ a brother-in-law a soddin’ favour.’

  ‘I know. I was in court, Jem. Remember?’

  ‘I paid me fine. Am I to be done twice for t’same thing? Against the law is that.’

  ‘No. We just need to know about Saturday night.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘The night Arthur Morris was murdered. A matter of yards from where you live.’

  ‘Nowt to do wi’ me, pal.’

  He spoke with the dismissive confidence of an innocent man.

  ‘I’m not saying it is. I want to know what you know. That’s all.’

  The man gave a sneer, then quickly retracted it. ‘I know Morris got what was comin’ to ’im, that’s what I know. Bastard like that.’

  Latchford leant forward and said something Brennan couldn’t quite catch, though he could guess at its meaning: Don’t incriminate yourself!

  Perhaps it had been a mistake to allow him to be present during the interview.

  Finally Latchford said, ‘Ask anyone in this street, in this district, why, in this entire town, and you’ll hear exactly the same sentiments. Jem’s not alone in that.’

  ‘I agree, Mr Latchford. But nobody deserves to die like that, do they?’

  ‘There’s worse ways to die,’ he snapped back. ‘Slow starvation for one. Hurling yourself in the Duggie or the canal to numb the pain of seeing your children starve, that’s another. A knife through the heart is quite a merciful way out, I’d have thought.’

  Brennan frowned at Latchford’s words, but said nothing. He simply shook his head. He needed to put the interview back on track.

  ‘Jem, did you see or hear anything on Saturday night, anything suspicious?’

  ‘Bugger all. I were asleep. Too many early bloody nights these days, what with the lockout an’ all. Can’t remember t’last time I had a pint.’

  This was hopeless. He had followed the chief constable’s orders, at least in part, and come up with nothing. To drag Jem Muldoon down to the station just to fill a cell was madness. As Brennan stood up to go, Muldoon looked up at him.

  ‘What were ’e doin’, eh? Morris, I mean. What were ’e doin’ up ’ere any road? No bugger’s gonna make him a cup o’ tea an’ a bacon butty, are they?’

  That was the question that lay, Brennan thought, at the very centre of this investigation.

  What was Arthur Morris doing in Scholes at all?

  As Brennan got to the door – with Latchford by his side – Muldoon spoke once more. ‘Happen it were someone not from round ’ere what did for the swine. Happen it were that one-eyed little bastard, eh?’

  ‘What?’

  Before Latchford, who actually raised a hand as if it had some magical power of forestalling speech, could stop him, he went on. ‘I said, happen it were that one-eyed little bastard. Him who’s been askin’ all sorts o’ questions.’

  Jem Muldoon looked at his advocate and saw only rebuke in his face. He shrugged his shoulders and held his hands steady on the table.

  But Brennan’s eyes had narrowed. ‘What one-eyed little bastard?’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Captain Alexander Bell shared a love of death with many of his fellow men.

  Not that he would ever admit to it, but it was an indisputable fact that Death embraced everything he held dear about Life. It brought the best out of people, reminding them not only of the transitory nature of this life but the spiritual sanctuary of the next, affirming both the awesome force and the sublime goodness of Almighty God. It was often said that the English were a reserved, insensitive race, that they nurtured the concept of the stiff upper lip to the detriment of rather more continental displays of emotion.

  Death put the lie to that.

  What greater demonstration of emotion could there possibly be than the convention of mourning, with all its outward panoply of grief and bereavement that betokened an intensity of inner grieving? He recalled the outrage he had felt in India the first time he had seen a widow become a suttee, throwing herself on her husband’s burning pyre in Allahabad, near Lucknow. It seemed to be a thorough dereliction of all that was human,
and dignified, and British.

  He noticed with approval, as he waited in the hallway at the Morris residence, the deferential lowering of eyes in the domestic staff, the pallor of their faces and the elegiac silence as they passed each other in the sombre execution of their duties. Each one had, of course, been given attire more suitable to mourning, yet another indication of the selflessness and the unanimity Death brings to a household.

  ‘If sir will come this way?’

  The butler’s sudden appearance, like mist at a séance, startled him.

  ‘Of course.’

  He was led into a small sitting room that lay to the left of the main drawing room. This, it seemed, was to be the place where the family received visitors of condolence. As he entered, Captain Bell was immediately struck by the chill of the room. At the far wall, an elaborate mahogany hearth, its inner panels inlaid with hand-painted tiles, lay cold and forlorn. The splendid Queen Anne bracket clock, with its gentle chinoiserie, lay on the mantel between two silver candlesticks, both of which were symbolically lit on a bed of crape.

  He tried to recall the blazing flames dancing in the grate of the drawing room on his last, much more joyful visit a few months ago, the way they created a frenetic sparkling in the tiles that framed them as he, along with other eminent guests, awaited the arrival of their host, with a pianist playing ‘Nocturne’ by Chopin on the splendid Steinway. The memory and the notes faded, and he rebuked himself for his selfishness and concern for his own comfort.

  ‘Alexander?’

  He turned round and saw Ambrose Morris, Member of Parliament for Wigan, standing in the doorway.

  As always, he was dressed impeccably, in full mourning: dark suit, black tie and armband, with his hair groomed elegantly with Macassar oil. Yet the aura he normally gave off – of someone perfectly at ease with his own abilities and appearance – was somehow diminished, as if his brother’s death had lessened him both physically and mentally. The shoulders, he noticed, had lost some of their poise, an impression reinforced by the signs of an incipient stoop and an expression on his face, mainly hidden but there beneath the confident surface, of irretrievable loss. An involuntary image flickered in his mind: Atlas, condemned by Zeus to bear the whole weight of the world on his shoulders.