by AJ Wright
Cox blinked twice before recognising the Federation man. ‘Latchford. What do you want? I’m busy.’
He turned to go but felt a large hand press down on his shoulder. Once more he turned round, his eyes blazing with anger now. ‘How dare you!’
‘Now that’s no way to speak to someone who might be able to do you a favour, is it?’
‘What the blazes are you talking about?’
‘There’s the Bricklayer’s Arms round the corner, in Hallgate. Let’s me and you go and have a drink, shall we?’
The thought of entering that establishment, a place of dubious and violent repute, filled Cox with horror.
‘Go to hell!’ he resumed his progress down Market Street.
‘Someone who can do a favour can do a bad turn an’ all,’ Latchford said, lowering his tone to a whispered growl.
There was something in his voice, in his manner, that forced Cox to stop and listen.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘I’m on a sort of mission of mercy. Seeking out the great men of the town and asking for, shall we say, an investment?’
‘For God’s sake what are you talking about?’
Latchford smiled. ‘Imagine how your star would rise, Mr Cox, if it were made known you subscribed to a relief fund that would …’
Confusion gave way to understanding, which manifested itself in a sneer spread across Cox’s face. ‘Taken to begging, have we? That’s a crime, don’t you know?’
‘You have the most amazing ability to turn goodness into evil, Mr Cox. A sort of alchemist in reverse.’
‘Have you been drinking, Latchford?’
‘Not one drop.’
‘Well then there can only be one other explanation for your ramblings – you’ve lost your mind. It’s we who need relieving, not the ones who rely on our industry. We bestow charity with every wage packet. Good evening!’
He swung round and resumed his progress down Market Street, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed low like a menacing bull.
Latchford drew his muffler closer to his throat and stuck both hands into his pockets. Worth a try, he thought. He shrugged and was about to cross the road when someone called his name. He turned to his right and saw Detective Sergeant Brennan standing on the steps of the Crofter’s Arms. What the bloody hell did he want now?
‘I thought it was you!’ Brennan said as he got near.
‘Sergeant Brennan. A surprise.’
‘I like the beer in the Crofter’s,’ he said with a nod behind him.
Thin snowflakes swirled around the two men like insects.
‘You finished for the day?’ Latchford asked.
He looked across the road, anxious to be away.
‘Oh, I never finish. Not really. Was that James Cox I saw you with just then?’
Latchford glanced down Market Street. He could just make out the man’s stooping form as he reached the corner of Market Square. A line of hackney carriages stood waiting, with little hope of business, for early evening customers. Cox addressed the first cabbie and clambered inside.
‘It was.’
‘I didn’t realise you two were acquainted.’
‘He knows me and I know him. If that’s a definition of acquainted, then I suppose we are.’
‘Can I buy you a drink?’
Latchford’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, I could lie and say I like your company, but you wouldn’t swallow that now, would you?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Well then. Let’s say I have a few questions and seeing you just now has saved me the trouble of disturbing you in your home.’
‘Didn’t stop you disturbing Mrs Haggerty in her home this morning, did it?’
‘That wasn’t my idea. In fact, I’ve just arranged for her release. She’s on her way now back home, in a carriage paid for by the chief constable himself.’
Who had only done so when Brennan presented him with the evidence of Bragg’s writing of the letter to Arthur Morris and the unfeasibility of Bridie being in league with a nefarious character from Manchester.
‘The least you could do.’
‘So? Shall we sample – or in my case further sample – the delights of the Crofter’s ale? At least we’ll be out of the snow for a while.’
Once ensconced in a small corner booth, the two men sat with their foaming glasses and allowed the smooth sharpness to slither down before Brennan began.
‘How did you know about the way Arthur Morris died? With a knife through the heart. It wasn’t exactly common knowledge now, was it?’
Latchford laughed out loud. ‘And you think it was a slip? Saying something only the murderer would know?’
‘Possibly.’
‘When you say it wasn’t common knowledge, Sergeant, you’re reckoning without the loose tongue of a certain priest.’
Brennan nodded slowly.
‘Tell me about your dealings with Andrew Morris.’
Latchford smacked his lips, licking the froth. ‘I have no dealings with the man.’
‘You and Molly Haggerty were courting at one time.’
‘It’s no secret.’
The man was definitely hiding something, but he wasn’t the type of character to succumb to threats. There was a confidence about Frank Latchford that bordered on arrogance.
‘I hear you’re making him pay.’
That brought a reaction. Latchford gave him a sharp look, but said nothing.
‘How are you making him pay, Frank?’
Latchford seemed to come to a decision. ‘I’m not making him do anything. He’s made a contribution to the relief fund. Magnanimous, unlike his father.’
‘Were you asking for a similar gesture from James Cox just then?’
There was a new expression in Latchford’s eyes, respect tinged with wariness, the way you’d watch a tiger prowling behind its bars. ‘It wouldn’t have done any harm, would it? And I’m not too proud to beg for help.’
A sneering note entered his voice.
‘I can see that. With Arthur Morris out of the way, do you think things will begin to move now?’
‘There’s every chance. If the colliery owners don’t do anything rash. Doesn’t help the immediate suffering though, does it?’
‘They’d hardly be rash at a time like this,’ Brennan replied. Then he smiled. ‘Speaking of rashes, Frank, I’d like you to do me a favour.’
Latchford looked at him warily. ‘What is it?’
‘Call it a favour you owe me.’
‘I owe you nothing.’
‘Oh I think you do. I can’t prove who organised the attack on me last week which put me in the infirmary, but I have a good idea.’
Latchford looked blankly at him and said nothing.
‘It’s always wise to avoid making enemies if you possibly can.’
‘Is it?’
‘And if you carry out this small favour, perhaps I can see my way to foregoing the desire for revenge. Believe me, Frank, if I want to get someone, no matter how long it takes …’
Latchford appeared to weigh up his options. Perhaps the prospect of continually watching his shadow persuaded him. Finally, he came down on the side of self-preserving pragmatism. ‘What’s the favour?’
‘I want you to come up to the infirmary with me right now.’
‘Why?’
‘To look at a body.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Two days later, Ambrose Morris stepped off the train at Wigan North Western and handed the porter his case. He hadn’t packed much, for he didn’t intend to stay any longer than it would take to persuade young Andrew of the error of his ways. Ambrose hadn’t shared his late brother’s determination to see Andrew married to some eligible but distinctly unattractive heiress, but to see him throw his life away on some mill girl … Still, he had an idea that might work.
The telegram had come at a most inopportune time. His duties within the party had begun to assume greater significance since the tortuous pro
gress of the Parish Councils Bill – over fifty folios of print covering the amendments alone – which provided a very real threat of forcing the House to sit until Christmas. Balfour, bless him, had offered to withdraw much of the opposition if the government split the bill in two, leaving the poor law elements until next year, but Gladstone was fixated on the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill.
Damn the man.
Nevertheless, despite the pressing demands of the Commons, and Salisbury’s insistence on strategy – a quality Ambrose was admired for – he relaxed as the carriage made its slow advance through the built-up snow. The events of the previous fortnight even now seemed unreal, consigned to that storehouse of the past, where the memory of his brother’s murder sat alongside happier times when the two of them had been youngsters unencumbered by the obligations of adulthood. Strange, he reflected, how, since Arthur’s death, his thoughts had been drawn to those innocent days, times he hadn’t given a moment’s thought to in years. All of his brother’s faults, indeed all of his own, too, seemed to fade away like dried-out stains when they were once more climbing trees and rocking on wooden horses.
‘When do we change?’ he said out loud, and he laughed when the coachman, misunderstanding the rhetorical question, slid open the wooden trap and told him there would be no need to change, the horses could cope.
When they finally arrived in Standish and the family home, Ambrose stepped down from the carriage and saw his sister-in-law’s face framed in an upper window. He gave her a cheery wave, but even at this distance he could see the deep worry lines etched on her face. She had told him, in her longer than usual communication, about the second murder in the town while he was in London – a man named Bragg, whom Sergeant Brennan felt had a connection with the family.
He wondered if her ‘rheumatism’ had gone?
Brennan had been busy these last two days. Firstly, he had sat down to put on paper everything to do with the two murders, but the smooth cursive flow of his writing soon became interspersed with footnotes, interpolated suggestions, question marks and exclamation marks, words and phrases underscored, some almost obliterated in frustration. Finally, he had placed the pages and pages of jumbled thoughts and speculations on one side of his desk, and beside them he placed a blank sheet of notepaper and wrote the following:
1. The letter found on Morris’s body with the message:
His hand shal be agenst evryman and evryman’s hand agenst him
Strike causes hell – O Lord end suffrin Or die
No name or address of sender. But Bragg’s handwriting.
2. How did A.M. know where to go in Scholes? Again, no address. How? How?
3. Letter and envelope filthy. Yet maid at Morris home says envelope was white and clean. How did it get dirty if he put it straight into pocket?
4. If Bragg wrote letter, did he lie in wait for A.M. in alleyway?
5. Why would A.M. go in alleyway? Invited by Bragg?
6. But if Bragg wrote letter, how did he get back to Scholes ahead of A.M. after posting letter? Carriage? None seen.
7. But did Bragg post letter??? If not, who then?
8. Accomplice? Josiah Sweet? Possible. But seems feeble character. Would Bragg trust such a fool to deliver letter?
9. Back to three.
10. The Davy lamp door knocker. Heavy, loud, yet the one who posted the letter used his fist. Why? Was the knocker too high for him? A child? Again, would Bragg entrust such an errand to a mere child?
11. Bragg. Bragg. Bragg. Asking questions about Andrew and Molly. For Arthur Morris? Likely. So Bragg was working for A.M. [Frank Latchford confirmed at the infirmary mortuary that he was indeed the one who had been asking questions – so no room for doubt.]
12. Yet if Bragg was working for Morris, why should he kill the golden goose?
13. Unless he were acting for a third person to become a paid assassin? But who? Why? Who would benefit most from A.M.’s death? And who would then have to kill Bragg, probably in order to shut him up for ever?
14. Back to three. Always the letter. Is there an explanation? Yes! Yes! Yes!
Brennan had sat back with a satisfied expression on his face. Not smug, no, because that implied a certain amount of pride, too, and pride was the last thing he felt. He had been blind, he knew – the formation of the letter r for one thing, and it had been Jaggery who showed genuine initiative then. Helped by his four-year-old son, of course. Furthermore, if he were right, and his answers to the questions he had posed, especially to questions three, ten, and thirteen, were correct, then he would have to tread very carefully indeed.
The next thing Brennan did, following on his assumption that he was right in his deductions, was to initiate discreet investigations. The person he had in mind had been very clever, and he had to be absolutely certain of his facts if he were to proceed. A telegram communication to the chief constable in Manchester, signed by Captain Bell as protocol dictated, had been followed by inquiries much closer to home, inquiries he kept from his superior for the time being.
He also had the plaster casts of the footprints taken at the murder scene by the canal all lined up in a neat row along one wall of his small office.
Naturally, he had had the impressions photographed as well, and an initial search of Josiah Sweet’s boat had unearthed a foul-smelling pair of the latter’s hobnailed boots that matched one set of prints. Another set had corresponded with the soles of Bragg’s boots, as was to be expected seeing that he had been staying on the boat for a while. But it was the third set of footprints that caused him some interest. There was no match with anything on the boat. Could these be the footprints of the murderer? If so, all he had to do was search every house in Wigan for a match.
And yet the tread on the soles was quite unusual, quite distinctive.
The final task he had given himself, and in some ways the most arduous, had been to arrange a private meeting with the chief constable during which he wished to present his findings. He wouldn’t, of course, describe them as findings, as he knew full well that Captain Bell would assert they were no such thing. But he would be as convincing an advocate as he could in order to impress upon him the force of his logic, a thread binding all of his questions together, but which depended upon the slender thread retaining its strength at its most tenuous spot – the answer to question number three.
It was a matter of seconds before he went to fulfil his appointment with Captain Bell that Constable Jaggery came rushing up the steps of the police station, slipping on the thick snow on the topmost step before regaining his precarious balance with the aid of the iron railing. He had a flushed and excited expression on his face. Brennan met him at the entrance, watched by a curious brace of individuals about to be entered into the arrest book.
‘Got ’im, Sergeant!’ Jaggery said after a few deep breaths.
‘Got who?’
‘The witness. Says he can identify meladdo.’
Thus armed with a stronger case, Brennan turned and marched towards the office of the chief constable.
James Cox sat in his study and shook his head once more. From the nursery upstairs came the sounds of his children yelling at each other, one of them pleading that it was his turn on the rocking horse. He leant forward and read once more the communication he held in his still-quivering hands. The letter, from the Blackpool Tower Company, was unequivocal. Two weeks. That was all they would allow him to resume production and go some way towards making up the lamentable delay he had shown in completing his rather substantial contract.
Did they think he was a magician? Conjuring iron and steel from a gigantic top hat with a wave of a giant wand? They were only thirty odd miles away. Hadn’t they heard about the devastation wrought by the damned miners and their refusal to accept the economic realities of life?
Did they think he could stroll down to the nearest colliery, clamber into a pit cage and lower himself down to hew tubfuls of coal, then haul them to the surface where he could lift them with l
ittle effort onto the coal wagons which he would attach to a convenient locomotive, its steam already billowing into the blue, sunny sky, and transport them to his works where they would be swallowed by beehives and then furnaces that hadn’t been fed for weeks?
Or were their heads already high above the clouds swirling around a tower – a bloody castle in the air – that had yet to be built?
A pity about Bragg, he told himself. Bragg would have shown initiative and somehow organised what he would need. But Bragg was dead, wasn’t he? Dead and therefore useless.
He looked at the photograph on his study wall, a posed studio portrait of himself and Agnes in the early flush of marriage, and he saw the sparkle in his eyes that was soberly hidden beneath the rigidly stern expression and the well-trimmed moustache. He saw, too, the naïve optimism in Agnes’s eyes, only the slight incline of her mouth suggesting she had retained any thoughts of the ridiculous accusations of the Irish slut that had been made only a few days before the photograph was taken.
Looking at these ghosts from the past, he was struck, only momentarily it must be said, by a shaft of regret. His younger self had shown only the nascent spark of the conflagration that would later consume him in his middle age.
Bragg had organised that, too.
It struck him as therefore more than a coincidence when he heard the front door bell and, in a few minutes, admitted Detective Sergeant Brennan into his study who, within thirty seconds of sitting down, brought up the name of Theodore Bragg.
‘Theodore Bragg?’ he said after a few seconds’ thought.
The ever so slight emphasis he had placed on the Christian name told Brennan all he wanted to know.
‘You knew the man, of course?’
‘What makes you say that? I’m a very busy …’
‘I know he did some work for you.’
‘Oh? How do you know that?’
‘The Manchester police have been very helpful. He is, shall we say, known to them?’
‘So?’
‘When we informed them of his death, they searched his addresses. He had several.’
