by Alex Grecian
If Little’s killer was smart, he had hopped on the early train and was already far away.
But Kett allowed himself a hard smile. They had lost the Ripper, but lessons had been learned. If Little’s killer had been bold enough or foolish enough to remain in London, Kett had utter faith that these men would find him and bring him to justice.
The bald man stood at the edge of the crowd and watched as Sergeant Kett returned to the gallery. The gruff old policeman had glanced right at him without the slightest sign of recognition.
Dr Kingsley passed Kett on the staircase without a word and left the station through the arch at the far end. The bald man had never met Kingsley, but he’d heard some of the police talking about the aloof forensics specialist. By all accounts, Kingsley was good. Beyond good. The bald man wished he knew what Kingsley had whispered to the dark-haired young detective.
Across the platform, the detective frowned and gestured to two nearby bobbies.
“Take this trunk up to University College Hospital right away,” he said. “To Dr Kingsley’s lab. And be careful with it. The body inside is a detective.”
He spoke too loudly and the crowd gasped. The bald man composed his expression carefully, mirroring the shock he saw on the faces around him. There was a good bit of chatter, people already late returning to work, sharing the excitement of discovery and danger at a safe distance.
The two men struggled with the trunk. The bald man recognized one of the other police, a young constable named Pringle. He raised a hand and Pringle noticed him. The constable nodded and gestured toward a relatively deserted corner of the platform. The bald man moved quickly through the crowd and joined Pringle there.
“Hullo, sir,” Pringle said. “Bad bit of business this morning.”
“I overheard some of it,” the bald man said. “A detective?”
“In the trunk.” Pringle grimaced and nodded. “Least that’s what he said. Bad for us all, if you ask me. Killing detectives.”
“But I’m sure they’ll catch him, whoever did this, they’ll catch him straightaway, don’t you think?”
“I hope so, sir. I surely do.”
“Well, who’s that on the platform? Who’s in charge of it all?”
Pringle glanced over at the men shuffling across the platform, the trunk swaying between them, the detective following behind.
“That’s Day, sir. Detective Inspector Day. He’s only just joined us here last week. Come up from Devon, I think. You wouldn’t have met him yet, I’m sure.”
“Day, eh?”
“William’s his first name. William or. . No, it’s Walter. Walter Day, that’s it.”
“Good man?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, sir, but I hope he’s up to the task. Can’t have nobody running around offing detectives. Next thing, they’ll be takin’ aim at us working men. Can’t have that.”
“No, no, of course not.”
“Bad bit of business,” Pringle repeated.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then. Work to do, you know.”
“Of course.”
“No worries, Pringle. I’m quite sure your new inspector will do the job up right.”
Pringle nodded. “Sure an’ he will. Bad bit of business, though.”
“Yes. Good day, then.”
The bald man turned up the collar of his coat and glanced at the sky as he left the building. Grey clouds were rolling in quickly. The crowd would disperse as soon as the rain started, and the bald man didn’t want to get caught up in the rush.
He hurried across the street, avoiding a fresh pile of horse manure, and repeated the detective’s name under his breath. Detective Inspector Walter Day would bear watching.
But the more immediate problem was Dr Kingsley. Kingsley had shown something to Inspector Day, but the bald man had been too far away to see it. Had he left a clue?
The bald man regretted what had happened. He admired the Metropolitan Police, admired them and tried to help them in his own small way. But Inspector Little had stumbled onto his secret and there had been no choice.
Kingsley and Day. The bald man muttered their names again and spat at the hard-packed dirt of the street. He would have to keep an eye on Kingsley and Day. If they discovered his secret, too. . The bald man shook his head, dismissing the thought for now. He would follow the investigation, and if Inspector Day came too close to learning the truth. . well, Day might just disappear.
Constable Pringle brushed imaginary lint from his trousers and shot the cuffs of his crisp starched shirt. He realized he had a question for the man he’d been talking to and looked across the street, scanning the backs of the departing crowd. Too late. Pringle would have to drop in on him later.
He turned and hurried across the platform. Constables Hammersmith and Jones were shuffling along, the trunk swinging between them.
“Oy, Nevil,” Pringle said. “You fancy going along with me? Got some things to pick up.”
Nevil Hammersmith looked up and grunted.
“Depends on how long Dr Kingsley keeps us. If he’s got nothing for us there, I’ll be off duty, but it was a long night, Colin.”
“Won’t take long. I could use the company. Bit nervous today, you know.”
Hammersmith chuckled and switched the handle of the trunk to his other hand.
“Forgot you were taking Maggie out tonight, old man.”
“It’s dinner. Nothing more.”
“How very casual of you. May I assume you won’t be returning to the flat until late? I won’t wait up for you, but wake me when you arrive in the morning, would you?”
Pringle pursed his lips in a mock frown.
“The morning? You scandalize me, sir. And you besmirch Maggie’s good name.”
“Get on out of here, Pringle,” Jones said. “Hammersmith’s got work to do.”
Pringle wagged a finger at Jones, but hastened away before anyone could ask him to help with the trunk. He didn’t want to get dirt on his new jacket. He would pick Hammersmith up at the college before stopping at the tailor’s.
The thought of Inspector Little, broken and mutilated in the bottom of the trunk, passed through his mind and he swept it away. He’d just got a glimpse of the dead detective before Day had closed the trunk, but it was enough. He hadn’t known Little well. The detective had never even looked at Pringle, just muttered orders at him. Little had undoubtedly run across trouble on an investigation and been killed for it. But that would never happen to Pringle. He had joined the force strictly for the dapper uniform and the pretty girls who noticed it. He kept his nose out of the detectives’ business.
He smiled and stepped into the street, promptly planting his foot in a pile of horse manure.
2
The dancing man was already outside the back hall at 4 Whitehall Place when Detective Inspector Walter Day arrived. Day wondered at the fact that the dancing man had thus far avoided the workhouse, but he had visited that place and had no desire to send anyone there, if it could be helped. At least a head taller than Day, with massive hands and feet, the dancing man looked intimidating, but he kept his distance from people and bowed his head when he spoke. He worked, in a way, for his daily bread and Day, who thought himself a good judge of character, found him somehow touching. Today he had found the top half of a broken broom and was displaying it proudly as he gyrated atop an overturned milk crate, blowing kisses to passersby. Day gave him a ha’penny and went inside.
The Metropolitan Police Force was headquartered in the rear of a massive building located off Great Scotland Yard, and the entrance was commonly called the back hall, though there was no corresponding front hall. Day nodded to the sergeant on duty at the desk in the small receiving area and then passed through a short hallway.
The main room on the ground floor was segmented. To Day’s right as he left the hallway was the largest and most accessible section. It housed most of the detectives of the Metropolitan Police Force, along with innumerable constables, all of
whom hurried in and out day and night, struggling to deal with wearying numbers of cases involving burglary, assault, prostitution, missing persons, and muggings.
Day did not even glance in their direction. Instead, he turned to his left and walked past a row of communal desks, used by police and solicitors to talk to suspects before taking them back through yet another hallway to a walled-off holding area. He passed through a swinging gate in a low wooden railing and into the common office set up to accommodate the select group of detective inspectors who were referred to by the rest of the force as the Murder Squad.
Previously detectives working murder cases had used the same shared desks that were used by constables on the beat. But the Ripper case had changed all that. The railing had been installed and a dozen new desks had been brought in. A matching dozen of the Yard’s best detectives were moved over and given all of the murder cases in all of London.
They were not relieved of the many other cases they were already working.
Day hung his jacket and his hat on hooks against the far wall, then went to his desk in the large central area. The room was quiet, and he didn’t yet feel comfortable there. He hadn’t done anything to personalize his desk, sure that he’d be sent back down to Devon when it was discovered that he had no talent as a detective. He’d been a good constable, energetic, strong, and ready to serve, but detective work was daunting. He had seen something in Dr Kingsley’s eyes back at the train station. Day was sure Kingsley knew he wasn’t up to the job, positive that everybody knew it except Claire.
Michael Blacker waved at him from an identical desk halfway across the big room. Inspector Blacker’s desk was messier, papers piled everywhere, a teakettle half buried under a scrapbook, and a solitary left boot. Evidence gathered from some bizarre case that had consumed his time for the past three days.
“Another day, eh, Day?”
Blacker enjoyed the sort of puns and wordplay that Day found most tedious.
“Blacker, when was the last time you saw Mr Little?”
“Little? Some time yesterday. But not for long, for just a little. A little, right?”
“Right. I don’t suppose you’re familiar with any of his cases?”
“Sure, and I’ve got time galore, don’t I?”
Day nodded. He’d known the answer to that question before he’d asked it. Last month, ninety-six corpses had been pulled from the Thames, more than half of them with their throats slit. It hadn’t been an unusual body count for a city where the annual number of arrests topped sixty thousand. The twelve working inspectors of Scotland Yard had no time to deal with their own caseloads, much less one another’s. And now, without Little, they were eleven. This half of the common room was quiet because everyone except Day and Blacker was out dealing with London’s crime.
“I’ll need to see his files.”
“Don’t know if he’d like that. Wait for him. He should be here soon.”
“He’s not coming in today.”
Colonel Sir Edward Bradford emerged from his office in the corner and motioned with his good arm.
“Day. See you in here?”
“Yes, sir.”
Day crossed the room through the labyrinth of desks, ignoring Blacker’s puzzled stare. Inside, Sir Edward’s office was small and dim, crowded with heavy furniture. A stuffed tiger’s head, the only souvenir on display of Sir Edward’s time in India, was mounted on the wall behind the desk. The commissioner closed the door and gestured to an empty chair.
When both men were seated, Sir Edward stroked his white beard and closed his eyes.
“How long have you been with us now, Day?”
This was it, Day was sure of it. Sir Edward had decided that the younger man wasn’t cut out for detective work and was planning to move him back to Devon. It would be a relief, but Day had no idea how he would explain it to his wife. Claire would be so disappointed in him.
“Almost a week, sir.”
“When I took this post, Mr Day, it was with the expectation that I would be working with the legendary Inspector March, the greatest detective on the greatest police force in the world. You can imagine my dismay upon arriving in London to find that Mr March had already tendered his resignation from the Murder Squad.”
With a long and illustrious career behind him, Inspector Adrian March had been among the men put in charge of the Ripper investigation. He had failed to catch the wily killer of at least five women, and the public knew it. March had retired early from the force. Day had been brought up to replace him, and he still didn’t understand why.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“I suspect you share my dismay.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And so I have missed my opportunity to work with those great Scotland Yard detectives Adrian March and Dick Tanner and Frederick Abberline, but now I have you.”
“I apologize, sir.”
Day avoided the commissioner’s eyes. Sir Edward was an intimidating man. He had stepped into the job of police commissioner in the month before Day’s arrival, and already he had the complete respect of the men under his command. He was a veteran of the Indian Mutiny, about which Day knew very little, and had lost his arm in an encounter with a tiger. Perhaps the same tiger whose head now surveyed the office from a wooden plank nailed to the wall. It was rumored that Sir Edward had accepted no anesthetic during the amputation of his mutilated arm.
“There’s no need for apologies. This isn’t a dressing-down, Mr Day. But I like to acknowledge the reality of a situation, rather than pussyfoot around the way you lot do over here. You have little experience as a police, is that correct?”
“Sir, I acted as constable for four years in Devon.”
“I’m aware. But you have never lived in London until quite recently.”
“I’ve visited many times.”
“And you have no experience whatsoever as a detective.”
“No, sir.”
“And yet you were handpicked by the great detective himself as his replacement.”
“I am as surprised as you are, sir. If you’d prefer, of course, I’ll tender my resignation immediately.”
Sir Edward waved the suggestion away like a bad odor. “That’s not at all what I’m getting at, Mr Day.”
He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and blew his nose with remarkable one-handed dexterity, tucked the cloth away, and pointed to an umbrella stand in the corner behind the door.
“The brown ivory one,” Sir Edward said. “See it there? Bring it to me, would you?”
The stand was crowded with umbrellas. Day ran his fingers across the bouquet of handles: smooth mahogany with mother-of-pearl inlays, burnished white ivory, brass and silver and semiprecious stones, tortoiseshell, carved animal heads, and scrollwork. One handle was less ornate than the others. It appeared to be of humble unworked wood, but the surface was smooth and buttery, unlike any wood that Day had seen. He assumed it to be brown ivory, and pulled it from the stand, handing it across the desk.
“Have you seen mammoth ivory before, Mr Day?”
“No, sir, I don’t believe I have.”
“It’s worth far less than the ivory we see from elephant tusks, but I place great value on it nonetheless. This was once the tusk of an animal that is long since extinct, an animal that thundered across the land in great herds, larger and heavier and more impressive than anything it encountered. And it’s now as if that animal had never existed, but for this bit of bone. Neither you nor I will ever see a mammoth, but here is the proof of its life, here in this simple umbrella handle. An elephant tusk may be worth more on the open market, but I’ve seen elephants, Day, and to hold an elephant tusk in my hand no longer impresses me.”
“Were there many of them in India?”
“What, elephants? There were some, yes.”
“I’ve never seen one.”
Sir Edward nodded. “Thank you. Yes, it’s easy to forget sometimes just how extraordinary that continent is. I do miss the s
un, Mr Day. Since I arrived here, the sky has been grey and my nose has become increasingly raw. I appear to have come down with something or other.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
Sir Edward dismissed the sentiment. “I shall improve. Nothing has killed me yet, and a bit of wet weather won’t do the job where bullets, blades, and a scorpion’s sting have failed.”
He smiled and held the furled umbrella up to the light.
“These things, these bones of something that will never be seen again, are dug up by the bushel every day in Siberia. I wonder how many are left under the ice there.”
“I wouldn’t imagine there’s a never-ending supply of them.”
“No, of course there isn’t. So why do we value the elephant ivory so much more?”
“Elephant ivory is a good deal whiter than mammoth ivory, isn’t it, sir?”
“Hmm. Yes, it is.”
He laid the umbrella on the desk between them and leaned forward.
“I value experience, Mr Day.”
“I understand, sir. Inspector March would naturally be of greater value to you than I am. And of greater value to the Yard.”
“You’re not following. Yes, of course Mr March would be of great value to me, but as I said, he’s picked you as his successor. His experience has told him something about you which I have not yet seen. But I must rely on Mr March’s instinct. On his experience. And that means that I must trust you to be up to this job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You grasp what I’m trying to get at?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“Good,” Sir Edward said. “Now, you’re at a decided disadvantage here today.”
“Sir, I hope to have more time to prove myself.”
“So you want to continue on this case?”
“This case?” Day had thought they were still talking in broader terms.
“Yes. This is perhaps more than you should have to shoulder so soon after arriving. The murder of one of your fellow detectives. . I can assign someone else and there would be no shame in it for you. Blacker or Tiffany can do it. They knew Little better than you did.”
