A Scream in Soho

by John G. Brandon

  Chapter VII

  “Danny the Dip” Turns Up

  Inspector McCarthy, minus the sergeant’s torch, began to creep his way back in the direction of his lodgings. Any helpful light that might have come from the glowing embers of the fire had been long since blotted out by the exertions of the fire brigade. He had not proceeded very far when he thudded against some extremely solid human object who, upon mutual investigation, turned out to be C. 1285, back again upon his beat.

  As the constable was in possession of a torch, which, by the way, Regulations did not permit him to use except in a moment of crisis, the inspector borrowed it from him, and the two proceeded side by side towards the middle of Greek Street until the inspector’s way obliged him to turn out of that thoroughfare.

  “Strange case that to-night, sir,” C. 1285 ventured, after a moment.

  “Extraordinary,” McCarthy answered affably. “’Tis jobs like that that keep us up on our toes, and, incidentally”—he stifled a yawn—“out of our beds.”

  “I’ve managed to discover that there was one vehicle went out of Soho Square, and must have come through it just about the time of that scream,” the constable went on. “That is,” he added dubiously, “if you could call it a vehicle.”

  “What was that?” McCarthy asked quickly.

  “Old Joe Anselmi’s portable coffee-stall,” the constable told him. “That’s a regular job, though he generally gets it through the square with a couple of helpers about half-past eleven. But to-night, for some reason or other he was late, I suppose the two chaps who generally help him to push it to his stand didn’t turn up and he must have waited till just before one, and then had to shove it himself—a bit of a job for an old man.”

  McCarthy nodded. He knew old Joe Anselmi well; had done so ever since he himself had been a lad knocking about the purlieus of Soho. A respectable hard-working old man, a rigid and devout Catholic, and one most certainly not likely to be connected with crime in any shape or form whatsoever.

  “It certainly must have been a job for the old man to push a lumbering thing like that along by himself,” he agreed. “And he turned out of the square just at that time you say? Which way did he go?”

  “By Sutton Street into the Charing Cross Road,” he was told. “His pitch, as I suppose you know, Inspector, is at a corner just a bit down Denman Street.”

  “I know,” McCarthy said. A good many times when out upon a nocturnal prowl he had pulled up at the old man’s stall for a cup of coffee and a chow about bygone days in Soho. Certainly that unwieldy portable place of business was not to be connected in any way with the crime in Soho Square.

  Arrived at the corner at which he turned right to make his way through into Dean Street, while the constable’s beat took him to the left towards Frith Street, they parted company.

  “Look in to my place for the torch and a drink in the morning,” he said. “The kind of luck I’m having to-night I’d have broken my neck without the loan of it long before this. Good night.”

  Inside his own room he once again divested himself of his dressing-gown and prepared to turn in; he would have to be out bright and early in the morning to get to the scene of the crime before anyone connected with that queer lot of offices arrived there. For a moment it was in his mind to give Bill Haynes a ring, but he decided against it. Knowing the Assistant Commissioner’s enthusiasm where sticky crimes of the sort just committed were concerned, he would be probably kept up the greater part of what little time remained to him for sleep jawing the whole thing over again.

  He seemed to have been asleep but five minutes when the telephone at his bedside rang out at an alarming rate. Starting up he switched on his light, glanced at his wrist-watch to discover that it was five o’clock, then lifted the receiver.

  “What is it now?” he demanded, a not unnatural tartness in his voice.

  He was informed that he was being called by the “S” Division station at Golders Green, and that the inspector in charge was speaking.

  “Golders Green!” McCarthy echoed. “What in the name of Heaven does Golders Green want with me, Inspector?”

  “There’s a rather strange and ugly business happened at this end, Inspector,” he was informed. “We wouldn’t have troubled you but for the fact that there’s a man named Regan concerned in it—Dan Regan, who we know to be a West End pickpocket.”

  “‘Danny the Dip’!” McCarthy snapped. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He’s telling a story that takes a bit of believing, Inspector,” the voice at the other end of the line went on. “He says that he was doing a certain job for you when he was knocked out in Park Lane. The next thing he knew when he came to was that he was wandering about on the Heath. He didn’t know where he was, and had the idea that he was in Hyde Park. One of my men on beat found him wandering about near the Vale of Health, and brought him in. He’s in an absolutely bemused state, and I’d say he has been given a shot of something or other. He hardly seems to know what he is talking about, but he sticks to the tale that he was doing a job for you.”

  “He’s quite right there, Inspector,” McCarthy said. “I left him in Oxford Street doing a bit of shadowing for me. Can’t he give any explanation as to what has happened to him?”

  “Nothing that seems to make sense,” came the prompt answer. “And there’s another side of it too: he’s covered with blood; far more than the crack over the head he’s undoubtedly had will account for.”

  “The poor divil has run into bad trouble somewhere or other,” McCarthy said ruefully. “Too bad; too bad, entirely.”

  “There’s something considerably worse than that which the constable discovered at the same time,” the voice continued. “Not far from where Regan was found wandering about, he discovered the body of a woman who had been brutally murdered. Her throat had been cut until the head was nearly severed from the body, and she had other wounds as well.”

  “What’s that!” McCarthy almost yelled into the phone. “Repeat that, Inspector!”

  With the greatest possible succinctness the “S” Division officer did so.

  “What type of woman did she seem to be and how long does your D.S. say she’s been dead?” McCarthy got out all in one breath.

  He was told that as far as could be judged by exteriors, the quality of her clothes, etc., etc., the murdered woman appeared, at any rate, to belong to the wealthy class. The body was clad in evening dress, covered by a coat which certainly had cost a considerable amount of money, and although no jewellery or anything else had been found upon her, there were distinct evidences that she had been in the habit of wearing rings, and the lobe of one ear was torn as though an ear-ring had been wrenched from it. The divisional-surgeon had been called, and, though only making a short and cursory examination, had given it as his opinion that she had been murdered somewhere in the region of midnight or perhaps a little later, but not more than an hour or so, in his opinion.

  “Where is the body now?” McCarthy asked quickly.

  He was told that it was at the local mortuary, but that the D.S. did not propose carrying out the post-mortem until the morning.

  “Listen, Inspector,” McCarthy said quickly. “Have the body transferred at once—at once, you understand me—to the mortuary here. I’ll call up our divisional-surgeon and tell him to get there at once. I believe it to be the body of a person murdered in Soho Square somewhere about one o’clock to-night, and spirited away in some mysterious fashion. Now get that straight, like a good fella, as positive orders from H.Q.”

  “But,” the local inspector was beginning, some objection obviously in his mind, when McCarthy interrupted.

  “I’ll have the orders sent direct to you from the Assistant Commissioner, within ten minutes, if that occurs to ye as the proper proceeding, Inspector,” he said. “Come to think of it, perhaps it would be. Red tape can play the very divil with a
man if he puts a foot wrong. Stand by for a call from the A.C. within a few minutes of my getting off the line, and at the same time send Regan in to the mortuary in the first vehicle you can grab hold of. Now get busy, time is the whole essence of this particular thing. S’long—and thanks for the call, though how you found my number is a mystery to me.”

  “Regan knew it,” the inspector told him. “It was that that made us think there might be something in his yarn.”

  Ringing off, McCarthy promptly dialled the number of Sir William Haynes’ Bloomsbury residence, and a moment later had him on the line. Quickly he poured into that staggered gentleman’s ear a brief résumé of what had happened since they had parted, and requested the prompt transference of the body from Golders Green to the West End.

  “Golders Green is naturally standing on a bit of etiquette, Bill,” he concluded, “but a word from you direct will put that right, and when you’ve done that ye might give our sawbones a personal tinkle to pull up his socks and get himself to the mortuary without any undue delay. He was bellyachin’ at being lugged to Soho Square to view poor Harper’s body, and what he’ll have to say if I have him routed out again will be unfit for publication. His howls will go up to the high heaven! He’s not a bad old stick and knows his job inside out, but he does like his bed. So do I,” he added whimsically, “and, if you remember, I promised myself a full issue of it to-night, and here’s the result. Get busy, Bill—the chap at Golders Green is hanging on for your O.K.”

  “Would you care for me to get dressed and slip along to the mortuary, Mac?” Sir William asked eagerly.

  “Very far from it,” his friend answered promptly and succinctly. “Definitely, no! To start with,” he added in more mollifying tones, “you’d probably break your neck on the road there, Bill, and as I told you once before to-night, what Scotland Yard would do without you is more than I, or anyone else, could say. The blow would be shattering.”

  Before Sir William could reply to these somewhat invidious remarks, McCarthy rang off, and made a dive for his clothes.

  Five minutes later saw him out in the street again, but this time fully garbed and torched. This Soho Square murder was beginning to open up in an unusually strange manner, but perhaps the queerest part of it to the inspector, and the angle of it he was most interested in at the moment, was what had happened to “Danny the Dip” after he had left him in Oxford Street on the heels of the man with those unnatural-looking ice-blue eyes.

  Chapter VIII

  The Inspector Sustains a Shock!

  The body which McCarthy found stretched out fully dressed upon a slab in the mortuary when, at last, he managed to make his way to that charnel house, undoubtedly bore out the description given to it by the inspector at Golders Green as suggesting that of a woman of a certain social position and, certainly, affluent circumstances.

  He found it already in charge of the divisional-surgeon who, marvellous to relate, was accepting this most recent call upon him quite cheerfully; indeed, seemed rather bucked about it than otherwise. The Assistant Commissioner, he thought, must have buttered the medical gentleman well and truly when he rang him, to have this effect upon his usually anything but philosophic nature.

  A glance into the little office room wherein the mortuary-keeper kept the belongings, carefully parcelled and tabulated, of those unfortunate enough to be brought into this gloomy bourne showed him that “Danny the Dip” had been forwarded on along with the cadaver, and was seated in a chair looking very much as though he were but half awake from a heavy dope sleep. Indeed, he stared at the inspector as though he scarcely recognized him.

  “Can you give that chap a shot of anything that will fully awaken his faculties, Doc?” he asked quietly.

  “I can,” the medical man answered with a doubtful glance at the dishevelled-looking, bloodstained figure of the pickpocket. “But if you want to get anything out of him immediately, I’d suggest a hot, strong cup of tea will have quicker results. He’s had an injection of one of the barbituary drugs by the look of him. Morphine or heroin, I’d say.”

  McCarthy glanced at the mortuary-keeper. “Can you manage it, do y’ think?”

  That worthy nodded affirmatively. There were not many for whom he would have put himself to any trouble at that hour of the morning, but Inspector McCarthy was an especial favourite of his. The D.S. could have asked for it till his tongue withered without moving the burly official.

  “’Tis aisy, Inspector,” he said, in his strong Hibernian brogue. “I’ll stick a kittle on me little oil stove.” He bent a huge head towards the inspector and cast a glance back towards the vacant-looking Regan. “Have ye noticed th’ state his clothes are in?” he whispered. “’Tis blood he is fr’m head to foot. He never got it from that dab on the nut, and he doesn’t seem to be hurrted anny other place.”

  “So the inspector at Golders Green informed me,” McCarthy responded, with a worried look towards his late assistant. “We’ll go into that later, when he’s in better shape. Load him up with tea, hot and strong.”

  “I’ll pour a pint of it into him, boilin’, before he’s five minutes older,” the mortuary-keeper assured him. “An’ if that don’t do the thrick, I’ll pour another.”

  With this assurance McCarthy turned towards the female body upon the slab.

  That she had been a handsome and certainly perfectly gowned woman but a few short hours ago there was no doubt, nor had the inspector at Golders Green been far out when he had said that the coat which covered a high fronted—and doubtless bare-backed—evening gown had cost a considerable amount of money. It was ermine and cut in the very latest mode, but the collar and front of the garment were literally steeped in blood from the ghastly throat wound which had most certainly brought about her death.

  As the inspector had said, her head had been nearly severed from her body—the work of some absolutely fiendish butcher. The very savagery of the crime explained at once to McCarthy that wallow of blood upon the door, the outer steps and even the railings. The coat also explained by the very thickness of its fur the means by which the body had been got away without leaving any traces beyond those mentioned: the whole head and shoulders had been wrapped in it, thus preventing any seepage of the tell-tale fluid. It was equally possible that the vehicle, whatever it might have been, used to transport the cadaver from the square would be found equally free from bloodstains when it might eventually be picked up—if ever.

  “You’re quite sure it’s the body in the Soho business, Mac?” the divisional-surgeon asked.

  “Quite,” McCarthy answered positively. “Unless,” he amended, “two women were murdered in London to-night at about the same time and in the same manner, and both used the same perfume to a degree rather more than most women to-day are in the habit of doing. I got it strongly outside the Soho Square house and there’s no mistaking it for anything but the same that this unfortunate creature has been using.”

  The doctor nodded. “I get it myself,” he said. “It’s queer.”

  It was on the tip of McCarthy’s tongue to ask what was queer about it, but as he did not want to listen to any discourse upon perfumes, generally, and this particular one specifically he withheld the question and turned again to his examination. Everything she wore, shoes, stockings and lingerie all carried the hallmark of expensiveness and quality. There were, as he had been informed by Golders Green, definite signs upon the fingers that she had worn rings upon each hand, and the mark was plainly to be seen where one ear-ring, at least, had been ruthlessly torn from the right ear-lobe. As neither of the ears had been pierced they must have been screw or clip fastenings, and that they had been taken at all seemed to argue that they must have been of considerable value. In the inside of the coat, which now lay wide open and overhanging the slab upon one side, there was a pocket into which he thrust his hand and brought out a solid gold cigarette-case which, however, carried no monogram or other possi
ble means of identification; nor, that he could see upon a cursory examination, were there any markings on the underclothes.

  He gave some little time to a study of the face itself, upon which the grey pallor of death seemed to show strangely through the heavy coating of make-up the woman wore. He decided that it was of a definitely Continental type, and not English; Teutonic, he would have said, with extraordinarily strong features for one of her sex.

  “What nationality would you put her down as being, Doc?” he asked.

  “German,” the D.S. answered unhesitatingly. “A perfect Teutonic cast of features; no doubt about that in my mind. Is that the only thing you notice about it, Mac?” he continued, a note in his voice which made the inspector glance at him quickly.

  “What else is there to see?” McCarthy questioned. “Besides that she was a woman of distinction in her early, or mid-thirties, I’d say, and of a particularly strong cast of features, what is there to see?”

  “A devil of a lot that will surprise you,” the medico answered. “That is,” he amended, “if anything can.”

  “It can’t,” McCarthy assured him equably, “but I’ll listen, just the same.”

  “Well, if this doesn’t, I’ll eat my hat,” the surgeon said tersely. “Your woman, McCarthy, happens to be a man!”

  It was useless for the inspector to even try to hide the complete and utter surprise which filled him. His eyes bulged and his jaw dropped.

  “Well, I’ll—I’ll go to hell!” he gasped. “You’re not codding, I suppose?” he asked quickly.

  “If you think I enjoy being lugged out of bed at this hour of the morning so much that I start codding people, you’re very much mistaken,” the medico growled. “Your lady, I repeat, is a man. To satisfy yourself just run your hand upwards under the chin. If there aren’t bristles enough under the make-up to set your mind at rest upon that point, then you take a deuce of a lot of satisfying.”