Mind of a Killer

by Simon Beaufort

  He led the way to Morley’s office, which was lit by a six-paned window on each side of his writing table. In front of a fireplace were three chairs on what had once been a fine Oriental carpet, before ages of coal cinders had leached it of colour. The austere, stern editor signalled for them to sit, while he remained at his desk, dressed in a single-breasted, navy-blue suit with a crisp white shirt and spotted necktie, his thinning grey hair combed neatly backwards. His expression, as always, was grave and dignified.

  ‘Mr Stead told me what you’ve been doing,’ he began coolly. ‘I don’t believe such matters should occupy you when there are major issues requiring analysis and discussion.’

  Lonsdale heard Hulda stifle a sigh. For Morley, ‘major issues’ meant the Irish situation, for which he owned a deep and abiding fascination.

  ‘Superintendent Ramsey contacted me,’ Morley continued. ‘He says the Donovan business is too sensitive to be released, and has asked us to withhold publication.’

  ‘I’ve already assured the police of our discretion,’ said Lonsdale, irked that his word as a gentleman seemed to be in question.

  ‘Ramsey gave two reasons for his request, both reasonable,’ Morley went on. ‘First, he wishes to avoid alarming the public. Do not forget the garrotting murders of 1862, which caused widespread panic.’

  ‘There are few who will forget those,’ sighed Stead. ‘It was later claimed that the press and police created such a sense of unease that it discouraged people from coming forward with evidence, helping the murderer escape justice.’

  ‘Second, he feels that publishing details will hinder the course of justice. The police can determine guilt or innocence on the basis of what the suspect knows about the crime, but if everything is public, there’s a danger that the wrong man might be convicted.’

  ‘So we forget about the murder?’ asked Lonsdale, thinking about Stead’s contention that The PMG was under a moral obligation to investigate because Cath had died for it.

  ‘We do,’ nodded Morley. ‘We leave it to the police. Superintendent Ramsey has promised to keep us informed of progress, although whether we will ever cover such a sordid affair is debatable.’

  ‘But what happens if the police fail?’ demanded Hulda, standing and putting her hands on her hips. ‘Do we forget about justice for Walker? And what if the police take months to solve it? No one will be interested in a crime that happened in the dim and distant past.’

  The question she did not ask, but that was clear in the way her eyes flashed with righteous indignation was: is that what you want – for the matter to be so ancient that details about it will never sully the pages of The PMG?

  Thunderclouds gathered across Morley’s craggy features. ‘The news with which you should be concerned, Miss Friederichs,’ he snapped icily, ‘is that which deals with great affairs – Ireland or the new reform bill to increase the electorate. These are the type of topics we should be writing about in order to help our readership understand them.’

  ‘But will they sell papers?’ demanded Hulda, while Lonsdale and Stead regarded her askance, astonished that she should challenge the man who had broken convention by hiring her in the first place.

  Lonsdale braced himself for an explosion, but Morley only stood and went to the window, standing with his hands behind his back so they would not see his face. Lonsdale sensed he was struggling to control his temper. ‘They will if they are well written,’ he said. ‘So we shall know where the blame lies if circulation falls. Meanwhile, leave crime to the sensational weeklies.’

  ‘But—’ began Hulda.

  ‘I will not be gainsaid,’ he snapped, turning so quickly that Hulda took an involuntary step backwards. Then, to Lonsdale’s surprise, Morley’s voice became gentler, and he saw the crusty editor had a soft spot for his passionately outspoken assistant. ‘Yet Mr Stead believes that the crime is more important than an unsavoury fallout between robbers and unfortunates, and I trust his judgement. Perhaps we will publish a short account of it later – although not until the police say we may.’

  Hulda was glaring. ‘So what would you like us to write about today?’ she asked, her tone only just avoiding insolence.

  Morley smiled briefly. ‘There’s a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience at the Savoy Theatre tonight. I want a review, because there is a new female lead. Now, if there’s nothing else …’

  On leaving Morley’s office, Stead disappeared to the compositors’ office without a word. Lonsdale went to the reporters’ room, Hulda, fuming silently, at his heels. There was only one person there when they arrived – Alfred Milner, a thin-faced Oxford graduate who had abandoned a career in law for journalism. Lonsdale sensed that the mild-mannered Milner was destined for great things, and The PMG would not contain his budding genius for long.

  ‘I assume you have just seen Mr Morley,’ he said drily. ‘You have a look on your face that would curdle new cream, Friederichs.’

  ‘That man—’ Hulda began hotly.

  ‘Is one of the greatest intellects of our time,’ interrupted Milner. ‘A deep-thinker who has turned The PMG into a great bastion of political analysis.’

  ‘But there’s more to the news than that,’ said Lonsdale, finally voicing his own disappointment at Morley’s decision.

  ‘How can he not see how important this story might be?’ spat Hulda.

  ‘I doubt it will be important,’ said Milner, gently reproachful. ‘Grisly, certainly. Fascinating, perhaps. But not important.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Lonsdale, while Hulda sat at the desk and slammed a few drawers to vent her ire. ‘Donovan’s murder was superbly planned, and so was Cath’s. This isn’t the work of some deranged madman; it shows considerable resourcefulness and a highly organized mind.’

  Hulda fumbled for a cigar, although she did not light it. ‘I’m not surprised to hear you speak on his behalf, Milner,’ she said sullenly. ‘You being a regular guest at his dull Sunday afternoon tea parties. Thank God we have Stead to balance the man.’

  ‘They do complement each other,’ agreed Milner. ‘But I can assure you that Mr Morley’s parties are far from dull – he entertains some of the greatest thinkers in the country. But on a more immediate note, will you read this, Alec? It’s about whether Britain should send warships to Egypt, to quell the anarchy brought about by Colonel Arabi’s coup.’

  With the deadline approaching for the final issue of the week, Lonsdale spent thirty frantic minutes helping Milner finish his article. When it was done, the pressure turned onto the compositors, and Lonsdale gave a sigh of relief as he heard the clatter of the printing machines start up. Within minutes, the papers would be packed in bales and handed to armies of paperboys.

  Milner took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead. He was not physically robust, and rarely came to work before ten o’clock. He screwed the lid back on the ink bottle and leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Thank you, Alec,’ he said, running a hand lightly over his slicked hair. ‘I’ll do the same for you – if you survive another week.’ He cast a meaningful glance at Lonsdale’s bruised eye. ‘I heard what happened. You shouldn’t have gone there alone; you should’ve taken one of us.’

  ‘Me,’ said Hulda, looking Milner up and down disparagingly. ‘He should have taken me. If you had escorted him, there would have been two of you with bruised faces. I, on the other hand, can look after myself.’

  Before Milner could respond, the door to the office opened. It was Stead, the customary twinkle back in his eye, and his irritation at Morley’s intervention already a thing of the past. ‘I’ve assignments for you two,’ he said, looking at Lonsdale and Hulda, ‘and you’ll be pleased to know they don’t involve an evening at the Savoy. Cook will handle that. Hulda, I want you to look into an art exhibit that opens in the East End on Monday.’

  ‘Monday?’ asked Hulda, brightening. ‘Then in the meantime I can explore—’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Stead. ‘You heard Mr Morley. It
is too late to do more today, so I suggest you go home and read anything you might need in preparation for the art exhibit. But not tomorrow, of course. It’s a sin to labour on the Sabbath.’

  Hulda opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it. Clamping her cigar between her teeth, she grabbed her coat and stalked out. They heard her heavy steps going down the stairs.

  Stead turned to Lonsdale. ‘She has the simpler of the assignments,’ he said. ‘What I have in mind for you is far more difficult, and may even involve a little danger.’

  FOUR

  That Sunday, after attending church with Jack, Lonsdale began preparing for the assignment that had been allocated by Stead. Then, the following morning, he slept as late as he could, before starting what he imagined actors went through prior to every performance: he readied himself to play a role. At about nine o’clock on Monday night, an unshaven and deliberately grubby Lonsdale was dropped off by a brougham carriage near the insalubrious Fox and Hounds tavern on a rough backstreet of Lambeth. The first step in the assignment allocated by Stead had been taken.

  Stead’s idea had developed from a brief report in Saturday’s final edition – a snippet of news that had been taken from one of the morning newspapers by a sub-editor and included only because there had been unused space on page five. To Stead, however, it represented the tip of an iceberg in an appalling case of neglect and cruelty:

  A coroner’s jury yesterday returned a verdict of manslaughter against the master of the Holbeach Union Workhouse in Lincolnshire, for causing the death of a pauper named Bingham. The man had been suffering from a skin disease, and was placed in a fumigating box used to disinfect persons, and apparently forgotten. His cries at length attracted attention, and he was released, but not until he had been so terribly burned that skin and flesh fell from different parts of his body. He died a few hours afterwards.

  ‘We must find out what the conditions in a workhouse are really like,’ Stead had said. ‘How are these men lodged and fed? What goes on when night comes, and the misfits and outcasts crowd around workhouse doors? How can a man be left in a box to die? Bingham deserves such questions to be answered!’

  ‘The New Poor Law is behind it,’ Milner had stated. ‘The law that says able-bodied persons unable to support themselves should only receive relief in workhouses.’

  ‘Workhouses!’ spat Stead. ‘Wicked places where the standard of living is obliged by law to be inferior to that of the lowest-paid worker, in order to serve as a deterrent to shirkers and drive them back to honest toil. But such centres repress, not help, the poor.’

  Stead’s plan was for Lonsdale to spend a night in a workhouse to see what it was like to be treated as a ‘casual pauper’. The reporter now shuffled away from the carriage in his filthy boots, dressed in what had once been a snuff-brown coat, but was faded to the colour of imperfectly baked bricks. The coat was too small, and his arms projected beyond the sleeves, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets against the chill of a clear, cold night.

  Lambeth Workhouse loomed gloomy and squat over Princes Road. Its thick front door was caked in a greasy patina of soot and grime, and Lonsdale could smell the rankness of unwashed bodies from outside, although it was not nearly as powerful as the reek of despair and hopelessness. It unnerved him, and it took considerable courage to knock and ask for a bed.

  Once allowed inside, he was interviewed and taken to a room with three large baths, each containing a liquid that looked so much like mutton broth that he baulked at going near them, let alone immersing himself. But the clerk was waiting expectantly, so Lonsdale gave the man his clothes tied in a bundle and plunged into the water. It was icy cold, with a thin layer of scum across the top, and the bottom was full of grit, perhaps an inch deep in places. Lonsdale made a show of splashing about, and scrambled out as soon as he was sure he would not be ordered back in. It was, he thought, one of the most disgusting things he had ever done.

  After drying off with a cloth as coarse as sand, he was given a lump of stale bread and was issued a blue sleeping shirt, a rug to cover himself, and a numbered tag so that he could retrieve his clothes in the morning. He was then sent across an open court to a large shed, one side of which was comprised only of a canvas sheet with a gap of some four feet at the bottom. The floor was flagstone, but so thickly encrusted with slime it could barely be seen, and it was sticky under his naked feet.

  Inside were, he estimated, at least a hundred and twenty hay-stuffed bags, almost all occupied by men streaked with filth, despite the baths. In a number of places men had moved the bags close to each other – ‘clubbing’ they called it in self-denigrating sarcasm – as a feeble measure against the cold. Most were asleep, although a few ruffians squatted on their beds, singing ribald songs or telling obscene jokes, their eyes gleaming in the embers of their foul pipes. The place stank of acrid, fetid bodies, rotting bed-straw, and the foul pools on the floor where men, declining to make the chilly trip to the latrines, had created lavatories of their own.

  Lonsdale found a free bag and, despite it having a bloodstain bigger than his hand, lay down, knowing that to baulk would show a degree of fastidiousness likely to make the other lodgers take notice of him. He looked at the bread, thinking he would have to eat at least some of it if he did not want to stand out.

  ‘Not hungry, old pal?’ asked one of three lads watching him keenly – a short, thin boy of fifteen or so, with large blue eyes and close-cropped hair. ‘Chuck it here, then.’ Obligingly, Lonsdale tore the bread in two and threw the larger piece to the lad, who devoured it quickly as his friends tried to grab it from him.

  ‘Aw, Jamie,’ grumbled one when it was gone. ‘You could’ve shared.’

  Determined to learn all he could, Lonsdale propped himself against a post and pretended to doze, watching as Jamie and his friends lit their pipes. He listened in growing horror as the youth began to relate tales of stealing, sex, and fights. Eventually, they slept, and the noise in the shed subsided, so that by the time the bells from nearby St Mary’s Church tolled twelve, all was still. It was not quiet, though, with the flapping of the canvas curtain in the wind, snoring, the sounds of drinkers at the communal water pail, and the scuttle of those who got up to relieve themselves at the latrine or against the wall inside.

  For hour after hour Lonsdale sat there, counting the time until seven o’clock – when he thought he would be able to leave. Four o’clock came and went, then five, by which time he was so cold that he doubted he would ever be warm again. At six, factory bells called working men to their jobs, but no one stirred in the workhouse, and the snoring continued unabated. Then it chimed seven. Lonsdale jumped up, relieved that the ordeal was almost over, before realizing he was the only one who had moved. Eventually, two men appeared and began bawling out numbers, so that the bundles of clothes turned in the night before could be exchanged for the borrowed shirts.

  When everyone was up and dressed, the boys took the rugs, and the men made a heap of the bags against the wall, turning the shed from bedroom to breakfast room. There followed three-quarters of an hour of waiting for a paltry breakfast – a slice of bread and a pint basin of gruel, which had an unpleasant taste but warmed his numb hands. To Lonsdale, frozen, uncomfortable, and thinking longingly of home, it seemed an eternity. Hardly had he finished – having again given half of the bread to Jamie – before a rough-looking man known as the ‘taskmaster’ said in a loud voice, ‘Now then, you lot belong to me!’

  The sun shone brightly as Lonsdale, his ordeal finally over, walked through the busy streets to where the same carriage that had dropped him off the night before was waiting. His friend Milner, whom Stead had assigned to collect him, was lounging comfortably inside, reading The Daily Telegraph.

  ‘You look a sight,’ said Milner in distaste. ‘I’m not sure I want you in here with me.’

  Ignoring the comment, Lonsdale flopped back against the plush upholstery and accepted a gulp of brandy from Milner’s hipflask. He relished the war
mth as it settled in his stomach.

  ‘I’ve been waiting two hours,’ Milner grumbled, as the carriage moved away. ‘It’s well past eleven o’clock, you know.’

  Lonsdale shuddered. ‘There are duties to be performed before the inmates are allowed out. I had no idea they’d take so long.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘Today’s was turning cranks that work a flour mill. Turning the crank is like turning a windlass. It shouldn’t have been too laborious, because only four measures of corn have to be ground each day. The problem was that the taskmaster set us to work, then left. At least half the men immediately stopped working. The miller came in once or twice, and suddenly everyone was at work, but when he left, all was as before. It shouldn’t have taken more than an hour, but it took three.’

  ‘The poor laws at work,’ mused Milner. ‘What do …’

  He trailed off when he saw Lonsdale had fallen asleep, and they rode in silence until the carriage clattered to a halt outside the tall, elegant Georgian façade of Jack’s house. Lonsdale woke when the driver jumped down to tend his horses.

  ‘Do you own this?’ asked Milner.

  ‘My brother does,’ replied Lonsdale. ‘But he’ll marry soon, and then I’ll be looking for rooms. I don’t suppose you—?’ His question was interrupted by a thump from behind them. ‘What was that?’

  ‘It sounded like someone jumping off the back of the carriage,’ said Milner peering out of the window. ‘I have a feeling we might just have given someone a free ride.’

  Wednesday, 26 April

  My dear Lonsdale,

  I write to congratulate you on your coming of age, not just as a journalist, but as a crusader in the cause of righteousness. I enclose a copy of today’s early edition of The PMG, which includes the first instalment of your account of a night in a workhouse. Milner told me that he had never seen so great a change in appearance wrought in a single night. He felt that when you went in, you were well disguised, but that after spending fifteen hours in the cold and squalor, you had absolutely become confirmed in the visage of a tramp. The experiences that wrought these changes show in your account. You have written with passion of the filth, immorality, and hopelessness, and you have written so that things might be done, not merely discussed.