The English Monster

by Lloyd Shepherd

  “That is two thoughts, sir,” says Harriott, and Constable Horton, despite himself, smiles. Story looks confused for a moment, as if his demons were dancing in the air behind Harriott’s head.

  “My dear Harriott, your own efforts in this case are to be applauded,” says the third Shadwell magistrate, Markland, the dandified Yorkshireman whose deep mellifluous tones are suggestive of the vaguely dissolute landowner he once was. “Yet you cannot deny the simple fact that we are fighting this outbreak of violence like a man whose limbs are unaware of each other. We are all over the place, a whirlwind of frantic action. But we do not have the requisite tools for the job. We cannot watch every lodging house, every tavern, every . . .” He looks at Story somewhat squeamishly. “. . . every house of ill-repute.”

  John Harriott does now begin to lose his temper.

  “There are, no doubt, any number of excuses as to why our progress has been so poor,” he says. “You lay these reasons out articulately, and they have been well rehearsed. Too well rehearsed for my liking, sir. Too well rehearsed indeed. We have clues. We have a direction. Why have we not followed it?”

  “Which direction are you referring to?” asks Markland, in a tone of voice that suggests Harriott has just cast some dark aspersion on his wife.

  “The maul, dammit, man, the maul! The demonstrated instrument of at least two of the Marr murders, and we have had the initials of its owner, JP, since the very start of this case. The very start! I have had my man Horton here seeking out this JP in Wapping, but he has had no assistance from your office!”

  “Well, sir,” says Markland, smiling now. “Well, sir, your office does have the distinct advantage of being operated by those with particular interests in the operations of other districts.”

  “Meaning what, exactly, Markland?”

  “Meaning just that, Harriott. You have taken it upon yourself to pursue this case with zeal, energy, and passion. Your willingness to involve yourself in the affairs of other offices, while your own is neglected, is to be applauded for its public-spiritedness.”

  “Neglected? How neglected, sir?”

  “The windows of this office face out to the river, Harriott. They do not face inward. Your realm is the water and the shipping upon it. While you busy yourself with events which have taken place outside your realm, I hear tell that the number of larcenous events out on the water have begun to rise.”

  “A fact no doubt unrelated to the general air of anarchy which has been building in this area while you gentlemen sit upon your hands and wait for a solution to present itself.”

  “An elegant suggestion, Harriott, but also a self-serving one. Why on earth are you so fearsomely exercised by the lack of progress in an investigation in which you have no official standing?”

  “Because, Markland, any right-thinking gentleman should be exercised by it. Not once before have we seen murders like these. Not once, I say! They are unique in their barbarity, their random nature, and the sudden way they have fallen upon us. They will be written about and pored over by future generations, and our actions here, today, will be subject to the verdict of history.”

  At this, Markland smiles to himself.

  “Well, sir, we have read your memoirs and are aware of your position in history. It is a fine thing to wish to preserve.”

  Constable Horton wants to step in at this point, because John Harriott’s face has gone a dangerous shade of purple. Horton is becoming concerned that the old magistrate will do himself mental and physical harm. The old man’s face expresses frustration as well as anger, and he is reaching for something to grasp on to; Markland’s throat would serve pretty well. He catches Horton’s watchful eye, and seems to deflate, as if in the face of an unanswerable assertion. Still looking at his constable, he begins to speak again. He seems smaller, suddenly.

  “Mr. Markland. Mr. Capper. Mr. Story. My apologies. I have grown hot with you here, and that does nothing to help this case. I admit to a sense of personal frustration and weakness. You mention my memoirs, Markland, somewhat cruelly. I would say this, simply. My memoirs speak of a man who has been accustomed to solving problems through the undertaking of something, through some action. And yet every action we take in this case seems to drag us further into a fog of misunderstanding. We have arrested a great many people, gentlemen, both here and throughout London. We have suspected Portuguese sailors, Irish soldiers, and Scottish shopkeepers. We have detected spies, smelled out murderers, and seen monsters out of the corners of our eyes. We have, in short, been flailing, gentlemen. Myself as much as any of us. And I begin to perceive that a different kind of activity is required by this. An activity more careful and considered than we have perhaps been used to. We are not in the business of simply knocking together the heads of Irish coal heavers here, gentlemen. I believe we are in the business of something else, something we might call detection. It is a species of police work to which my constable Horton here has given much thought.”

  For the first time, the eyes of the Shadwell magistrates look at Horton. He looks back, calmly, despite his customary discomfort with any form of attention.

  “Horton?” says Harriott, cooler but still diminished, as if he were handing on a mace to a successor. “Perhaps you would share your thoughts on the matter with the gentlemen here?”

  “Sir.” Horton steps toward the desk behind which the old magistrate has now sat down, and looks at the three magistrates seated before him. “Gentlemen, our resources are limited to a half-dozen police officers and perhaps two dozen constables. At present, these resources are undertaking to speak to local people, and to act on what they find. This has led us into confusion, gentlemen.”

  “Confusion?” says Markland, the only one of the three who seems to be listening carefully. Capper continues to look terrified, Story somehow bored, as if waiting for the conversation to take on a more divine quality.

  “Confusion, sir. By relying on the testimony of individuals, we have exposed ourselves to the prejudices of those individuals, and we have thus been chasing our tails. It is an easy thing, gentlemen, for a man to inform on another, with no evidence and no motive other than envy or irritation. Across London, I estimate close to a hundred people have been arrested and brought in for questioning in relation to these incidents. Three men are currently being held at Coldbath Fields. One, Sylvester Driscoll, was arrested the day after the previous murders for being in possession of brandy and bloodstained trousers, and has been in custody ever since. I need hardly point out that makes him innocent of these more recent murders.

  “The other two are Portuguese sailors against whom I can discover no evidence of any kind other than that they were in the area of Ratcliffe Highway on the night of the Marr murders, and there is some uncertainty over their legal status. Gentlemen, I will say that if these are our standards of proof we will need to arrest hundreds if not thousands of men in these districts before we even come close to arresting the right men, and even if we do arrest the real culprits it will be as much down to luck as planning. This is not a part of town where men can always account for their movements or provide papers. The population is transitory and often below and outside the law. If we continue in this vein, the streets of Wapping and Shadwell will have to be cleared and the jails of our offices extended outward and upward to accommodate the intake.”

  Horton speaks quietly but forcefully. Markland looks furious and turns toward Harriott.

  “Harriott, I may take a certain level of . . . criticism from you. Your experience, your years, and your standing require me to do so. But to accept such words from a man like this, a man for whom the accepted propriety of superior and subaltern have been proven to be unfamiliar and who has long been tainted with mutiny, is really quite beyond the pale.”

  John Harriott glances at his constable at that. Horton hears the word mutiny thundering in his mind and looks at Markland with acute attentiveness, like a gazelle near a lion that may or may not be waking up.

  “Markland, hea
r him,” says Harriott. “Hear him for a while longer.”

  “I can see no . . .”

  “Markland!” In the voice is the bark and rasp of the navy and the army, and Markland stops his tongue. “A minute or two longer.” He nods to Horton to continue.

  “Gentlemen, I propose to you that we should follow evidence, not hearsay. The evidence is clear. We have the maul, and its initials. We have the ripping chisel, left on the counter at the Marr murders. We have certain eyewitness accounts, which place two men at the scene of both murders, one tall and one short. The taller of these men is said to be lame, with a distinct limp. We have the reports of men heard running through a house out onto Pennington Street, and the reports of voices at the scenes of both crimes. We have clear footprints across the London Dock Company’s land behind the King’s Arms. We have the facts of the murders themselves: their brutality, their suddenness, and the apparent lack of connection between them. As Mr. Harriott says, we have the fact that a second set of murders occurred despite the arrests from the first murders, and so why are we holding Portuguese sailors when they were under lock and key during the fearful events at the King’s Arms?”

  By this stage, even Capper is on his feet and Markland is beyond rage. Capper exclaims in a stretched, high-pitched voice that Horton’s knowledge of the facts suggests an outrageous breach of trust, and the constable must have bribed officers of Shadwell to gain all these pertinent facts, else how could they be known? John Harriott points out, heatedly, that all the facts have been in the newspapers over the previous days, and did they not read these papers? When it becomes clear that the Shadwell magistrates in fact do not read the newspapers, there is a brief, uncomfortable moment of calm into which Constable Horton jumps, feetfirst.

  “Gentlemen, I urge you to consider a reallocation of resources. I urge you to rely less on hearsay and more on witnessed evidence: on what people have seen and what they have heard, rather than on who they know and what they infer. I urge you to follow the logic of the case: that these people were murdered with instruments that can be traced, that there seems to have been at least two men involved, that one is tall and one is short, that . . .”

  It is Story, emerging from his meditation on demons and their evils, who cuts him short.

  “Enough! Harriott, enough! Call off your dog! We have heard a very great deal about how best to conduct an investigation. But these crimes are beyond investigation, Harriott. They are evil and bestial and foul things, and the best we can hope for is to maintain our dignity in the face of them. The perpetrators will come to us, either through the grace of God or through his actions within the local community. We do not propose to investigate these atrocities in the way your man here describes. We must pray and we must have faith in the humanity of the populace. And with that we end this meeting.”

  The three Shadwell magistrates rise, Capper and Markland looking at once embarrassed at the outburst of their superior and aghast at what Constable Horton has laid before them. Harriott says nothing as the magistrates march out. He looks tired and done with. As the door closes behind the Shadwell magistrates, he gets up and looks out of the window.

  “The humanity of the populace,” he says, more to himself than to his constable. “God help us.”

  Constable Horton nods, again more to himself than to Harriott. He feels in his pocket for the rough edge of the Potosí piece of eight he found at the empty house, and gives a small silent prayer of thanks for dishonesty by omission.

  SPRING 1664

  At the top of the wooded hill above the island’s settlement—the French fort, the small cluster of houses and the little harbor—there was a clearing, and within this clearing two men lay in each other’s arms, sheltered by the shadow of the trees which seemed to grow out of the rock and straight into the sky. A light breeze brushed their skin and stirred their long hair. A large brown dog slept nearby, its head twitching as it dreamily chased wild boar through the mist of its memories.

  It was a clear blue Caribbean day. The air was warm, not quite hot, but held within it the promise of broiling hurricanes and burning afternoons in the weeks to come.

  From down by the sea came the distant crack of a shot, followed by an echo as the noise bounced off the rocky edges of the island. The taller of the two men snapped awake and reached for a gun by his side. He was dark-haired and bearded, his skin browned by the sun, and as he stood and raised the musket toward the source of the gun-crack his true height became apparent. He held the weapon to his shoulder and scanned the trees, alert and tense and naked.

  For a moment, the stillness and silence returned. Some of the island’s gigantic population of pigeons started to coo again. Then, gently, the other man raised his hand to stroke the standing man’s ankle, his eyes still closed.

  “Apaise-toi, Guillaume. There are always guns on Tortuga. And you always spring to your feet like a scared whippet.”

  The tall man ignored him, still sweeping his gun across the trees. The dog had also woken up, and gazed at the standing man, his eyes dull.

  There was no other sound for a good while, but then a crackling of gunfire erupted somewhere down the hill beyond the fort, or perhaps at the fort itself. The Frenchman now sat up and looked toward the sound of the shots, his blue eyes flat and uninterested. He stretched his legs out in front of him on the ground, and his arms out behind him, leaning back on his hands to look into the sky, even as the gunfire boomed below. It appeared to be coming closer. The Frenchman looked to be the same age as his companion, but where that man was tall and dark-haired, this man was blond and small and intricate. He sat up straight again, wrapping his legs to one side like a woman and hooking one arm around the standing leg of his companion, hugging himself into the other’s thigh. He started to stroke his hand up and down the other’s leg, a smile on his face, his eyes distant.

  “Now, Guillaume, you must learn to . . .”

  Men appeared through the trees, a small group of four, dressed in rough leather breeches, thick cotton shirts, and a variety of colored hats and neckerchiefs, all of which had seen better days. They came to a halt within the ring of trees and, to a man, began to laugh.

  “Wot a sight, fellas,” said one of them, resplendent in a red hat that had kept its dye but lost its shape. “Wot larks for a forest by the sea.” His accent was London, his sword looked Spanish, his musket was undoubtedly French. He smirked as he stepped into the clearing, full of the cockiness of a male in a group despite the dark-haired man’s gun, which now rested steadily on the newcomer’s face. “So it’s true, fellas. The so-called Tortuga Brethren are too busy fucking each other’s arses to be of any use in our escapades. Let’s leave these two to their cuddles.”

  He winked at the tall man.

  “You want to get to Port Royal, mate. They’ve got plenty of cunt there. No making do with your little friend here.”

  He made to leave, but the seated Frenchman spoke to him and caused him to turn back.

  “You are English, I think?”

  The red-hatted Londoner looked at him, still with his splendid grin. His teeth were whiter than the teeth of a rogue sailor had any business being. His skin was red and burned.

  “So, here’s a French poof with a tongue in his head,” he said. “The very worst kind. We always thought you bastards were a bunch of queers. Perhaps he fancies a taste of some Wapping cock?” This to his friends at the edge of the clearing, who laughed heartily.

  The Frenchman looked equable, despite the supine nature of his pose, squeezed against the long flank of his companion.

  “You are English, yes?”

  “And you are French. What of it, you bugger?”

  “I know a man who knows a man who has enjoyed the physical delights of your new king. I believe Charles le deux, non? He told me your new king likes to call the men he fucks Oliver. Personally, I do not understand the reference.”

  The Londoner’s smile vanished and his musket began to rise as he started to say something, but he fa
iled to find the mot juste because at that moment the front of his face fell in on itself as the sound of shot ripped through the clearing. The Londoner collapsed, and the standing naked man put his musket back down to reload it, careful not to knock the butt into the head of his reclining French companion.

  The dead Londoner’s comrades stared down at the fallen shape of their shipmate, and then started to raise their own weapons, only to hear a click as the reclining Frenchman raised his own gun, as if from nowhere, an elegant bejeweled thing which twinkled like his eyes as it caught the beams from the sun. He was now on his knees, his cock swinging audaciously.

  “Alors, messieurs,” he said, one eye closed and one eye staring down the barrel of his rifle, which was aimed directly between the eyes of one of the men, before moving on to the next, and then the third, and then back again. “Mon cher Guillaume has dealt with your English friend, using his French musket. I too have a French weapon, and while mon cher Guillaume reloads his own gun I am pointing mine at the three of you. It is already loaded. You may shoot, but one of you will die, perhaps not even the one who fired the shot. Your odds are three to one. Do you feel lucky today, gaffeurs?”

  As he talked, his tall friend continued reloading his gun, under the watchful eyes of the three remaining intruders.

  “And now,” said the Frenchman. “Some introductions. This attractive fellow here is Guillaume, an English friend of mine. And my name is L’Ollonais. I understand this is not an easy name for you English to say, but you have perhaps heard it before today?”

  All three of the men shivered. After perhaps ten seconds, one of them moved his foot back slowly, as if walking away from a snarling lioness. He started to inch back toward the perimeter of the clearing. Eventually, his two companions began to do the same. By this time, the tall man had reloaded his musket and had raised it to his shoulder, wincing slightly as an old vivid wound in his left side was stretched by the movement, something only his French companion noticed.