It takes more than an hour to reach the neat, austere little house, as neat and austere as the woman who opens the door to Horton’s knock. He introduces himself, and explains his business. She looks skeptical, but she is not the type to resist official authority in any form and lets him in.
The front door gives straight onto a single room, with a well-tended hearth. There is a door to a small kitchen, from where there is a delicious smell of poultry being readied in preparation for the upcoming feast day. Unusually for a house this small there is also a staircase, and Margaret Jewell’s mother calls up it, tenderly but anxiously. Within half a minute her daughter appears.
The girl is wearing a simple white cotton dress, and her hair is pinned up roughly, as if she has tidied it just to come downstairs. She is pale but composed, Horton is relieved to see. He has a vivid flash of recollection: a young girl, sitting on a pavement, weeping uncontrollably, her hair red and disheveled. The girl who comes down the stairs looks very different now, as if she’s aged ten years in a few weeks. She no longer seems the hysterical type.
He introduces himself. She sits down in one of the two ancient chairs in the little room. He takes the other. The old mother retires to the kitchen, but hovers near the opening between the two rooms, listening and watching.
The girl speaks with a fierce nervousness. She is barely more than a child, after all.
“You were there. That night. You were there at the house.”
“Yes, I was,” he says. “Miss Jewell, I am here as part of our investigation into the murder of your employer Timothy Marr, and his family.” The words sound strange and officious on his tongue. He rehearsed them several times in the coach. He does not quite know why.
“And Jim.” She looks into the fire, as if to say she has finished with looking at him for the time being. She holds a small brooch in her fingers, which she turns slowly.
“Jim? Oh, yes. James Gowen. The shop boy.”
“No one asked me any questions about him.”
“Should they have done?”
“I don’t know whether they should have done or not. But people forget, don’t they? They forget the servants. Like they’re not important.”
“So you’re not implying that James could have been . . .”
“No, sir. No I am not.” She seems irritated by him now, and he is conscious of not acknowledging the point she is trying to make. It is true. He has not previously found himself asking anyone questions about Gowen’s murder. Thinking about it now, it seems like a potentially enormous oversight.
He waits for a moment, watching her. He has begun to lean forward, and Margaret Jewell’s mother, watching from the kitchen, is disturbed to see something almost predatory in his pose, and is on the point of interrupting them when Horton begins to speak again.
“Well, I am investigating the murders, and . . .”
“What does that mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“Investigating? You are investigating. I don’t understand the words you are using.”
He hesitates. Her manner is quiet, but there’s a willful, young intelligence about her as well. He recognizes it as something which could be useful to him, if he can find a way of exploiting it.
“All I mean is that I am trying to uncover facts about the crime which may have been missed by others.”
Margaret looks at him now, and she almost smiles. The expression is startlingly adult.
“But I thought the Shadwell magistrates were investigating, as you say. They have certainly talked to a great many people. Locked quite a few of them up, I hear, as well.”
“Indeed they have, miss. But, so far, they have not established a reason for the killings.”
“A reason?”
“A . . . motive. A circumstance which would lead to somebody wanting to kill Timothy Marr.”
“Or his wife. Or his baby. Or James.”
He is startled. Once again, this insight has not occurred to him.
“Or those, yes.”
“I answered all the questions the magistrates asked me.”
“You did, miss, you did. I would like to speak to you about matters which may not seem directly connected to the events themselves.”
“How so?”
“Well, were there perhaps people . . . in recent times . . . who were particularly memorable.”
“Memorable?”
“Yes. People who came to the shop.”
“A great many people came to the shop, Mr. . . . Do I call you ‘mister’? Or something else? Are you like a soldier?”
“Nothing like. I was a sailor once. Constable Horton is correct, I suppose.”
“Well, Constable Horton, a great many people came to Mr. Marr’s shop. Why should I remember any particular one of them?”
“I cannot say, miss. Perhaps this means something to you.”
He pulls something out of his pocket: the Potosí piece of eight. He hands it to her. He is not quite sure why.
“What is it?” she asks.
“It is a piece of eight.”
“Ah, yes. Spanish money.”
“Normally, yes. But I understand it is still used in some far-flung parts of the world.”
“Still used in London, too, Mr. Horton. Mr. Marr took payment for quite a few orders with Spanish money.”
“So I understand. Were there any orders paid for with Spanish money recently?”
“Well, there was one that was going to be. I heard Mr. Marr complaining about it.”
“What do you mean, going to be?”
The mother is making no pretense of working in the kitchen now. She stands in the opening, watching the two of them talk.
“Order came in two weeks ago. Funny little fellow came into the shop with it, Jewish I think he was. Said he’d be paying in Spanish money. Mr. Marr was grumbling about it.”
“He didn’t want to be paid in Spanish money?”
“No, he said not. I heard him talking to Mrs. Marr about it. Said it was a flipping liberty, but it being such a big order he’d put up with it.”
“What was the order for?”
“Plain cotton clothes, mainly. Osnabrück cotton. Various sizes. Some cloth shoes, too.”
“And what happened to this order?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“Did Marr complete the order?”
“Oh. Well, no. I never heard about it again, to be truthful with you.”
“It was never mentioned again?”
“No.”
They talk for a while longer, but not a long while. Margaret relaxes and talks freely, but nothing much of what she says seems pertinent to Horton. A great deal of it is complaining about her treatment: by the magistrates, by the villagers of Tilbury, by her mother, who is still listening at the kitchen door and sniffs with affronted sadness to hear her daughter’s grumbles. As he leaves, the girl touches his sleeve and whispers to him:
“Will you find me a position? Or help me? I cannot stay here a great while longer. It is stiflin’ here.”
And her eyes glitter with the memory of being a London girl, surrounded by the clamor of maritime possibilities.
Horton says he will see what he can do, and heads out to the waiting coach. They head back westward. The old coin is hard against his thigh, its edges impertinently sharp. He thinks about what he has heard, and the order book he had taken from 29 Ratcliffe Highway.
Returning into Wapping, the coach edges down the Highway through the early evening crowd, then left onto New Gravel Lane and thence into the warren of boardinghouses, inns, and shops crammed between the lane and the dock. He tells the driver to slow down quickly, looking up at the names of the houses, before finding the one he is looking for. He gets out and sends the driver home. He knocks at the door and is let inside, where he is shown up to a door on the second floor. He knocks, and for a good while there is no response. Eventually a quiet, shaky voice asks: “Who’s knocking?” Its accent is local but also educa
ted, the rough corners rubbed off by books.
“Constable Horton. River Police Office.”
“River Police? What do you want?” The voice still sounds tremulous, but is a little more sure of itself.
“Let me in, Mr. Turner. It should be obvious to you why I am here.”
Another long pause, and then the door slowly opens. The pale face of John Turner looks out and peers into Horton’s face, exploring it for confirmation of his official status. Turner seems satisfied with what he sees, and lets Horton into the room beyond.
An open wooden chest containing Turner’s belongings is in the middle of the room. A bed, part-covered by some nondescript material, is along one wall. An old piece of sailcloth serves for a curtain. Turner is a man who has not yet made a firm commitment to his new lodgings. There is not even a chair to sit on, so Turner indicates the bed. Horton seats himself, and Turner closes the lid of the chest and sits on that. The position is awkward, especially for a man wearing only a nightshirt, as Turner is.
He seems not to have left this dusty little room for some time, if at all. He is unshaven and disheveled, and smells of dust and sweat and hunger. It occurs to Horton how odd it is, showing up at a stranger’s door and asking to be let in to ask questions. And then it occurs to him how odd it is that this has only just occurred to him. Somehow, it seems that some simple small talk is required. They are both adult men. He is not talking to a child. And yet it occurs to him that he has no idea what to say. Small talk is not something Charles Horton is comfortable with. Perhaps he should have brought Abigail.
“You seem to have found somewhere adequate to live,” he says. This sounds clumsy and witless, and Turner looks quizzical. His expression makes his confusion clear. Why is this man making conversation with me? Why doesn’t he get to his point?
So, enough small talk, then.
“Mr. Turner, I want to ask you some questions about the events you witnessed at the King’s Head.”
“Witnessed? What do you mean by that?”
“Saw. Heard.”
“I saw a man busy cutting Mrs. Williamson’s throat.”
Turner is belligerent if still somewhat afraid. Horton takes a breath, and tries again. Steering the conversation toward . . . what, exactly?
“I would like to find out more about the details of that night, Mr. Turner.”
“Details? What details?”
“Well, for instance, did you hear anyone talking?”
“When?”
“Immediately before you came down the stairs. Or immediately after.”
“Well, immediately after I was busy legging it up to the bedroom and out of the window.”
“Of course. Of course. So before then?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Well, let me try and explain. Imagine you’re back at the inn.”
“You police fellows have some strange ideas.”
“Possibly.”
“Well, as I hear it, you’ve arrested half of London. Arrest the other half and you’ll have the bastard. Makes sense, don’t it?”
“There have been a great many arrests, it is true.”
“Too bloody many, by all accounts, but you still haven’t caught them, have you? Too bloody busy arresting people to look at what’s in front of your bloody noses.”
“And what is it that’s in front of our noses?”
“I don’t know, do I? Not my job to know, is it?”
The man’s voice is now insolent as well as belligerent. The change is startling. A sudden insight occurs to Horton: Turner feels this room, this whole situation, is somehow beneath him. He feels his presence at the murders of the Williamsons gives him something like celebrity, or what passes for it in the poorer parts of London. It’s like a kind of power, and this makes him feel essentially superior to Horton, and indeed the magistrates. I was there, his sneer seems to say. You can’t possibly understand. The man won’t be charmed. A different approach is required.
Horton stands and suddenly Turner looks afraid again, leaning back away from him. Horton feels something powerful and exhilarating, seeing Turner cringe like that. He is conscious that this power flows from his position as a policeman. It feels oddly and dangerously wonderful. He folds his arms, his earlier tiredness washed away, and glowers down at the other man.
“Listen to me, now,” he says, in a low, cold voice which he barely recognizes. “I know how bloody clever you think you are. I’ve heard it all before. But I know that six nights ago you were swinging over New Gravel Lane with your yellow arse hanging in the wind, whimpering like an old lady. I know you did nothing—nothing—to save those poor people. I know you saved your own skin while Williamson and his wife were cut to pieces. I know you locked yourself in your tiny little bedroom while they had their throats slashed and God knows what else done to their dying bodies. While you whined away like a little helpless puppy. So don’t pretend you’re anything special. Don’t. I’m here to do my job, and my job is to find out what happened to these people, not to sit here while you show me how very clever you are, Mr. Turner. It’s a simple question. Did you hear anything? Did anybody speak?”
Turner’s face is somehow both pale and flushed red at the same time. He looks sick, close to fainting, dizzy from this unexpected presence in his room. For a single moment, Horton seems to be channeling the entire authority of the British Empire, and Turner can smell that power, can feel the heat of it coming off the man standing over him. Nothing like this has ever happened before. No soldier or police officer or guard has ever bullied him before. He simply collapses under the weight of it.
“Sorry,” he mutters. Horton says nothing, still enjoying the magic but also feeling an itch of something. Guilt, perhaps? Surely not guilt again?
“No apologies, Mr. Turner. Just the facts.”
Horton steps back and sits down on the bed again. He unfolds his arms and puts his hands back in his lap.
“What do you want to know?” Turner asks, looking at the floor, miserable but amenable.
“Did you hear or see anything unusual on the night of the murders?”
“Only what I already told you. The noises in the inn, which I went down to investigate. I saw what was happening, and that’s when I escaped out of the window.”
“Well, then, I need you to think about anything else you might have seen or heard, either on the day of the murders or in the days and weeks running up to it.”
Turner looks at him in some despair.
“Mr. Horton, it’s an alehouse. There’s people coming and going all the time. There’s arguments and fights and strange undertakings going on from dawn till dusk.”
Strangely poetic, Horton thinks.
“I understand that, Mr. Turner. What I want you to do is think of anything that stands out. Did you ever hear Williamson arguing with anyone?”
“All the time. He wasn’t scared of a shout, was old Williamson.”
Horton pauses. Perhaps this is a fool’s errand, after all. He searches his own memory for something which might make a connection.
“Did you ever hear Williamson arguing about business?”
“You mean the business of the inn?”
“Perhaps. Or something about business outside.”
“No, I never heard him arguing with anyone about that.”
Horton scratches around in his head once more.
“There was something going on between Williamson and his wife, though, come to think of it. Something to do with some bit of business Williamson had going on outside.” Turner speaks with a crisp formality now, the insurance clerk in him coming out.
“Tell me about that, then.”
“I heard them arguing about it a few nights before . . . the recent events. Mrs. Williamson was crying when I came in from work that night. I only remember because that was exceeding unusual, that was. She never cried, that woman. She was kind to me, but she was formidable.
“But this night, she was terrible upset. She tried
to hide it from me when I came in, but I could see she’d been crying and probably still was. I asked after her health and she said she was fine, but she wasn’t. I went upstairs. Bit later, I went out to the privy outside the kitchen at the back of the place.”
“No chamber pot in your room, Mr. Turner?”
“Yes, there’s a chamber pot. But I needed . . . well, I needed the privy. I haven’t been well. But that’s probably not relevant, is it, Mr. Horton?”
“No. Carry on.”
“Well, from the privy you can hear people talking in the kitchen, especially if they’re talking loudly.” Which probably better explains why you were in there, thinks Horton, who is realizing how much he dislikes this man. “Mrs. Williamson was shouting at her husband, and she was still crying too. Her voice sounded all broken up, know how I mean?”
“Yes, I know.”
“I couldn’t hear everything that was being said, but they were talking about some kind of a deal that old Williamson had done. She wasn’t at all happy about it, and she was letting him know it. He seemed to have done a deal to supply a big old load of food: beans, peas, rice, stuff like that. He knew how to get things, did Williamson, and he was always getting hold of stuff for people, usually in the victualing line. Made as much money from that as he did from the inn, he told me once.
“But for some reason she didn’t like this deal. Maybe the size of it scared her, I don’t know. But I do remember her screaming at him at one point. Sin sin sin, she was saying, over and over, and she was really crying now. And then she said something about Sheerness.”
“Sheerness?”
“Yes. She said if she had her way she’d take those peas and beans and throw them in the sea at Sheerness, and then he could see his precious victuals float down to the bottom of the ocean, like those poor blessed niggers had done.”
Horton blinks at that.
“She talked about ‘niggers’?”
“Well, she might have said Negroes or blacks or some such, but you get my meaning.”
“She talked about Negroes drowning?”
The English Monster Page 18
