The Incendiary's Trail

by James McCreet

  As she reached for the last of the strawberries, the handle began to rattle on the door leading to a rear courtyard: a heavy oaken door which was bolted and seldom used (and known to the cognoscenti as the ‘lovers’ door’). Indeed, a full-length mirror hung upon its back, half-disguising its existence. That mirror wobbled now as Mary shouted back at her own reflection.

  ‘Use the front entrance, dear! This one is bolted. We don’t use it.’

  The door stopped rattling. Then a tremendous kick ripped the bolt and lock from the jamb. A man carrying a black canvas bag entered, pushing the splintered door closed behind him.

  ‘Good evening, Mary.’

  ‘You can’t come kicking my f— door in!’ replied Ms Chatterton in characteristically salty terms. ‘Who are you, blackguard, to come bashing into my private parlour? I should box your ears!’

  The man, who had a scarf pulled over his face and a hat worn low, stepped briskly towards her and slapped her hard across the face with the back of his gloved hand.

  ‘Why, you —! I’ll not be hit in my own f— Rooms!’ she expostulated, struggling to haul her bulk to a standing position.

  He hit her again, this time rocking her back into the chair. A trickle of blood emerged from her already fruit-reddened lips. Her eyes burned with humiliation and loathing: ‘You —! Were I a man, I would rip out your eyes and fry them!’

  And again he hit her, so that the tears in her eyes were those of pain rather than mere outrage. After this, he unbuttoned his coat and pulled a chair over to sit before her. She snivelled and mopped her bleeding lip with a silk handkerchief. He extracted a razor from an inner pocket.

  ‘Now Mary, there is no need for theatricals. I want to talk to you. I trust that you will not call out further, or I will be obliged to cut your throat with this weapon and ruin that delightful dress with your blood.’

  ‘Show your face, you cur, so that I might spit on it.’

  ‘I have been watching you, Mary. They say you know many secrets about many powerful people. They say that if you were inclined, you could blackmail half of London with the pillow-whispered truths of your career.’

  ‘I am sworn to secrecy. On my honour.’

  ‘Your “honour”? That is amusing. They say that the greatest secrets are the ones you keep about yourself, Mary.’

  ‘So, you are a blackmailer. You have no information about me, d— you. My boys will soon return to find you here – then you shall see my wrath!’

  ‘No, they will hear a man’s voice in here as they have so many times before and they will retire until morning, when they imagine your “visiter” will leave by this discreet door here. We will be quite undisturbed. Am I correct?’

  ‘Blackguard! What are you, then? Come to blackmail me? Take some jewellery and leave, you petty criminal. You shall be found later and beaten beyond recognition.’

  ‘I see I have not yet garnered your full attention. Perhaps you need something to focus on. Have you seen this before?’

  At this, the man – who, by now, I am sure the reader has correctly identified as the ‘General’ who met Mr Bradford in the marine store – extracted Eliza-Beth’s locket from his coat and held it before Mary’s eyes. It twirled in the gaslight.

  She became rigid in her throne and paled even further. She looked behind her to the other door, hoping vainly, perhaps, that a rescuer would enter.

  ‘Ah, now I have your full attention!’ he continued. ‘Where have you seen this trinket before, Ms Chatterton?’

  ‘I . . . I have never seen it. It looks too cheap to be of my possession.’

  ‘Your expression says otherwise. Have you been to Lambeth recently, or to see the shows at Vauxhall Gardens?’

  ‘I have not.’ Her lower lip began to quiver.

  ‘Must I strike you again? I know that you have been to both.’

  ‘Vauxhall is a pleasant place. Why wouldn’t I go there for the music and the dancing?’

  ‘Or to see “Dr Zwigoff’s Anatomical Wonders”, perhaps? No answer? Mary Chatterton lost for words? You have been there on three occasions, one of them being a private viewing of the wonders. And you have also visited the freaks at home—’

  ‘They are not freaks!’

  ‘No matter what the appellation, you have been to that boarding house in Lambeth. Tell me, have you been following the newspapers in the last couple of days?’

  ‘I don’t bother myself with the latest events in China, or the price of coal.’

  ‘Yes, you are a queen in this tiny kingdom of yours. Nothing beyond its gaiety and popping corks exists. Gossip and rumour is your only news. Still, there can be few who have not already heard the news. Must I be the one to inform you of young Eliza-Beth?’

  ‘What? What of her?’

  ‘I perceive your concern. She is dead – most likely being boiled for her skeleton as we speak, her throat opened by a ruffian’s razor—’

  ‘Liar!’ Fat tears swelled from those once beguiling eyes and her lips crumpled. ‘Liar! She is alive! She must be alive.’

  ‘No, she is dead. Murdered.’

  ‘O! . . . I . . . I cannot bear it!’

  He opened the locket and extracted the lock of red hair. He stood and held it next to Mary’s head so that the strands became quite indistinguishable from her hair.

  ‘A perfect match. I was curious, Mary, why you might have such an interest in the girl. When I met her for myself, the resemblance was striking. The locket merely confirmed my assumptions – it and the letter.’

  ‘You have my letter?’

  ‘Your letter? No, but I have hers. She made reference to a striking similarity that she shared with her anonymous parent. She believed she knew your identity.’

  ‘My Eliza-Beth! . . . Show me the letter. Please.’

  ‘Alas, it is in a poor condition. I have it in a secure place.’

  ‘And now you will use it against me, is that right? Are you her murderer?’

  ‘Tell me the story.’

  ‘Why should I? Did you kill her?’

  ‘The girl is dead. Only you and I and perhaps the father need know the truth. I have enough to blackmail you, if that was my purpose. Was it the shame that made you forsake her?’

  ‘I was young and beautiful. I might have had London at my feet, but my lover – Love! What a dream! – filled my head with tales of houses and children. I was ready to settle: the mother hen. Can you imagine? He was a good man; perhaps he would have cared for me. But I did not want one man. One man could not buy enough jewellery or champagne for one as empty as I. One man could not supply the attention that I needed. A queen needs more than a king – she needs a country.

  ‘He was away when I gave birth to the monster, that punishment from Heaven for my sin. I could not accept the child . . . nor could I bear to live with it. I told him it was stillborn . . . I left him also. All I had was my beauty and my dreams . . . and now . . . look what I have become. I am unworthy of the man and the child.’

  ‘So you abandoned her. I would have done the same.’

  ‘It is easy for you to say that! You are a man. You feel no guilt or emotion or connection with a child. She came from inside me!’

  ‘And you abandoned her.’

  ‘B—!’

  ‘Indeed I am. Why did you try to contact your abandoned child now, after all these years?’

  ‘You would not understand.’

  ‘Guilt? Redemption? Or was it business? I have heard that the girl was quite—’

  ‘Have you no soul? Have you no pity?’

  ‘Maybe once, but I found such things superfluous, and then dangerous. What I am interested in at present, however, is the identity of the father. I have my suspicions, and you will confirm or deny them. Information is my currency, Ms Chatterton. I would have difficulty blackmailing one such as you, who has greater currency than I in the guilty secrets of important people, and whose character is as blackened as can be. The father may be a different matter. I suspect he has much to lo
se from these revelations.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Have you contacted him as you have contacted Eliza-Beth? Do you now aim to pursue that family life you once eschewed?’

  ‘Ha! What man would acknowledge such a creature as Eliza-Beth as his own? What man would accept me, knowing what all of London knows about my reputation? I have not spoken to him for years. He may be dead for all I know, or living on the other side of the world.’

  ‘Why do you protect him? You have no love for him now.’

  ‘The love I had for him was the only love I ever truly gave a man. I will take it to the grave, if only to spite you. You callous, heartless—’

  ‘I anticipated such an answer. And if it is the grave you seek, you will find it soon enough – but not before you tell me what I require.’

  ‘You will not get the better of me, you —!’

  ‘We will see.’ He stood and opened his black canvas bag, extracting a coil of rope from within. Then he took a silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket. ‘I am going to put this in your mouth, Mary, and secure it in place. I can’t have you screaming all night. You will speak when you are ready to speak. Do not be alarmed – it is clean.’

  Naturally, she struggled as he tied her. But her cries were soon stifled and she was broken in body and in spirit. That was when he reached for the poker and began to stoke the coals so that an eruption of sparks reflected in his eager eyes.

  TEN

  Mr Williamson had just taken a carriage to Haymarket and was turning over the facts of the case in his head as he rattled across the night-time city. Who had delivered the letter to Eliza-Beth? And did that have anything to do with her murder? Since there was little apparent motivation for the crime, those few visiters were his only routes of investigation. Mr Coggins had listed the clergyman, the writer, Mary Chatterton and the doctor as callers during the current run at Vauxhall. Reverend Archer had already been filed in the detective’s mind as a dubious case; Dr Cole was in Edinburgh and would not return for some days; Mary Chatter-ton, however, was the greatest anomaly in his mind.

  This notorious woman of pleasure was famous for hardly ever leaving her Rooms, not least because of her unwieldy size and inability to be too distant from a bottle of champagne. She was a rare and gaudy flower that flourished only in the unique climate of her kingdom. And, in retrospect, the letter had had a vaguely feminine stroke, its letters just a little more rounded and its downward strokes more truncated than one might find in a man’s writing.

  Haymarket had passed the zenith of its revels as he stepped from the cab. The streets were less populous and the gaiety had transformed into surfeit. He pursed his lips in distaste as a young girl hanging from the neck of her beau vomited forth the large quantities of brandy and water she had consumed that evening. Someone else was singing drunkenly unseen, no doubt having emerged from the penny gaff with its bawdy songs fresh in his gin-addled mind. Mr Williamson made for the passage that led to Mary’s Night Rooms.

  ‘There is an admission to be paid.’ A thickset man barred the detective’s way with a beefy arm.

  ‘I am Sergeant Williamson of the Detective Force. I am not a customer.’

  ‘It don’t matter nothing to me. All who enters pays.’

  ‘I know you. You are “Fancy” Harry. If I am not mistaken, you have spent some time in gaol for your violent temper. Are you committing a violent act upon me now?’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘I fear that heavy arm of yours has done me some damage. I will be forced to arrest you—’

  ‘I didn’t touch you!’

  ‘I’m sure there is a constable hereabouts who will aid me in your arrest . . .’

  ‘All right! Enter! You police are—’

  ‘Contain that thought in the limited drawers of your mind, Harry.’

  Music made its way along the murky passage to meet him, and rose in volume as he opened the door to the ground-floor dancing hall. A few couples were still whirling across the wooden floor with intoxicated imprecision as the band worked their instruments in the final throes of exhaustion. Cigar smoke, perspiration and the scent of spilled drinks filled the humid air of the place. Murmured conversation precipitated from the tabled balconies above, punctuated with a pattering of lascivious laughter. Their pleasure was reaching its autumn, turning from sweetness to rot.

  Mr Williamson approached the large horseshoe-shaped bar, which flashed with gas plumes reflected in multitudinous bottles and mirrors.

  ‘You strike me as a brandy and water man,’ chirped the hatless girl attending it. ‘I always knows a brandy cove, I does.’

  ‘You are mistaken. I am looking for Miss Mary Chatter-ton.’

  ‘You and a hundred other gents! Miss Chatterton is seen only by appointment.’

  ‘I am not . . . I am not seeking services of that kind. This is about an investigation I am conducting.’

  ‘Well, you still can’t see her. She’s entertaining a gentleman as we speak.’

  ‘How long will she be?’

  ‘What a question!’ The bar girl gave a saucy wink. ‘The lucky gent will be leaving here at dawn if I’m any judge.’

  ‘I cannot wait. Call her now or I will be arresting you and having you sent to Newgate before you can serve another drink.’

  ‘Why? I haven’t done anything wr—’

  At that moment, one of the boys who had earlier been attending Mary burst into the room pale with horror and raised the cry that spelled free admittance to Mr Williamson:

  ‘Murder! O! Mary is murdered!’

  The boy then fainted where he stood and was fussed over by the barmaid. At the cry of ‘murder’, the band stopped and the dancers stopped. The conversation upon the balcony diminished and a prickly silence settled. There was a single, strangled cry that could have been a laugh or a sob – then an urgent murmuring overtook the gathered revellers.

  Mr Williamson strode over the fallen boy towards the door from which he had emerged. A stench of burned hair, flesh and clothing told him that the discovery would be an unpleasant one.

  He was correct. The boudoir of Mary Chatterton presented a sorry scene. He immediately noted the shattered lock of the ‘lovers’ door’ and also took in the chair placed opposite Mary’s. Evidently a discussion had taken place. The lady herself was tied firmly to her chair, her head slumped on to her breast. Drops of her blood spattered the walls and furniture. There was not enough blood to have produced a clear footprint, but some of the drops had been smudged by a flat sole, which appeared very like the one he had seen at the Lambeth house. A balled and bloodstained handkerchief lay on the floor beside the chair and the poker remained in the fire, glowing red at its tip. Was that the gag that had stifled her shouts?

  Mary herself was barely distinguishable, even to those who knew her. Her head had had its crown of red hair burned away like a stubble-scorched field, leaving that bloated face oddly naked. The effect thereupon was worsened by the bruises, swelling and crusted rivulets of blood that had evidently resulted from a systematic beating. Her arms showed the charred spots where the poker had been held against her. He checked her fingernails to see if she had managed to retaliate and found some blood there which may have been her own or her assailant’s. None of these injuries had killed her, however. It was the gaping wound across her throat.

  Brought back to awareness by an unadulterated brandy, the boy who had found her ventured gingerly into the room once more. His lip trembled with emotion.

  ‘Is she really dead, sir? Is Mary dead?’

  ‘Yes, quite dead. Her throat has been cut. She was badly treated before that small mercy, I fear. Tell me how you found her.’

  ‘I heard the lovers’ door go and thought she was again alone, the gentleman having left—’

  ‘Who was with her? Did you see him?’

  ‘I didn’t, sir. There is a rule that if we hear a man’s voice, we are to retire until morning.’

  ‘And you never break that rule?’

&n
bsp; ‘I . . . I admit I saw the fellow for the briefest moment through the door here. He was sitting before her and they were talking. I didn’t see his face ’cause he had a wide-brimmed hat on and a scarf about his face. His clothes were all black. I dared not linger, so I retired to the dancing hall. If only I had—’

  ‘And when did you find her?’

  ‘As I said, I heard the door go. I waited about twenty minutes and came to see if she wanted champagne. I smelled the awful smoke and saw her sitting there . . . O! Her beautiful hair all gone!’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Just now, before I came into the bar.’

  Mr Williamson opened the lovers’ door and stepped out into the alleyway. There was no sign of anyone – merely the stink of the stopped gutters. He stepped back inside and extracted his notebook.

  ‘Can you tell me if anything has been taken from this room?’

  ‘I would have to look.’

  ‘Well, look then. Now.’

  The boy crossed to the mantel and looked carefully where Mary’s discarded jewellery still glinted dully. He seemed to examine each piece rapidly. Then he crossed to her body and examined her bejewelled fingers with a lachrymose tenderness. Next, he opened a wooden box on an ornate escritoire loaded with feminine unguents and found that it was still stocked with money. His eyes flicked among the bottles and Mr Williamson saw the reaction.

  ‘The letter – the letter is gone.’

  ‘Which letter?’

  ‘She had been writing a letter. I was to deliver it personally this very night.’

  ‘To whom was it addressed?’

  ‘I don’t know. I only saw her writing it and then saw it lying there. It was there when we left the room, I’m sure.’

  ‘Tell me, boy, have you ever been to that house in Lambeth where the recent murder took place?’