by BK Duncan
She leaned across the table.
‘...you’ll find a list of forthcoming inquests in the stop press of your own newspaper. Goodbye, Mr Cahill.’
May picked up the empty plate and walked to the kitchen to slice some more oranges. As she pushed open the door she threw a glance over her shoulder. He was standing where she’d left him, cleaning his glasses. From now on maybe things would be clearer for him in more ways than one.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Okay, but only on the understanding that you take the kid under your wing; she looks as prey for wolves as if she’d just stepped out of a production of Red Riding Hood.’
Horatio was wasted at the beck and call of his father’s cough linctus empire, but he was a poor judge of character when it came to young women. Vi had already clocked how often the delectable Miss Keaps batted her eyelids in the box office to flirt her way around the manager’s demands; if anything, it was the would-be predators who needed to be on their guard.
They were snatching a quick cup of coffee in the dining rooms down the road from the Gaiety. Vi had been running through the bill positions she’d envisaged for the turns she’d decided on and, when they’d come to her proposal that Alice should open the second half, Horatio had looked doubtful. Vi had acknowledged the girl was inexperienced, but had pointed out that the patrons would’ve been propping up the theatre bar in the interval and therefore needed a touch of winsome sentimentality to quieten them down.
‘Whatever you say, boss.’
‘You make it sound like I’m actually paying you.’
Vi returned his smile. ‘Not in money, no. How are the arrangements for Glasgow coming along?’
‘Full steam ahead. We’re both booked for the whole week. You’re to do your Shakespeare scene; I’m the headline act of course.’
Vi tried to ignore the stab of professional jealousy. Although Horatio was a competent magician with a good line in patter, this was his first legitimate theatrical engagement. She wondered what inducements he’d had to offer to secure his place as top of the bill. She drank her coffee to allow the resentment to settle.
‘So we’re to go straight up after the talent show?’
‘I’d prefer it if you remained here for a day or two. Travel up separately. We don’t want tongues wagging. And, besides, I’ve a few things I need to finalise. On my own.’
‘That’ll mean I have to give the landlady another week’s rent. Even with the slot in the regular show I’d be hard pushed to manage that with enough left over for my new costume.’
‘I’ll see you right if it becomes necessary. And, believe me, it’ll be worth every extra penny when you see what I’ve got lined up for us north of the border.’
It wasn’t like him to be so secretive. In all the theatrical - and other - dealings they’d had over the past two years, Horatio had always been forthcoming; remarkably so at times. Vi smiled. And then it came to her that maybe whatever he was so intent in keeping from her had nothing to do with business at all. Perhaps it was personal. The most personal thing there could possibly be between two people. Conducted far away from the puritanical gaze of his father. Horatio was a romantic underneath it all and an elopement to Gretna Green would be just the sort of surprise he’d relish pulling out of his hat. She hugged the delicious prospect of spending the rest of her life with the man who had stolen her heart - and her favours - the first night they’d met. But she wouldn’t spoil his little boy excitement by letting on she knew.
‘Come on, back to the fray. We need to tell the scene painters what we want on the flats.’
He pushed his chair back. ‘Good job I’ve got you to keep me on the straight and narrow. I’d be lost otherwise.’
Vi thought she couldn’t have put it better herself.
Chapter Fifteen
May was awoken at sunrise by a loud knocking on the door. It was PC Collier with the news that a body had been found and the coroner wanted her in the office immediately. She dressed, left a note for Alice, and was there in a little over thirty minutes. She deposited her coat, hat, gloves, and bag on her desk, picked up a pad and pencil, and went through to the mortuary to see what couldn’t have waited until eight o’clock.
Colonel Tindal was standing over the new arrival. With him was Detective Inspector Beecham, who looked across at May.
‘I’d advise you not to come too close.’ He mopped his brow with a handkerchief.
‘Thank you for your concern but I have seen dead bodies before.’ The abrupt start to the day had made May tetchy.
‘Don’t mean that. It’s the influenza; reckon I’m the next one has his name on that particular bullet.’
The detective inspector was a wiry man with a face like a whippet’s. In the glare of the electric light his grey pallor made his cheekbones even more pronounced. May knew he had three small children and hoped his sensible wife had already quarantined them from the infection.
‘You can take notes from over there, Miss Keaps.’ Colonel Tindal waved a hand in her direction. ‘But I don’t expect to have to repeat myself so pay close attention. The body was found where and at what time?’
The detective inspector took out his notebook. ‘An alleyway in Limehouse. Just off the Causeway. First discovered at approximately five o’clock this morning by dockers returning from the timber wharves. I’ll be able to be more precise when they’ve sobered up.’
May waited as Colonel Tindal went through his ritual of taking a pinch of snuff. DI Beecham watched him over the body with a look of acute longing; no doubt any stimulant on offer was the next best thing to being in bed. She made a mental note to go and get him a strong cup of Java from the coffee house across the road before he set off back to the station. Colonel Tindal let out a sharp sneeze before pulling back the sheet.
‘Young man in his twenties, I’d say. Looks to be well nourished. Not a sailor certainly. Torso and face badly beaten. Make that, savagely. Was anything found in the pockets?’
The policeman consulted his notes again. ‘A wallet. Empty. And a ration card showing an address in Epping. A constable is on his way there now.’ He glanced over at May. ‘I’ll let you have the details for the warrants when we’ve gathered all the facts.’
‘You will supply the names and addresses of the witnesses who discovered the body and any other relevant information to my officer within the hour. A post-mortem will be conducted before the end of the day, and the inquest convened for tomorrow morning.’
Colonel Tindal held his lapels and leaned back as if he’d already heard the jury’s verdict.
‘Robbery and murder clear as you like. Rest assured this case will be back in the not-so-capable hands of our esteemed police force in no time at all. Now, Miss Keaps, we might as well make a start on other business; I have some letters I wish to dictate.’
May waited until the two men had left the mortuary then walked over to pull the sheet back up over the body. She flinched when she saw the dead man’s battered face. Would his mother or father be able to recognise him? She wished they could be spared having to look but the possession of personal effects was not enough to establish identity. She would ensure that she was on hand to escort them through the ordeal in preference to PC Collier or one of his colleagues; in the absence of any other comfort they would be grateful for a woman’s presence.
***
The turnout for the preliminary inquest was the bare minimum - the jury, the two men who had found the body, and Dr Swan. May arranged her papers on the courtroom table. The victim had been identified as Miles Elliott. His father - a shipping owner in the import/export business - had done so with the air of a man who was doing his duty without engaging any of his emotions; a protective strategy she often saw in the early stages of shock. He hadn’t yet arrived in the courtroom but May knew the coroner wouldn’t wait for him and, for once, she was grateful
for Colonel Tindal’s refusal to let anything throw him off course. The preliminaries were always difficult for any parent to sit through.
May had sworn in the jury and formally opened the proceedings. The coroner was now engaged in a heated discussion with the foreman. Every now and then he pulled at his side-whiskers and shot accusatory glances at May. She couldn’t work out why: it was the jury he’d specified and the foreman one of his favourites, always able to procure a unanimous decision. Colonel Tindal cleared his throat.
‘The jury has requested to hear from the witnesses who discovered the body, and then to go and see the location for themselves. Although I regard such a procedure as unnecessary, the law demands that I accede. The first witness.’
May nodded to the docker sitting nearest her and walked with him to the stand. She administered the oath and sat back down.
Colonel Tindal leaned towards him. ‘You found the body, did you not?’
‘Yes.’
‘In a Limehouse alley, I believe?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you insist on confining yourself to one-word responses then I suspect we will still be in this courtroom when Hell freezes over. Elaborate, man.’
The witness looked at May who nodded encouragingly.
‘We was walking home. Having had a bit of a skin-full, truth be told. Humping planks of wood being thirsty work and all that. There was only the two of us, the others having taken for a hankering after a meat pie-’
‘Are we now to be subjected to your life story? Place, time and circumstances will suffice.’
‘Well, I reckon it was gone five - we’d heard the clock - and was in the Causeway when Norm said he was aching for a slash and I reckoned that was not a bad idea so we nipped into the alley and there we found him. Dead. No mistaking that. Dead as you like. So we did the business we’d come for then off to find a copper.’
‘An edifying tale. Makes me proud to be British. Next witness.’
The second docker’s version differed in only minor details - mainly whose idea it had been to go into the alley in the first place. He finished just as Colonel Tindal began to look as if he’d burst a blood vessel.
‘Miss Keaps, you will arrange for three taxicabs to be at our disposal in ten minutes’ time. We will recess until then. However...’
He raked the jury with such a look that some of them flushed or stared at their laps.
‘...I will remind you that inside or outside this courtroom, you are on His Majesty’s business and will conduct yourselves in the appropriate manner. I will be in my chambers until required.’
He pushed his chair back with a grunt and walked out, muttering to himself.
At first May was unable to find anyone who could come at such short notice but then inspiration struck and she telephoned the Pickford’s Removal depot just down the High Street and asked if they had anything that might be suitable. They provided a charabanc they used for staff outings and now it was at the court entrance, some of the jury already sitting at the back as skittish as if they were embarking on a trip to the seaside. May hoped they would settle down before the coroner stepped onboard. He would be in a bad enough mood as it was.
***
The journey to Limehouse was short and unmemorable. The trouble started when the driver tried to turn off Wills Street into the Causeway. A costermonger with his barrow occupied the corner and refused to move. May had a humiliating vision of the coroner sending her to remonstrate with him. They were attracting enough attention as it was from women with baskets of washing on their hips who stood and stared while raggedy children sidled up to squat beside the wheels and poke at the tyres with sticks. May knew the area - Tom’s garage was a stone’s throw away in Pennyfields - but that didn’t mean she was immune to the poverty. Poplar had its fair share of destitutes but Limehouse embraced them as its own: after all, they had no further to fall.
The driver exercised his power as the only motor vehicle in the vicinity and switched off the engine, the charabanc blocking both the Causeway and Wills Street. May, the jury, and Colonel Tindal got out and plunged past an Oriental grocer’s, a bag and sack shop, and a Chinese herbalist. May was looking for the restaurant she’d been told flanked the alleyway. She smelled it first. A warm aroma of fish being fried with something like aniseed. On the other corner was a ship’s chandler. With the shouts of a man hawking catmeat from his cart she found it impossible to imagine the circumstances of the young man’s death. It was all too ordinary. Thomas Cook brought their tourists here to thrill at Chinese in full robes chasing each other with cleavers but they were actors; in reality the threat of unfettered violence had no more basis in fact than Sax Rohmer’s The Mystery of Dr Fu-Manchu which May had once returned to the library in disgust.
The jury was now huddled around the entrance to the alleyway. There seemed to be some debate going on concerning how far down a body would have to be before it would remain hidden from the street. May had the uncomfortable sense that some of the men were enjoying this. A break in their humdrum routine it may be but she wondered how they’d feel when they returned to the courtroom to find Miles Elliott’s father waiting for them. It wouldn’t have such an air of colourful detective fiction about it then.
She was aware of someone arriving to stand beside her. With a flip of her stomach she recognised Brilliant Chang. She had thought - hoped - that he was beginning a long stretch in prison prior to deportation.
‘Would you be so good as to tell me, Miss Keaps, what all these people are doing outside my restaurant?’
So this is where he’d gone to ground after he was forced to close his club. It must’ve felt to be quite a comedown. Should she seek out Jack and tell him? No, if he was such an ace reporter as he liked to make believe then he could find out for himself. May stepped away from the smell of the Chinaman’s cologne, and the aura of his energy.
As she detached herself, she heard a voice call her name from the other side of the street. A group of dockers - all three friends of her father - were waving at her. She felt assaulted by the collision of the worlds of her past, work, and the suave debonairness of the man-about-town scanning her face so intently.
‘Miss Keaps, I will ask you again if it is a collusion of the authorities that brings you here. If so, I would like you to know that my business interests are many and varied, but all of them legitimate.’
Colonel Tindal materialised at his shoulder.
‘Have you come to Limehouse to seek the confederacy of your countrymen in the practice of extorting money from young girls and plying them with cocaine?’
‘I have never done such a thing. And, despite their best endeavours - some less generous than myself would say hounding - the police have found nothing to substantiate such a slanderous accusation.’
‘There is no automatic corollary between the absence of evidence and the absence of truth. If I find that you are in some way connected with what went on here then I will make it my personal crusade to ensure that you and your evil ilk-’
Acting instinctively, May had pinched his sleeve and pulled him discretely to one side. Although she agreed with Colonel Tindal in his assessment of this man, as the coroner he should not be expressing such opinions on the public highway.
‘I’m sorry, Colonel Tindal, but it is my duty to remind you that Mr Chan has no legal representative present, and besides, the jury might overhear. On your instructions I’ll issue a warrant for him to attend the second inquest and you can question him then.’
She thought he was going to spontaneously combust; his jowls were mottled with purple, his mouth hung open like a fish’s, and he’d clenched his fists. He’d make her pay for her insubordination later but she’d had to interfere before he’d compromised himself even further - and removed the possibility of them ever getting to the truth of what’d happened to Miles Elliott. He spun away.
>
‘We have been subjected to the distasteful odours of this place long enough. I order everyone to get back to our transportation immediately.’ He turned to Brilliant Chang. ‘You, sir, I will deal with in due course. And I am not as easily hoodwinked as stupid star-struck girls. So beware.’
He strode off across the road, causing a minister on a bicycle to swerve and hurl curses. May refused to make eye contact with anyone as she herded the jury over to join him.
***
‘The post-mortem examination revealed a number of interesting facts.’ Dr Swan put on his half-moon spectacles and glanced down at the report in his hand. ‘There were visible contusions on the face and torso but the resulting eccyhmosis indicates the body was beaten after death. Had this violence occurred prior then the skin would’ve been generally dark and much discoloured by the infiltration of blood throughout its whole thickness, which, in itself, produces an increase in firmness and tenacity in the skin. Once animal heat has left and the muscles are lax, this cannot happen. The blood, in essence, is no longer available due to cadaveric lividity - blood pooling, if you will - which in this case occurred in the lower limbs which were slate blue. There were several ugly gashes - also rendered post mortem - on the deceased’s back that could’ve been made by a docker’s hook.’
‘Tell me, did you find such a weapon conveniently lying on the slab beside the body? Perhaps with a note attached?’
May sucked in her breath. She knew how much the coroner disliked speculation from medical witnesses but she wished he would occasionally remember that there were relatives present. She looked across at Mr Elliott to see how he was taking it. A tic in the muscle under one eye, nothing more.
Dr Swan hardly missed a beat. ‘I found traces of wood chips in his hair and on his clothes. A certain amount of evidence,’ he looked at Colonel Tindal, ‘evidence, mind, of rats gnawing the ends of the fingers therefore making it reasonable to conclude that he may have been dead for some time before discovery. There is one other thing: the young man was in the habit of taking opium. The vessels of the head were unusually congested; the sinuses engorged; and there were hardened faeces packing the intestines, bowel, and rectum - the young man would have suffered from chronic constipation as a result of his drug habit.’ He laid the report on the rail in front of him. ‘I was not able to determine the precise cause of death. Therefore, begging the coroner’s leave and given that it was imperative to act before any signs were lost to decay, I took the liberty of sending tissue and fluid samples, and the entire stomach with contents, to the pathology laboratory at St Mary’s Hospital where they have the facilities to perform toxicology tests.’
