Blood Is Blood

by Will Thomas

“This was my first,” I admitted.

  “You are one cold-hearted old son.”

  I poured myself a temperate glass of the spirits. “I knew what to expect. Besides, I have no time for sentiment.”

  He drank down a second glass, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “So, this got us nothing. No clue whether Keller was out to get my brother or not.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Not every lead will take us to the killer. Your brother always says to have patience.”

  “S’cuse me if I’m not so civilized as I once was. I’ve seen men with their scalps cut and ripped off, and I’ve seen Indian women and children slaughtered by federal soldiers on horseback. However, I’ve never seen a man get his neck snapped like a chicken in the hands of a farmer’s wife.”

  I sipped the whiskey and set it down again. Despite the reputation of detectives in the penny press, I do not care for strong spirits, although a pint of stout or porter with a meal is perfectly acceptable, in my opinion. If one has tasted the water in our fair city one will understand. There is a reason we overboil water for tea or coffee.

  Caleb poured my glass full, despite my protest.

  “I’m not drinking alone,” he said.

  I thought of my Methodist mother, the look on her face if she saw me drinking Jameson whiskey a few steps from a prison. Then I thought of Rebecca. I was certainly doing my best to impress her these days. I unbent and swallowed a little. Meanwhile, Caleb poured the last of the bottle into his tumbler. Promptly, the publican brought a second. Barker’s brother waved it away.

  “I need to keep a clear head.”

  “Clear head?” I demanded. “You just drank an entire bottle of whiskey!”

  “Thomas, you’re what we in the Territories call a tenderfoot.”

  Outside, Caleb crawled into a hansom as if he’d had nothing stronger to drink than ginger beer. Meanwhile, the one and a half tumblers I drank bounced about in my head as we rode. Eventually we drifted into Whitehall and stopped in Craig’s Court.

  “Are you coming up?” I asked.

  “No, I think I’ll wander about awhile. I could use some air after that experience.”

  I nodded and trudged up the stair.

  “Good afternoon, Jeremy,” I said as I went into number 5.

  “Afternoon, Mr. L. Celebrating early, are we?”

  How did he know? I thought I was acting in my usual manner, or at least I was doing my best. Could he smell the alcohol on my breath from across the room? I wasn’t even close to him. I suspected that Jenkins and alcohol had some kind of mystical union only they understood.

  “We’ve just attended a hanging,” I said. “Caleb and I were in need of a drink.”

  “No doubt,” Jenkins agreed. I supposed in his mind he was always in need of a drink.

  “Did any visitors come in our absence?”

  “No, sir, not a one.”

  “What about messages?”

  “One from the priory. Miss Fletcher wishes to speak with you at your convenience.”

  “Do you have any idea what about?”

  “How should I know, sir? I only work here.”

  “I’ll visit her later,” I said. “I’ve just come from a hanging. I need some time to think.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I had promised Scotland Yard under some unnamed penalty that I would communicate with them on the case with pertinent information, though not necessarily my opinions. I had received no such promise from them in return. With so many inspectors and chief inspectors running hither and yon, it is a wonder that even they can communicate information between themselves.

  I had once worked temporarily for the Metropolitan Detective Police Force. Therefore, I understood how they work. Each inspector is buried beneath a mountain of cases, some recent and some not. The latter must be investigated in perpetuity, even if, as Dickens said, the case was dead as a doornail. Therefore, they are constantly harried, working sixteen-hour days, though paid for ten, and develop ulcers from food served in low public houses eaten at irregular hours. I genuinely feel for them, and I thoroughly understand why they are prone to declare the most obvious suspect as the killer. That being said, sometimes the Yard will surprise you. There is a reason why the Metropolitan is considered the best police force in the world.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that the case was stalling. The files were spread across my desk, and on a table nearby was a tall stack of papers that had separated themselves from other files, or which had lost their folders, so that no one knew where one began and another ended.

  Jenkins had retrieved for each of us a particularly potent and nearly undrinkable cup of coffee from the Silver Cross at the corner of the court, while I stared at a map of London in between the daunting, teetering tower of papers.

  “This is hideous,” I told him, putting down the cup.

  “It is, but it will keep you awake.”

  I took about an inch worth of papers and took them over to his desk.

  “Jeremy, I want you to go through these papers and make whatever order you can of them. If you find a connection to this case, put them in a new folder. If not, start a second pile.”

  Jenkins raised an eyebrow. He rarely received such a specific and complicated task. He was no Percival and required no quests, thank you.

  “All right, Mr. L.,” he said with a world-weary air. Like me, like all of us on this revolving sphere, he wanted to be left in peace. I was out much of the time, however, and I wasn’t going to make life too easy for him. He was already leaving early most days, as it was.

  “Have you ordered a new filing cabinet?” I asked.

  “I have. It’s due tomorrow, I think.”

  “Is it a copy of the original?”

  “It’s coming from the same factory.”

  I looked at him. At times he can be highly organized. When he’s sober, at least.

  “How do you know it is the same manufacturer?” I asked.

  “I keep an inventory of the furnishings, of course.”

  Hidden depths, I thought. We all have them. I patted him on the shoulder.

  “Good work, old man.”

  He brightened a little and we set to work. If I leafed through an inch of papers per day, I would be through by the new century. Some of them made no sense whatsoever. Others were like an adventure tale without an ending. Still others I read were as dull as a chancery suit. There were photographs with no notation of who was pictured, sketches, and Bertillon forms, with the criminal carefully measured.

  Then the telephone set jangled, an unwelcome interruption. Even Jenkins looked at the candlestick base with a baleful glance. I reached out and lifted the receiver.

  “Ahoy?”

  “I have an incoming call for you, sir,” the operator said, as he put me through.

  “Llewelyn?” a male voice said. “This is McNaughton. You said you would share information, did you not?”

  “I did.”

  “Can you come over in, say, ten minutes? There is something here you will find very interesting. I’m sure you have something in return for me, as well. I heard you have been busy.”

  “I have, at that. Ten minutes, then.”

  “Nine, now.”

  I set the receiver back in its cradle. There is something satisfying about hanging up on a chief constable.

  “They want me over at ‘A’ Division.”

  “Permanently or temporarily?” Jenkins asked.

  “Don’t you start.”

  I walked over to Scotland Yard and found McNaughton lounging in the hall on the ground floor, waiting for me. We went into his office and without much fanfare, I told him what had happened since last we spoke.

  “This Mrs. Archer. Is she a looker?” he asked.

  “In an East End sort of way.”

  “Someone’s left-handed wife?” he asked.

  “Possibly.”

  “Is Barker’s brother staying out of trouble?”

  There was a photograph on his d
esk in a standing frame, a woman looking stiff and formal. It was a professional portrait of McNaughton’s wife. Suddenly I wanted one of Rebecca for my own desk, but I knew it would never happen.

  “I assume he’s off doing Pinkerton work,” I continued. “He won’t tell us what he is up to.”

  “That’s not a bad way to work. Has he been assisting you with the case?”

  “On and off,” I said.

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Do I have the word ‘idiot’ stamped on my forehead?”

  He put up his hands in apology. “No offense intended. Anything else?”

  We spoke for a few more minutes. I told him as much as I thought the Guv would allow me to reveal. Yes, we wanted to help the Yard, but we still wanted to win the race ourselves.

  “So,” I finally said. “You have some information that might be of interest to me?”

  “I do, indeed,” he answered, rising from his chair. “Follow me.”

  We went down the hall, then took a set of stairs to the basement. There were offices below, just like the ones above. I realized where he was taking me. A sign directed us to the end of the hall that read “Body Room.” It was the new Scotland Yard’s postmortem office. I began to wonder who might be in there.

  “You don’t go all weak-kneed, do you?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  He led me inside. A body was on a hand litter in the back, covered in a sheet. Another corpse on the main table was only partially covered.

  “Strathmore!” I cried.

  The financier’s body was already turning an unhealthy purple along his neck and shoulders. His skin looked sallow. The tip of his tongue protruded from his lips, equally dark. There were rough marks around his neck.

  “Strangled?” I asked.

  “No. Hanged.”

  “He topped himself?”

  “We thought so, but there is a problem. Presumably he stepped off the bed. But the rope is too short for his feet to reach it.”

  “Could he have stepped off the bars of the cell?”

  McNaughton shook his head. “Too far.”

  “Did he share a cell?”

  “No.”

  I thought for a moment. “So someone, presumably, came in and hanged him.”

  “Two people, I’d say.”

  I thought some more. The brain is a marvelous thing when one exercises it now and again. “Was he widely disliked?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Would they have access to a key?”

  “The guards would.”

  Of course, I realized. The guards would have a key. He was pushing me toward a conclusion.

  “It was a prison for small crimes, as I recall,” I said. “Or those like Strathmore, who dealt with the wealthy. Such men would not be acquainted with how to pick a lock or hang a fellow. Bribing a guard is another matter. Strathmore himself probably bribed people on a daily basis, I’m certain. Have the guards been questioned thoroughly?”

  McNaughton snorted. “Of course they have. They’re being questioned right now.”

  “Guards are not well paid, are they?”

  “Not even as well as a constable, which is to say almost nothing.”

  “They work in a facility with men who possibly have a cache of bonds or notes hidden away somewhere.”

  “Or several somewheres,” he said.

  “Ipso facto, it was a guard. Tell me, honestly, how thoroughly can a guard be questioned?”

  “Generally speaking, as thoroughly as it takes. Confessions in such cases are very high. It is not worth their while to remain silent.”

  I bent over the table and regarded Strathmore again. He looked older than he had when he was alive. His eyebrows were shaggy, and he had needed to shave when he was burst in upon and murdered.

  “You say it would take two guards?”

  “Yes, I’d think so, at least.”

  “So each might fear the others would confess, and hope that by doing so first, he’d receive a lighter sentence.”

  “That’s how I read it.”

  I leaned against a chest of instruments, thinking. I liked McNaughton. I had encountered him a year ago, although so far Barker had not met him. I was developing a few associates of my own. Watchers. Soon I would have my own network of people upon which I could rely.

  McNaughton cleared his throat.

  “I’m sorry. You’re busy. Did you call me to inform me or to ask for an alibi?”

  “Both, I suppose.”

  “If it was last night, I was at Barker’s residence. We had a fire, and the Southwark Fire Brigade will vouch for my presence.”

  I looked down on the mortal remains of Edward Strathmore. Because of the lividity, his pallor was almost ghostlike. I had been speaking to this man, face-to-face, but a few days ago.

  “Do you recall the first body you saw as a constable?” I asked.

  “Of course,” McNaughton said, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

  “Did you get weak-kneed? I know I did my first time.”

  “Passed right out. Took a ribbing from my superiors for a month. Why? Do you need a chair?”

  “No,” I said. “Perhaps that’s the problem. This fellow, for whatever reason, is dead. He was murdered. This is perhaps the third corpse I’ve had to look at this month. You’ve probably seen more. I don’t want this to become routine. I don’t want to give up my outrage over a person’s murder.”

  He shook his head and tried to sweep a smile under his mustache.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Most of us want to just go home to the missus at the end of the day. Bounce little Jenny on our knee. Have a warm pint at the corner pub. We’re not tortured souls like you.”

  “I was told last week, in confidence I suppose, that when I was first hired, most of the people who worked with Mr. Barker thought he’d made a tragic mistake. Even I wasn’t sure I could do the work.”

  “And you’re still here six years later. Where are the naysayers? They gave up harping on you and went on to another subject, haven’t they?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Look, if you’re wanting for absolution, find a priest. If you had wanted to fit in, you’d have cut your hair, grown a mustache, and stopped buying ties from Saville Row.”

  “I like Saville Row ties,” I said.

  “Mr. Llewelyn, you are one of a kind. Now will you kindly vacate our body room, and let me get on to my next case?”

  I was in the hall trying to gather my aplomb when McNaughton called me back.

  “Oy!”

  I turned around and looked at him. I’m not one of his constables to be ordered about.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Don’t get shirty. There’s something else I wanted you to see.”

  He lifted the sheet from the face of the other body. It was a male, perhaps forty, more decomposed than the newly murdered Mr. Strathmore. He was a solid-looking man, over six foot. He had a fussy little mustache, waxed to points, which was very un-English.

  “Do you know him?”

  “No, I don’t recognize him. What’s his name?”

  “Anatole Mercier, a French national. We are applying to the Sûreté for information about him.”

  “How did he get here?” I asked.

  “He was stabbed in the back in an alleyway a few days ago.”

  “There was a Mercier connected with Jacques Perrine’s case,” I told him. “His son-in-law, the record said.”

  “You don’t know how he came to be dead in an alley, do you?”

  “Sorry, Chief Constable,” I said. “I can’t help you.”

  “Perhaps you can. Look again. He’s about the same height and build as your employer. I wondered if he could impersonate him well enough in a bank.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, still unconvinced.

  “Llewelyn,” McNaughton said. “I am off duty after a thirty-six-hour shift. Come have a pint with me.”

  I sig
hed and consulted my pocket watch. “It’s barely noon.”

  “It is midnight as far as I am concerned.”

  “Very well. Where shall we go?”

  “My favorite is near the Houses of Parliament. The Red Lion.”

  We made our way down Whitehall Street and eventually came upon the pub. There was a long queue at the bar, but we managed to find a table and sat.

  “How is the investigation going?” he asked, wiping the foam from his mustache with a finger after our stouts had arrived. I’d always wanted to do that. I thought of growing one, but knew Rebecca would object. Then I remembered, she wasn’t mine anymore, and it hurt all over again.

  “Tolerably,” I said. “There is a lot of information to digest, but I feel like I’m getting close. I don’t know why, I just feel it.”

  “Good. I’ve got some welcome news for you. A present from the Met, so to speak.”

  “I’ve always liked good news,” I told him. “What is it?”

  “We arrested the Hobson clan last night. Every last one of them.”

  “Really? On what charge?”

  “Being a public nuisance. Actually, being an accessory to murder.”

  “What? Of their own brother?”

  “He didn’t jump into Limehouse Reach of his own accord. By the way, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “Me?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable. This may seem strange coming from an enquiry agent, but I didn’t like to lie. “No, not at all.”

  “We found your man Briggs in Aldgate, guarding a house. Brought him in for questioning. He didn’t carry a pistol, just that metal-tipped truncheon of his, and no one has heard of him ever carrying a firearm. But you do.”

  “I do, but I wouldn’t carry one in front of my fiancée.”

  There it went. One lie leads to two, as Barker often said. I qualified it by thinking she was no longer my fiancée.

  “Perhaps not,” he said.

  “Anyway, why would I need a revolver with Bully Boy Briggs around? He’d make short work of them.”

  “Perhaps,” he repeated, still unconvinced.

  “What about the elusive Mrs. Archer?”

  “We almost had her yesterday near the train station, but she disappeared, her and another man with her.”

  I stared at him, my pint ignored. I rarely ignore a pint.