Hell! said the Duchess

by Michael Arlen

  As he approached he noticed that the crowd was thickening quickly around the pot-bellied little speaker. They were a sullen-looking lot, on the whole. There was no “friendly backchat” or “unfailing sense of humour” about them. Two policemen stood nearby with expressions of remote dis­interestedness. Wingless did not trouble to push his way to the front of the crowd, for the oratorical arts of the little speaker did not include that of cultured restraint.

  “Why?” he was shouting. “Why? That’s wot every mother’s son of us all is arsking ourselves. Friends, the conscience of the people grinds slowly—but when it starts grinding, friends, it grinds like ’ell and without fear or favour to rich and poor or ’igh and low. The righteous anger of the people is a fearful thing—but, friends, it is the people’s right to be angry against in­justice and clarss prejudice. I say it again—CLARSS PREJUDICE.”

  “Here,” said one of the policemen, with that scholarly intonation with which Lon­don has grown resentfully familiar since the long and memorable administration of Lord Trenchard as Commissioner. “Here, try speaking a bit lower, will you?”

  “The voice of justice,” hissed the little man indignantly, “doesn’t ’ave to shout to be ’eard. Now, friends, I am going to arsk you a plain question: WHY ’asn’t this Jane the Ripper been cort? Why ’asn’t this fiend in yewman form been ’ung by the neck until she is dead? Friends, that’s wot the voice of the people is arsking. Why ’asn’t this vampire been arrested? I’ll TELL you why, friends. And I’ll tell you in one word—clarss. Did you ’ear me? I said—clarss. That’s why the Ripper ’asn’t been arrested yet—and that’s why she won’t ever be arrested—because England is ’idebound by clarss prejudice and the police is ’idebound by clarss prejudice—and, friends, we’re blamed fools to stand it. Wot would ’ave happened to the Ripper if she ’ad been a working woman gone nuts? She’d ’ave been strung up long since. But, friends, she ’asn’t even been arrested—and for why? Because she’s a ruddy marchioness or a lousy duchess with a great name but narsty ’abits——”

  Wingless went over to the two young policemen, told them he was a friend of Mr. Icelin, and suggested that one of them should run the few hundred yards to Scot­land Yard to fetch Superintendent Crust. He added that the matter was urgent and had to do with investigations which the Superintendent was making. When, rather doubtfully, one of the policemen had gone off at a good pace, Wingless said to the other: “Can’t we hold that little chap on anything?”

  The young policeman, an Old Malvernian who had recently passed into the force with honours in Literature and Classical History from the Trenchard Police College, said: “I daresay we might, sir, if it was worth it. But it so seldom is. It’s usually better to let them dither away.”

  The pot-bellied little man had evidently come to the end of his exhortations, and the crowd was moving away. They were a quiet lot, mostly men, but Wingless again noticed that there was about them a sullen look unusual in the ordinary English crowd. The pot-bellied little man was left talking to three men in a low voice, glancing occa­sionally in the policeman’s direction.

  Wingless said: “My advice to you, con­stable, is not to let our little friend go before Mr. Crust comes.”

  “There’s no difficulty, sir, about holding him for a bit on a charge of inciting to violence. I’ll keep an eye on him until the Superintendent gets here.”

  At that moment Crust was seen approaching them, walking with surprising swiftness for a man of his bulk. Wingless quickly explained why it might be worth their while to put a few questions to the antagonist of “clarss.” Then Crust went up to the little man, from whom his companions instantly melted away, and said gloomily: “Come on, Joe. Just want to ask you a few questions.”

  “Me?” said the little man indignantly. “Wot should I come along for?” But at the same time he winked with surprising amiability at Wingless, as though to say he was the last man in the world to prevent a superintendent from having his little joke.

  When they were in Crust’s room at Scot­land Yard, the Superintendent said: “Now we are not charging you with anything, Joe Chundle. Anyway, not if you behave your­self. But do you realise you are laying your­self open to the charge of uttering seditious speeches? Your usual line is speaking on atheism. What has made you change to Jane the Ripper?”

  “My conscience,” said Joe, with the resigned air of a man not unused to having his word doubted.

  “Now, Joe, don’t come that over me. I’ve known you too long. I want two answers to two questions, and I want them quick. Who put you on to this Jane the Ripper lay? And who told you to spread around this daft story about her being a lady of title?”

  Mr. Chundle said: “Look ’ere, Super, this is getting too deep for me. I’ll tell you all I know, but it ain’t anything. I can’t tell you who’s spreading the rumour because I don’t know, but you could ’ear it in every pub to-night before closing. The chap who told me about it didn’t know more’n I did, but he gave me five bob to do my bit about Jane the Ripper and say she was being pro­tected because of ’er position. Lord bless me, Super, there must have been ’undreds of chaps like me that was . . .”

  The telephone bell rang. The Super­intendent listened without a word for quite three minutes. As he slowly replaced the receiver, he said absently: “All right, Joe. But mind you stick to atheism in future. It’s more respectable.”

  When they were alone he got up and took up his bowler, and then stood staring into it. His great clumsy figure sagged at the shoulders as though he had suddenly given way to an overwhelming fatigue. There was a strained look in his melancholy eyes as he turned to Wingless.

  “Sir,” he said, “maybe I ought to ring up Mr. Icelin at his home, but I just haven’t the heart. He has been in his office here since eight this morning working his head off, and a man must get some rest some time. You can come along with me if you like, sir. This news is going to shake London a bit too much for my liking.”

  “What is it, Crust?”

  “Sir,” said Crust, “the Inspector at Vine Street has just reported that the decapitated head of a man was found fifteen minutes ago just inside the railings of the Green Park almost opposite Half Moon Street. It was in a white cardboard hat-box. The Green Park is closed now, and the hat-box must have been chucked over the top of the rail­ings, because the lid had fallen off. The woman who first saw through the railings what was in the box had a fit, and no wonder.”

  “You’re right,” Wingless said, as they drove northwards in the police car. “This is going to shake things up quite a bit.”

  The Superintendent looked at him with a very mournful expression.

  “Sir,” said he, “but that’s not all, nor the worst of it. A perfumed card was found pinned to the poor chap’s forehead, and the perfume is quite unmistakable.”

  “Nothing written on the card?”

  “Didn’t I tell you, sir? ‘Isn’t it a ripping day? With cordial good wishes from Jane the Ripper.’ I’d like,” said the Superinten­dent, “to wring the bitch’s neck for her im­pudence.”

  “Man,” said Wingless, “do you call a severed head no more than impudence?”

  “Sir,” said Crust, “maybe I’m going goofy myself. Did I forget to tell you that the constable who examined the head found that it was a wax head, very lifelike to be sure, and that the blood, of which there was naturally a large amount, was some kind of coloured chemical.”

  “I’ll be darned,” said Wingless.

  “And me,” said the Superintendent. “But what does get my goat is that this severed wax head is maybe going to cause more trouble than the three murders put together. And do you know why, sir? Because the public is in no mood to believe what the police tell them, and so the public won’t believe it wasn’t a real head. And, sir,” said old Crust, looking gloomily into his bowler hat, “if I’m not right I’ll eat this hat.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The July Riots in London must make that year for ever infamous
in the glorious history of England. To our enlightened civilisation, hitherto founded on the Credit System—which means that the rich man owes his duty to God and the poor man owes his to God-knows-who—the Riots were a shocking revelation of the corrupt passions that are born of over-education. Two Com­missions of Enquiry are still deliberating upon the causes, aspects and suppression of the disorders, and much reliance is placed upon their findings. But it would appear that they are suffering a good deal of discomfort, for a Commission’s dilemma is grave which must combine severity with sagacity and temper justice with compro­mise. You know how it is when whatever you do is wrong anyway.

  These admirable Commissions have issued certain pronouncements. For example, Lord Buick of Barstow, always a safe man to rebuke, has been rebuked for having per­mitted his newspapers to publish during the Riots statements of a kind likely to inflame and misdirect the more unthinking amongst the populace. The Viscounts Astor and Rothermere, the Barons Beaverbrook and Camrose, and of course their eldest sons, have on the other hand been commended for their sane and sound attitude of praising the restraint of the rioters, the restraint of the police, the restraint of the Fascists, and the restraint of everyone concerned, except of course of a handful of foreign agitators, on whom they very properly put the blame: Lord Beaverbrook adding a rider to the effect that such things could not happen in England if we bought less beef from the Argentine and made more butter in England.

  The scholars of Eton College had also emerged with credit from the Enquiry, as was only to be expected. These brave lads had no sooner heard that revolu­tion was threatening the capital than they marched on London. They must have been stopped by the surprised policemen on the way had they not represented them­selves, quite correctly, as a march of the un­employed. They were unarmed, except with such blunt instruments as they could pick up on the way. Marching up from Knightsbridge they attacked the rioters with peculiar fitness at Hyde Park Corner, be­neath the gaze of the iron Duke of Welling­ton who, permitting himself to overlook the geographical claims of Belgian soil, had said that Waterloo was won near Windsor.

  The Commission of Enquiry recorded with admiration an incident of the Battle of Hyde Park Corner. In the very heat of the engagement, when the brave lads had just stormed the Communists’ barricades stretch­ing from Wellington’s statue to the gates of the Park, it was noticed that an elderly nurse wheeling a pram was waiting at the corner of Constitution Hill to cross to the Park. In­stantly a truce was declared and the nurse and her charge, escorted by one Etonian with a bleeding nose and one Communist with a black eye, were allowed to proceed between the silent ranks of the combatants into the Park.

  It was to this incident, which reflected great credit on all concerned, that the school­boys put down their ultimate defeat just before lunch-time. For these brave lads, hitherto supported only by thoughts of pro­tecting England’s great traditions against the ignoble changes of a revolution, were re­minded by the baby in the pram of their own not very distant childhood and of their still less distant parents, and their enthusiasm was somewhat damped by doubts as to the recognition which their services to the State would receive from their mothers. However, they retreated in good order just before lunch-time, leaving the field to the Com­munists, who had wisely brought their luncheons with them in the form of sausage rolls and a tasty bit of pork pie here and there, no doubt supplied to them by alien agitators.

  They were shortly to regret the effect of this rich nourishment on their powers of en­durance. For the Corps of Commissionaires, leaving for the time the patrons of exclusive hotels to find their own taxis, flushed with indignation, ablaze with medals honourably won on the field of battle, and undeterred by thoughts of their mothers, who had any­how not had the forethought to send them to public schools, marched up Piccadilly and speedily demolished the pretensions of the Communists.

  We must not forget to add that the con­duct of the police throughout the rioting was warmly approved by the Commission. They had been told neither to provoke the Communists in any way nor to seem to side with the Fascists. Their restraint in these particulars was admirable, and their discre­tion called for the highest praise. But they stood no nonsense and put down rowdyism with a firm hand. When Hyde Park Corner had been cleared of fighters and the shop­keepers in the neighbourhood had come to have a look at the mess, the police instantly charged them with drawn truncheons and arrested several for loitering.

  The Riots began with sporadic rowdyism on the morning after the finding of the severed head in the Green Park, which no­body believed was made of wax, and lasted for three days. The rioters’ first objective was the Duchess of Dove’s house in Grosvenor Square. Exactly how the sus­picions of these wretches had become fixed on the gentle Duchess will probably always remain a mystery. What is certain is that great numbers of the more violent sort, con­vinced that Jane the Ripper was being pro­tected by the authorities merely because she was the Duchess of Dove, had determined to take the law into their own hands. They called loudly for justice. They screamed their abhorrence of favouritism. They spat on privilege. They proclaimed Lynch Law.

  Storming Grosvenor Square in two columns of approximately a thousand per­sons each, one pouring down Bruton Street and one down South Audley Street from the north, these wretches had Mayfair at their mercy. The police, taken by surprise, and forewarned only of probable attacks on the House of Commons through the day, sought in vain to keep them from their objective. With little difficulty the more arrogant amongst the mob forced their way into the Duchess’s house, having previously smashed every window in the Square to the strains of the Internationale, which they sang with an accuracy possible only to those who had been suborned and trained by alien agitators.

  Once within the Duchess’s house the rioters, amongst whom it is regrettable to report that there were as many women as men, smashed everything they could see with the most disagreeable thoroughness imagin­able. Nor did they behave in any way with that good-humoured restraint which it has always been our pride to discern in the behaviour of the English crowd as compared with crowds abroad, who have not of course been taught the principles of fair play. It is with distaste we learn that they did not respect even the privacy of the Duchess’s bedroom, and that her daintily-appointed bathroom and privy appeared especially to infuriate the women among the mob.

  Had Mary Dove been in her room her fate must have been horrible, for several of the men were so lost to all human feelings that they had come prepared with ropes with which to hang her out of the window in the sight of their gratified friends below. Nor were the women backward in suggest­ing the most vile humiliations that might be put upon her body. They had to content themselves with lesser outrages. And, unable to destroy the object of their primitive anger, they wreaked their vengeance on her property by hurling everything they could lay hands on out of the broken windows to the yelling crowd below.

  Thus the charming but private details of a gentlewoman’s bedchamber became the derided objects of the rioters’ lust, and the coarse hands of the mob delighted to destroy the flimsy fabrics of a duchess’s intimate toilet. While London, on that wretched day, was not spared the degrading spectacle of Englishmen wearing in broad daylight a lady’s knickers as fancy headgear.

  But worse was yet to come. The crowd in the Square became so inflamed by the revelation of what the rich wore next to their pampered skins while the unemploy­ment figures went up—or down, what the hell?—every week, that they began storm­ing the other houses in the Square and debauching their contents. So that presently when a column of Fascists marched into Grosvenor Square from Carlos Place they were met by the disgusting spectacle of common men and women wearing on their heads the chamber-pots of some of the proudest families in England.

  But before the Fascists appeared to dis­tract the attention of the rioters, Miss Gool had suffered a great deal. Those depraved wretches would not believe that the Duchess was not concealed within the house. They would not believe th
at she had escaped their vengeance. They therefore subjected Miss Gool to every form of insult, though her repeated statements before the Commission of Enquiry that she had been made the object of abominable lusts were unanimously denied by those rioters who were later arrested and who protested most vehemently that Miss Gool was not at all their idea of a nice bit of skirt.

  The temper of the rebels in the neighbour­hood of Westminster was less licentious but more dangerous. Here the foul features of revolution were clearly to be seen. The mob’s objective was nothing less than the seat of Government, and the hostility of the people was directed with bitter tenacity at the in­violable persons of their elected representa­tives. It is not known whether they also contemplated the awful crime of high treason against the Crown, but it is odds on that they did. To these dangerous revolu­tionaries the affair of the Duchess of Dove was no more than an excuse for carrying out an anarchy they had long contemplated. Falsely representing their ambitions to the deluded people to be the setting up of a Re­public, they sought to destroy by violence the Constitution of England and to erect in its place a shameful tyranny.

  It was only through the reluctance of the Cabinet to call out armed troops, and thus dignify a riot by treating it as a rebellion and expose to a critical world the proud civilisation of England at last scarred by Civil War, that the disorders could have lasted so long as they did. Nor was London, on the second and most furious night of the rioting, spared the furious agonies of revolu­tion. And even the most depraved of the Communists were abashed, even the most besotted of the rioters sought the obscurity of their homes, when the cry of “Fire!” was raised and a pillar of smoke was seen to mount with awful solemnity from the direc­tion of Whitehall.