Elementary Murder

by AJ Wright

  ‘So I suppose we sit here and wait?’ Nathaniel Edgar declared to the small group sitting or standing around the room. There was a smell of crusted bread, of stale tea and coffee in the air.

  ‘The fog’s cleared,’ Miss Ryan observed.

  ‘Typically British,’ Edgar said without humour. ‘While the world all around us is collapsing, we observe the niceties by commenting on the weather.’

  Miss Ryan turned and gave him the basilisk glare that Standard 4 knew all too well.

  ‘I was about to point out, Mr Edgar, that the fog clearing might well bring the headmaster to us. If the trams had been suspended …’

  ‘But they weren’t, were they?’ Edgar replied snappily and with a certain viciousness. ‘I caught the tram. Most here did too. You, of course, always arrive by broomstick.’

  Suddenly, from the far corner of the room, Emily Mason, who had been sitting there gazing wistfully through the window, burst into tears.

  ‘Why are you always so ’orrible?’ she sobbed, standing up to give her words added force.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Not only Edgar, but the other members of staff also stared at Emily in shock. The pupil-teacher had never been known to express any sort of opinion on anything before now, cowed as she was by the proximity of those who used to teach her not all that long ago. But she hadn’t finished.

  ‘After all Mr Weston’s done for you. For you!’ She raised a finger and pointed it unwaveringly at Nathaniel Edgar. ‘Aye. All you can do is sneer an’ sit yonder lovin’ it.’

  It was Jane Rodley who moved quickly to the girl’s side and placed an arm around her shoulder. ‘Now, now, Emily. We’re all overwrought by this. Best to sit back down over here with me.’

  ‘Aye, lass,’ said Edgar mockingly. ‘Sit thiself down before I say summat I shouldn’t.’

  Jane Rodley whirled round to remonstrate with such unpleasantness.

  Alice Walsh, having moved quickly across the room, helped sit Emily down. ‘The man isn’t worth the bother, Jane,’ she said.

  Edgar was about to snap a response when he was stopped in his tracks by the staffroom door opening.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ asked Richard Weston, standing with one hand on the door handle and the other adjusting the bandage that was wrapped around his head.

  ‘It was most definitely a woman,’ Weston said, somewhat shamefacedly.

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ Brennan was sitting in the headmaster’s office at the end of the day.

  All the staff had left, except for Miss Mason who was due to begin her mentoring session with Weston. He had insisted that the session go ahead, despite the pupil-teacher’s misgivings. Weston sat back and gingerly touched his head. The grain of opium powder he had been given by the doctor was now losing its effect, and a dull throbbing threatened to develop into something much more painful.

  ‘No man would ever make such an unholy shriek just before the attack.’

  ‘Have you any reason to suppose someone might wish to harm you?’

  ‘None, Sergeant. All I know is that the blow rendered me unconscious.’

  ‘You suffered a single blow.’

  ‘Correct.’

  Brennan frowned. None of this made any sense. If the one who murdered Dorothea Gadsworth and Henry Tollet were the one wielding the hammer, then surely she would have finished the job as he lay there defenceless? Unless she was disturbed. But again, this was a completely different modus operandi. Poisoning. Drowning. Now a hammer attack?

  What the hell was going on?

  ‘Can you remember anything else about the attack? Anything, however insignificant you might think it.’

  The headmaster gave the question some thought before replying in the negative.

  ‘I think that’s all I can tell you, Sergeant. Not much help, I know.’ He stretched out his arms as if to conclude the meeting. At that point there was a timid knock on his door. ‘Come in, Miss Mason,’ he called out with an apologetic smile to Brennan.

  The pupil-teacher came in slowly, her eyes still red from lunchtime and the unsavoury confrontation with Nathaniel Edgar.

  ‘Please, sit down. Sergeant Brennan is just leaving. I hardly think he’s desperate to learn the fundamentals of teaching, are you, Sergeant?’

  Brennan admitted that it wasn’t on his list of priorities, gave the pupil-teacher a nod of acknowledgement and left the room.

  As he did so, Weston reached into his desk drawer and took out an old, dog-eared volume. She was familiar with its contents, as it provided the bulk of their tutorials. She read its title: A Manual for Good Teachers.

  ‘You must be very wary, once you become a fully qualified member of the profession, when people start talking about how best to educate the young. I spoke last time about Froebel, the German who brought us the word “kindergarten”. All very well and good, but to encourage children to learn through play, with little regard for the importance of discipline, is to my mind nothing short of catastrophic. Listen to this, Emily.’

  He opened the book and extracted a slip of paper on which he had written some text.

  ‘“Play …is the free expression of what is in a child’s soul.” What do you think of that for an educational philosophy, eh?’

  Emily shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘What should I think?’

  ‘You should think that such nonsense should never have left Germany. Play indeed! The only path to learning lies in two things: the establishment of good discipline, and the ability to explain and encourage. Play discourages both. Now note, I am not saying there is no place for play, far from it. Healthy mind and so on. But there’s a place for that sort of thing and it isn’t the classroom. There the atmosphere should be orderly and structured. Out there …’ He waved a hand towards the window and the playground beyond. ‘Out there they can let off steam. That is all. Now, I want you to read the section “Strategies for Discipline”. In particular we’ll discuss the relative merits of immediate punishment as opposed to the implementation of a cooling-off period. Later, by way of light relief, we’ll practise the conjugation of the verb “aimer”.’

  Emily, suppressing a sniffle, opened the volume at the relative chapter and began to read, or give a show of reading.

  Weston, meanwhile, stood up and walked over to the window. He saw the playground railings, women walking past clutching shawls around them to ward off the early evening chill. But it was the railings he focused on as his head began to throb with more insistence. For the first time, he began to see them not as a practical means of keeping children in, but as a way of keeping demons out.

  When he got back to the station, Brennan was met by Constable Jaggery, who seemed in an excitable mood.

  ‘You’ll never guess, Sergeant!’ said Jaggery in the corridor leading to Brennan’s office.

  ‘That’s true,’ Brennan replied and walked on.

  ‘No, I mean, we might’ve found him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The lad what went missing. Billy Kelly.’

  Brennan stopped in his tracks. From the enthusiastic sparkle in his constable’s eye he knew the answer to the next question but asked it anyway. ‘Alive?’

  ‘Aye!’

  ‘Where is he?’ Brennan looked round the corridor as if expecting the boy to be produced at any moment like a rabbit from a top hat.

  ‘Ah,’ said Jaggery with a slight lowering of his voice.

  ‘Ah what?’

  ‘Well, when I say alive …’

  ‘You mean dead?’

  ‘No, Sergeant. Oh no. The lad’s alive, right enough.’

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘The infirmary.’

  ‘He’s been attacked?’

  ‘In a manner o’ speakin’, like.’

  Brennan was beginning to feel this was a conversation he’d never escape from.

  ‘Constable Jaggery. If you don’t tell me in as few words as possible what the matter is with young Kelly, then I’ll personally s
ee to it that you’re on night patrol in Scholes every Saturday for the next month.’

  The threat of patrolling that particular area of Wigan, especially after the events of last winter during the miners’ lockout, was more than enough to render his prose succinct and eloquent.

  ‘The lad was bitten by what looks like a rat or rats, Sergeant. He was saved from fallin’ in front of a goods train by the Sally Ann. Doctor says the lad’s got a fever an’ isn’t conscious.’

  ‘How do we know it’s the missing boy then?’

  ‘He’s got red hair. How many red-haired lads …’

  ‘Thank you, Constable. Now come with me.’ He patted the man’s broad shoulders and turned towards the exit. As they left the station in search of a hackney, he prayed that this was the breakthrough he’d been hoping for.

  Once he’d seen the boy for himself – still unconscious and hand swathed in bandages – Brennan gave orders for Constable Jaggery to inform the boy’s parents that their son had been found. ‘Use discretion and sensitivity, Constable. I don’t want them running up here expecting to see their son sitting up in bed eating porridge.’

  ‘Don’t think that’s likely, is it, Sergeant? Judgin’ by the state of ’im.’

  Brennan gave a heavy sigh and waved his dismissal.

  ‘Well?’ he asked, turning to the doctor who was standing by the boy’s bed and consulting his notes.

  ‘No,’ the doctor replied, deliberately misunderstanding him. ‘Not well, Sergeant. Not well at all. The boy has been bitten by a rat, and he is running a dangerously high fever. See here?’

  He lifted the boy’s bare arms and indicated an irregular red rash; smooth in places and dotted with lumps in others.

  ‘And here, you can see the joints in his knees are swollen. So too are his feet, which also contain a similar rash. These are not good signs.’

  ‘Will he survive?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘I don’t know where he’s been for the last few days, but the boy stank to high heaven when he was brought in. The nurses washed him. But he has had a rough time of it, I’d guess. Which of course might mean that, ironically, he’s used to surviving in less than satisfactory conditions. He might live. He might die.’

  ‘I hear he was saved by the Salvation Army.’

  A half-smile crept on to the doctor’s face. ‘Isn’t that their raison d’être?’

  ‘Their what?’

  ‘It’s French, Sergeant. It means their reason for existing. They aren’t called the Salvation Army for nothing.’

  ‘He almost got killed by a train,’ Brennan said, ignoring the doctor’s attempt at humour.

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘Then what was he doing on a train track?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘And what was the Sally Army doing on a train track?’

  Again, the doctor gave a hint of a smile. ‘Apparently, according to the ambulance driver who brought him here, the boy was being chased.’

  ‘Chased? By who?’

  ‘Why, Sergeant, by the Salvation Army.’

  I’ll need to speak to that lot, he thought.

  Brennan stared at the boy’s expressionless face. If this child had been the one to attempt arson at the school, and if he were there on Friday night, then he might well have seen Miss Gadsworth and whoever gave her the poison. It would help his investigation no end if the lad were to wake up and give him a name. But then again, he might never wake up, never speak again.

  ‘If the boy does come round, Doctor, I’d like to be informed. Immediately.’

  The look the doctor gave him showed how unaccustomed he was to being told what to do. He gave a curt nod and moved along the ward to the next bed.

  As Brennan turned to leave, he was surprised to see the double doors at the far end of the ward swing open and two familiar figures enter in some haste.

  They spoke briefly to the nurse on duty seated at a small table by the entrance, and she pointed down the ward to where Billy Kelly was lying. They both looked up and saw Brennan who had stopped at the foot of the bed. Both figures seemed hesitant, uncertain whether to proceed down the ward or turn round and leave.

  But I’ve seen you now, thought Brennan. He gave them a wave to underline the fact.

  Reverend Charles Pearl and Jane Rodley approached him slowly and with as much dignity as they could muster.

  ‘Sergeant Brennan!’ Miss Rodley said. ‘An unexpected pleasure.’

  ‘Ma’am. Vicar.’

  Reverend Pearl gave a slight cough. Of the two of them, he seemed most discomforted by the policeman’s presence. ‘We were visiting some of my sick parishioners,’ he began.

  Miss Rodley took up the tale. ‘And we bumped into your constable. The rather large one.’

  ‘Hard to miss,’ Brennan agreed.

  ‘We exchanged pleasantries and I asked how your investigations were progressing and he simply suggested we ask you ourselves.’

  ‘So here we are!’ Reverend Pearl added, unnecessarily.

  To forestall any questions, Miss Rodley moved to the boy’s bedside and gazed down at his unconscious form. Brennan was surprised to see her reach down and stroke the boy’s hair.

  ‘He gets into more fights because of this,’ she said, holding his red hair in her fingers. ‘Children can be so cruel. Anyone who is different in any way …’

  ‘How is the boy?’ asked Reverend Pearl.

  ‘He has a fever,’ said Brennan.

  ‘But he’ll be all right?’ Miss Rodley asked.

  Brennan held up his hands.

  ‘The poor child.’

  After a few moments, she moved away and stood beside her fiancé, whispering something in his ear that Brennan couldn’t quite catch. The vicar gave her a questioning look, then gave a nod of acquiescence before moving to the boy’s bedside and kneeling down. Miss Rodley placed herself on the other side of the bed and she too knelt down. Both of them bowed their heads and Reverend Pearl began to pray.

  ‘Heavenly Father, tender shepherd of the sheep, you gather the lambs in your arms and cherish them to your bosom. We commend to your loving care this child, William. Relieve his pain and guard him from danger. Restore to him your gifts of gladness and strength. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

  Brennan whispered ‘Amen’ and watched them both stand up. They bade him farewell, Miss Rodley stroking the boy’s hair one last time. As they walked slowly, almost funereally, from the bed, Brennan heard her say, ‘It’s Billy. He hates William.’

  When he alighted from the tram on Park Road, Constable Jaggery glared enviously at the two colliers across the road who were entering the vault of the Pagefield Hotel. They were still coated in coal dust, and he could imagine how, in a few minutes’ time, their thirst would be quenched by a cooling pint of bitter. He promised himself, as he turned down Gidlow Lane, that he would soon be doing exactly the same once his shift had finished in an hour’s time.

  As he made his way towards Diggle Street, he wondered whether the news he was bringing the Kellys would be deemed good or bad. It was certainly good news that the lad had been found, but it was also bad news that he was lying in the infirmary unconscious. He wondered how he’d respond if his own lad were lying there. But then he told himself the situations wouldn’t be the same at all, because he and his missus thought the world of their boy and wouldn’t have left it four hours, let alone four days, before reporting him missing.

  Still, they were his mam and dad after all, and surely they’d welcome the good news if not the bad.

  When he got to number 23 he took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

  The curtain in the front window twitched and he heard a muffled conversation from beyond the front door, but instead of the sound of a key turning or a door handle rattling, all he could hear was the sound of something heavy being knocked to the floor and a volley of curses followed swiftly by the slamming of another door inside.

  ‘Open the door!’ he shouted. ‘Police ’ere.
I got news about your lad!’

  He hammered on the door once more. He heard heavy footsteps from inside and suddenly the door swung open. The giant of a man who stood there glowered at him with murderous intent.

  ‘What dost want?’ he growled.

  Jaggery wasn’t cowed by the man’s size nor his obvious strength. He took in his red hair and recalled seeing him arguing with Sergeant Prescott at the station. ‘It’s about your lad.’

  ‘What about ’im?’

  ‘We’ve found him.’

  Tommy Kelly cast a glance behind the policeman, as if he were shielding the child. ‘Where is he then?’

  By now a couple of doors along the street had opened, and curious heads peered out.

  ‘Happen it’s best if I come in,’ said Jaggery.

  But Tommy Kelly stood his ground on the doorstep. ‘Happen it’s not.’

  ‘But I’ve got summat to tell you, an’ it might be better if I told you inside. Is your wife in?’

  ‘Aye. She’s up t’chimney.’

  Jaggery looked surprised at that. ‘Well, if you could get her down …’

  Before Kelly could respond, another voice piped up from number 19.

  ‘If tha lookin’ for Edith Kelly tha’re out o’ luck.’

  Jaggery whirled round and saw a sharp-featured woman standing on her doorstep now, arms folded and staring back at Tommy Kelly in brave defiance.

  ‘Why? Where is she?’

  The woman gave a harsh laugh. ‘Gone tearin’ down t’backs as if tallyman’s after ’er!’

  With that she stepped back inside and slammed her door shut.

  Jaggery looked at Kelly with interest now. ‘Why’s she buggered off then?’

  Kelly shrugged. ‘Gone for some milk. We’ve run out.’

  ‘Wrong, pal. She’s run out, not your bloody milk jug.’