The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  “Betty is a good woman,” he said and paused again.

  “I don’t doubt that,” I answered evenly.

  He darkened again. He seemed to find some critical note in my innocent comment.

  “That old bastard used her ill,” he said.

  I waited a full minute for him to continue, but he only said: “She’s a good woman”, and flashed me a swift, pugnacious look, as though he expected me to challenge him on this occasion.

  “And what does Betty want with me?” I asked, feeling that I must get his story launched before he ran out of confidence altogether.

  He hawed and hemmed and sneezed fiercely again.

  “She wants to do business with you,” he said at last.

  “Oh?” I said carefully.

  He wiped his nose with a greasy clout.1

  “Is that why you have been haunting me for the last twenty-four hours?” I asked.

  He looked away unhappily, for all the world as if I had caught him with his hand in my purse.

  “She wants to do business,” he said again.

  “What kind of business?” I barked, suddenly losing my patience.

  He blinked.

  “You can trust her,” he then said maddeningly. “For all that she’s black outside.”

  Light dawned in a great blinding flash. Murrell’s packhorse. The uncomely Negress. Here was her emissary.

  “She has the receipts?” I asked.

  “She knows where they are,” he said.

  “Can she get them for me?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, Captain. But you can.”

  “I can? How?”

  “She’ll tell you that. For one hundred guineas.”

  There was something wrong with this proposition. I pondered it for a moment, then I saw what it was. The price they asked was far too low. One hundred guineas for receipts valued in thousands. Why was she prepared to sell so cheap?

  He looked towards me anxiously.

  “Are you interested?”

  “Is it only the information I shall buy?”

  He nodded. “Aye. But it’s the only way you’ll get them back. You’d never find them in a hundred years without Betty’s help.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He looked puzzled by my question.

  “What do you mean, Sir?”

  “Is she the only one who knows their whereabouts?”

  “There’s nobody else,” he replied stoutly.

  I thought of the bruised and tortured body of the redhaired assistant. If he had had knowledge of the receipts, it seemed unlikely that the secret had died with him. I could not imagine that fiercely grinning mouth had remained silent under the pressure of such pain. Pelham must also know by now. In which case, the code-book was still my best lever. And cheaper, too.

  “There’s more to these receipts than you think,” Smith said sharply. His grey face looked suddenly deeply cunning.

  “Oh?”

  “You’ll be paying for that, too.”

  “You must need the money badly to think of selling so cheap,” I said.

  He moved against the chair-back uncomfortably.

  “We need to move away,” he said.

  Pelham. They were afraid of Pelham.

  “The climate here won’t suit your mort,”1 I said, pleasantly.

  “Will you buy?” he asked.

  “I’d need to know more before I do.”

  “It’s Betty’s business,” he said. “I’m just her Mercury.”

  “And when can we strike hands?” I asked.

  “Come down to my flash2 tonight,” he said. “Roach’s Landings, that’s where I hang out.”

  “No,” I said. “You must come here.”

  I had a vision of my reception at Roach’s Landings. A quick blow behind the ear and eternal darkness for George Nash. Did they take me for a gawney?3

  He shifted from buttock to buttock.

  “She won’t stir out,” he said. “Not ’til we’re ready to ship away.”

  “She must be greatly feared,” I said. “Doesn’t she trust to her own magic?”

  A look of baffled resentment crept into his face, a closed expression to his eye. I decided not to probe any further into his extraordinary relationship with the black savage. I wondered briefly whether Murrell had received a decent interment yet. Presumably the poor creature had now abandoned hope of his return from the dead, for she obviously no longer felt herself protected by his magic.

  “Will you come?” Smith asked.

  I weighed up the alternatives. Until Pelham made a move, this ill-assorted couple were my chief lead to the receipts. It would be better to trust them – up to a point.

  “I’ll go to Roach’s Landings for the information,” I said. “But you must come here for the money.”

  He paused for only a moment and then nodded his agreement. If I had expected an angry reaction to my proposal, I was to be disappointed. He accepted my terms stoically. “Coffin” Smith was well-used to toeing other people’s lines. He had danced all his life to other people’s tunes.

  “We’d better go now,” he said.

  Roach’s Landings was arrived at through a snake of stinking streets. It was a place of ruined houses and collapsing walls. Most of the buildings seemed to have foundered in the mud and the rest looked as though a cough would bring them down. The only reassuring constituents of this dismal scene were the sun shining on the waters of the Thames and the boats, those alluring symbols of escape, their masts springing like a bizarre forest behind the chimney stacks. It was a most sinister area, amid warehouses and workshops, surrounded by the huge ramps of the dock walls. Strident voices shattered the air around us and soot stuck to my skin in the oppressive heat. Smith threaded his way through the twisting, dirty alleys with the sureness of long acquaintance. In this part of the world he was entirely confident.

  I was far from feeling confident myself. We had passed at least half a dozen gallows, the corpses polishing the King’s irons.1 But there seemed little likelihood that the people we saw were much moved by such grisly warnings. They eyed one with speculative glances and I walked with half my mind to my exposed back. The inhabitants of Roach’s Landings were scarcely human. They were treated by their superiors as hardly more than wild beasts, and with good reason. Officers of the Law paraded here in groups of five and then only in daylight. I almost wished that I had dressed with less care that morning.

  I kept a ready hand to my sword and felt a mixture of relief and anxiety as we turned in to an alarmingly dark hallway, stinking of cats and piss. A dozen eyes followed us as we mounted the broken stairs. The walls were sweating and peeling, and the air was redolent of damp and despair.

  As we reached the head of the stairs, Smith struck a tinder. The air had grown fouler the higher we rose and the only light came from the cracks in the roof, through which the winter rains had seeped.

  He knocked on a door in a secret signal. There was no answer. He waited a moment, then repeated the signal.

  Again, a still, uncanny silence. Smith caught his breath in a muffled gasp. Something soft and furry brushed against my ankles. There was no sound but a faint whisper from behind the wainscot and a dull murmur from far below in the street.

  Smith called out her name.

  There was no reply. Before I could stop him, Smith had put a shoulder to the door and burst into the room.

  He stopped abruptly, aghast at the sight that met his eyes. A cry broke from him, hoarse, pathetic, broken. I would never have supposed such an explicit sound could issue from that grey mouth.

  The hot little room was a shambles. The rickety chairs and cheap wooden table lay splintered and broken, shards of crockery lay where they had been hurled. The greasy walls were splattered with blood and bloodied skin curled in the dust of the floor. The most fearful battle had taken place here and the loser lay where she had fallen upon the filthy bed. The Negress, almost naked, lolled across the bloodsoaked pallet. Her eyes had r
olled wildly back into her head, her enormous shining legs were cut in notches and other terrible wounds flowered like obscene roses on her breasts and stomach.

  It was a cruel and diabolic scene, a mad scene out of Bedlam. She had been put to the sword with a vengeance and must have suffered beyond agony.

  Smith stood by the bed. After a deathly pause, he covered the grotesque body with a sheet. In the midst of this reeling, drunken nastiness he looked, of a sudden, immensely composed, almost sedate. When he turned to look at me, his eyes were dry and as lifeless as the corpse.

  He began to swear quietly. A string of the most trenchant obscenities dropped from his mouth in his hoarse, grey voice.

  XX

  I passed a day in immeasurable gloom, only relieved by a deadly sleepiness, which passed leaving me with the naked prospect of absolute failure. Betty was dead and with her death all my chances of receiving the correct information may well have died also. The outlines of the case seemed like the outlines of a lost boat slowly being buried by the tide.

  Betty had known where the receipts were to be got. Pelham may or may not know. If he hadn’t known, had he been responsible for the frightful butchery in that squalid room? In which case, had he learned of their whereabouts?

  I thought it hardly likely. Looking at that grim body on the bed, looking at the condition of the room, I could scarcely believe that any woman who could fight so hard would disclose her knowledge easily.

  I could not shake off the feeling that her secret had died with her.

  Pelham must be still as ignorant as I myself.

  But more prepared to help himself! Three men had died, and one woman. I knew that he had killed the assistant. If one death could be laid at his door, why not all? It was possible, even logical. And if he was prepared to go to such lengths to secure the receipts, what lengths would he not go to in order to take the code-book?

  And yet, so far, I had remained unmolested.

  Another thought nagged at my mind. For all Pelham’s debauched and tarnished reputation, he had never been noted for savagery. Whenever I thought of the scene in that dismal room, it was the maniacal quality of it that disturbed me most. It accorded ill, somehow, with what I knew of Pelham’s methods. It didn’t have his grain.

  On the other hand, I remembered the body of the redhaired man, the lacerations, the engraved terror on the ghastly, grinning face. Pelham was either losing his finesse, or else he was beginning to employ some vicious skips.1

  My own situation had become extremely vulnerable. I would have to keep a sharp eye out for danger. The codebook was still my greatest asset, but Pelham, it now appeared, was not the man to sit and bargain when he could obtain his will by shorter means.

  In the midst of suchlike cogitations, the bell rang and I opened the door to Pelham’s saucy footman. Sir Harry desired to see me urgently, the man said. I was to go at once, the coach stood at my door.

  “You may tell your master,” I said, “that nothing will induce me to walk into his house. If he has anything whatever to discuss with me, he must come to do it here.”

  The footman looked very surprised. Then he turned on his heel and went to confer with the coachman, the same hulking fellow who had carried me unknowingly to Hammersmith. I stood watching.

  Then the footman hoisted himself aboard, and the coach rattled away into the night.

  An hour later the bell jangled again. I lay aside my book and went to answer the door. I opened it to find Pelham standing on the step. He leaned heavily upon his walking-stick. Behind him loomed the enormous figure of the coachman.

  Pelham bowed in his negligent, ironical way and produced a small and elegant snuff-box from his pocket. He took a pinch with a delicate air and raised it to his nostrils.

  “Well, Sir, here I am,” he said pleasantly enough.

  I bowed and, stepping slightly aside, opened the door a trifle wider.

  With a swift, upward motion, Pelham flung the contents of the snuff-box in my face. A stinging powder flew into my eyes, which began to swell immediately, smarting most horribly. I started back, half-blinded, the edge of the door still in my hand.

  I tried to close the door, but Pelham’s foot was against it, blocking its movement.

  Out of the stinging cloud of darkness, I was dimly aware of the huge bulk of the coachman lunging forward. The door cracked back against the wall as he thrust it out of my hand. I felt two enormous arms encircle me and I was lifted bodily from the doorway and carried, coughing and sneezing, to the coach.

  He bundled me without ceremony into its dressed leather interior.

  Pelham was back in his elegant bed, looking as if he had never left it. The footman fussed about him, settling his pillows and straightening his counterpane. He left a full glass of light-coloured liquid on the night table by his master’s side and left the room. The gigantic coachman stood behind me.

  I was sitting in a mahogany Chippendale chair, my arms securely tied. My eyes still itched abominably from the powder. It burned in my nostrils and my mouth was very dry.

  Pelham took a deep swig of the amber liquid. He smiled at me as I ran my tongue involuntarily over my stinging lips. It was a slow, wide smile, quite without malice.

  “I’m sorry you felt you had to refuse my invitation, Captain,” he said conversationally, for all the world as if we were seated at some evening party. “But I’m glad you saw fit to come along in the end.”

  “How could I refuse such a gracious request?” I replied, mustering as much ease as I could in the circumstances. I did not feel at all at ease. The silent bear of a man loomed behind me, smelling of leather and horse sweat.

  “Why did you refuse?” Pelham asked curiously.

  I nodded my head towards my bound hands. It seemed answer enough.

  Pelham took another draught from the glass. I watched the liquid tilt into his mouth and my own seemed drier than summer dust. He caught me licking my lips again and raised his glass in a mocking salute.

  “My cure-all,” he said smiling.

  “One of Murrell’s prescriptions, I’ve no doubt,” I murmured. He laughed obligingly.

  “Good God, man, I’d no more have drunk one of his remedies than I would drink piss,” he said. “Murrell was a cheap rogue.”

  I raised an eyebrow. He looked up at that moment and saw the disbelieving expression on my face. He laughed again.

  “A cheap rogue,” he repeated. “And a fool.”

  He lay back on his pillows, gazing ruminatively into the yellow fluid in the glass. His treacle-brown eyes looked fathomless as he asked:

  “Where is the code-book?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Where are the receipts?” I countered.

  Pelham nodded almost imperceptibly. The greasy giant behind me leaned forward slightly and I felt a slight pressure on my shoulder.

  Sir Harry yawned.

  “I hope you will be reasonable about this, Nash,” he said. “I detest unnecessary violence and I despise unnecessary heroics.”

  The giant’s huge hands massaged my shoulders gently.

  “We made a bargain, Sir Harry,” I said.

  “Unfortunately, it’s a bargain I can’t keep,” he drawled, adding insolently: “I give you my word on it.”

  “And if I insist on your keeping to our agreement?”

  The coachman must have been the bastard son of Sally Mapp,1 only his profession was to throw a man’s bones out of joint, not to set them. The fingers digging into my neck seemed to separate each muscle. The pain, though brief, was excruciating. For a minute or two the world went black.

  “You are not in a position to insist,” Pelham said reasonably. “I must point out that an injury to one’s neck is more serious than to any other part of the body. A fracture may cause paralysis, or if Jemmy here should tear your spinal cord . . .” He left the rest to my imagination.

  The fingers went to work in earnest now. A light danced before my eyes like a malevolent firefly. Pain shot from
my neck in every direction, only to be gathered up again in a tight knot under the giant’s probing fingers. I gritted my teeth and began to sweat.

  The torture ceased as Pelham spoke once more.

  “Would you believe me, Nash, if I told you that these receipts you are so anxious to find, don’t – and never did – exist?”

  The fingers relaxed their hold and the red mist in front of my eyes cleared slightly. I looked over towards the bed, which seemed to be floating in a slight haze.

  Pelham smiled his slow smile. Again, there seemed to be no harm in it.

  “Do you tell me this out of real knowledge, Sir Harry?” I asked. “Or have you exhausted all the possibilities of finding them?”

  He frowned, not following my drift for a moment. The implications of what I had said appeared to strike him unexpectedly. His eyes glowed hot as coals. He nodded towards the coachman, with an altogether different expression on his face.

  The coachman stepped forward, but this time I was ready for him. I rolled from beneath the plaguily teasing fingers, flexed my knees and sprang upright, carrying the chair with me like some absurd extension of my backside. As I turned in a tight circle, I aimed the chair legs at the man’s crotch in a vicious, stabbing motion. With a howl of rage and pain he clutched at his culls and as he did so, I whirled the body of the chair towards his lowered head. I felt like a terrier baiting a bull. But, caught off balance, the bull fell heavily, striking his head against a heavy mahogany dresser. He grunted and then lay still. My wrists felt as if they were clean broken in two and I was still vexatiously imprisoned in the chair.

  I turned my attention to the bed. Pelham lay half-stupefied, half-amused at my performance. Suddenly aroused to his vulnerability, be made a belated move towards the bellrope hanging by his bed. With a clumsy stride, I fell against his outstretched hand and pushed him back upon his pillows aiming for his wounded neck. He grimaced with pain as I caught his shoulder, but the effort caused me almost as much agony. I stood panting from my exertions, looking down at him. I must have cut a weird figure, bruised and dishevelled, the chair sticking out behind me.