by David Field
‘If you don’t behave yourself, Jackson Enright,’ Esther purred in a perfect imitation of the lady in question, ‘our coach driver will get more than twenty pounds as a reward for his trouble. Although he’d probably fall off his seat if he saw us both with no clothes on inside his coach.’
BOOK THREE: THE PRODIGAL SISTER
Chapter One
Fred Watkins was part way through a bad shift that was about to get even worse. He and his staff could only conduct the routine inspections of their section of the Great Western Railway track during the hours of darkness, when there were fewer trains thundering between London Paddington and Bristol, and vice-versa. It was difficult enough at the best of times, but tonight it was made even more of a challenge by the aggressive drizzle that soaked his oilskin overcoat, matted his grey hair to his head, and obscured the indifferent light shed by the paraffin lamp he was holding at shoulder height.
It was now shortly after eleven at night, as far as he could deduce from the face of his Albert watch as he held it out close to his fading eyes with slightly shaking hands, so they had at least half an hour before the first of the night mails came hurling along the ‘down’ line in a cloud of steam. As for the ‘up’ line along which he was walking, with Bert and Paddy behind him, routinely hitting out sideways with their test hammers, it would see nothing until the milk train from Cheltenham came through at around four am, by which time Fred hoped to be home and dry, tucked up in bed beside Polly with a cup of cocoa to warm his innards.
At least he became free of the incessant drizzle once he stepped gratefully inside the curved brick archway of Kemble Tunnel, a quarter of a mile or so from where they’d begun the inspection under the water tower at the end of the up platform of the local station. Once out of the other end of the four hundred yard brick-sided canyon it would be another half mile in the drenching drizzle until they reached Kemble Wick Bridge, then they could turn, do the same on the down section during the walk back to Kemble, and call it a night. And what a bloody night!
‘Good job we bothered,’ he yelled back at Paddy Brogan and Bert Cottishall as he caught sight of the bundle in the distance. ‘Some bloody fool’s dumped some rubbish in here!’ It wasn’t unusual and sometimes it wasn’t just discarded clothing like this looked to be; he’d found farm carts, dead cows and even a bicycle frame on the line from time to time — things that could all derail a train travelling at high speed and cause a major disaster.
As he got closer, there seemed to be more than just a bundle of clothing. He lifted his lantern higher and leaned forward to get a better look, then yelled in horror as he felt his hastily consumed supper rising towards his throat.
It was a woman — or at least, what had once been a woman. Her head looked more like a squashed pumpkin and one of her legs stuck out at an obscene angle where it seemed to have been ripped away from her torso. There was blood all down the front of the light coloured tweed travelling cape that went with the once dressy costume, the long skirt of which was now halfway up her thighs, revealing muddied petticoats and long silken drawers soaked in what was almost certainly more blood.
‘Bloody ’Ell,’ Bert observed quietly as he drew level with Fred and looked down. It somehow seemed like an understatement.
‘Better not touch the lady,’ Paddy advised him as he completed the trio.
‘Believe me, here’s no chance o’ me touchin’ that!’ Fred confirmed, ‘but since yer so full of advice, run back up the line an’ advise the night porter ter telegraph the police sergeant in Kemble.’
Paddy took off, his lantern light lurching and swaying as it got smaller and smaller, disappearing from the tunnel. There was an uneasy silence, until Bert said, ‘Shouldn’t we move it further away from the line, just in case?’
‘No,’ Fred insisted. ‘The next train’s hours away on this side. Yer shouldn’t touch things ’til the police arrive, ain’t that what we’re always bein’ told?’
‘Right enough,’ confirmed Bert, who in truth was no more anxious to touch the blood-sodden bundle than was his superior. The body was fully clear of the line anyway, wedged between it and the tunnel wall, although it was just possible for its clothing to get caught up in the wheels of a passing express as the result of the suction created by a train travelling at high speed.
‘She musta bin a jumper,’ Bert observed morosely.
‘Looks that way,’ Fred conceded. Suicides in front of speeding trains, or from bridges over the line, were one of the more common hazards for line inspectors, but they were normally reported direct to the police by their hysterical discoverers, or those who had witnessed the incident, and most of the time railway staff were the last to arrive, after the worst bits had been hastily covered by a police cape. This was a first for Fred, and hopefully his last as well, since retirement was only three years away.
A twitching sound along the rails of the down line alerted them to the approach of the first night mail and they stood well to the far side of the up line as the train clattered and hissed its way through the tunnel in a cloud of sooty hot steam. Since they had nothing better to do after that, Fred sent Bert down to the far end of the tunnel to stand guard, while he awaited the tell-tale sign of lanterns swinging towards him from the end of the station platform a quarter of a mile north of the entrance they had come in through.
It was almost an hour later before Fred saw the dim lights emerging through what had now turned into persistent rain and Paddy returned with the bulky figure of Sergeant Joe Oakley alongside him. Fred was glad that it was Joe and not that young idiot who worked with him in the local police station; not only was Joe more likely to take over responsibility for what lay down the tunnel, but he and Fred were both members of the Kemble Cricket Club, of which Joe was the opening batsman and Fred was now, in his retirement from once having been its wicket keeper, an umpire.
‘What yer got fer me?’ Joe enquired as he nodded his recognition.
‘Down there — a dead woman,’ Fred grunted.
‘Did yer check that she were dead?’ Joe asked routinely.
Fred snorted. ‘Take a look fer yerself. Yer won’t need no doctor’s qualifications ter tell yer she’s a goner.’
Fred reluctantly accompanied Joe back inside the tunnel and showed him what he meant. Joe nodded sagely and looked more closely at what was left of the face.
‘I figured she were a jumper,’ Fred advised him helpfully.
Joe shook his head. ‘I ’ope yer examine railway lines more carefully than dead bodies.’
‘Funnily enough, I don’t get so many o’ them in my line o’ work as you do,’ Fred replied sarcastically, ‘but what yer gettin’ at?’
Joe stood back up and pointed back down at the pulpy mass above the shoulders. ‘She’s bin fitted wi’ a gag. Take a look in ’er mouth.’
‘I’d rather not — but so what?’
‘If you was goin’ ter jump in front of a train, would yer stuff a gag in yer own mouth?’
‘No, likely not. So yer reckon somebody else did that?’
‘Seems likely,’ Joe confirmed. ‘But it don’t make sense that someone dragged her down all this way ter shove ’er in front of a train. It’d increase ’er chances o’ breakin’ free from ’is grasp. Plus, if yer gonna do it in a lonely tunnel, why bother gaggin’ ’er in the first place?’
‘If yer right, an’ she were dragged ’ere from somewhere further up the track, the gag musta bin ter stop ’er screamin’ while she were taken ’ere,’ Fred suggested.
‘Maybe. But my money’s on ’er bein’ shoved off a movin’ train. When were the last express that come through?’
‘That’d be the up afternoon “Cornishman” from Penzance. It come through about ten o’clock, when we was just clockin’ on fer the night.’
‘Nothing since?’
‘Only locals, stoppin’ at Kemble. The last o’ them woulda bin around quarter ter eleven.’
‘And where were you then?’
‘Just startin’ down the track, u
nder the water tower back there.’
‘So you weren’t in this tunnel at any time before when, exactly?’
‘When we found the body — musta bin past eleven, why?’
‘This unfortunate lady coulda bin pushed from a movin’ train and you wouldn’t ’ave bin any the wiser, would yer?’
‘No, ’course not, but what makes yer think that’s what ’appened to ’er?’
‘Just a feelin’, that’s all. We’ll maybe know better when the police doctor gets ’ere.’
‘An’ when’s that likely ter be?’
‘Not ’til daylight. Looks like yer night shift just became a day shift an’ all.’
‘’Owd’yer mean?’
‘Well someone’s got ter stay wi’ the body ’til they gets ’ere from Swindon. And that won’t ’appen ’til I get back ter me office an’ telegraph ’em. I can send the boy down ter guard the body itself, but we need folk kept out o’ both ends o’ the tunnel. That’s gonna ’ave ter be you an’ a colleague, I’m afraid. It needs a senior man. On me way back, I’ll let Polly know what’s ’appened, an’ that yer’ll be late fer yer breakfast.’
It was fully daylight before Fred eased himself up from his haunches, pushed back from the tunnel entrance that he’d been leaning against, half dozing and waved at the small party of men who were approaching from the direction of Kemble Station. The signals were in the horizontal position and there appeared to be a queue of stationary trains waiting on the up line way back beyond Kemble. Meanwhile, the morning traffic was slowly increasing on the down line and those alighting at the very end of the extended platform were almost abreast of Fred and were craning their necks in curiosity.
‘I’m Inspector Manly from Swindon,’ the tall grey-haired uniformed officer advised Fred as he drew level with him, ‘and this is Dr. Bebbington, police surgeon.’
‘Has anyone touched the body?’ Bebbington enquired.
‘You must be jokin’,’ Fred replied with a surly grimace. ‘Just wait ’til yer see it. It’s near the far end, down that way.’ He indicated with a wave of his hand. The doctor looked anxiously back towards Kemble and Fred knew what he was thinking.
‘It’s alright,’ he assured the doctor. ‘They’ve stopped the trains on this ’alf o’ the track, but don’t wander over onto the other one, ’cos the down line’s still operatin’.’
Back at the body, Dr Bebbington squatted down for a better look, while Fred looked the other way. Meanwhile, Inspector Manly was examining the walls in company with Sergeant Oakley.
‘I told yer so,’ Oakley yelled back at Fred. ‘Take a look at these walls.’
Fred reluctantly walked over to join them and tried to make sense of the scrape marks on the brickwork that Joe was triumphantly pointing at.
‘We couldn’t see ’em while it were still dark, but yer can see where ’er body caught the sides an’ scraped down ’em as she flew outta the carriage. She probably bounced off the wall and under the following carriages, which explains the mess she’s in.’
‘Yeah, thanks fer that,’ Fred muttered. ‘I’m not so sure I’ll be needin’ me breakfast after all.’
The doctor was in the act of closing his medical bag as Fred and Joe walked back towards him and Joe pointed out what he had just discovered.
‘Consistent with the visible injuries, anyway,’ Dr Bebbington confirmed, ‘but I can’t tell you anything more until I get her on the table back at the mortuary. Time of death sometime around midnight last night, that’s the best I can do at this stage. You can move her now and reopen the line.’
While Constable Jacks went in search of a handcart, Fred hurried back to the station and advised a very relieved stationmaster that the up line could be re-opened to traffic. The small crowd at the ticket window gave a hollow cheer at the news and the stationmaster sent the message to the signalman in the box three hundred yards north of Kemble that he could drop the arm.
Chapter Two
Esther Enright finally felt confident enough to lower baby Lily gently into her cot, then stood back up and held her breath. The child’s eyes flickered open for a brief second as she whimpered in feeble protest, then they closed again and Esther sighed with relief. Lily was Esther’s first and the new mother was uncertain what one was supposed to do to ease the pain of teething; she knew that some desperate mothers resorted to laudanum, but Alice Bridges, one floor up, had advised her against it. ‘Just the warmth an’ reassurance of its mother, that’s all a bubby needs,’ she’d told her, and she’d had two of her own, so perhaps she knew best.
Esther caught her own reflection in the bedside mirror and straightened a few stray wisps of her long black curls. Then she looked down at the unmade bed and Jack’s clothes from yesterday that hadn’t yet reached the privacy of the laundry basket. As she stripped back the bed sheets and began re-laying them, she reflected on the past two years and the changes that they had brought to her previous humdrum existence running old Isaac Rosen’s garment business in Spitalfields, before the man who’d been her unofficial father had died and left the business to her.
Although a skilled seamstress herself, and a recent convert to the book-keeping side of the enterprise, she’d sold the business to a property development company when Jack had proposed marriage and she’d finally given in to the cravings that had been increasingly overtaking her every time she’d been in his company. But before that she’d continued residing in the same building while she assisted the incoming tenant, a union founder who’d finished up being murdered in a vendetta from which Esher herself had barely escaped with her life.
The physical side of marriage proved to be everything Esther had hoped for and more, following their marriage inside the lofty old St Margaret’s Church in Jack’s boyhood home of Barking. They had a week’s blissful honeymoon in a guest house in Southend, before moving officially into their new home to begin their married life together. Although the sale proceeds from the old Rosen building in Lamb Street had been more money than Esther had seen in her entire life, they hadn’t seemed so large when compared with the prices of residential accommodation in north London, where Jack needed to live in order to travel daily to and from his detective work in Whitehall’s Scotland Yard. Jack was a Detective Constable, working alongside his Detective Sergeant uncle, Percy Enright, who’d coaxed Jack into the police force several years previously, just before the start of the series of prostitute murders in Whitechapel which had first brought Jack and Esther together.
In the end, Jack and Esther had settled for the second floor suite of rooms at 14 Crescent Row, Clerkenwell. Two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom and a kitchen. A far cry from the rambling four bedroomed house in Barking that Jack had grown up in, but a long way up indeed from the single back room in a Spitalfields lodging house in which Esther had once eked out a modest living as a seamstress. She’d been a single girl in a violent part of London where human life was cheap, and female life even cheaper. Still, at least she’d learned the value of money and was more than able to manage the household on Jack’s twenty-four shillings a week, along with the married man’s allowance of an additional five shillings, and free coal.
Lillian Rachael Enright had come along just over a year after their marriage, and now, in July 1892, she was cutting her first teeth. Esther had taken to childbirth like a natural and Jack adored little Lily.
With a frisson of alarm, Esther heard their entrance door being opened from the hallway and Jack’s cheery shout to announce that he was home. Esther emerged from Lily’s bedroom, her fingers on her lips to indicate that she had only just got their daughter to sleep and Jack mouthed an apology as he walked towards her, arms open, and gave her the sort of kiss from which there was usually no return.
‘I haven’t even given supper a thought,’ she confessed in a whisper. ‘I’ve only just got Lily down and it’s been one of those days when she bawled every time she wasn’t feeding.’
An hour later, as they sat eating up the remains of Sunday’s l
amb roast and the potatoes that Esther had put on to boil she enquired about Jack’s working day.
‘Excellent!’ he enthused. ‘We finally got that brute who’s been molesting women on the Embankment.’
‘That’s good news,’ Esther agreed, ‘especially for women.’
‘Also for Harvey Bennett, who was getting mighty tired of dressing up in women’s clothing,’ Jack grinned. ‘I know some men enjoy it, but not Harvey. Still, that’s the price you pay for being the only man in River Division who doesn’t have a moustache.’
‘So what now?’ Esther asked. ‘You’ve been on that Embankment detail for a week or two now, so what does Percy intend to drag you into next? Foiling bank robberies, or hunting down Fenians?’
‘No idea,’ Jack admitted. ‘He was called away to a meeting with Chief Inspector Wallace, who’s in charge of country enquiries, so it may be that I have to travel away for a few days. They’ve let us work together ever since our success in solving all those union-related burglaries.’
‘With my assistance, let me remind you yet again,’ Esther added.
‘Whoever she turns out to be, she was approximately three months pregnant,’ James Bebbington advised the two men from Scotland Yard who’d been called in by the local Swindon force.
‘Nothing in her clothing to indicate who she might have been?’ Percy Enright asked hopefully.
Bebbington shook his head. ‘Only where she’d come from, which deepens the mystery. In her purse was the return half of a rail ticket from London Paddington to Kemble — a small community just north of here, where her body was found in the local railway tunnel. The ticket was dated to the day her body was discovered, which suggests that she may have travelled to Kemble and then for some inexplicable reason taken it into her head to return the same day. There’s a laundry mark on one of the undergarments that we believe to be that of a London laundry and the local police have instigated enquiries in that direction, but that’s as far as we’ve got.’
