Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (8 page)

Wardle paused at the door. “Tomorrow I’m out at Windsor. Get your things and settle in. I’ve sent word to Brunswick Square. Finish up that report and go home.”

NOBODY TO BLAME

At eight o’clock next morning, I bade farewell to Brunswick Square and headed for the Yard. One day fixing mainsprings on night shift; the next, assistant to a renowned detective. Within the week, I signed papers awarding me the rank of sergeant and the princely sum of £58 per annum. I was to assist Wardle principally with legwork and paperwork. The tag in my jacket was changed from Holborn to Whitehall, and I swore a silent oath that he shouldn’t regret his choice.

There was a certain interest in me as an outsider. Though not unheard of, bringing in someone from outside meant passing over the constables within the Yard. I chose to say as little as possible. This proved wise. Darlington decided that my silence hinted of secret experience; he broadcast impressive rumours about past successes, of which I was not permitted to speak. He frequently asked about my work with Wardle. The questions were harmless, born of curiosity and fun, but I thought it best to parry them, remembering Wardle’s injunction that first day. Darlington thought this secrecy a hoot. “You tight Scotsman,” he would say, “aiming for the top, are you? You’ll be in the foreign service before long!” He was also kind enough to invite me out every so often. I occasionally went for a drink after work; but I refused weekend invitations, afraid that if I got to know him off-duty I would be found out as a fraud and a new boy. He soon decided that I was a cold fish and stopped asking.

Every so often, Wardle would summon me along to a case, in the main little different from Brunswick Square affairs; but it all seemed grander to me. I took to making assiduous notes so that future reports might not cause me so much anguish.

These outings gave me the chance to see the great man at his work. Throughout, he would keep his hands thrust deep in those coat pockets. Shaking hands he did rarely, as if wary that some ague might assail him. Writing was anathema to him. When there were notes to be taken, it was I who took them. Though some found him a difficult little man, he always seemed to get the answers he wanted. He was disarmingly dogged, though a man of few words, those few words were intense enough to make you feel he knew all about you. It was thus bootless to conceal what he already knew. Impressed from the first, I strove to anticipate his requests and to please him, though it took me a time to fathom his methods.

He required from me a daily synopsis of events across the capital. Studying the newspapers thus became dignified as work. I took pleasure in keeping up with current affairs, and skimming the cream off the news for him. The papers were full of triumphalist trumpeting and apocalyptic clamour. Election fever swept the nation every five minutes or so. The columns were full of questions: the Irish Question, the Reform Question, the Slavery Question. People wrung their hands over the Whitechapel garottings, only for that to be eclipsed by new scandals about Middle Eastern canals or East Midlands cotton.

The leading articles exalted rationality and condemned passion and profiteering. The other pages glamorised the same, especially the theatre reviews. Mr Darwin’s book was
de rigueur
on the coffee table, though I never met a soul who read it. Anticipation of the underground train gave way to boredom. And the Queen’s array of mid-European quacks sparked rumours that her forefathers’ madness was descending upon her.

Besides all this, Wardle had an ongoing task for me. “I want to put my house in order,” he told me. “There’s years of rubbish in these cabinets. When I retire, I want everything left straightforward for the man who steps into my boots.”

So, on quieter days, I set to work whittling down the paperwork from forty years of cases. Of closed cases I was to throw out everything but the final report. If a case was not closed, I was to close it, that is, tidy up loose ends and write the report.

Some cases solved themselves. Complaints were outdated, debts invalidated, or infringements irrelevant. Some gave of obvious action. Missing persons were frequently no longer missing, and if the necessary letters were written and answered, they could be tied up in a matter of days.

Other cases were less clear. I learnt that many investigations are never concluded. This took me aback at first. I gradually came to realise how much tramping about town each scrap of paper in the files represented: questioning here, corroborating there. It was no wonder there were so many loose ends.

Only when bewildered could I trouble Wardle, and he would always choose the simplest way to be done with it. I learnt to propose my own plan of action for each case. At the end of quiet days in the office, I would run through the files while he stood at the window, gazing out into the grubby courtyard at the heart of the Yard buildings. New reports drew an approving murmur. To my plan for cases outstanding, he would listen impatiently, snapping, “Nobody weeps over the likes of them, Watchman. Spare us the Celtic indignation and lighten the burden.”

It was a peculiar process, dispensing with history thus. I would flick through the material painstakingly transcribed and fastidiously labelled by Jackman, dash off a summary reprise, then throw out the rest, refiling the nice, slim envelope in a drawer marked “Cases Closed”. Not that I didn’t make mistakes. Unsolved murders, I quickly learnt, he was content to leave open.

“Bodies have a way,” he said “of lingering. You never know when a skeleton’ll fall out the closet and point a bony finger at someone.”

Nor had it occurred to me to take into account the persons involved. A caution for drunkenness against Billy Broad of Barking could go straight into the wastepaper basket; but, should Baron Burlington of Belgravia’s china vases turn up in a Sotheby’s catalogue, we would need the full details of their disappearance. I got a roasting for throwing out a theft at Charles Dickens’ house.

“Use your nous, Watchman. A public figure. Writer. Experienced with the courts. Suppose he pops in, writing some new serial, and asks us to check the files?”

I fished the papers out of the bin and left the Dickens theft open.

It was a happy time for me. Wardle stomped in and out, shrouded in gravitas, which impressed me greatly. I never could work out quite how he was so busy. Either he was involved in cases of which I knew nothing, or else, through years of grind, he had earned himself one of those positions of such respect that nobody knows what your responsibilities are any more.

I worked at the smaller desk – nonetheless a broad affair with drawers and an inkwell. He decreed that I start working back through the files from the previous New Year; more recent cases might yet admit of progress. Christmas had been busy, and it took several weeks to sift through December of ’59, trying to find a sure-footed style for my reports.

We soon fell into a routine. On Fridays, we lunched together at the Dog and Duck, and he went home early, leaving me to put the office in order. The rest of the week, I chose between wandering out to a street stall and sandwiches in the back room, where Darlington bombarded me with stories about the Yard. He told me that Wardle was an expert in unmasking frauds and cracking gambling rings. That Irish financier investigation, for instance, was the famous Sadleir suicide, an undercover coup that scandalised the business world; the story went that the man had left such a revelatory suicide note, the police had been obliged to cover it up and forge a less explosive document. Darlington saw this as a touchstone of Wardle’s genius. His own department was much more mundane, he complained, and I realised he envied me my post.

Thus occupied, I managed for nearly a month to resist looking up the spout case, more through fear than self-denial. If Wardle caught me looking at it, it would be obvious I had ditched chronology for curiosity. I had no greater dread than stepping out of line and finding myself back at Brunswick Square under Glossop’s mocking eye.

One Friday, when Wardle had gone to the doctor with a pain in the gut I found myself pulling out the envelope marked “
Euston Square, 9th November
”. It was marked as closed. Seized by excitement, I flicked through it urgently, the porter’s statement, and Roxton Coxhill’s; my own report, in pristine condition; Jackman’s summary. Of Wardle’s previous sergeant I knew little, beyond the sour impression I’d received when handing in my report. From his paperwork he seemed a dab hand in calligraphy, but no visionary with the bigger picture. A few comments around the Yard had given me the impression that he had departed under a cloud. “Wardle’s new boy? Good luck. You’ll need it.” I didn’t ask for details.

Filled with excitement at the prospect of unravelling the mystery, I scanned through Jackman’s summary. I found myself none the wiser. Rather than solve the riddle, he seemed simply to have ignored it. He had left out everything of importance, labelling it an industrial mishap, with not a question mark in sight. My indignation rose as I read the travesty of a report over and over. It mentioned that the corpse was sent for post-mortem, but there was no mention of Simpson’s revelation. In fact, Jackman mentioned none of the peculiarities, the clock sabotage, the mysterious repair man. There was no new evidence whatsoever, and the companies involved were exonerated from blame under the tag “accidental damage”.

The complacency of the thing left me breathless. I stomped around the office in indignation. Was I simply to despatch this case into obscurity, like all the others? True enough, I had thrown away cases still more inconclusive than this, but it would not do to worry about that. I stood at the little window, as Wardle often did, the details of that night flooding back to me, when the door opened and in stomped the inspector himself.

“Afternoon, Watchman. You’re working hard.”

“Sir! Are you quite well? I thought you were going straight home.”

“You don’t get rid of me so easy, son.” To my horror, he sat down at my desk. I hurried over to tidy the papers away but he raised a hand. “Sick of filing, Watchman?”

“Can’t keep me from the filing cabinet, sir.”

“Careful now. Push too hard and that brain of yours might start to function.” As he glanced over the papers, my heart pounded, but he sat back with a satisfied look. “This may be a grind, son, but I’m pleased to see it done well.” He nodded that special nod he kept for approving my plans. “Keep your head down and we’ll get through the lot by Christmas after next.”

All weekend I could barely sleep. I tossed and turned in my little garret, dogged by unquiet dreams. Why did it trouble me so? Partly because I’d spent so long musing on the solution, partly excitement. I had watched how Wardle would pick up on little details and expand them into theories. Here was me, aping the great detective’s method, going over unexplained details with obsessive, if unproductive, scrutiny.

By Monday morning, my head was muddy and I felt on the verge of illness. Wardle eyed me strangely, and my cheeks burned under his gaze. I had the job I’d wanted so long, and he was pleased with my work. Why should I care about a case long closed, that meant nothing to anybody? Better to stick to the task in hand. I tried to put the spout from my mind; but I could not.

I formed a plan. Rather than rile him with a special song and dance, I would evaluate it on the same basis as any other case: that is, with a view to closing it. From that angle, my scruples were hard to justify. Property had been damaged, yes, but none of the injured parties had pressed charges. As long as they stood to receive insurance payments, what did it matter whether it was caused by a vagabond or an activist? If the man had been killed there, the Crown would have to take an interest, but it was hard to pinpoint where the illegality had occurred. Yet if I could get Wardle’s approval, I could later stumble on the anomalies Jackman had suppressed and open up Pandora’s box.

While Wardle was in the office, I worked speedily through the intervening files, back to early November. Whenever he was out and about, I spent an unreasonable amount of time reading over the spout file. Only then did I notice that Jackman’s sheet was dated 10th November. That was the day I delivered my report, but I delivered it late afternoon, before my night shift. Too late. No wonder he’d looked at me sourly.

I spent the week planning my strategy. I decided to slip the spout into the last session on Friday, hoping Wardle would give it the nod and head home. To put him in a good mood, I had accumulated several closed cases, which we sped through rapidly.

“Then we come to Euston Square, early morning, ninth November.”

“Night you came along?”

“Yes, sir.” I hesitated. “Seems a little murky. Thought I’d do a few interviews. The night porter.”

“Why?” he snapped.

I bit my lip. I had gone over and over these justifications. “For a sober report, sir. He was drunk that night, but only he met the mysterious repair man. Then I’ll try the HECC.”

“Oh yes?”

“Perhaps Coxhill has enemies. I’d like to hear what his engineers have to say about the sabotaged machinery. Maybe there have been other mishaps.”

“They’ll be the last to tell you that.”

“Then the clockmaker.”

“The clockmaker?”

“Yes, sir. Might have a notion who would want to steal the mechanism. I noted the manufacturer’s name.”

Wardle raised an eyebrow. “I see your thinking, son. No need for it, though. Any more? Or can we have lunch?”

That was all. I looked down at the file. “You must admit, sir, it was peculiar.”