The Murder of Patience Brooke (19 page)

Rogers and Feak joined them. They turned on the bull’s eye lamps and went into the narrow lane which turned suddenly at a right angle into another narrower alley from which various tunnels and passages led off in different directions. There were the usual wrecks of houses and tenements reeling against each other, and it was dark, too dark to see much. Which way to go? They hesitated, uncertain. Then they heard something.

The superintendent stopped and put his finger to his lips. They froze. It was a snatch of a song, the song of poor Edmund. It stopped suddenly so it was difficult to tell where it came from. They strained to hear. Somewhere someone was running. Was it Blackledge? Had he known that Feak was following him? They heard the steps receding from them and then nothing. The alleys were silent; they were deep in the maze. The superintendent signalled to Rogers and Feak that they should take two of the alleys, his eyes asked Dickens if he would go down with Feak, and he would go straight ahead. The two constables took out their truncheons. The superintendent drew a flintlock pistol out of his coat pocket.

Dickens followed Feak as lightly as he could into the mouth of the tunnel to the left of them – it was too like his dream to be comfortable; the passage sloped downwards to God knew where. Feak walked carefully, holding his lantern up. Dickens’s lamp swayed in his nervous hand and cast shadows on the walls, misshapen forms which brooded over him. The buildings almost touched in the middle over his head. Something scuttled over his foot. Feak turned off into another passageway, leaving Dickens alone. The lamp shook even more and the shadows closed in. There was a shape of something on the ground ahead. Dickens found he had not the courage to go forward; he felt that same suffocation that he had experienced in the tunnel with Scrap, as if thick breath were clotted in his throat. He lifted the lamp to see that the passage ended in a black, blank wall, looming at him like a threat. He could hear the slow drip of water; the walls were pressing in on him. He felt the trickle of cold sweat like an icy finger at his back. Where was Feak? He took a step back, and felt the mud ooze under his boot, the heel slipping so that he almost fell.

Then, suddenly, horribly, the thing on the ground reared up, a confusion of rags and bones, a living skeleton, a thing from a nightmare. It charged at him. There were naked arms and legs, and in the quivering light Dickens saw briefly a simian face, burning, terrible eyes and a wide open mouth which shouted, ‘I am Legion!’ The figure barged past, knocking into him so that he almost lost his balance, his feet sliding in the mud. He scrabbled for something to hold on to and the lamp fell from his hand. Blackness descended on him like a thick blanket tossed from above. Then there was a shout. It was Rogers, his voice high and urgent, coming from somewhere else. At that moment his hand found Feak’s thick woollen sleeve.

‘All right, sir,’ whispered Feak. ‘Who woz that?’

‘Not our man.’ Dickens’s voice was hoarse, but surprisingly steady after his terror.

Rogers called out again. Dickens and Feak hurried out of their alley. Where was the superintendent? Footsteps, hurried. A light. Sam Jones appeared, his face white in the flickering lamplight.

‘We’ve found him – dead.’

Dickens followed Feak, his feet clumsy in the mud, slime and broken stones. Halfway down the alley which Rogers had taken, he saw the constable kneeling by a form sprawled on the ground. The superintendent and Feak were there holding up their lamps. Dickens approached, and all four looked down at the crooked face with its pitiless eyes staring, ghastly in death. Blackledge appeared to have two mouths, one twisted in the rictus of death and the other a gaping red beneath the chin. Dickens could see that his throat had been cut and the blood had poured out, staining the grimy stones, running still to create pools round Rogers’s spread coat.

‘Feak, use your rattle – raise up the other constables. We need help here.’

The high roaring of the rattle sounded. Soon, heavy feet were heard trampling down towards them, and the two other constables appeared with their lights. Faces appeared at some of the windows, and a knot of people appeared at the entrance to the alley, attracted by the sound of feet and the rattle. Feak told them to go in. They went reluctantly, muttering about the ‘perlice’, and they heard whispers: ‘’Oo’s dead?’; ‘Stabbed, I think.’

‘I want you to deal with the body, Feak, with the help of these two. Rogers you need to go for the police wagon. Take him to the morgue. Mr Dickens and I will have a look round. Oh, and Rogers, look in the pockets. We could do with his keys. Then go and lock up his room, and bring them back to me before you go to the station.’ Sam hoped the key to the cash box would be there, too.

Rogers found the keys and dashed away. Dickens and Jones stood looking at the body of the man they had hoped would unlock the mystery of the murder of Patience Brooke. It was too late – the crooked face would reveal nothing now. But the ugly gash at the neck told them, without doubt, that Blackledge had not killed Patience, the same hand had destroyed both. In death he looked no different; no sense of peace had softened the features. He looked, if anything, angry, the twisted mouth seeming almost to snarl up at them as if it were their fault that he had been cheated. Superstition had it that on the victim’s eyes would be stamped the face of his murderer. Who was it that he saw? Dickens almost bent over Blackledge to see if those open eyes could show them the face of the killer.

Rogers returned with the keys. The door to that strangely impersonal room was locked now. It could yield up few secrets except perhaps what might be in the cash box. The superintendent and Dickens went along the alley and into another, but it was hopeless. There were too many places where he might hide, and anyway, the sound of running footsteps they had heard told them that the murderer had gone.

They left Feak and the other two to watch over the corpse while they went back to the house. No need for caution now. They went in. To their astonishment, a young woman was sitting at the table sipping a glass of wine. She was attractive in a hard way and reasonably well dressed in a dark red velvet jacket which accentuated her curves and a velvet skirt which fell in folds to the floor. She wore a black feathered hat which sat on black tightly curled hair. The immediate effect was of unexpected elegance in this mean room. Her astonishingly blue eyes were immediately suspicious.

‘Wot you doin ’ere? Police ain’t yer.’ Her look at Sam was hostile. ‘Where’s Alf then? You got ’im for somethin’?’

‘I am Superintendent Jones of Bow Street, and yes, we have got him. How did you get in? What is your business here?’

‘Obvious innit.’ She laughed. ‘You ought ter know that, Mr Superintendent.’ She held up a key.

Sam smiled. ‘I think I can guess. Were you to meet him tonight?’

‘Yers, ’e said ’e ’ad some business, but we’d go out for a bit o’ dinner – ’e’s good ter me is Alf. Generous yer know.’ She smoothed own her velvet skirt, not new but good second-hand. It was elegant in its way if a bit worn in places where the nap of the velvet had been rubbed. She was obviously pleased with it. ‘Alf’s got money. We woz thinkin’ of movin’ on ter somewhere better – America, p’r’aps but ’e said ’e ’ad businesss to finish off first. I woz waitin’ – I wanted somethin’ better even if –’ She broke off, suddenly uncertain.

‘What sort of business?’ Sam asked not expecting her to know much.

‘Wiv is partner, ’e said.’

‘Have you met this partner?’

‘Yers, ’e’s a toff – pretends ’e’s not but yer can tell. ’E puts it on – wearin’ rough clothes, talkin’ like us. They go out sometimes, Alf an’ ’im, sort o’ in disguise.’

‘Name?’

‘Dunno – Teddy, Alf calls ’im. Might be ’is real name, might not. Didn’t care though. ’E was rough at times even if ’e was a toff an’ ’andsome as a prince.’

‘Rough? In what way?’

She looked down; Dickens thought he saw a faint flush at her neck. Perhaps she wasn’t as hard as she wanted to be.

‘Alf wanted me to be good to ’im – yer know, Teddy. I didn’t wanter but Alf said ’e ’ad to keep in wiv ’im cos o’ the money so I let ’im.’ She looked at Dickens. ‘Yer don’t wanter know what ’e did ter me. I didn’t tell Alf cos – I don’t know – I thought –’

‘He’d be angry with Teddy – it might cause trouble between them?’ Dickens asked.

‘Not really. ’E’d be angry wiv me, I thought. ’E’s good ter me, ’e is,’ she insisted, ‘but I’ve ter do wot ’e says. I ’ave ter – if I wants –’ Unconsciously, she smoothed her velvet skirt again. No doubt for the first time in her life she had something to wear that wasn’t coarse wool or cotton. Dickens feared that the price for the velvet and feathers had been too high. His fears were confirmed in her next words.

‘Teddy ’e likes ’em young, yer know. I ’ad ter bring young uns ’ere so that ’e could – yer know –’ She looked miserable now. ‘’E could be cruel, that Teddy. Frightened ’em – frightened me sometimes, too.’ She rubbed at her arms and one hand twisted round a wrist as if in memory of being tied there. What had been done to these girls in this room which was so innocuous, without any imprint at all of what had occurred there? She shook herself so that the memory fell away like a discarded scarf. ‘Still we’re gettin’ out of it soon. Wot you done wiv Alf?’ She remembered that they had got him.

She had to be told. ‘What is your name?’

‘Wot’s that ter you?’ She was angry again now. ‘If yer must know, it’s Louisa Mapp.’

‘I’m sorry Miss Mapp, but Mr Blackledge is dead.’

‘Dead? ’Ow? When?’ The colour drained from her face as swiftly as her hopes of a better life drained away.

‘He was murdered – not long ago – down in the alleys. His throat was cut.’

‘Gawd,’ she said, ‘Oh gawd – woz it ’im – Teddy? ’E’s vicious ’e is. Dangerous. Yer catch ’im?’

‘We were too late. He got away.’

‘Too late – yer woz – too late for Alf – and for me.’ Tears welled up, and she looked what she was really – just a girl who had had hopes and lost them. The hardness had gone from her face. It was pinched with disappointment. Dickens thought of the Home – would there be a chance for her there? He would find her again and ask her. Her concern for the young girls she had brought here showed that she had some feeling left – it had not all been taken out of her by two brutal men. He did not doubt that Blackledge had been violent with her even if she pretended to herself that he was good to her.

The tears ran through the paint, and underneath they saw how young she was – seventeen, perhaps. How old were the young ones that she had brought here?

‘Yer’ll get ’im?’ she asked.

‘Tell us anything you can about him,’ Sam Jones said, ‘anything. Where did they go in their disguises, for example?’

‘Down ter Ratcliffe ’ighway – Johnstone’s – yer know it.’

They did – one of the notorious opium dens down in the East End, not far from Wapping Stairs, another labyrinth of squalor and degradation. It seemed that both Teddy and Alf had liked to live dangerously, and one had been murdered. Perhaps Teddy was the more ruthless or simply got in first. Whatever had happened, neither could let the other live.

‘Did you know Teddy’s other name?’

‘Nah, niver sed it ter me. I’m just Teddy, ’e sed. Sed it as if it woz funny, yer know. ’E’d ’old yer down and stroke yer wiv ’is knife – just Teddy, ’e’d say, laughin’ like ’e ’ad a secret. Sang sometimes, too, when he woz doin’ yer. Nasty it woz – creepy, as if ’e wanted ter use the knife for somethin’ else. Cut one of the little girls once across the throat – terrified she woz but ’e laughed. Give ’er two shillins. Two shillins,’ she said bitterly, ‘when ’e had thousands.’

‘Can you remember the song, Louisa?’ asked Dickens gently.

She sang the words that Davey had written down, ‘
Thrown on the wide world,
doomed to wander and roam, Bereft of my parents, bereft of my home.
’ The words sounded low and plaintive in her mouth; she was singing for herself, and as she sang, the tears ran down her face. She put her head down on the table and wept again for all she had lost before she had come to the streets. What a mockery Teddy had made of that song.

Dickens put his hand on her shoulder. He looked at Sam seeing in his face his own pity for the lost innocence of Louisa Mapp and those other little girls who had been brought here to please two depraved men. Louisa Mapp had not told them half. Presently she stopped and looked at them.

‘Gotter go,’ she said. ‘Yer don’t want me no more? If yer do I’m at Bell Lane, Mrs Cutler’s ’ouse.’ She wanted to get away from them. They had seen too much. She adjusted her velvet jacket, rustled her skirts, straightened her shoulders, looked at them with a defiant stare from her bright eyes, and was out before Sam had time to ask for anything else. Dickens admired her courage – she was going out into the dark, but her hat was straight and she stood erect.

‘It was he wasn’t it who sang as he killed Patience.’ Dickens’s voice was tight with anger. He had thought Blackledge bad, but this was worse. Teddy was a brute in every way, callous and laughing as he had hurt these girls. They had to find him. ‘Teddy is the Edmund of the song – he must be. So, surely, it follows that he is Edmund Crewe. I wonder what the song means to him. What must he have done to Patience? No wonder she ran away.’

‘We have to find out all we can about him. We cannot prove that he is a Crewe nor that he killed Blackledge. The connection between them is a fact – that much Ducat told, but it is not much use. We can only find him, rattle him – if he can be rattled – and watch what he does.’

‘Why kill Blackledge?’ asked Dickens.

‘Perhaps Blackledge knew we were on to him and told Teddy. Someone might have said we were at Ducat’s.’

‘Not Ambrose Tiplady?’

‘I don’t think so nor Ducat, but his clerk might have mentioned to someone that the police had been there, and if Blackledge saw Feak he might have thought he was in some danger. And we do not know what else they have been involved in. They could have taken other girls anywhere. They could have killed before Patience. Blackledge might have warned him, thinking they were in it together, not realising the danger he was putting himself into, not realising that Teddy would kill him just as he would a rat. He should hang – when we get him. Now, let’s have a look at this cash box.’