A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) (29 page)

THERE ARE still people who remember when pirates were hanged at Wapping. Whether their twitching limbs and swollen faces, or their tarred remains left hanging in iron cages as a warning, did anything other than provide the residents with a good spectacle is doubtful. Occasionally, even now, a yellowed bony hand pokes out of the stinking mud when the tide goes out.

Crime is still breathed in at Wapping with its fetid air. Seamen still throng its narrow streets and rat-infested wharves and warehouses, and lurch drunkenly from its alehouses. Between the walls of its crammed, tottering buildings run dark alleys into which it would be rash to venture. Chandlers’ shops spill their wares upon the cobbles. Smuggled goods change hands in smoky back rooms. Grog-shops, taverns, opium dens and bawdy houses jostle one another. If you want a bed for the night, no questions asked, it can be had for a shilling or two, if you don’t mind the squalid condition. It might be cheaper if you are prepared to share it.

It had grown dark by the time we reached the Silver Anchor tavern, a low, board-fronted building with a shingled roof, which looked as if it might originally have been a storehouse. We had enquired among the ships’ captains and shipping agents about anyone signing on as crew in the name of Laurent, or Mas, or speaking with a French accent. Most said they didn’t know of anyone of that description. Only one agent remembered an enquirer who possibly might have been our man. He had asked about ships wanting crew, but the agent had sent him away, not liking the look of him.

‘We are not fussy about a man, provided he’s fit and healthy and can do the job,’ said the agent. ‘But that one had a look in his eyes I have seen before. It was a look you see in the eyes of men with blood on their hands.’

Now we gathered before the Silver Anchor, reasonably sure our quarry was within. Our numbers were swelled by officers of the River Police. The tavern was doing good business. The noise of raucous laughter, female shrieks and quarrelling male voices, snatches of music, all streamed with the light from the tavern’s mullioned windows. We had checked the area carefully and I’d made sure men were stationed round the building at all points from which an exit could be made. I opened the door and, followed by Sergeant Morris, went in.

‘You have a guest lodging here, a Frenchman, name of Pierre Laurent,’ I said to him. ‘I am Inspector Ross, of Scotland Yard, and I am anxious to speak to him. Where is he?’

The innkeeper began to wipe down his bar with a rag so dirty, it would only make the surface grimier. ‘Well, sirs, I don’t know that he is here.’ Somewhere above, faintly, my ear caught the ting of a very small bell: the sort operated by a cord to summon a servant. Behind me, I heard Morris growl.

‘Where is he?’ I snapped. ‘Don’t play for time. The building is surrounded. If he’s here, he can’t escape.’

The man straightened up and glanced at the staircase running up beside the bar. ‘Second door left.’

Careful though we had been, there had been time enough for someone to communicate with the fugitive upstairs. The bell was probably a time-honoured signal given whenever the police entered the place. It needed only a jerk on a cord operated by someone below in the crowded taproom. The host might have done it with his foot while the movement of the grimy rag had distracted our attention. As Morris and I reached the first floor, we saw the bell, still quivering on its metal spring. The second door on the left gaped open, and the room beyond was empty.

‘Has anyone left?’

‘No, sir! We’re watching all the doors and windows!’ yelled back the officer in the street.

I hurried back to the main corridor, followed by one of the bawd’s shoes as an encouragement.

Morris was standing by a narrow ladder and looking up at an open hatch. As I appeared, he pointed. ‘He’s not gone down, sir, he’s gone up! There must be an attic up there at least.’

The ladder debouched into a long, low loft running the length of the building. Rows of straw mattresses indicated this was where you could buy your bed the most cheaply. Two old men sat staring at us with rheumy eyes, mildly surprised to see us pop up through the hatch like a pair of jack-in-the-boxes. There was no sign of Mas, or anywhere he could be hidden.

‘He’s on the roof, sir!’ shouted Morris, pointing upward at an open skylight. As he spoke we heard above our heads the scrape of a foot sliding on the tiles.

We clattered back downstairs. The crowd in the taproom raised a derisive cheer as we raced through them and out into the street. Our quarry’s whereabouts was signalled by upturned faces and pointing fingers of our River Police colleagues outside. High above, outlined starkly against the blue-black of the night sky, a darker silhouette picked its way across the roof as delicately as a tightrope walker.

‘Mas!’ I yelled up to him. ‘You cannot escape! Come down!’

His response was to jump, to make a graceful, athletic leap across the narrow space between this roof and that of the next building and land there. A couple of tiles were dislodged, fell to the ground and shattered. The silhouetted figure teetered wildly and appeared on the verge of falling backwards. He flung out his arms to either side, to gain balance, and wavered like an aspen before the wind. A sizeable crowd was gathering fast below now, and from it came a united intake of breath.

‘He’s going to fall! He’ll break his neck!’ cried someone. A woman shrieked.

But Mas didn’t fall. He regained his balance and, bent double, scrabbled rapidly on all fours, like the rat he was, across that roof, over the ridge tiles and disappeared. The crowd cheered.

I reflected that Mas had been a seaman in his youth and learned to swarm up the rigging in blustery weather. He did not fear heights.

We ran after him and the crowd ran after us. There then followed a weird and frantic chase. Mas scuttled across roof after roof, leaping from one to the other with the same balletic grace. We crashed and stumbled our way along below, trying to keep him in sight, waiting for the moment, which must come, when there wasn’t another roof to which he could jump. The sightseers, among them the patrons of the Silver Anchor, their ranks swelled by the customers of every taproom we passed, ran along with us, despite our orders to keep clear. They hindered our progress – their intention – and shouted their encouragements to the fleeing man.

So we came to the end of the row of buildings where it abutted a narrow wharf beyond which lay the river, gurgling and slapping against the stonework.

‘He’ll have to climb down now,’ said Morris. ‘Fetch a ladder, someone! Hey, you up there!’ he added, bellowing to the fugitive. ‘Stay where you are and we’ll get you down.’

But Mas had no intention of accepting our offer. He was in his own waterside element. We saw his slim figure stand erect at the very point of the gable. He raised his arms and we all fell silent in awe and apprehension as the silhouetted form, starkly outlined again the moon, took flight, arching into the air, and then flying outward and downward in a swallow dive. By some miracle he cleared the wharf, and plunged into the murky waters of the Thames.

He caused a waterspout that sent a great fountain high into the air and across the wharf to drench those nearby. We all ran to the edge. Lanterns were held out. The surface of the river was black, choppy, and slicked with oil. Debris of all sorts bobbed about. Moored craft creaked and rocked with the wave. But nothing resembled the head of a man treading water, or showed us the progress of a swimmer.

‘He can stay underwater for so long,’ I muttered. ‘But not for ever.’

‘He’ll have knocked himself out and drowned,’ murmured Morris, as the seconds ticked by.

‘No, sir, look!’ shouted one of the River officers, pointing.

There in the distance, caught in the light of lanterns hung from the bow of a moored vessel, we could see the water breaking, and a stream of foam, as a swimmer struck out strongly.

Perhaps his intention was to lose himself among the moored craft, and come ashore at a different spot. He might have been successful. But crewmen aboard a barge anchored further out had spotted the man in the water. Not knowing what was happening, they were reacting instinctively.

We heard their cry of ‘Man overboard!’ They were already lowering a boat. Figures, one armed with a boathook, were waiting to scramble into it to the rescue.

‘Mr Ross!’ shouted the sergeant of the River Police who had come with us. ‘We have a police launch ready, sir. This way!’

We ran after him, and found ourselves crammed into the police launch, heading towards the spot. As we neared it we saw a remarkable sight, as if we had not already seen so many that evening.

The would-be rescuers had reached the man in the water, but he was declining to be rescued. Hands stretched out to him. A rope was thrown. Voices implored him to ‘Grab hold, matey!’ He ignored all offers and struck out in another direction.

The River Police sergeant put a loud-hailer to his mouth. ‘Detain him! Detain that man!’

The crewmen heard him. The one with the boathook stretched it out and hooked it into the swimmer’s clothing. The swimmer threshed about, trying to free himself without drowning in the effort. But he was caught as surely as a fish on a line, and soon we had him landed.

‘Hector Mas?’ I gasped at the sodden figure sprawled on the deck of the launch at our feet. ‘Otherwise known as Pierre Laurent? You are under arrest.’

The half-drowned creature rolled on to his side and spewed out half a gallon of filthy river water. Then he looked up and disgorged another stream, this time of French, directed at me.

I don’t understand French and, if Lizzie had been with us, I doubt her knowledge included the words Mas was using. But, no matter, I got his meaning quite clearly.

It was late when I arrived home that evening, damp and exhausted. I was eager to tell the tale of our triumph. But I was forestalled. To my surprise, not only had Lizzie waited up for me, but she also had Mrs Jameson with her.

‘I am surprised to see you, ma’am,’ I said to her, ‘at this late hour. I hope nothing more has gone amiss.’

Not waiting for her answer, I couldn’t help but add eagerly, ‘You should know, ma’am, that we have him! We have the man who killed your lodger. He is a Frenchman and is now sitting, still awash with river water, in the cells.’

It struck me that this intelligence was not being received with the cries of amazement and delight I had anticipated. I saw the two women glance at one another. My heart sank.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Ben,’ began Lizzie. ‘We’re delighted you’ve caught Mas, of course. You must all be so pleased and Superintendent Dunn in particular. But Mrs Jameson has waited to see you, even though it’s so late, because she has something very important she wants to tell you.’

I sat down, feeling the heat from the hearth begin to dry my damp clothes. I suspected I was starting to steam like a racehorse and probably smelled abominably of the river.

‘The fact is this, Mr Ross,’ Mrs Jameson began. ‘I should offer an apology. I should have told you of this before, but it was not until the funeral of poor Mr Tapley that it occurred to me you might like to know about it. Indeed, I had almost forgot it until today.’

‘Yes?’ I encouraged her. She looked very nervous.

‘I was very surprised, when we attended the funeral, to meet Mr Tapley’s cousin, Mr Jonathan Tapley, and see what a fine, prosperous gentleman he was – is. Such a beautifully tailored coat . . . The coat particularly, and the cane.’

‘Yes . . .’ I repeated dully, apprehension growing in me.

‘I do realise you asked me, and Jenny, too, on the day of the murder, whether we’d seen any strangers loitering about the house. I said I had not because, you see, my mind was running on suspicious-looking strangers, ruffians, murderers . . . I had forgotten the gentleman with the cane.’

I closed my eyes briefly. ‘Go on, ma’am.’