Act of Murder (12 page)

‘I shall ensure your late husband’s equipment will remain safe and unmolested,’ he had assured her.

Now, in the dark seclusion of her room, she sat at the small writing-table by the window and pored over Richard’s papers. Among the items he had carefully kept in his briefcase were the
detailed records of his more ‘exclusive’ material. This was normally kept under lock and key back in Leeds. Some of the slides, she knew, were kept with him at all times, and she cast
an eye over the small notebook he used to record these.

The entries he had inscribed were couched in the most innocent of terms: ‘Rose Blossoms’; ‘The Flower Girls’; ‘The Organ Grinder’; ‘Picking
Cherries’
.

Yet she knew what those slides contained. The fact that the first set – ‘Rose Blossoms’ – had been underscored in the notebook told her that these had been brought with
him and were even now stored in the safe in the Public Hall office. She would have to retrieve them and decide what to do with them. She had no doubt now that the man she saw Richard talking to in
the street, whom he had described as a pillar of the community, had entered into some financial arrangement for a private showing of the slides. Now, with Richard dead, it would be prudent to
destroy any evidence of such wickedness, for she herself could be considered guilty by association.

And yet . . . these slides had made him considerably more money than anything else, and in destroying them she would in effect be destroying the means to financial independence. It pained her to
admit it, but Richard had been right.

Did she really desire a future with her sainted brother, who rose every morning at five and chanted the
Te Deum
in a voice so grave and forbidding you’d think he was offering a
lament for the dead rather than a hymn of praise? A brother who, because of her earlier life as a governess, would now, after her period of mourning, expect her to earn her keep by teaching his
parishioners’ children in Sunday School, after having sat through yet another of his interminably long sermons?

‘I mustn’t be hasty!’ she thought, closing the notebook gently. ‘Above all things, I must consider my future.’

*

Enoch Platt lay in his bed, covered with his greatcoat and gazing at the small curtained window. Slivers of morning sunlight managed to creep through the grubbed holes in the
fabric. Not that he took any notice of the light, or the sun, or the myriad of street noises coming from beyond his bedroom window. No. He was seeing a blackness so total it felt like the onset of
Death itself, and hearing the cries that came from all around him . . .

Cries that had been laughter only a few minutes earlier, laughter mingled with the sound of picks striking the coal face, and the dull gritty trundle of the corves being pushed along the tracks,
and the frequent bursts of coughing and curses. Then they heard the distant rumble, like thunder in the next county, swiftly followed by a huge blast that sent Enoch and the others flying through
the suffocating dust clouds until they came to near the shaft. Coal tubs and huge wedges of timber lay scattered in all directions, and from afar came a dim red glow that illuminated everything,
rendering it akin to a scene from hell itself. He coughed, and fought to gain control of his breathing, but the dust was swirling and clogging up his nostrils and stinging his eyes. He could just
make out the shattered remains of countless bodies, limbs ripped from their sockets and bodies twisted at impossible angles. Then he dropped down to his knees, where he felt his hands touch
someone’s face, and stooped low to see who it was. Despite the storm raging all around, and the cries of those still trapped beneath the tons of rubble from the collapsed walls, he took great
care to wipe his eyes clean of the dust for a few seconds to examine the one he had found. His heart raced as the dim glow of flames from afar revealed his brother, Joseph, his eyes open and gazing
back at him. Gazing but not seeing.

It was then that he noticed the dust speckling his eyes, tiny dots of grit colouring the blue eyes grey, then black, with no reflex flutter from his lids. He tried to close those eyes, clogged
thick now with dust, but as he held his brother’s head in his hands he realised with a sickening sensation of horror that it moved too easily, and when he gazed fearfully down he saw the neck
had been severed just above the breastbone and there was no sign anywhere of the rest of his broken body. With a low, keening groan he raised the head in both hands, and the groan became a high,
piercing scream that was deadened only by the next explosion which slammed into his ears, bringing both welcome darkness and a permanent dislodgement of the brain.

*

‘Now that we’re here,’ said Detective Sergeant Slevin with a look of venom towards the hapless Bowery, ‘we might as well make use of it. But I can tell
you, constable, I am less than pleased by this wild goose chase.’

Where Violet Cowburn had lain in some distress the night before, now a female of indeterminate age was sitting up and singing at the top of her voice.

‘Transferred from the Idiot Ward,’ said a tight-lipped matron. ‘She has tubercolosis, though you wouldn’t think so, listening to that caterwauling.’

‘You must have a great deal to put up with,’ said Slevin, giving her a smile. ‘Now, would it be possible for you to tell me where I might find Dr Bentham?’

‘In the operating theatre and under no circumstances to be disturbed.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing,’ Slevin replied. ‘But the great doctor knows me well, and he has promised to do something for me.’

‘Oh?’

‘Both he and I would owe you a debt of gratitude if you were to pass this on to him.’ He produced the small brown bottle containing the potion Georgina had been taking for her
neuralgia
.

‘What is it?’

‘Ah,’ he said with another of his winning smiles, ‘you have my question all ready. That’s precisely what I want you to ask him. On my behalf. What exactly is this
potion?’

She took it uncertainly.

‘Tell him I’ll look forward to his opinion on the potion. Good day.’

Before she could say anything further, he and Constable Bowery were already leaving the ward and its unruly patient behind.

‘What do you reckon’s in the bottle, sergeant?’

‘I don’t know. Probably what Mrs Throstle says is in it. But it will do no harm to check.’

As they travelled towards the Cowburn house at Springfield, suffering the uneven rattle of the hackney as it bounced along on the cobbled surface, Slevin pondered the gruesome circumstances of
Richard Throstle’s death. Why, for instance, had he been mutilated in such a manner? If you want to kill someone, then you take the quickest and most economical route, surely? Yet somehow the
murderer had gained access to the victim’s room – the door was undamaged and the lock untampered with – and rendered him pliant in some way. There had been no visible signs of a
blow to the head, so it was possible he was suffocated before the murderer set about his vile task. But what if Mrs Throstle had awakened at any time? True, she had taken her analgesic, but surely
the murderer wasn’t to know that? And what if she had awakened at the moment of execution? Perhaps then she too would be lying in the infirmary mortuary beside her husband. The more he
thought about it, the more he felt that there was something deeply personal about this crime, and that robbery was far from the crazed mind of the creature who perpetrated the act.

‘Presence of mind,’ Slevin said aloud as the hackney trundled its uncomfortable way past Mesnes Park.

‘Beg pardon, sergeant?’

‘Would you have the presence of mind to do what she did?’

‘What who did?’

Slevin tightened his lips in exasperation. ‘Mrs Georgina Throstle.’

‘Why? What’d she do then?’ Perhaps, he thought, if the sergeant occasionally let him share whatever he was thinking about then he wouldn’t have to ask such questions.
Bowery was no mentalist.

‘When she awoke and discovered her husband so abominably defiled in death, she had the presence of mind to look under the bed to see if her jewellery had been stolen.’

‘Perhaps she was fond of ’em.’

‘Her husband is lying there drenched in blood with his member swimming in a pisspot and she thinks of her baubles? A remarkable woman, constable, don’t you think?’

‘Could’ve been the shock?’

‘Yes. Yes, it could have been. Let’s keep an open mind, eh? When we return, I want you to take a couple of men and do the rounds of the public houses and drinking dens.’

‘Bloody ’ell, sergeant! Do you know how many of them there are?’

‘A fair number, I should say. But if Throstle was threatened by card sharps, then surely he would have had enough sense to restrict his wanderings to the town centre? He’s hardly
likely to take an afternoon constitutional up Scholes or Beech Hill, now is he? Specially in all that fog. No, restrict your enquiries to the town centre.’ He gave a smile of mock compassion.
‘There. See how logic and deduction are a boon to detection, constable?’

Bowery sighed. He had a vision of blistered feet, and sullen and hostile responses. There were still a good number of such places in the town itself. ‘What are we lookin’
for?’

‘Card games. Gambling of any description. Throstle told his wife he was chased by card sharps.’

‘But we know that was a lie, sergeant. It was Cowburn who did the chasin’ after skimmin’ his young wench downstairs.’

‘That’s as may be. But we cannot ignore the possibility that he was referring to an earlier encounter.’

‘It’s a wild goose chase, sergeant.’

‘Is it?’ Slevin asked innocently.

Constable Bowery folded his arms, stared glumly through the window and silently swore. He would have cursed out loud if he had known what was waiting for them in Mort Street.

*

The morning after an opening night is always thought of as a dead time, when the euphoria of the night before, especially when the audience is as rapturous and generous in its
applause as it was at the Royal Court, has long since faded like echoes in an empty hall. In her small room at the lodging-house, with Belle Greave still snoring loudly in the adjoining room, Susan
Coupe had spent a few hours preparing her next role – that of Portia in
Julius Caesar.

Later, as she left her lodgings in Greenhough Street, having politely but firmly declined Belle’s offer to accompany her, she walked quickly down the incline towards the town centre. The
warnings from her landlady were still fresh in her mind: ‘Whatever you do, love, don’t go
up
Greenhough Street. That’d take you to Scholes, an’ that’s the last
place a fine-lookin’ lass like you wants to end up in.’ Scholes, she went on with gruesome relish, was a ‘lively place’, where policemen never ventured alone and whose
Saturday nights were often a veritable bloodbath outside several of the seventy or so public houses.

Susan had shuddered, the advice reinforcing her dislike of the town. The notorious district might well be set apart from the more respectable part of town where she was lodged, but the very
existence of such brutish creatures disgusted her. She had seen many of them over the last few days, slouching past in the late afternoon, their faces smeared and blackened by coal dust and their
eyes somehow seeming to select her, of all those in the street and outside the many shops, for prurient attention. Must the male sex always regard women with such a leering desire?

Yet James, dear, sweet James, was so very different. When he held her in his arms she felt so safe, so impervious to whatever the world might hurl at her.

The young actress walked along the pavement, her thoughts well hidden by the demure smile set permanently on her lips. But passing a butcher’s shop she felt a revulsion upon seeing thick
bloody slabs of meat and slender rabbits hanging from rusted hooks.

‘Stick to yer ribs, them, love!’ Standing in the butcher’s doorway stood a huge bear of a man. His thick whiskers covered bright red lips and he gave her a proud smile as he
swung one of the dead rabbits to and fro.

‘No, thank you,’ she replied, making an effort not to offend.

As she walked to the edge of the pavement, squirming her way past a small group of women jabbering away in their unintelligible accents, she caught sight of James standing on the opposite side
of the street, waving to her and raising his hat to catch her attention.

‘You look worried,’ he said as she reached him, immediately linking her arm in his.

‘But not any more,’ she said. She fought back an impulse to rest her head on his broad shoulders.

‘Well,’ he beamed, and took a deep breath of air. ‘The fog has lifted, the afternoon is crisp and fine, and we mustn’t waste a second.’

‘You seem in a better mood today. What have you done about the telegram?’

‘Sent a reply, of course.’

Susan Coupe lowered her eyes. ‘I see.’

He turned to face her fully and held both her arms that were hanging listlessly at her side. ‘Not that sort of reply. I’ve told you, she merely wants to make sure she’ll be
adequately provided for. The alimony she is receiving is already one-fifth of what I earn, and she is keen for that to increase once the suit is concluded.’

‘Such a mercenary woman!’ She paused. ‘It’s just that any form of communication with
her
. . .’

He leaned forward and touched her nose with his forefinger. To Susan, it was a deeply romantic gesture. ‘Now, let’s forget about her, and everything else for a while, shall
we?’

‘Quite right,’ she said with a sudden laugh. ‘Where shall we go?’

‘Aha! I thought a bracing winter’s walk. Just allow me to lead the way, my dearest. A special treat.’

She loved treats. She loved James. And at that moment, as they strolled arm in arm along the crowded pavements, Susan allowed herself to hope that there might be a time in the near future when
the two of them could stroll as freely and as leisurely through Hyde Park or along the Mall with no fear of what the past once held, no fear of being observed by the woman who was still his wife.
Portia’s words came to her just then: