Terror by Gaslight (15 page)

Next time he was allowed out on the Heath, or sent on an errand, he must be sure to have his savings in his pocket. And then he’d run! He knew where the river was. He’d go in
that direction. The docks must be somewhere on the river.

And then he recalled Frankel’s malevolent words, which had been almost lost in a haze of fear and pain. He was to be fined five shillings! The tyrant must have guessed the boy had savings and had resolved to grab them, to prevent him escaping.

Once the rest of the punishment had been served, his master would get his hands on the money, there was no doubt of that. Even if Frankel didn’t find it in its crude hiding place, he’d beat it out of him.

And then the boy would have no means of subsistence for his first days in the outside world, if he managed to get there.

But now the boy’s mind was racing.

He realized he’d have to make his bid for freedom this very evening. Apart from rescuing the cash, this might be the best chance he’d have, while he was out of sight, and disregarded by the rest of the household. If he could somehow get out of this prison, he could sneak upstairs, collect his money, and steal away before his absence was discovered.

Frankel was coming to thrash him at ten: it would be good to avoid that. The Highgate church clock had just struck seven. So there’d be three more hours during which the men would give him no thought.

Frankel worked in his laboratory till eight, and then he and Stone sat down to dinner, which was cooked and served by Prosser. Until dinner, Stone would be in the office, working on papers and sipping gin.

The window of the laundry room was usually left ajar. The boy could reach it by climbing up the drainpipe; he’d done it before. Then he would make his way to the attic and back, using the dark places and short cuts he knew well.

But how was he to get out of the coal house?

A memory had been lurking at the back of his mind during his hours of dejection. And now, as his energy began
to flow, it came to the fore. He remembered the trick Titch had bragged about last year.

Titch, of course, had been the smallest of the street gang, but what he lacked in inches he made up for in cunning and dubious skills. He claimed that he could always escape from a locked room and, for a ha’penny each, he’d told the rest of them how it was done.

The boy felt in his pocket and was reassured to find the matches he always carried, to light the fires at six o’clock every morning. The other essential for that task was old newspapers, and a pile of these was kept alongside the coal. He groped around in the gloom and found a broadsheet. He took a double page from the centre, thought for a moment, and then added another to make a double layer.

He knelt down and slipped most of his paper mat through the gap beneath the coal-house door, retaining only a few inches on his own side.

The key of this door normally stayed in the outside keyhole, and he fervently hoped that today would be no exception. He would soon find out.

He took one of the long lucifers from the matchbox, inserted it into the lock, and pushed. To his joy, it met something hard. The key was there.

He pressed the matchstick hard against the tip of the key, attempting to dislodge it. The match snapped. He tried three more matches and they all broke.

Desperately, he racked his brains to try and think of something stronger to use, and it occurred to him that there was an item on his belt that might do the trick. The buckle had the usual small metal spike to go into the holes at the opposite end. He removed his belt and eased the spike into the keyhole. Would it be long enough?

After a moment he let out a sigh of relief. Metal had met metal. The spike was touching the key.

He pushed hard with his new tool and felt the key move slightly but not enough to fall out. For five minutes the boy prodded and probed with the spike, attacking the key from every possible angle. In spite of the cold, sweat began to form on his brow.

And then, just as he was about to despair, he felt the key move decisively and heard it fall to the ground outside. It was not yet time to rejoice. Had the key landed safely on the newspaper? Or had it bounced off and ended up out of reach? And was the space below the door big enough for the key to pass through?

The boy’s hands trembled as he pulled the paper gently towards him. The light was too faint for him to see if the key was there. He ran his fingers cautiously over the paper to feel for it. And suddenly, amazingly, there it was! Titch had got it right! His key to the outside world was sitting there on the middle crease of the newspaper.

Carefully, he picked it up and put it briefly in his pocket, while he stood up and restored the belt to his trousers. When he was ready, he put the key in the lock, turned it, and heard the tongue withdraw to its housing with a pleasing click.

Then he turned the handle and began to push the door open, gently, so as to reduce any creaking. When the door was halfway open he slid out sideways, with the minimum of movement.

He was surprised to find bright moonlight outside. He blinked, and exhaled heavily after his exertions. He allowed himself a moment of exhilaration. He was free. He peered around him eagerly.

And now came the shock. A man was leaning against the wall opposite, only a few yards away! It was Prosser, and he was staring at the coal-house door, as if waiting for the fugitive to appear.

For an instant the boy froze with fright.

Then he turned to run but already Prosser had taken four swift strides and had an iron grip on the boy’s arm, and a large hand over his mouth.

The boy was too shaken to struggle as Prosser pulled the door wide open, steered them both inside, and closed the door behind them.

‘If you know what’s good for you, don’t make a sound!’ he ordered, removing his palm from the boy’s face. Now deflated, the boy stood helplessly awaiting his fate, which he assumed would be another savage beating to add to the one he was expecting later.

Prosser spoke quietly and, to the boy’s surprise, without hostility or anger. ‘Good trick that with the key. I ain’t seen that done for years.’ Was the man playing cat-and-mouse with him? ‘I was on my way to let you out when I seen the key moving. I thought I’d let you get on with it. See if it still works.’

‘Let me out?’ gasped the boy. This must be some new refinement of torment. ‘You was going to let me out?’

‘Yeah. And you’d better get a long way away from here bloody quick. Only don’t go without your dosh.’ He took from his pocket a small cloth bag, in which was the rag containing the boy’s savings. ‘I put it in a bag, see. Be safer. That weren’t a clever place you was hiding it.’

The boy’s surprise had turned to astonishment. He could scarcely find his words.

‘You mean … you’re letting me go?’

‘Yeah,’ said Prosser. ‘Better that way. Frankel’s in an evil mood. Crazy with rage, you might say. And he’ll be worse when he’s had his wine. I don’t want murder done in this house. One of us could swing for it.’

Obviously, he wasn’t going to tell the boy about his moment of weakness an hour ago. After three pints of beer he’d lapsed into melancholy.

In truth, although an enthusiastic bar-room brawler, Prosser had never cared for wanton cruelty. And the thought of what Frankel would do to the boy later had begun to disturb him.

And then had come that extraordinary thought. Recalling drunken nights in Kentish Town, it had occurred to him that he could actually be the father of this boy! Or of another just like him. His conscience, which he had regarded as dead and buried years ago, had revived enough to nag him. Perhaps there’d been something wrong with the beer.

This stupid softness still had a hold on him.

‘If you’ve nowhere better to go,’ he found himself saying, ‘go to the Horse and Groom down Archway. My brother works in the taproom. Tell him I sent you. He might give you a hand, if his feet aren’t plaguing him.’

In a daze, the boy remembered that if someone did you a kindness you were supposed to say ‘Thank you’. It had happened so rarely in his life that he had scarcely ever used the phrase. But he used it now.

‘Thank you, Mr Prosser,’ he said. And he liked the sound if it, so he said it again.

By now Prosser was surfeited with all this kindness and affability and was beginning to feel ashamed of himself. He managed to regain a proper gruffness as he said, ‘Now listen, boy. Don’t you never tell no one what goes on here. You bring Frankel down, you bring me down.’

‘I’ll never say a word, I swear it!’ the boy assured him.

‘You better not,’ said Prosser sternly, ‘cos if you do, I got mates who’ll find you wherever you are and cut out your liver. Now go, quick!’

Stuffing the moneybag in his shirt and some bread in his pocket, the boy went: swiftly on to the Heath, and then swiftly off it, getting on to the Highgate Road as soon as he was clear of the houses. Then he headed towards Archway.

In ten years’ time, he would own a sheep farm in Australia. And five years after that he would be Mayor of Kilby, New South Wales.

But he had many more of life’s slings and arrows to experience before that.

Thoughtfully, Prosser left the coal house, closing and locking the door behind him. After a few paces and a moment’s thought, he went back and unlocked the door, leaving the key on the inside.

T
HE LITTLE CLUSTER
of homes and gardens, greens and pathways that nestles in Hampstead’s Vale of Health is a remarkable phenomenon: a country village in the middle of a wild heath, in the heart of a great metropolis.

It began and grew, and acquired its name, between the years 1400 and 1700, when the City of London was often ravaged by disease: first, the Black Death, and then the recurrent Plague. At the first sign of an outbreak, prosperous city-dwellers would flee to the Hampstead uplands and especially to the hollow in the middle. Here there was fresh air, and a wide barrier of grassland between them and the dreaded bacilli.

The Vale of Health had rural lanes and a country pub beside a placid lake, where herons and smaller waterfowl prosper under the overhanging trees.

This hamlet lies on the west side of Hampstead Heath, and Highgate is to the east, so, on leaving the Aspinalls’, Steele and Mason had more than a mile to walk across damp turf and country paths. It was a pleasant prospect, the ground firm underfoot and the air still mild at the end of a sunny, early-December afternoon. The two men had much to talk about.

The Aspinalls had proved hospitable: Mason had
especially enjoyed the fruit cake. But their hosts had been very anxious. The wealthy businessman and his wife no longer walked on the Heath, a deprivation they bitterly resented. But their main concern was their youngest son who, at twenty-three, seemed a likely target for the Maniac. Yet the young man insisted on crossing the Heath each day to go to work in Hampstead, often returning quite late in the evening. And on Sunday nights, he was liable to stroll across for a drink at Jack Straw’s Castle. He adamantly refused to be accompanied by a bodyguard. Nevertheless, the Aspinalls were employing a burly ex-soldier to follow him, at a distance and without his knowledge.

The trouble was that the ex-soldier had twice been detained by police patrols, who thought he was the killer stalking his next victim. An unpleasant atmosphere of fear and suspicion pervaded the area.

Herbert Aspinall maintained that this was the whole purpose of the Maniac and, probably, his accomplices. He believed it was all a revolutionary plot to undermine London’s reputation as a safe and pleasant place to live, or to come and do business. Beyond that, he’d had no practical ideas or useful information to offer.

As they walked amid the little hills and trees and hedgerows, the detectives reviewed the case. Neither had heard of Mrs Butters’ death, which had occurred too late for the morning papers. In fact, the two men had not met today until they both arrived at the Aspinalls’. Steele had spent the morning in the chambers of their accountant, Giles Randall, discussing the implications of his report. They’d then lunched at his club. Mason had manned the office, catching up on paperwork, after which he’d eaten a mound of brawn sandwiches, lovingly prepared by his wife.

Steele told Mason about his meeting with Randall earlier and went on to report on the previous day’s visit to Scotland
Yard. He had informed Willoughby they were building a file on the activities of Austin and his shady lawyer, and had been surprised to learn that the police were already investigating Jamieson on another matter.

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ said Mason. ‘The man’s as crooked as a barrel of snakes. What’s the latest on the Heath Maniac?’

‘They’ve traced McDonald, the Greenwells’ man: the chap who fell out with everyone. He’s eliminated from the inquiry.’

‘Oh yes,’ Mason recalled. ‘The bullying butler. Don’t say he’s gone home to die too.’

‘Not quite. He’s gone home, but he seems in robust health. He’s back in Scotland, living with his parents and working as a labourer. It’s established that he hasn’t been south of the border this year. So there’s no need for you to go on asking around the alehouses.’

Mason bore the news cheerfully. ‘Oh well. There’ll soon be something else we need to know. What more did the big chief say?’

‘He’s looking into the anti-homosexual theory.’

This was a possibility that had been mooted early in the investigation. Certain parts of the Heath had long been regarded as a meeting place for homosexuals. Was the Maniac out to destroy those he regarded as deviants? None of the four victims so far were thought to be homosexual but, as lone men walking on the Heath at night, they might have appeared so to a deranged mind.

Willoughby had considered the idea at the outset but it was not an easy avenue to pursue. There was a homosexual community in London but they had to maintain strict secrecy, since their activities were illegal. Obviously, they could not confide in the police. So there had been no way Scotland Yard could learn if they faced a special threat. Until now. Steele brought the story up to date.

‘The police raided the home of a Turkish man this week, in connection with an assault. They found scores of letters and leaflets calling for the extermination of homosexuals. The man had already fled but he’ll be caught; there’s a warrant out for his arrest on the original assault charge. We’ll know more when they bring him in.’

‘That shouldn’t take long,’ said Mason. ‘There aren’t that many Turks walking the streets of London. Did you tell Mr Willoughby about this meeting at the Royal Oak?’

‘I did, and he’s put several plain-clothes men on duty. They should be lurking in the Vale of Health already. So if there is any danger, help will be at hand.’

But the danger wasn’t in the Vale of Health. It was much closer.

One of the scenic delights of Hampstead Heath is the number of ponds, some large, some small, some tidied and tended for swimming, others still wild and natural. In most cases, the footpaths simply skirt around the water. But, in the middle of the Heath, one lake is spanned by a brickwork bridge, twenty yards long. It was when Steele and Mason were halfway across this bridge that the attackers struck.

The detectives were suddenly aware that three men, carrying cudgels, had emerged from the trees beyond the end they were approaching and were walking towards them. There was no doubt of their intentions.

Steele and Mason were used to physical combat but they were also prudent. Since they were outnumbered and the advancing men were armed, discretion was the better part of valour.

‘I think we should turn round,’ said Steele calmly.

But as they did so, three men, also bearing heavy sticks, appeared at the end from which they’d entered the bridge. Their retreat was cut off.

Steele cursed his own stupidity. He’d been prepared for a
trap at their destination but not on the way there. Someone must have guessed the route they’d be taking.

‘Sorry, Jack,’ he said. ‘I got this one wrong.’

‘Never mind, guv,’ said Mason cheerfully. ‘There’s only six of them. Backs to the wall, eh?’

The brick parapets at each side of the bridge were generally waist-high but in the middle they arched up a little higher. So anyone standing close to the brickwork could not be attacked from that direction. The two men backed against a centre section, standing a well-judged five feet apart so that, if one of them ducked a blow, it would not go on to hit the other. And each man could hit out without fear of striking his partner. They had been in this situation before.

Each man took off his coat and wrapped it round a forearm as a protective pad. Steele took a police whistle from his pocket and blew the longest loudest blasts he could produce. In the still air they would surely carry to the waiting police half a mile away.

But how long would it take rescuers to reach the bridge? Five minutes? Ten? By that time both men could be dead or crippled.

The attackers shouted oaths and war-whoops as they went into action. Apart from the swearing, there were no words. They seemed very professional.

The first blow was aimed at Steele’s head, but he took it on his cushioned arm, and then rammed the silver knob of his walking stick very hard into his assailant’s face. The man staggered back, blood pouring from a broken nose, but then he came on again.

As a club swung towards his skull, Mason grabbed it and used its impetus to hurl its owner to the ground; then he kicked the man ferociously under the chin.

The detectives’ shrewd positioning meant that, in trying to hit them, the roughnecks were getting in each other’s way.
One thug heaved himself up on to the parapet to attempt an assault from behind. But Steele saw the action instantly and, as the man tried to straighten up, dealt him a sharp blow which sent him toppling into the muddy water twenty feet below.

For more than a minute Steele and Mason fought off the attack, ducking the blows or fending them off with their padded forearms while inflicting damage on their own account, Steele with his stick, Mason with a pair of doughty fists.

But, eventually, numbers told.

As Mason ducked a blow from one flailing cudgel and warded off another with his arm, a more cunning opponent delivered a sweeping strike at his legs, knocking them from under him. Then, while Mason was falling, a fierce blow landed on his head. He crumpled to the ground and lay inert.

Steele moved quickly to stand over his friend and shelter him, swinging his stick, kicking out and shouting defiance.

But now the situation was hopeless. Amid his desperate efforts, Steele’s mind was racing. The thugs were clearly under orders. Had they been told to kill their victims, or just to disable them permanently?

And then, as Steele’s stick was wrenched from his grasp, there came the gunshots: two, in quick succession. One of the gang fell, as his leg gave way under him. The others turned and saw a man hurrying towards the bridge with a pistol in his hand. He fired a third shot, which took another of the thugs in the shoulder.

The gang didn’t wait for a fourth. Three of them began running full tilt towards Highgate; the man with the wounded shoulder staggered more slowly behind them. And, finally, the thug who had struggled out of the pond went stumbling blindly in the same general direction.

The man who’d been shot in the leg still lay clutching his knee and groaning.

The newcomer ignored him as he strode confidently up to Steele. ‘Good afternoon, Major,’ said Commander West. ‘Not safe to walk on the Heath these days without a gun. I thought I told you that.’

The Reverend Ernest Littlejohn closed the door silently behind him and began walking quietly down the dark passage. He felt he should talk to the lady of the house before leaving, but she was nowhere to be seen. He paused and coughed, in a discreet clerical way.

This traditional English signal worked, as usual, and Madge Scully came bustling out of the kitchen, drying rough red hands on a rough grey towel. She greeted the parson respectfully.

‘Oh. Excuse my wet hands, sir. I was doing some washing. Are you off now?’

‘Yes, I have to be, I’m afraid. And your husband is asleep. I don’t want to trouble him further.’

‘Was he all right? I mean, he wasn’t rude or anything?’

‘Not at all, Mrs Scully. He wanted to talk. He’s … er … had a colourful life, has he not?’

‘If you like to call it that. I think he’d have been better off getting a proper job.’

‘Oh well, the Lord has made us all differently. We serve him in varying ways. Your husband has given people the priceless gift of laughter.’

Madge Scully was concerned. ‘He didn’t spend all the time bragging about his success on the stage, did he? He was supposed to be confessing his sins.’

‘Well, the two were often intertwined.’ The Reverend Littlejohn smiled indulgently. ‘But, yes, he did confess his sins extremely fully. I have to say, a little more penitence and
a little less detail might have been fitting. But confess he did.’

‘I’m surprised it didn’t take all day.’

‘His trespasses were all of the kind the Lord is very ready to forgive. Mr Scully has made his peace with his creator.’

‘Well, thank you for coming, sir. Will you have a cup of tea before you go?’

‘No, thank you. I have other calls to make before evening prayers. I must be on my way.’

‘Do I owe you anything?’

‘Good gracious, no. The love of God and the services of his clergy are given freely.’

‘Well, that is nice, I must say.’

‘Of course, the Church has many expenses, as you know. Any donations to parish funds, however small, are always much appreciated.’

‘Oh. Yes. Right,’ said Mrs Scully. She thought of Major Steele’s gold sovereigns, which she had retrieved from under her husband’s pillow. Then she reflected that these were somewhat tarnished and grubby from use. And then she recalled the shiny, bright new shilling, minted only this year, which had turned up in her wages. That looked better, and also it was handier. She opened a drawer in the hall-stand, took out the shilling, and gave it to the parson.

‘Please take this, sir,’ she said. ‘With my thanks.’

‘The Church is most grateful,’ said the clergyman, pocketing the coin, with a little bow. ‘God bless you.’

He moved to the front door, and Madge opened it for him.

‘Thank you again, sir,’ she said.

‘And thank you, Mrs Scully,’ said the parson, as he made his exit. ‘Let me know when I can help with the funeral arrangements.’

Madge closed the door behind him and walked thoughtfully down the passage. She stopped outside her husband’s door and listened.

The call was so feeble that Madge would have missed it, had she not been concentrating intently. But there was no doubt about it. Her husband was calling her name. She opened the door and went in.

‘What is it, Luke?’ she asked. ‘The parson said you was asleep.’

‘I was.’ Scully’s speech was weary, but lucid. ‘Then I had a bad dream, and it woke me up. I got something on my mind.’

‘You’d better tell me, then.’

‘That parson said I had to get everything off my chest. So I did. Then he asked if my conscience was clear, and I said it was. But it ain’t.’

‘He said you’d owned up to all your past sins and been forgiven. All up to date. You haven’t managed to do new sins today, have you?’

‘No, Madge, it’s something I forgot. When them detectives was here, asking about the Heath murders. I might have helped them, but I didn’t. Something I could have told them. Only I decided not to. I never got on with coppers. Now it’s on my conscience. I ought to tell them.’