The Hellfire Conspiracy (5 page)

A
TWENTY-MINUTE WALK BROUGHT US TO THE
odd little police station perched upon the docks of Wapping Old Stairs. We were soon seated at a table with a cup of tea in front of each of us. Barker shook hands with the officer in charge, Inspector Dunham, one of those fellows in his fifties with white hair but a black mustache and eyebrows that made one wonder if he dyed them. He dipped his mustache into the tea, sipped noisily, and set the mug down again. Sitting down to tea with confreres seemed to be as much a ceremony here as it was in Japan.

“So, Barker, what brings you here today?”

“The body of a girl was found in a sewer in Grafton Street this morning, between ten and fifteen years of age by the size of her. She’d been dead at least two weeks, strangled. I thought it possible there might have been more than one. A strong rainstorm would have washed the body into the Thames.”

“She would have washed up at the Isle of Dogs. We get a lot of bodies here—suicides, accidents, stabbings—but when a girl is found strangled, we generally assume it is a crime of passion. Are you suggesting we have one man in London strangling young girls?”

“I don’t know yet, but it would be remiss of me not to look.”

Dunham screwed up his mouth in thought. “It’s true. We have had a few cases. Let me look through my files. Do you want more tea?”

“No, thank you.”

The inspector got up from his chair. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

After he left, I looked at my employer. “Would I be correct in assuming that this fellow here hadn’t heard a word about Gwendolyn DeVere or the girl found this morning because the Thames Police is in competition with the Metropolitan Police?”

“You’re catching on, lad. They’ll help us sometimes and up to a point, but never each other. We’re not direct competition, after all, and many in our profession are former police officers. But Scotland Yard helping the Railway Police, the City Police, or the lads here at Wapping? Never.”

“But if the organizations worked together, they’d solve more crimes,” I pointed out.

“True, but a great deal will have to change before that happens. Feuds run as deep here as in Palermo.”

Five minutes later, Dunham returned empty-handed.

“We’ve been scuppered,” he said flatly. “Apparently, while I was out on the river this morning, an inspector from Scotland Yard called and the sergeant in charge—who by the end of today will be scraping barnacles from the launch as a constable—allowed him to leave with five files.”

“Five files,” Barker repeated.

“Yes—and to answer your first question, we have found some bodies in the past month or two. It is an ongoing investigation. Scotland Yard has no right to commandeer those files. The Thames Police is the oldest existing police department in the world.”

“What was the name of the inspector who came calling today?”

“It was Swanson.”

“He is a canny fellow. We must all be on our toes if we hope to best him.” The Guv gave me a glance, and I knew what he was thinking. Inspector Swanson had not mentioned his visit here to us.

“I’m going to complain to A Division,” Dunham grumbled. “The minute one’s back is turned they crawl in like rats and plunder a man’s cases.”

“How was the case going?” my employer asked.

“Not well until you showed up. We knew all the victims were probably coming from one location, but it’s hard to track down where it is once they’ve been in the river an hour or two.”

“Were they all girls?”

“Yes, and as I recall, they were all between ten and fifteen years of age. Every one of them was in their underclothes and all had been outraged.”

“Outraged?” I asked.

“Whoever he is, he has a taste for virgin flesh, I reckon, not that he’s alone in London as far as that’s concerned, but that ain’t the worst of it. Feller collects grisly trophies, a finger here, a toe there. An ear, a nose. Nasty business.”

Barker’s brow had disappeared beneath the twin moons of his black spectacles. “But there is no profit to be made from killing young girls,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

“What is there to understand?” Dunham said harshly. “He pulled them off the streets, undressed them to their drawers and camisoles, had his way with them, and throttled them. Then he snipped off a bob as a trophy.”

“Can such depravity exist?” My employer brooded. “Never mind. I know that it can. So, what we are facing is not a white slave ring as we had at first anticipated. We are dealing with some kind of archfiend, a multiple murderer preying upon young girls.”

“And in Bethnal Green, too, that spits them out as regular as candles. He could go on forever if he ain’t stopped.”

“A new girl has gone missing,” Barker finally informed him. “We have been retained to find her. She comes from a middle-class family. Her mother may be a socialist, or at least, her friends appear to be.”

Dunham got up and put the teapot on the hob again. I wondered how many pots they went through in a day.

“This is a fine kettle of fish,” he commented. “It’s not the sort of subject that is put in the papers, but there’s nothing the socialists like better than a nice scandal to bring about reform. And here we are in the middle of one.”

“Aye,” Barker said.

“They think we can just snap our fingers and the criminals come running in to be arrested.”

“So, were none of the girls identified?”

“Oh, I found two of the five. I figure the other three might be street orphans. One was a local girl, Fanny Rice, come from a big family. Very quiet they was, seemed glad she’d been identified. The other was a foreigner, Zinnah Goldstein. Her parents really broke down when they identified the body. Her father tried to rend his coat, he was so grieved.”

“Were both of these girls snatched off the street?”

“In broad daylight. No clue as to who took them. One minute, they’re seen rounding the corner, and the next, they’re floaters, as waterlogged as a mackerel.”

“Have you noticed any pattern?”

“Both of those girls disappeared on a Friday and were found on Sunday or Monday.”

“It must have been a terrible few days for the parents,” I commented.

“Is there anything more you remember, since Inspector Swanson has been so good as to take your files?”

“Not much. All of them seemed to be from good families, though they were not without a brush with the law. Fanny ran away once, and Zinnah took an apple from a cart, but it could have been a confusion with her faulty English.”

“When you get those files back from Scotland Yard, I would like the last known addresses of their parents. You know it is possible that the parents of the other girls went to the authorities.”

“It’s possible,” Dunham admitted, stroking his mustache. “The feud runs deep. I suppose I must communicate with the Yard over this. I don’t want you gentlemen to think we never work for them, but I cannot guarantee their cooperation. I hope Swanson listens to reason. I mean, he has only the one victim, but we have five, and we were first. We have precedence. The case should be ours.”

“Come, Thomas,” Barker said, easing out of his chair. “Let us go back to the Charity Organization Society and ask some questions.”

“The Charity Organization Society?” the inspector repeated.

“What of it?” Barker asked.

“I believe both the Rices and the Goldsteins went through that organization when they first came here. They said so.”

“You did not mention it earlier.”

“Slipped my mind. I mean, it didn’t seem relevant. Is there a connection?”

“The missing girl’s mother works there.”

Dunham said nothing but nodded solemnly.

“Thank you, Inspector. Come, lad. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

There was still a pall over the offices of the Charity Organization Society, where the women had assembled even though it was a Saturday, in hope of getting some word about Gwendolyn DeVere. When we entered, the girl’s mother came forward through the double line of desks. Hypatia DeVere was no longer bedraggled, but her face was very pale and there were dark circles under her eyes. She must have spent the night in torment.

“Have you found anything?” she asked anxiously.

“No, ma’am,” Barker said solemnly. “We circled the district until midnight and showed a photograph from the Carricks to dozens of people. I suspect we shall receive some form of communiqué from her abductors soon, and, of course, Scotland Yard shall begin their search in earnest today as well.”

“They have already been here,” Miss Hill said, coming up beside the major’s wife. “An Inspector Swanson came in not a quarter hour ago.”

“Did he make any comment?” my employer asked.

“He was not pleased that we had hired a private agent,” Mrs. DeVere said, “but he seemed to know you. Why do you think we might hear from my daughter’s abductors?”

“If they originally had hopes of using her for the white slave trade, the quality of her clothing would have told them that she would be worth more for ransom.”

“Do you think so?” the poor woman asked, actually clutching Barker’s arm. “You think she might be ransomed? I have money of my own. I would give anything to have her back.”

“I make no promises, madam,” Barker said cautiously. “I merely state that white slavers are motivated by greed and would be intelligent enough to know that more money could be made by selling her back to you.”

“And if it isn’t a white slave ring?” Miss Hill asked.

“Then we must change our tactics,” Barker responded, evading the question. “We will know by the end of the day, I expect. Might I ask some questions? Mrs. DeVere, what do you remember about yesterday morning before the disappearance?”

“It was a typical day with Gwendolyn. I only bring her occasionally. I wanted to teach her the importance of doing charitable work and to appreciate how well off we are.”

“What are your duties here?” Barker asked.

“I am the bookkeeper. I have a good head for figures, and a great deal of money passes through the C.O.S.”

“We are not a charity, ourselves, although we provide immediate needs, such as blankets and coal,” Miss Hill explained. “Our primary duty is to see that donations from private individuals are evenly distributed among charitable organizations. It would be tragic if one group, such as the Salvation Army, receives an abundance of funds while another, like the Poplar Orphanage, receives nothing and must close its doors. We also see that the deserving poor are conveyed to the best institutions to meet their needs.”

“I see,” Barker responded, turning to Mrs. DeVere. “So what did the wee girl do here while you were busy keeping the books?”

I noticed Miss Hill’s lips broaden a little. Barker is a born Scot, but twenty years in the East and five in London had worn the edges off his accent. I hadn’t heard the phrase “wee girl” anywhere save the novels of Walter Scott.

“Gwendolyn is a good girl and she amuses herself,” her mother explained. “She is becoming quite a young lady. Sometimes she helps Miss Levy and the other girls. She has slipped off before, but always came back within a half hour. She always, always came back.”

“Is there any place she might have gone, anyone she knew in the area?”

“No, sir. No one in particular that I know of.”

“Did she have a desk at which she sat?” Barker asked.

“Yes, sir. That one,” Mrs. DeVere answered, indicating one at the far back of the room. As a group we all moved toward it. It was a smaller desk, not quite in keeping with the others. It looked derelict, and I felt sorry for the girl not merely for what had happened to her now but for being taken here in order to be shown her civic duty. She must have been bored to tears, I thought.

Barker began opening the drawers of the desk, but all he discovered was some paper, a pencil, and a book of fairy stories. The Guv held up the top sheet of paper to the light and scrutinized it, but there were no marks leftover from the sheet that had been on top of it.

“Nothing,” he said. There was a back door not far from the desk. Barker crossed to it and gave the handle a turn. It would not open.

“It is always locked,” Miss Hill stated. “We had thieves one morning a few years ago who stole some blankets. We’ve kept it locked ever since.”

“Is there any other way of egress?”

“No, sir.”

“Were the windows open yesterday morning?”

“Yes, but the ground slopes down from the front,” Miss Hill explained. “It is eight feet to the ground here and ten from the windows in my office.”

Barker flipped the latch on the window and lifted it. There was a bare alley beside it, but Miss Hill’s assessment of the height was correct. A flight of steps led up to the locked back door.

“If she slipped over the sill and hung by the ledge, she might have been able to drop without hurting herself,” I said.

“We would have seen her,” Miss Levy pointed out.

“Was it busy yesterday morning?” Barker asked.

“Very busy,” Miss Hill admitted. “But never so busy as to not see a twelve-year-old girl climbing out the window.”