The Limehouse Text (8 page)

“Surely he’s gone, sir,” I said, “and having a cup of hot tea somewhere. Perhaps we should do the same.”

For once I’d talked sense. Cyrus Barker nodded and we went inside.

“Look in the kitchen, lad, and do not neglect the pantry. Harm and I will have a look in the cellar.”

“But he went out the back door,” I protested.

“We have the evidence only of the open back door. No one saw him leave. If he is still here, he might have moved during our search of the garden. I fear we must search the entire house.”

I nodded wearily and walked into the kitchen. The room was deserted, of course, the moonlight bathing Dummolard’s copper pots in a blue glow. I wanted to go to bed, but now it appeared we would be spending the rest of the night on a wild-goose chase. I opened the pantry door, and the next thing I knew, Mac’s gun was kicked out of my hand, sliding across the counter and over it, out of reach. I blocked a blow to my face with my good arm instinctively, since all I could see was a black shape in the darkness.

“Sir—” I began, but a kick caught me in the chest, knocking the air out of me. I don’t know if he then kicked my feet out from under me or whether I just fell to the floor. I was preoccupied with trying to breathe. I rolled over, despite the cast, which I now loathed more than anything in the world, and watched the intruder run out the back door. I wanted to yell, to warn Barker, but I couldn’t draw enough breath into my lungs to get anything out.

A half minute later, Barker’s head came ’round the corner. I waved vaguely toward the door and he was gone. I lay back and closed my eyes, willing myself to calm down. Slowly, the pain in my chest subsided and I was able to breathe again.

Barker returned a few minutes later. “Up and over the wall,” he stated. For some reason, he decided I must need a glass of water. He set about searching for a tumbler. It was the first time I had ever seen him in the kitchen, there being some unwritten rule that this was Dummolard’s domain. He found the glassware in one of the cupboards and pumped water into it over the sink.

“Gave as well as got?” he asked, as he handed me the glass.

“Not even close, I’m afraid,” I admitted. “If you don’t mind, now that our intruder is definitely gone, I would like to go back to bed.”

“Sorry, lad. We shall have to go over the grounds again. I believe I shall sleep on the sofa in the library tonight with Mac’s shotgun close to hand. This fellow has caught me out once. I am not going to let it happen again.”

Barker helped me up and we went outside.

“Why didn’t he kill me when he had the chance?” I wondered aloud.

“He would not risk being caught in the kitchen. There are too many weapons at hand for a pair of trained fighters. It would have been a bloodbath. When you flushed him out, he had no other thought but to escape to fight another day.”

Our second examination of the garden, like the first, yielded nothing. I went upstairs and crawled into bed. As tired as I was, I had little sleep that night. Every creak had me sitting up in bed.

N
EVIL BAINBRIDGE’S FUNERAL WAS NOT TO BE
forgotten. As if in sympathy, rain wept steadily from an iron-gray heaven, icy raindrops that one could hear break on the waterproofs of the constables in attendance. All of us were in black and in misery, as if being here reminded us all of our own mortality. Even the statues of angels and men, ingrained with soot like sketches in charcoal, looked forlorn and miserable, wishing they could be somewhere else; but there was nowhere to go. The whole of London was blanketed under a leaden sky.

Standing under my umbrella, huddled into my macintosh for warmth, I wondered how long the service would go on. There was a great deal of ceremony to get through. It is rare when an officer is killed, and Scotland Yard seeks for an air of solemn grandeur and profound tragedy. Every now and then I got a glimpse within the waterproofs of the dress uniforms, with their epaulettes and braids, helmets and white gloves, of the constables and inspectors. In a show of toughness on the part of the Yard, none carried umbrellas, and the constables stood at attention, chins dripping and ice crystals lodged in their mustaches. Barker and I had no such restriction and made full use of our umbrellas, the droplets drumming on the waxed cotton and falling in a circle around us, save when a gust of cold wind whipped them over our trousers and shoes. I like rainy mornings in London, even in February, but only when I can spend them in a nice coffeehouse or a Charing Cross bookshop. Only lunatics, or someone heavily entrenched in ritual and duty, would be out on a morning like this.

Bainbridge’s widow was not a cheering sight. She was heavy and severe under a pair of beetling brows and a bonnet full of black feathers, as if a raven had wandered onto her hat and died of pure wretchedness. She glared through the commissioner’s address, she glared through the brief eulogy the minister gave, and she glared as her late husband’s wooden coffin was set to rest at the bottom of the grave. I would have liked to have given her the benefit of the doubt and to have said she had once been beautiful or kind or solicitous of the poor, but I was not feeling generous at that moment. Generosity comes with dry socks, I think.

I was in awe of death then, and now after many years and experiences, still am. I have never grown jaded about it. One minute we are sentient beings and the next, fodder for worms. What was the Good Lord thinking? I wished I had the assurance my employer had. There he stood beside me under his umbrella in his black macintosh, bowler hat coming down almost to the top of his spectacles, solemn, yes, but serene. He did not seem to feel the wet or the cold or the fear of death. I knew without asking that he was not subject to the doubts that were causing my misery and that afterward he would comment upon the sermon or the sublimity of the ceremony. I wondered whether it was merely the stoical training he had undergone in his lifetime, or if it was his character—in which case, I might never attain it.

“I think old Bainy would have approved of his funeral,” Barker said, as we walked from the grave after the ceremony had ended. “He was finally given the recognition by his superiors he deserved.”

We stopped to give way to a knot of Metropolitan Police dignitaries, including Commissioner Henderson of the Criminal Investigation Department and Munro of the Special Irish Branch. They all shot a cold glare Barker’s way, as if to ask, “Who let him in?” In the center was Terence Poole, looking worse even than I felt. The responsibility of finding Bainbridge’s killer fell foursquare upon his shoulders. I am sure all had taken him in hand, urging him to find this killer, as if he were a lost dog who simply needed to be rounded up. I would imagine there was a barb or two in the commissioner’s speech reserved just for Barker’s old friend and physical culture partner.

It was not my original intent to become an enquiry agent’s assistant, but I was glad at least that we were private rather than public servants. We answered to no one but our clients. We could stop and have lunch and talk about something else for a while and could go home to a nice meal and a good soak, at least most of the time. We had half Saturdays and full Sundays off. Admittedly, on some cases, we might work ’round the clock, but, again, that was part of the elasticity of our position.

I thought the Scotland Yard officials’ opinion of us unfair, saying we “lived by our wits,” the same phrase they used for safecrackers and confidence men. Some private agents were men who had been unsuccessful as police constables, I knew, and were not above breaking into residences to acquire evidence or performing other illegal activities. Cyrus Barker, whom I considered the cream of his profession, rarely used such techniques. He might bend a rule, but he rarely broke one. Were they jealous of his success, perhaps, or did they look down their noses at the fact that he placed advertisements in the newspapers for his services? For whatever reason, it was yet another act of which the Guv took no notice. As far as he was concerned, it was just more rain down the back of his waterproof.

My teeth were chattering when we came out of the cemetery, and I knew our chances of finding a cab were almost nonexistent. We were in Whitechapel, a very downtrodden section of town hard by the City. Barker seemed to know where he was going, if I didn’t. He took a left at one corner, a right at the next, and passed through an alleyway so narrow we had to close our umbrellas.
How much longer were we going to walk?
I wondered. My trouser legs were soaked through and my boots were becoming sodden.

Barker opened the door to a pub called the Ten Bells and I stepped gratefully inside. Warmth from food and human bodies and a roaring fire at one end flushed my features and fogged Barker’s spectacles. We stood at the bar and ordered pints and fell upon the free meal offered: boiled eggs and cheese, pickles and pickled onions, and crusty slices of bread slathered in butter. We took it all in and when our stomachs were full and our pint glasses half empty, we took off our waterproofs and sat down on a bench by the fire.
God bless the Ten Bells and proper publicans everywhere,
I thought.

“Do you know every building in London?” I asked.

“Almost, and you should, too. I have some very good ordnance maps, with my own notes jotted on them, that I made during my first few years here. It is important at times to know where the closest constabulary is or even the closest grog shop. Nice place, this, eh?”

“Better than Whitechapel deserves.”

Barker got out his traveling pipe and set it ablaze, and we spent an agreeable half hour baking our feet dry again on the fender, thinking of the constables who had changed out of their dress blacks and were back on their beats until day’s end.

“Lad, you’re falling asleep.”

I sniffed and rubbed my face. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t get much rest last night. Do you think our killer might simply give up now that he knows you’re after him?”

“He won’t give up. He has killed several times and has proven how unrelenting his determination is to get his hands on the manuscript.”

“It makes no sense. I mean, Bainbridge was right: it is just a book. Let us say the killer did lay hands on it. What would he do with it? It wouldn’t make him rich or powerful.”

“I’ll admit, lad, I haven’t worked that out myself. He may never have told a soul. Whatever it is, I feel it is something big, something very important, at least to him. He must not have it. I shall not be content until I see it back in the monastery it came from.”

“Even if we have to take it there ourselves?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

“But first, you’ll have to get it again, because you gave it to a Chinaman.”

“I trust I can lay hands on it when the moment comes.”

“Is it in the East End?”

Barker knocked his pipe on the fender. “This is not a parlor game, lad. Come. We have work to do.”

“Where to next, sir?” I asked, putting down my empty pint glass. My boots had dried out a little, and I had convinced myself that somewhere in the world at that moment a warm sun was shining down and might even come here someday. If anything, the room suddenly seemed too hot, pungent with hops and tobacco smoke. I wanted to be out again in the cold, crisp air.

“K Division, or at least Bainbridge’s constabulary in East India Dock Road. I want to get permission to go through his files. If he had a clue or a possible suspect in the crime, he wouldn’t have told us, not right away. He came to us only because he could not legally get the book himself. I am almost surprised he did not simply thump Mr. Hurtz with his truncheon and take it. Bainbridge was known for the direct approach, and he was a steady officer for many years.”

We took the tram into Limehouse. Sailor town does not improve in inclement weather, save that the pavement is not crowded by street sellers of dried squid and other “treats.” We had the streets to ourselves. Merchants halfheartedly called to us as we passed from the shadows of their shops. They recognized Barker now. It was
Shi Shi Ji
this and
Shi Shi Ji
that. They didn’t bother translating for my benefit. Barker stopped to talk once or twice.
This was it,
I told myself.
He’s going to talk to all six hundred Chinamen in London, and when he’s done with them, he’ll start on the Lascars.

East India Dock Road is a continuation of Commercial Road, but the great thoroughfare dwindles considerably when it reaches the dockyards. Bainbridge’s constabulary was a red brick building tucked in among the others in the street like a book on a shelf. Only the blue light suspended out in the street gave warning that this was the sole bastion of law and order in this sailor’s haven. Stepping inside, I was expecting the chaos I’ve seen before in the booking area of A Division at Great Scotland Yard itself. It was not so. There were no more than two or three constables on duty, but they seemed to have everything in hand. A lone fellow in a pair of wrist darbies sat talking with an officer, and two citizens waited patiently to be served. It looked as if Bainbridge had run a tight ship. One could get the impression that this was a sleepy little backwater constabulary where nothing ever happens. One would, however, be wrong. The first thing we discovered when we walked in the door was that the constabulary had just narrowly missed being burned to the ground. Bainbridge’s files, the ones we had come to see, had been reduced to ash.

“Burned, you say?” the Guv rasped to the solid-looking police sergeant in charge of the desk. “All of them?”

“Aye, sir. A little after midnight, it was. P. C. Threadgill, he does the overnight duty, you see, he smelled smoke and saw it coming from under the inspector’s door. The dustbin had been set in the middle of the floor and some files set alight in it. A regular blaze it was, according to Threadgill, and he was afeared it’d burn down the building. He poured water and sand from the fire bucket on it and then opened windows down the hall to kill the smoke. It was burnt to cinders, all them files Bainy—I mean Detective Inspector Bainbridge—had recorded so metic’lously. A crying shame, I says, and the place all reeking of smoke now. The back windows is open and all of us with our teeth chattering.”

“May I see his office?” Barker asked.

The constable hesitated a moment. We were unofficial, after all, but then, anything of interest had already been burned. He finally nodded. “A quick look wouldn’t hurt nothing, I ’spect.”

“You have no suspects?” my employer asked as we were led back to the office.

“Not a one that we can pin down,” the constable admitted. “And before you ask, no, not so much as a scrap of paper could be saved. Between the fire, the sand, and the water, there was nothing but moldering ash.”

“Murder,” the Guv muttered to me as we walked, “of a police officer and now arson in a London constabulary. This killer would appear to have no fear of Scotland Yard at all.”

The constable set his key in the lock and turned it. The smell of smoke was far stronger in here, though nothing had been burned save the files. A gray discoloration marked the center of the ceiling over the spot where the bin stood.

“Was this open last night?” my employer asked, pointing toward the open window.

“Aye, sir, but it’s a sheer wall. It would take a monkey to climb it.”

Barker grunted and moved to the desk on which was a common blotter of green paper, a map of the city, and pencils standing in a cup. A wooden chair on casters was pulled up to the desk, a chair which had been worn down by the seat of Bainbridge’s trousers for years but would be worn down no farther. A few prints of the early days of the station and the Bow Street Runners hung on the wall.
There was not much left behind after so many years on duty,
I thought.

“Took the top blotter sheet, too,” the constable noted.

“Why?” Barker queried.

“Old Bainy was a sketcher, sir. It was how he worked out his cases. Helped him think, he said. Wasn’t a bad artist, neither. Could have had him a job as an illustrator for the newspapers if he weren’t a copper down to his boots.”

“Interesting,” Barker declared, pouring the pencils from the cup onto the blotter. Taking a pencil in his hand, he started in the upper right-hand corner and began to move the lead back and forth across the blotting paper. What child in Britain had not taken a piece of paper to an old gravestone and rubbed an etching of an old knight or dame?

“We shall look this over, and if it bears fruit, you shall give it to Inspector Poole when he comes in.”