The Mangle Street Murders Part 24

*You throw like a girl,' Maybury jeered.

*Would you like me to show you how a real girl can throw?' I asked and the inspector grimaced.

*Just do it, Perkins.' He was red with frustration. *And, if you do not retrieve your equipment, Maybury, the cost of replacing it will be docked from your wages.'

Perkins fell short again and hauled in, while Maybury went down the bank to wrench at his rope from a different angle.

*Perhaps we could hire a rowing boat,' I said as, with another grunt, Perkins let his missile go and this time it landed perfectly, plunging into the water about two feet beyond the mound.

*At last.' Inspector Pound exhaled. *Reel it in, Perkins.'

Perkins pulled the rope and the end of the hook rose above the mound, but the barbs engaged and it began to float towards us.

*It's heavy.' Perkins adjusted his grip and Maybury took hold of the rope too.

The green surface broke, leaving a trail of muddy water in its wake as the mound ploughed steadily along now.

*It is about the right size,' Inspector Pound said and Perkins slipped, his foot going over the edge, letting go of the rope as he s.n.a.t.c.hed at his colleague to save himself, and the two men tumbled backwards, falling into the nettles behind them. Inspector Pound put his foot on the rope as it snaked back into the ca.n.a.l.

*Imbeciles,' he said under his breath, but Sidney Grice was not even looking at them. His attention was fixed on the mound which had rotated a quarter turn with the sudden release of tension, and something reared out of the slime, grey and pocked with decay, unreal and yet unmistakeable, a mud-clogged nose and an eaten lip bobbing in the filth five yards away.

Sidney Grice's face was triumphant.

*Not a bad morning's fishing,' he said. *Inspector, allow me to introduce you to the eponymous hero of Rigoletto, otherwise known as the late Mr James Hoggart.'

34.

Buckets and Sacks *And I thought the ca.n.a.l smelled bad,' Sidney Grice said, clamping his handkerchief firmly over his nose and mouth as the body was heaved up out of the water and deposited supine on the weed-choked towpath.

Perkins and Maybury turned away and Inspector Pound took a few steps backwards, but I had smelled death before many times, fresh on my father's table and old in the dysenteric field hospitals of Natal, and I would not let it overcome me. I swallowed hard but stayed my ground. If Sidney Grice could stand with the rotting man at his feet, so could and so would I. If only it had not been the face.

His face was half-eaten by rats and decay. The eyes and their lids had gone as had the upper lip and half the lower and most of the nose, the cavity in its place bubbling with a brown froth, and the left ear was missing and something slug-like oozed out of the crater in its place.

I could probably have coped with that face but it was the vapours of corruption that really unbalanced me. They hissed out of him in a last lost word.

I stumbled back. *I did not know.' But n.o.body was listening to me.

*Send into the factory for some buckets of water,' Sidney Grice called to the inspector, who jerked his head towards his men, who ran back the way we had come and across a wooden bridge over a bricked drainage ditch.

The body wore tails and a high-collared shirt with a black tie, sagging but still in an extravagant bow. His boots were still on his feet.

*Looks like he was going to the opera.' Inspector Pound leaned forwards but stayed well back.

*He was.' Sidney Grice suppressed a choke.

The inspector produced his bottle of camphor oil and emptied it on to his handkerchief.

*You said you had none left,' my guardian said.

*Not so.' Inspector Pound's voice was m.u.f.fled. *I said I had none to spare.'

The constables returned with two metal pails and dowsed the face and hands and upper body carefully, under Sidney Grice's instruction. Several of the dead man's fingers had been chewed off, and he was wearing a canary yellow waistcoat, badly shredded.

Sidney Grice walked clockwise slowly round the body, stopped, and then walked counter-clockwise.

*No obvious frontal wounds.' He turned to Inspector Pound. *You might as well take him to the morgue, but please make sure that the clothes are not thrown away this time and that the pockets are searched.'

The inspector's mouth tensed.

*All right, men, get this body moved.'

*What?' Perkins asked in horror.

*How?' Maybury asked.

*Take the buckets back to the factory,' Inspector Pound said patiently, *and ask for some spare sacks to roll it on to.'

*I think we will leave them to it,' Sidney Grice said to me. *I expect you could do with a cup of tea.'

Back at Gower Street I rushed to my room to get out of my boots and dress. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands and face and blew my nose, and went back to my room and smoked a cigarette out of the window and drank a large gin very quickly, then another more slowly with a second cigarette. I sprayed myself with Fougere, but the stench still filled my nostrils and a taste clung in my mouth. My living flesh was saturated with putrefaction.

35.

Caligula Inspector Pound cleared his desk. He pushed everything on to the floor, instantly turning a mess into chaos. He sat behind the desk in a creaky swivel chair as we sat facing him on two old uprights.

*Well, we have found out how he was killed.' He put down a plain brown cardboard folder. *I was worried that the corpse would be too decayed for that but the surgeon tells me there is no doubt about it a a stab wound in the back of his neck. The skin and muscles were too rotted to tell him anything, but the bones of his spine had been separated from the base of the skull by a short sharp blade.'

*A professional job then,' Sidney Grice said and the inspector nodded.

*It reminds me of a murder we had in seventy-eight. A Sicilian steamer captain found floating in the East India Docks with the same sort of wound. We never caught the culprit and the crew were very nervous about talking to us but, from what we could piece together, it was the work of a hired a.s.sa.s.sin. There is a lot of rivalry between the various family gangs there.'

*Rivincita,' I said, but my guardian brushed the word aside.

*No other obvious injuries a broken bones, for example?' he asked.

*None that he could find.' Inspector Pound brought out his meerschaum pipe. The bowl had been carved into a woman's face, her hair flowing backwards. He blew experimentally down the stem.

*Who performed the post-mortem examination?'

*Mr Rawlings.'

*He is a thorough man.' Sidney Grice leaned back. *Anything in the dead man's pockets? Any identification, for example?'

*All his pockets were empty save one,' Inspector Pound said. *In fact most of them were sewn up.'

*Now why would that be?'

*I could not say.' He opened his leather pouch and fed some tobacco into the pipe.

*They were obviously his stage clothes,' I said. *So he would not have any use for pockets and st.i.tching them keeps the costume in better shape.'

If either man heard me they gave no sign of it.

*You said save one,' Sidney Grice said, and Inspector Pound opened the folder grimly.

*I think you need to see this,' he said, and placed an oblong brown envelope on to the gouged wooden desktop. *Mr Rawlings found it in the inside jacket pocket.'

*Left or right?'

*Left.'

Sidney Grice picked it up and shot one hand to his eye.

*It is addressed to you,' he said and read out, *For the urgent attention of Inspector Pound, Marylebone Police Station.'

*Just as well it is in pencil,' the inspector said. *Ink would have run and be completely unreadable.'

*Was the envelope sealed?'

*I believe so.' He tamped the tobacco lightly with an oval disc on the end of his penknife.

Sidney Grice folded back the flap and took out a single piece of paper and laid it out flat.

*The handwriting and spelling are good,' he said.

*A man's hand,' Inspector Pound said, and Sidney Grice paled.

*Some sort of trick,' he said.

*None that I can see.' Inspector Pound pulled a straying strand of tobacco from the bowl and placed it back in the pouch.

*What is it?' I asked and Sidney Grice said quietly, *Read it out, Miss Middleton. I need to think.'

I picked up the letter. It was stained and slightly torn but still clearly legible. The writing was small and neat, in strong square letters, and both sides of the paper were filled.

*Dear Inspector Pound

*I am writing to you because I know you to be a man of honour who will not hesitate to admit he has made a mistake if it will save an innocent man from the Gallows and, be in no doubt about it, WILLIAM ASHBEY IS INNOCENT.

*How do I know this? Because I AM THE MURDERER OF SARAH ASHBEY. I crept into her sitting room and killed her with a crinkle-bladed knife I bought in their shop. I put my hand over her mouth and stabbed her in the heart before she could make a sound, and then I stabbed her again and again, forty times in all. I counted every cut. She never did me any wrong except for one thing. I saw her walking down the street. She had beautiful full lips and I smiled at her, but she walked straight past without even giving me a glance and I do not take kindly to being ignored. So I decided to make sure she would remember me FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE.

*The last person she ever saw was me, while her simpleton husband snored in the next room. I wanted to wake him up and tell him that he sold me the knife that killed his wife but he will know soon enough, when he reads this. I crept out of the front door. The stupid match girl was asleep outside. I stole a box of vespers from her tray.

*My bloodl.u.s.t was up after I did it. I went home but I could not sit down. I was so excited and I thought a why stop at one? a so I went out and did it again. This one was younger and I enjoyed the cutting of her all the more a the surprise when she saw me turning to terror when she saw the knife a the way she tried to fight me off and escape, the way she begged. Lord, how she squealed, but that only made it better. I did not have to worry about the noise this time.

*And when it was over I thought I would play a little game. So I put her body in a box. n.o.body has found her yet, though, so I had better tell you where she is. She lived and died in the bas.e.m.e.nt of 37 Chandler Street. The number is on the front door. Even your lot should be able to find that.'

The inspector struck a vesper and I carried on reading.

*Why am I telling you this? Because I do not want that lumbering idiot of a shopkeeper to get the credit for my artistry. I shall kill a dozen women before you catch me, IF you ever catch me. Maybe I shall make it a hundred a all that hot blood on my hands a I have the taste for it now.

*I started with those two wh.o.r.es on Slurry Street. Who knows where it might end?

*Do not waste your time listening to Mr Grice. He will try to steal your glory and he will never catch me, but you might, and here is a little clue to put you on the scent.

*You will know me as CALLIGULLA.'

Inspector Pound held the flame over his pipe and sucked it down two or three times before he blew it out. Grey wisps curled over the rim, thickening into small fragrant clouds that reminded me of my father in the long evenings we shared by the fire when his sight was failing and I would read to him. The inspector snapped the match and tossed it into a bin on the floor. He sat back to watch my guardian lost in thought, and it must have been the smoke that brought a tear to my eye.

My father did not approve of schools. He had been bullied at his and my mother, he told me, had been made miserable by her governess. And so he decided to teach me himself. But my father was a busy man. He had thrown himself into his medical and military duties and, whilst they brought him no consolation, they did distract him from his grief. He taught me the three R's and gave me a free rein in his library. I pored over atlases and anatomical textbooks. I fell in love with Horace and Shakespeare's sonnets. I studied military campaigns and astronomy. It was, perhaps, an eccentric education but, I believe, a good one. I never learned the pianoforte or sewing. I was not taught deportment but you were glad of that, you told me. I moved like a woman, you said, not like a standard lamp on castors.