The Fiend in Human Read online

  ‘Only as required,’ whispers the correspondent, while the turnkey struggles with the rusted metal door.

  ‘What is your judgement of the situation?’

  ‘Our man Ryan spins a clever tale,’ observes Whitty. ‘Note his long confession of crimes – falling just short of the crime of which he is convicted.’

  The turnkey chuckles. ‘They all does that, Squire. Very free they is with their past regrets and their sorry upbringing – it adds to the look of sincerity, don’t you see.’

  ‘Very full of secrets they is, too,’ observes Owler, who has resumed puffing on his dreadful pipe. ‘Always some unsavoury truth, kept secret by Certain Parties, concerning a Prominent Person.’

  ‘Still, Mr Ryan tells his story well.’

  ‘Our man was in the crim-con business, Sir. Such was established in the trial itself.’

  ‘So I understand. In partnership with a woman of ruined character.’

  ‘Name of Sally Hunger,’ says Owler. ‘A woman not unlike Mr Ryan in character.’

  ‘True for you, Squire. Such women make it their business to appeal to the flaws of a propertied man, for whom a charge of criminal conversation would mean ruin. To effect the dodge they require a male accomplice to play the outraged husband, and to provide protection for the female operative,’ replies the turnkey. ‘The female party lures the victim into a most depraved situation, then, at the moment of greatest possible mortification … you may imagine what follows.’

  ‘Quite,’ agrees Whitty. ‘Am I to assume that Mr Ryan performed the role of the outraged husband?’

  ‘The same. However, according to Mr Ryan, the gentlemen took exception to the dodge and refused to pay. What is more (and this is where credulity splinters, if my opinion has any credit), our man claims that there is another woman, very near and dear to him, whom the would-be mark will surely murder if Mr Ryan tells all. Of course it is all a cock.’

  Cock or no, Whitty’s mind has assumed a state of heightened interest, having combined the various impressions of this afternoon with his recollection of Ryan’s trial; the result is a plethora of intriguing, plausible narratives, each capable of eliciting keen interest in The Falcon.

  ‘Mr Owler, if I recall correctly, did not this selfsame Sally Hunger fall as a victim of the Fiend?’

  ‘Precisely, Sir. Your mind is working at high throttle at last. Sally were found in a lane near the Strand, the fifth victim, choked like the rest and mutilated in Chokee Bill fashion. She were Ryan’s undoing, of course. By similar fact, the cloud of suspicion spread to the other murders.’

  ‘It does seem rather a blunder – to kill so close to home.’

  ‘Who knows what rage might move the Fiend? All five was women of low character. All five was choked with a scarf. And there was things done to their faces. The murders was in every aspect identical.’

  ‘But Mr Ryan offers another explanation.’

  ‘Wictimization by the failed object of blackmail, yes.’

  ‘Oh, he has a tale for everything, Squire,’ says the turnkey. ‘That he will hang rather than see harm come to her.’

  ‘An elegant irony – that the blackmailer should die from extortion.’

  ‘Werily, Sir. Too elegant to be true.’

  Comes a contemptuous cackle from the turnkey: ‘The protection of a lady? It is not elegant, it is the oldest cock in The Steel!’

  ‘I expect that is true,’ agrees the correspondent. ‘We all strive to place our ugly little tale in a favourable light.’

  ‘All the same, Squire, one expects better from such a clever man. Sworn to a gentleman’s silence? Did you ever hear of anything so fishy in your life?’

  Having made their way in silence down Mount Pleasant, our partners in journalism now warm themselves with spiced gin at the Hare and Razor, a small, near-empty pub near Guilford Street, frequented by what look to be Coldbath Fields alumni, to judge by the drawn pallor in the faces and the concentration with which they take their liquor.

  About Mr Ryan, Whitty is of two minds. On the one hand, here is a man with as wily and ruthless a nature as one will find on the Ratcliffe Highway, a man spiritually capable of treachery even to the point of killing. Yet there exists a discontinuity between the man and the crime. The correspondent judges Ryan to be, above all, a tactician – a man who does nothing unless it be for money (he was a coiner after all), or some other objective in his own interest. This is hardly the sort of man who kills purely for gratification – as, seemingly, did Chokee Bill. Unless, of course, our man represents a new kind of villain, peculiar to the modern era; something as yet unforeseen.

  Whitty signals the barkeeper for another tot, as the nutmeg and lemon are in perfect combination. At the same time he reminds himself to be careful with spiced gin, for experts claim it to be more addictive than opium.

  ‘From what I have heard this afternoon, Mr Owler, I think you can rest more easy on the hanging. That a whole new story is about to erupt around our man.’

  Owler stares gloomily into his cup. ‘What might produce such an optimistic conclusion, Sir?’

  ‘Our man is an athlete in training – that much is clear. I find it unlikely that he is preparing his body for the grave.’

  ‘True, there is a futility to it.’

  ‘Therefore I have no choice but to conclude that our man is preparing his escape.’

  A LOOMING CRISIS IN BRITISH PRISONS

  by

  Edmund Whitty

  Correspondent

  The Falcon

  Much has been written concerning the failure of the British Prison system, notwithstanding the millions of pounds afforded it, to produce any social benefit other than as a tool for moralists, a playground for thugs and a laboratory for sadistic experimentation. However valid, such objections are soon to be eclipsed by a scandal of sheer incompetence, the which is destined to jolt London to its foundations.

  For indeed, despite the righteous huffing and puffing in the Fourth Estate over a ‘wave of crime’ in the city and the need for sterner measures against evildoers, scant attention has been paid to the incompetent enforcement of those laws which already exist. As a consequence, despite the unprecedented construction of new Houses of Correction and the gaoling of seventeen thousand British men, women and children, no discernible decline in the rate of criminal activity has occurred. More ominously, there is reason to suspect that, in the meanwhile, due to rampant negligence and petty corruption from the highest official to the lowest crusher, the public remains at the mercy of the true fiends who stalk the streets.

  Information has reached the ears of your correspondent indicating that the comedy of errors of which we speak is shortly to come to an explosive and sensational climax.

  16

  The Falcon

  Having secured payment of a barely acceptable five crowns for the predicted crisis in British prisons (which may or may not come to pass, Whitty could not care less), and the public uproar to follow (or not, as the case may be) when a certain condemned prisoner makes (or does not make) his escape, Whitty collects Sala’s stipend from the ancient cashier in spectacles and eye-shade, and upon exiting the building, negotiates the narrow passage to the rear, where the distinctive pong combines the fragrances of cemetery and inkwell. There he opens a small door and passes down a set of cellar steps, where the dank reek of mildew and wet earth contributes to an already rich bouquet. This is the entrance to the printing-office where The Falcon is set in type and brought to press; the firm is under separate ownership from the paper itself, having served a number of organs published in offices currently leased by The Falcon; the two companies have thus grown together like two adjacent plants in a crowded garden. The printing-house is by far the senior business, having printed for hire since broadcast began, some of whose workers – including the particular gentleman Whitty has come to see – have been employed here since they were children.

  Two floors below, having traversed a short hallway and a set of swing doors, a
quite different blend of odours presses onto Whitty’s face like the palm of a sweaty hand, an industrial confection of oil, glue, treacle, turpentine, stale breath, fresh paint, sodden paper and leaked gas, steamed together into an indivisible reek not dissimilar to overcooked cabbage. The noise is enough to rattle your sternum: a hiss on the top of the scale which would puncture your skull, accompanied by the low rumble of wheels on the bottom, with the intermittent rattle of straps and metal bands in between, the totality of which induces a peculiar vibration to the entire building from which nobody within may escape, from the Editor-in-Chief down to the lowest messenger, a vibration so constant that after a few months an employee would swear the building to be as still and as silent as a library.

  Bent beneath the oppressive din, Whitty climbs a steep iron staircase in order to proceed along a walkway of the same material, set against a brick wall made shiny with the stains of a thousand inky, oily hands. Intermittently he turns sideways in order to allow copy boys to pass – dirty-faced and hard-eyed, in paper caps and aprons, their shirt-sleeves rolled high above their elbows to reveal arms like black, stiffened hemp. As he passes an opening in the wall, he momentarily stops to gaze with admiration at the mighty steam engine one floor below, driving the ancient Koening & Baur press, its wheels turning so that flatbeds crash back and forth, causing cylinders and inking rollers to spin – a miracle of furious, untiring co-ordination, a brute symphony of cause and effect, and all so that a sheet of white paper at one end can emerge as a printed broadsheet out the other. The correspondent, who descends from a class well above the printing trades, knows as little as possible about the physical process of putting out a newspaper other than to wonder at man’s capacity to manipulate physical laws to advantage – imperfectly in this case, both in the varying quality of the product and in the machine’s tendency to break down at regular intervals, bringing the entire organ of public speech to a stuttering, ignominious halt.

  ‘Halloo!’ Whitty shouts down to a burly pressman lying on his back, wearing a large black apron over a grease-encrusted suit and cravat, working with an enormous wrench, like a veterinarian tinkering with the kidney of a shuddering beast. ‘You, my man! Have you encountered Mr Bigney?’

  ‘Wha?’

  ‘Bigney! Is he here, old chap?’

  ‘Whafa nomen?’

  ‘Bigney!’

  ‘Bigney wibtisset horse!’

  ‘Beg your pardon?’

  The man points further down the ramp. ‘Tissers!’

  ‘Typesetters? Thank you, Sir!’

  Whitty hurries up the ramp extending from the cat walk and turns in the direction of the typesetting room, whose double doors he is just about to swing open when out comes a small party whose skin has been inked as permanently black as an African’s. A clay pipe is wedged solidly into the gap provided by a missing tooth.

  ‘How do you do, Mr Bigney. Did you receive the material I sent you?’

  ‘Aye, and yor in luck. Yor on the pig’s back for sure.’

  Mr Walter Bigney, whose official designation is that of engraver, is a bit over thirty and looks twice that, due to a distinctive quality common to long-standing members of the trade, the result of any number of chemicals handled, inhaled, eaten and otherwise ingested in the course of a working day. However, even had he landed in a different occupation, Mr Bigney would still retain that particular stuntedness of stature common to the low-born, together with a set of black teeth, the result of a lifelong diet of ale, gin, tea, and bread dipped in animal fat.

  ‘Excellent, Mr Bigney. I knew I could rely upon you.’ Whitty feigns a heartiness he does not feel, for he does not like Mr Bigney and bridles at being called by such familiar names as ‘matey’ and ‘little prince’ by someone so distinctly inferior in rank. One does, after all, retain some semblance of personal pride. Or does one? One might think otherwise, to judge by the company one has been keeping.

  Still, the engraver remains essential to Whitty’s professional well-being, being possessed of that peculiar faculty more of value in this building than in any other – namely, the ability to locate and combine information, at will. This capacity has, in effect, transformed a mediocre engraver into an invaluable library – or at any rate the nearest thing to such a facility in the building. Having taken to heart the sound business principle that supply and demand determine market value, Mr Bigney is able to command an income far in excess of any engraver in the industry, and a degree of deference far in excess of his station.

  Whitty experiences uneasiness whenever he does business with Mr Bigney, a suspicion that the latter views him as but a cog in the larger machinery for social upheaval, all of which has the smell of something French.

  Speaking of things Gallic, Whitty first made use of Mr Bigney’s service during the Courvoisier case over a decade ago – the bewildering and almost motiveless killing of Lord William Russell by his French valet, which investigation became thoroughly corrupted by the £400 reward offered by the family. Thanks to the engraver’s connective facility for incidents of the most miscellaneous nature, Whitty assembled an array of circumstances (the placement of stolen property, the recollection by a servant of a somnolence after consuming beer provided by the suspect, the likelihood that evidence of a break-in was concocted from the inside), which, combined with known and accepted facts about the natural tendencies of foreigners (their childlike avarice in believing that Englishmen carry vast sums of gold; their primitive assumption that by murdering the victim they erase all evidence to convict), created a distinct probability that the valet was guilty.

  Hardly had the jury exited the courthouse before the correspondent, then a rank junior in the trade, burst into the sub-editor’s office (then a vicious ape by the name of Waites), with a set of articles questioning the advisability of hiring foreigners as servants, which engendered a satisfying panic among the Mayfair set. This triumph secured Whitty the post of correspondent on public hangings over his then rival at the paper, Fraser. The latter subsequently went on to secure a position at Dodd’s, and has been undertaking a war of attrition ever hence.

  ‘So my little prince would be asking after Mrs Marlowe.’ This from Bigney, maddeningly cryptic as always.

  ‘Mrs Marlowe? I don’t recall having mentioned anyone by that name.’

  ‘That’s why yor’ll pay yor friend Bigney his price.’ Whereupon the engraver reveals his teeth in what Whitty presumes to be meant as a smile.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Bigney, but I cannot hear above the noise well enough for proper discussion. If I may presume that you have something for me, may we step outside a moment?’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  ‘Your pleasure usually comes at my expense.’

  ‘Get out yor pocketbook, matey, and prepare for an improvement of yor professional prospects.’

  In the comparative silence of the outdoors, the correspondent’s ears ring like an after-tone of the bell in Coldbath Fields as he follows at a servant’s pace behind Mr Bigney on a turn around Ingester Square, in a dismal mist, sheltered by the weary-looking plane tree – which, seemingly afflicted by some wasting disease, reaches for the narrow patch of night overhead like a knotty hand from the grave.

  The engraver is a proud man, inappropriately proud, with the false superiority of the accidentally talented – a vague, malevolent smugness.

  Whitty reflects upon Mr Darwin and Mr Marx, on animal evolution and the eventual arrival of an Industrial Man – the latter consisting of that which remains of a human being after the removal of faculties incompatible with mechanized production. Before him may walk just such a prototype, Mr Bigney having been whittled down to the minimum necessary for the fulfilment of his purpose. The man cannot hear properly, nor can he appear in society without attracting alarmed stares at the condition of his skin (skin being the currency with which one trades first impressions); and yet, within the confines of this printing establishment, Bigney is perfectly suited to his environment, a bespoke creation of memory,
malice and craft.

  Whitty considers the faculty known as hyperamnesia – Bigney’s uncanny ability to locate everything he has seen or read. Such prodigies are by no means uncommon in the hallways of journals and newspapers; every paper in London contains at least one unaccountably vast human storehouse of information – of crimes, scandals, plagues, accidents, together with their leading actors and various connectivities …

  ‘Pay attention now, I have not all night to be mooning about with the jabbering class.’

  ‘On the contrary, Bigney, I eagerly await your information.’

  ‘Yor asked to pursue a line of enquiry concerning a certain female admirer what is supplying the Fiend in Human with vittles and suchlike.’

  ‘That is indeed the direction I am taking.’

  ‘It led to a diversity of facts. Collecting the evidence required my attention for most of the day.’ Bigney leans against the rusty iron fence surrounding the churchyard and lights his pipe.

  ‘Never mind the cost for now. Who is your Mrs Marlowe?’

  ‘By Mrs Marlowe yor would be meaning Mrs Cox.’

  ‘And who is Mrs Cox? I’d be grateful if you’d come to the point.’

  ‘By Mrs Cox, yor would be meaning Miss Hurtle.’

  ‘Damn me, Bigney, I am beginning to become annoyed.’

  Bigney places a black forefinger beside his nose, winking conspiratorially. ‘There were a certain connectivity in this Sorrowful Lamentation yor gave me, what struck me as familiar.’

  ‘So it seemed to me, though I couldn’t place it.’

  ‘Allow me to refresh yor memory.’ Whereupon the engraver recites part of the patterer’s Sorrowful Lamentation which the correspondent left with him earlier, pointedly by memory, though having glanced at it but once:

  O once I knew a love so true,

  Our hearts we freely gave;