The Murderer's Apprentice Read online

  The Murderer’s Apprentice

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Acknowledgements

  The Inspector Ben Ross Mysteries

  Copyright

  ‘Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city…

  Most of the shops lighted before their time – as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.’

  Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853

  ‘Criminal cases are continually hinging upon that one point. A man is suspected of a crime months perhaps after it has been committed. His linen or clothes are examined, and brownish stains discovered upon them. Are they bloodstains, or mud stains, or rust stains, or fruit stains, or what are they? This is a question which has puzzled many an expert, and why? Because there was no reliable test.’

  Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887

  Chapter One

  Inspector Ben Ross

  Londoners are rightly proud of the gas lighting that has made the streets so much safer at night than in their grandfathers’ day. Respectable Londoners, that is to say. There are plenty of residents who do not want any kind of light shining on their activities. They are the folk who interest me and any other police officer.

  Unfortunately there is one thing that renders the gas lamps almost useless and provides plenty of cover for wrongdoing: it is the London fog. It is as though evil had found its natural milieu, creeping its way unseen into every nook and cranny. Fog is the villain’s willing accomplice and the murderer’s quick-to-learn apprentice.

  The early months of 1870 had tested our hardiness to breaking point. We were now in March, yet still the snow lay banked up and soot-coated in sheltered corners. The bitter wind nipped at noses and ears; and even the best of gloves couldn’t protect chilled fingers. People had begun to murmur wistfully about spring, many as if remembering an old departed friend. More optimistic hearts spoke of it not being many weeks away, at least according to the calendar.

  Well, you would never have guessed it. London, in addition to the cold, had been assailed for the past week by a foul-smelling, suffocating pea-souper. Sea mists rolled upriver and encountered the pall of coal smoke belching from every chimney, whether domestic or industrial. Also contributing were the engines puffing in and out of our great railway termini, odours from the giant gasometers, the noxious vapours from the Thames mud at low tide, the rotting heaps of rubbish in the slum courtyards and nameless refuse running in the gutters, and there you have it: a ‘London Particular’ as it’s known. It wraps itself around everything like a dirty yellow blanket, slips into a house the moment a door is opened; and finds any chink in a window frame. Londoners are perversely proud of that, too. Fog is something they do better than anyone else.

  Beggars and vagrants froze in the streets overnight. Drunken revellers stumbled from the alehouses and sprawled on the cobbles. Unable to aid themselves, and unseen in the murk by passers-by, their stiffened corpses were often discovered when some other person tripped over them.

  Where it had melted, snow had now turned to icy slush. The horses had pieces of sacking tied over their hooves to prevent them slipping and would have looked comical in these winter boots if they could have been seen in the gloom. As it was, the familiar clip-clop of their approach was muffled and you couldn’t always hear them coming. There would be a sudden rattle of wheels out there in the greyish-yellow curtain, and a dull thud, perhaps a sudden nervous whinny, followed by a shout from the cabbie or other driver. The pedestrian had to leap aside, hoping, as he did so, that he leaped in the right direction. Understandably, accidents had become commonplace.

  The swirling monster breathed sickness and death on its clammy intrusive breath. The very young and the very old were its first victims but no one was safe. On all sides the coughs and wheezes of the stricken could be heard in the murk; and served better than any lantern in locating pedestrians. It sometimes seemed as if most of London was ailing. The casual wards of the workhouses were full. Hopeful queues formed every evening but most were turned away. The children of the poor were sewn into bodices of wadded cotton to be cut free and emerge like moths from a chrysalis in spring – if they survived until then.

  At Scotland Yard, that Monday morning, the week had not started well. We had our fair share of casualties, brought about by the cold and damp. Even a seemingly immovable fixture like Superintendent Dunn had succumbed. He was at home in bed with a mustard poultice on his chest and his feet on a stone hot-water bottle, under the watchful eye of Mrs Dunn. His absence freed us from his demands to know what we were all doing; and why this or that criminal had not yet been brought to book. But it also slowed the making of decisions. This meant much day-to-day business fell to me. I did not mind; but I did wonder what would happen when Dunn returned, restored to vigour, and turned his eagle eye on everything I’d instigated in his absence.

  Another inspector and three constables were absent sick, adding to my load. Worryingly, stalwart Sergeant Morris, on whom I depended, was croaking like a bullfrog. He kept saying he was all right but he didn’t look it. And Constable Biddle had a cold.

  You might think that Biddle’s cold was the least of my worries but in reality it was not. It struck very close to home because Biddle is walking out with our maid of all work, Bessie. He had been discovered in our kitchen the previous evening, with his head over a bowl of steaming water laced with Friar’s Balsam, and a towel over the lot. Standing over him was Bessie and every time he threw back the towel, and raised his scarlet, perspiring face to complain, she pushed his head down again and covered it over. His muffled cries attracted Lizzie, my wife, who came upon the scene. While sympathetic to Biddle’s plight, she promptly banned him from the house until his cold was better. ‘Or we’ll all have it,’ she said briskly.

  Bessie was distraught, but Lizzie unrelenting, pointing out that Biddle had a mother to take care of him. Bessie bridles at talk of Mrs Biddle. There is some friction there. Mrs Biddle claims Bessie wants to rob her of her only support, her son, and leave her all alone. ‘And me with my knees’, as she is wont to add.

  This was the situation when, at two o’clock on a dark afternoon and all gas mantles in the building already hissing, the officer on the downstairs desk was startled by an apparition which burst through the front door.

  The combination of a Scotch cap pulled down about his ears and a red muffler wound round his neck hid the visitor’s face. Most strangely, he wore a shabby floor-length fur coat of considerable age. Billows of smoky moisture swirled around him.

  ‘I thought at first it was a performing bear on its hind paws, and wearing a hat,’ said the desk officer later. ‘It gave me quite a turn.’

  The newcomer unwound the muffler and declared, ‘I come to tell you about an ’orrid murder!’

  Chapter Two

  The visitor went on to declare that
the body of a young woman had been discovered in the kitchen refuse bin kept in the yard behind the restaurant where he worked as kitchen boy. All this was more than enough for the desk officer. The visitor was brought up to see me.

  Now we had been joined in my cramped office by Morris, and by Biddle, who brought with him his cold, but also a notebook ready to take a statement.

  Divested of his motley outerwear, the informant proved to be about sixteen or seventeen years of age. He still wore his grubby apron. He was a stubby youth whose build suggested he made short work of any leftovers that came back from the dining room. I was surprised there was anything left to go in the refuse bin. His head only reached the middle button of my waistcoat and, with his generous girth, gave the impression that, supported by his short legs, the rest of his body measured pretty much the same in all directions, like a dice. His name was Horace Worth.

  ‘It’s not my fault, gents,’ said Horace, deeply aggrieved at being expelled from the warm kitchen on such an errand, and what he took as a lack of sympathy on our part. ‘I don’t know why everyone is blaming me.’

  ‘We’re not blaming you, my lad,’ rumbled Morris, ‘not unless this turns out to be a load of nonsense.’

  ‘I didn’t put her there. I didn’t know she was there. If I’d known she was, I’d have stayed in the kitchen and not put my nose outa the door. I swear on a stack of Bibles I don’t know how she got there. It’s not my fault, is it? But first O’Brian goes hitting me over the head with a ladle…’

  ‘Who is O’Brian?’

  ‘He’s the cook. He’s a bad-tempered b—. He’s bad-tempered at the best of times. When I ran in and told him what a horrible shock I’d had – and it frightened the life outa me, you can believe that! Well, O’Brian, he hit me over the head with a ladle.’ The speaker rubbed his skull at the memory. ‘And then Mr Bellini comes and he starts on me. He’s the owner. Worst of all, she turns up, his wife. She’s a dragon, that’s what she is! A regular dragon. She keeps her eye on the money,’ he added confidingly. ‘The fruit and veg merchants know her for the way she haggles over the price of every potato.’

  ‘What’s the name of this chophouse?’

  ‘We’re called the Imperial Dining Rooms,’ Horace replied grandly. ‘We’re in New Bond Street and we are a quality establishment. So, Mr Bellini says I’m to go to Scotland Yard. Never mind how much trouble I had getting here. You can’t see your hand in front of your face out there. Half the time I didn’t know if I was going north or south.’ He pronounced ‘th’ as if it were ‘f’, the directions coming out as ‘norf’ and ‘sarf’.

  ‘You had only to stop the first constable you met and inform him,’ croaked Morris, unsympathetic to our visitor’s hardship. ‘He would have returned with you to your place of employment and found out a bit more about it, before making a detailed report in an official manner.’

  ‘I already told you, Mr Bellini said I was to come to the Yard,’ retorted Horace with dignity. ‘He said he didn’t want no ordinary bluebottle poking about. He wanted an officer who’d know what to do with a dead ’un. I was to come here to the Yard and nowhere else. Anyway, I didn’t see any constable. I heard one. He was out in the middle of Piccadilly trying to sort out some mix-up between a cabbie and a costermonger’s cart. I couldn’t see him, only heard him shouting. They was all shouting, the cabbie, the costermonger and a few other people. There was veg rolling about all over the road. I trod on a parsnip.’

  By way of proof, he burrowed in his coat pocket and produced a squashed shape that might once have been a parsnip.

  ‘Why did you pick it up and carry it here?’ asked Morris, still hoarsely.

  ‘I’m taking it back with me,’ retorted Horace. ‘It can go in the soup.’

  ‘Wherever this establishment is,’ I muttered to Morris, ‘I don’t think I’d care to dine there.’

  Horace had sharp ears. ‘There ain’t nuffin’ wrong wiv our place!’ he declared sternly. ‘You can come and look round our kitchen and it’s all as clean as a pin. Half the time O’Brian, he has me clearing up, washing pots and dishes and scrubbing down the table. I don’t do the floors, mind,’ he added. ‘Because there’s an old girl comes in of a morning and does that. I’m not a skivvy; I’m learning the cooking. I watch O’Brian. Mostly, he has me peel spuds and stir things. When he’s in a good mood, he explains how to make pastry and so on. I’ll be a proper cook meself one day.’

  ‘Heaven help us!’ murmured Morris.

  ‘Tell it all again to the constable and he’ll write it down!’ I ordered and Biddle got ready with his pad and pencil. Aside to Morris, I asked, ‘Who is there to send?’

  ‘Mullins is out looking into a burglary,’ Morris informed me. ‘Jessop reported for duty this morning; but he was sniffing and snorting something awful so I sent him home. The others have all been called to other matters, robbery mostly. It’s this fog. Every villain in London is taking advantage of it. We’re very short-handed, Mr Ross.’

  ‘Constable Biddle?’

  Biddle emerged from behind a large handkerchief and blinked red-rimmed watery eyes at me. ‘Sir?’

  I sighed. ‘You had better stay here. But arrange for a police surgeon to meet us at the scene, will you? Well, then, Morris, it’s up to you and me, I suppose!’

  * * *

  It did take us a good while to get to the spot. We had to go on foot. Horace Worth led the way, shouting out all the time so that we knew where he was, because the fog swallowed him. Sometimes we could dimly make out his sturdy form in its fur wrapping, but mostly he was only a voice, ‘crying in the wilderness’, as Morris observed, in a gloomy attempt at some humour. Morris and I both carried bull’s-eye lanterns. Their yellow glow in the fog served to identify our position, but that was all. We cannoned into other pedestrians and stumbled over unseen obstacles. At long last, we arrived at the Imperial Dining Rooms.

  The entrance to the chophouse was narrow. But once inside we found the building ran back through the block in a suite of three small dining areas, justifying the name of the place, though empty at that moment of customers. Beyond that we debouched into the kitchen where there was a welcome heat, a less welcome steamy atmosphere, and a hostile reception awaiting us.

  They were three in number and their faces shone with perspiration. I soon began to feel the sweat trickling between my own shoulder blades beneath the heavy greatcoat I wore. I began to regret having exchanged one extreme of temperature for another.

  O’Brian, the cook, was a small man wearing a stained white apron over check trousers, and a chef’s white hat. He scowled at us and gestured with the ladle he gripped; it was unclear whether this was in greeting or defiance. Beside him stood a stout gentleman who turned out to be Mr Bellini, the owner of the establishment. He had luxuriant dark moustaches and looked very much the popular idea of an Italian eating-house proprietor, until he spoke in the purest of London accents. Beside him stood Mrs Bellini, also generously built and clad in black bombazine. Her face was red and her hair even redder. It was piled in an intricate mound of braids that put me in mind of a nest of writhing adders. Perched on top was a small lace cap with dangling ribbons framing her broad features.

  Taken all together, we pretty well packed the kitchen, and the crush was soon made worse by the arrival of a newcomer. The back door opened, admitting a gust of fog and a constable in a greatcoat. He must have been standing guard over the body.

  ‘Mitchum, sir,’ he said to me, when he’d managed to squeeze in and Morris and I had identified ourselves. ‘This place is on my beat.’

  ‘They did go and find you, then!’ growled Morris, with a glare at Horace Worth.

  ‘Not exactly, sir,’ explained Mitchum. ‘A passer-by in the street stopped me and told me there was a problem at the chophouse. He’d just come from there, he said, and there was a lot of disturbance in the kitchens. He couldn’t make out exactly what was going on, but someone was shouting out that a corpse was in the backyard. So, I thought I’d
better come and have a look, sir. It’s a body, all right, a girl.’

  ‘I want it out of there!’ snapped Mr Bellini. ‘I want that thing off my premises. I can’t have customers while it’s here and I’m losing trade.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think there’s much trade to be lost, sir,’ observed Morris. ‘Not in this fog.’

  ‘There’s always trade near Piccadilly!’ retorted Bellini.

  ‘We’re famous for our steak puddings.’ Mrs Bellini spoke up. ‘We make the best in this part of town.’

  ‘I’ve been making them since six this morning,’ broke in O’Brian. ‘But who’s going to order steak pudding when there’s corpses on the premises? They all know the story of Sweeney Todd, don’t they? They won’t touch those puddings, you can put your last penny on it!’

  ‘She’s got nothing to do with us, that girl!’ shouted Mrs Bellini furiously. ‘She’s a common prostitute, that’s what she is – or she was. They’re always ending up dead in alleys, those girls. But this one’s ended up in our backyard and it’s not right!’

  ‘Ruined, that’s what we’ll be, ruined!’ lamented her husband.

  ‘Mitchum,’ I said to the constable. ‘Perhaps you could take us to the body? The rest of you, stay in here. We’ll take statements from you all later.’

  ‘What have we got to say about it?’ yelled Mrs Bellini, her already florid complexion now an alarming magenta colour. ‘It ain’t nothing to do with us! We just want her taken away!’

  ‘So she will be, eventually, madam,’ Morris soothed her. ‘We’ll just take a look, first. Why don’t you all go into the dining room there?’ He pointed at the door through which we’d entered the kitchen. ‘Perhaps a nice cup of tea would help restore your nerves.’

  Morris’s calm manner and concern for her nerves placated Mrs Bellini, who observed that she was glad someone had some concern for her feelings. She then barked an order for tea to O’Brian. We left them to it.