Act of Murder Page 5

  Jonathan stood behind him and patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘Take care,’ he said in a deep whisper. Then he turned and left the room.

  Benjamin stared at his reflection, at the heaviness that lay behind the eyes, and with slow mechanical movements he completed the applications that would turn him into Samuel Baxter, Detective.

  *

  When Constable Jimmy Bowery, along with two of the larger members of the constabulary, arrived at Mort Street it was dark and still foggy. The gas lamps ranged along the street cast a dull yellow glow that just managed to penetrate the thick veil of fog and transformed the group of neighbours gathered outside the Cowburns’ front door into something almost funereal. Even the miners, still blackened from their toils of the day, stood beside their womenfolk offering their own beery views of the violence that had visited their street. Some of them were reluctant to judge their workmate without first hearing what he had to say. Besides, Violet Cowburn might have been asking for it. This viewpoint was angrily rebuffed by the distaff side of the argument, which offered the opinion that no offence by young Violet warranted such a brutal and possibly deadly response.

  The policemen had shunted their way through the crowd and Bowery had the onlookers pushed back, away from the front door. Some of the miners, still simmering with resentment at the role of the police in the recent coal strike, refused to be moved, staring defiantly into the faces of the constables. But the arrival of the doctor had brought a communal sense of concern for the young girl still lying at the foot of the stairs, and the men had retreated. Within minutes the girl was brought out, with Ethel Grundy holding her head steady as the doctor had instructed, and was placed in a waiting carriage for transportation to Wigan Infirmary.

  As the carriage trundled slowly down the cobbled street to be swallowed up by the fog, and as the crowd was ready to disperse, with some of the men grumbling about being clemmed to buggery wi’ all this nonsense, a murmur of excitement had rippled through them as someone spotted a forlorn figure, shoulders slumped and hands planted firmly in pockets, walk glumly past the vanishing carriage and make his way in a slouching gait towards the gathering of neighbours.

  ‘Billy!’ one of the men yelled out. ‘Tha’s getten company!’

  Bowery, standing inside the doorway, wheeled around to glower at the one who had shouted, but all the coal-black faces returned the same blank, surly expressions. Farther down the street, the dim shape of Billy Cowburn froze beneath a gas lamp. Then he turned quickly and started to run back the way he came.

  Before the three policemen could give chase, several of the miners moved with surprising rapidity to block their path.

  ‘Let the lad be!’ snarled one.

  ‘It’s his daughter, he can do what he wants!’ rasped another.

  One of them placed a clenched fist against Jimmy Bowery’s face and said, ‘Tha has t’get past me first!’

  Constable James Bowery could never be described as quick on his feet. Indeed, his large frame, bulked out in almost every direction by a combination of flab and muscle, made rapid movement a mere memory of his youth. But the one thing he did pride himself on was his strength. It was this strength, as he reached up and gripped the offending fist, that caused his aggressor to wince in excruciating pain as he felt every bone in his hand splinter with a sickening crunch. He was on his knees, cursing and begging for release, within seconds.

  Bowery nodded to the other two to give chase. A parting of Red Sea proportions opened up before them and they rushed down the pavement in pursuit of their quarry, who had disappeared up a narrow alleyway on the opposite side of the street. The rattle of his clog-irons on the unevenly cobbled surface echoed hollowly from the entrance which formed a narrow archway beneath two terraced houses. The two policemen, whose boots were only slightly better suited to running along the smoothly treacherous cobblestones, scampered through the entrance to be swallowed up by the fog and the sudden darkness of the alley. Bowery and the others could now only listen to the sounds of pursuit, then an almighty crash of splintering wood and muffled imprecations. Finally a silence, broken only by a strange rasping noise.

  ‘They’ve getten ’im!’ said one of the men through gritted teeth.

  ‘Or he’s getten them!’ came the anonymous, more optimistic response.

  All eyes were now turned on the arched entrance to the alley. A gas lamp hung above it, casting freak shadows. Suddenly, three shapes emerged like an unholy trinity and the source of the noise became clear – the two policemen were dragging what appeared to be the unconscious fugitive between them, his clogs scraping toe-first against the uneven flagging of the alley and his head dangling low and swinging from side to side as they pulled him roughly back to the street.

  Bowery raised a hand. He didn’t want the brute to be brought all the way back – no sense in parading their triumph before his neighbours – and so, with a glance of dire warning to the silent onlookers, he moved quickly off to join his colleagues and help them transport him as best they could to the even less welcoming environs of the Wigan Borough Police cells and a more intimate opportunity to question the man.

  ‘Whoa!’ came a voice from behind him as he made his way down the street.

  He turned and saw one of the women – the Cowburns’ neighbour – walking quickly towards him, flanked by two men.

  ‘Don’t interfere,’ warned Constable Bowery, employing his most menacing tones. ‘Or you’ll be sharin’ a cell with me laddo over yonder.’ Which wasn’t strictly true, of course, but the threat was clear.

  The woman ignored him and strode on. Bowery was amazed to see her walk right past him with purposeful tread and make straight for his colleagues and their prey.

  ‘Bloody women!’ he muttered, joining the others. ‘Be off!’

  But Ethel Grundy would not be off. She stood her ground, gazing down at the slumped form of the fugitive with a grim expression on her face. For a moment, Bowery thought she was about to launch into the prisoner and pummel him into the cobblestones in a paroxysm of neighbourly outrage. But then he saw the other women gather around her and heard one of them say, ‘Tha were right, Ethel. Tha’s getten eyes like a bloody hawk an’ no mistake! Fog or no bloody fog!’

  Bowery felt it was time to reassert his authority. This wasn’t a sideshow. ‘Right then, you’ve had your eyeful, now get back to your husbands.’

  Ethel switched her gaze from the unconscious figure, whose head was lolling at a most uncomfortable angle, to the large red-faced constable towering over her. She thrust her jaw forward in a pugilistic gesture of defiance. ‘That’s exactly what I’m doin’, you big daft sod.’

  Bowery looked at the other constables. ‘What?’ was all he could think to say.

  Ethel Grundy pointed a finger at the man they had arrested. ‘That poor bugger yonder, who you’ve knocked seven bells out of, isn’t Billy Cowburn.’

  ‘Who the hell is he then?’

  ‘Well, he’s my husband, mister policeman. That’s Nat Grundy. Looks like Billy bloody Cowburn’s buggered off.’

  *

  ‘Let me see if I understand this correctly,’ said the chief constable, Captain Alexander Bell, who was standing behind his escritoire with both hands behind his back and gazing up at the plasterwork swirl of the ceiling.

  Before him, Constable Jimmy Bowery clutched his helmet to his chest as if it could offer some sort of protection from what was about to be fired his way.

  ‘You were in charge of two men.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you were to arrest one William Cowburn for violent assault on his daughter.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The suspect duly appearing out of the fog, like a genie from a bottle, as it were.’

  ‘Dunno ’bout a genie, sir. Looked more like . . .’

  ‘The simile is immaterial!’ Bell snapped at the unfortunate object of his wrath. He paused, then said, ‘And under your orders, the two constables gave chase when Mr Cowburn appeare
d?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And the two constables were still under your orders when they reappeared with someone they had arrested in the alleyway?’

  Bowery, who felt it unnecessary to offer a verbal response, opted for silence.

  ‘Yet this someone was a completely innocent man who just happened to be walking home through the alleyway?’

  A nod. He held back the excuse offered by the other two constables – that all these bloody miners looked the same when covered in coal dust.

  ‘An innocent man whom your men knocked into the middle of next week? So, Constable Bowery, tell me this.’ He walked over and put his face inches from the perspiring constable. ‘Where in God’s name is William Cowburn? Hum?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir. But we’ve got a notice out to all the lads. Keep a sharp eye out for the bugger.’

  Captain Bell smiled, but there was no warmth in it. ‘Sharp eye, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He’ll turn up. Where can he go?’

  His tormentor treated the question as rhetorical. ‘Any idea why he threw his daughter downstairs?’

  ‘His neighbour said she’d heard a racket earlier when Cowburn got home. Seen a man running past her window. Hell for leather.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Dunno, sir. She only caught a glimpse. Then Cowburn licks out after ’im. I don’t reckon he was offerin’ him a cup of tea.’

  ‘How’s the girl?’

  ‘Paintbrush – I mean, Constable Turner – is up at the infirmary now. I sent him to sit with her till she come round.’ Bowery lowered his helmet as he spoke, quite proud of this show of initiative on his part.

  ‘Well, get Constable Turner back and take his place. It’s called clearing up your own mess. It’s what makes us different from animals, constable. Don’t you think?’

  Captain Bell watched Bowery turn and leave the room. Damn the fellow! Time was that such slackness would have brought forth a charge and a spell in an incarceration cell with extra duties and loss of privileges. Even that was comparatively lenient. There had been a time in the army when incompetence like that shown by Bowery would be punishable by flogging. He even remembered ordering one feckless individual to be branded, the letters BC on his forehead denoting Bad Character. Only in Constable Bowery’s case it would stand for Bovine Clown.

  He glanced up at the clock hanging on the wall of his office. Six-twenty. He was cutting it fine. Of all the nights to be called upon to issue a reprimand! If he moved quickly he just had time to dress for the theatre. Briskly he lifted his topcoat from the peg by the door and left the room. As he did so, he almost collided with his detective sergeant, Samuel Slevin.

  ‘Ah, sergeant!’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘You finished for the day?’

  ‘Yes, sir, unless . . .’

  ‘Oh no. There’s nothing that can’t wait.’ The chief constable was halfway down the corridor when he called over his shoulder, ‘Only our constables making a pig’s ear of something that should be a simple arrest.’ He turned as he reached the far door.

  Slevin saw the unusual glint in his superior’s eye, a flicker of anticipation that animated his normally cadaverous features. It wasn’t his place to ask the obvious question, though. It would smack almost of insubordination.

  ‘Well, I must dash, sergeant. The Silver King awaits, eh?’ With that cryptic pronouncement he breezed through the door and disappeared from view.

  Slevin gave a shrug and followed at a similarly rapid pace. If he hurried, he could be home in ten minutes – and then he might get half an hour with his son Peter before Sarah took him upstairs.

  As he passed the entrance to the Royal Court Theatre, he saw a crowd was already forming along the pavement for the evening performance, and some of the more elegantly dressed were already inside, talking animatedly. He caught sight of the huge playbill advertising the production, The Silver King, and smiled to himself. Some detective he was. This notice had stared him in the eye for the past week as he made his way home to Wallgate, and yet he had appeared confused when Captain Bell mentioned it.

  He raised his hat to the bored young lady who sat in the tiny booth in the foyer, and the response he got – a sort of puzzled frown and a scowl for his impertinence – only served to heighten his good humour.

  *

  Enoch Platt stood outside the Public Hall, clapping his hands together as fast as he could. He was of average height and sturdily built, his shoulders curved downwards from a thick, sinewy neck. He was somewhere in his late forties, and his grey-black hair hung in matted strands like dead snakes. He wore a dark brown overcoat, open to the waist to reveal a filthy collarless shirt that must have once been white. His thick black moustache hung over his mouth, obscuring his upper lip completely.

  Those queueing to go in, most of whom knew him at least by sight, gave him glances ranging from sympathy, amusement and annoyance to barely concealed antipathy. Enoch, in return, gave each one of them a glowering scowl and scrutinised their faces with especial and disconcerting closeness. Or rather, not so much their faces as their eyes. Once he had fixed someone with his eyes, that person had only two options – to look away or to challenge and confront. For most people, the former was infinitely preferable.

  Some did take verbal exception to his penetrating glare. But once it reached the point of physical contact, Enoch generally came out on top, straddling the one who had suddenly become his enemy and drooling saliva onto his face as he thumped and cursed in rapid succession.

  Now he was clapping his hands with such ferocity that he suddenly reached a crescendo of manic applause; then he stopped and stared intently at one of the people queueing, a man standing with one foot on the stone steps of the building. He was a man of similar age to Enoch, but smaller in stature, the faint traces of black etched around his eyes betraying the slightly haunted look of the miner. Beside him his wife held onto his arm and pulled it closer to her.

  ‘I see you!’ cried Enoch in that curiously hoarse rasp of a voice. He had raised an arm and was pointing a thick finger in the man’s direction. ‘Another waitin’ at t’doors of hell!’

  Unlike most of his selected victims, this man turned his gaze fully upon Enoch.

  ‘Sod off, Enoch,’ he said with a snarl.

  Enoch stepped forward until he was a matter of inches from the man’s face. Their eyes locked together.

  ‘I been there!’ Enoch rasped. ‘I seen hell!’

  Those behind were rather startled to see the man lean forward, so that his nose was almost touching Enoch’s. Only the ones standing closest to the tableau heard what the man said next.

  ‘Aye. An’ I’ve seen it too. An’ I’m not likely to forget it. Now piss off!’

  There was what appeared to be a flicker of recognition in Enoch’s eyes. Whatever the cause, it was sufficient for him to pull his head back and divert his glare elsewhere. He stepped back to survey the queue and once more began to clap, slowly this time, as he scanned the faces for another victim.

  *

  All eyes were on the splendidly ornate box where the mayor of Wigan and his lady wife were about to take their seats. The first sight the audience got was the brightly glittering chain of office made of sterling silver, the gilt shoulder-pieces with the seal inscription ‘Sigilum Comune Villae et Burgide Wigan’ resting proudly on his broad shoulders. His worship beamed down on the audience with a paternal pride and gave them all a hearty wave. The Royal Court Theatre was packed to the rafters, and surely this gave the lie to those who had mocked the idea of such a prestigious touring company spending time in the borough for the entertainment and edification of not just the middle classes but, hopefully, the labouring classes too.

  Suddenly there was a hush in the theatre as the orchestra struck the opening chords and the various lamps around the upper boxes and down below began to dim slowly. Then the curtain opened, and the audience applauded – and some of them ventured an appreciative whistle – at the bright and sta
rtling colours that depicted the skittle alley at the Wheatsheaf, Clerkenwell.

  *

  Meanwhile, as the audience at the Royal Court Theatre were watching that faithful old servant Jaikes wander into the Wheatsheaf in search of his dear master Will Denver, another audience, composed mainly of those from the labouring classes, was being entertained in a far more dramatic and macabre fashion not fifty yards away.

  Having weathered the storm of righteous outrage Enoch Platt had unleashed upon them, they were given a foretaste of what to expect as they entered the hall through an elaborately constructed passageway covered in black cloth. All along the winding route to their seats, they saw lurid figures of hooded monks with faces hidden deep in the shadows cast by heavy cowls. There were drawings of gravestones shifted from the perpendicular with gaping black holes beneath, and wizened bodies hanging from gibbets, ravens pecking at their bloodied eyes.

  The Public Hall, where Richard Throstle’s Phantasmagoria was about to begin, was abuzz with anticipation. Word had spread around the town that this was no ordinary magic lantern show. Some who had already witnessed the performance had sworn vehemently that darker forces were at work here, that the sudden and ghoulish appearance of spirits and goblins was not solely the product of Mr Throstle’s legerdemain and expertise, and that the things they had seen (and, according to some, the things they had felt) owed some of their existence to the forces of the Devil, for surely it was only Lucifer himself who could create such devilish and gruesome scenes. They were unwilling to discount Enoch’s warnings out of hand, whatever they might say to the poor fool.

  ‘Another full house,’ Georgina whispered as Richard stood behind the makeshift curtain prior to his dramatic appearance.

  ‘Yes,’ her husband replied, although the way he scanned row after row of excited customers betrayed a less than enthusiastic appreciation of another rewarding night’s work.

  ‘Whatever is the matter?’ she snapped.