Children of the Tide (28 page)

“Shall you?” the culprit asked, his voice turning shrill. “Stand aside,” he chanted, his body swaying. “That be right, Matron. You are right,” Jibbs screamed. “Filth you are, not worth a farthing. Squirm all you like. Swallow your handiwork …
eat it, eat it
.”

“Inspector!”

Caldwell's voice rang out from the attic storey.

“Here, Caldwell, on the first floor.”

“I shall come down,” shouted the sergeant.

“With haste, sir, for Mr. Jibbs is alive and breathing on the second floor, just below you.”

Tobias Jibbs scrambled to his feet. He tore off his facial bandages. A long red scar cut over his nose and cheeks. He paced back and forth. Caldwell's footsteps began to descend the staircase from the third floor. “The tide, the tide!” Jibbs screamed. In the next moment, as Caldwell reached the second floor, Jibbs hurled himself toward a back window, smashing through the glass and climbing out on the narrow parapet. “He's out, sir,” yelled Caldwell.

“How well can you see him, Sergeant?” Endersby yelled.

“He is on the parapet.”

“You won't catch him unless he re-enters a house. Or falls into the courtyard.”

Caldwell answered, “I can't reach him, Inspector. He's moved on toward the back of the courtyard. I won't be able to balance and grab hold of him at the same time.”

“Come down, then, Sergeant,” commanded the inspector.

“He is close to the neighbouring house, sir, to the west,” Caldwell said. “He's holding the side of the window frame as if … he's moving on.”

Inspector Endersby dashed out the broken street door and in less than a minute had made the corner and pushed his way back down the hall of Mrs. Kermode's lodging house, through the kitchen pantry, and out to the open courtyard. An anxious crowd of lodgers and kitchen help greeted him. Smallwood had come down from the attic room and joined Mrs. Kermode; the two of them were at present looking up at the second floor and the painfully slow progress Mr. Jibbs was making along the uneven edge of the parapet.

“We may have him,” Endersby whispered to himself. The parapet moulding ran like a band connecting all the houses, a feature of the older houses in Seven Dials. It was clear to any observer that a dormer open to the skies or a second-storey window could afford a way out — except that a problem lay in the descent to an exit door. Watching Mr. Jibbs scramble, Endersby could gauge which door he might use and then have a policeman sent to apprehend the criminal.

“Mr. Jibbs!” shouted Endersby from the lantern-lit courtyard. “Come down, sir, in the name of the London Detective Police. Come out of harm's way, sir.”

“Filth and scum!” Mr. Jibbs yelled back.

Jibbs now crouched down, eyeing the slippery tiles lying in wait for him on a walkway connected to an adjacent storey. The women began shouting up to Mr. Jibbs, begging him to come down. Mr. Jibbs slowly stood, determined to take a risk. He took small steps, turning his body to face the roof, his back to the courtyard. He leaned in to give himself balance. He glanced back once or twice at Caldwell, who was still peering out the window of the other house, blocking a retreat. The culprit grabbed hold of a brick chimney flue. He screamed down to the courtyard below: “I shall find her, I shall. I shall put an end to …” His words stopped. His right foot slipped. He retrieved it in time and held on.

Rain began to fall. Mr. Jibbs huddled. His frock coat became sodden and drooped from the pelting raindrops. The courtyard was awash with the sound of murmuring voices and rain droplets. Soon the clouds parted, the rain ceased, and Mr. Jibbs straightened and turned his head toward a far slope. His right hand reached out.

“I am —” Jibbs yelled.

His voice froze; he wrenched his head in the other direction. He tried to regain his footing, but the slippery stone let him go. Mr. Jibbs arched; his feet danced and kicked. Letting forth a piercing cry, his arms flailing in a ghastly parody of flight, Mr. Jibbs plunged through the night air.

“Oh, Mother of God!” cried Mrs. Kermode, covering her face with her hands. “Mercy, mercy,” the two kitchen servants gasped, their eyes never leaving the body as it plummeted twelve feet and landed with a shattering crash on top of a stack of mirrors. A sprinkling sound of broken fragments and bits of ornate frame flew up from the body's impact. Jibbs lay spread-eagle; the impact from the body started a kind of avalanche — like dominoes, the remaining stacked mirrors fell over, one against another, frames breaking, the glass splitting and falling to the ground. Not ten feet in front of the astonished group, the body lay prone, mirror ornaments hanging askew amidst a pool of shimmering shards.

“Come, Smallwood,” commanded Endersby. “The man is still breathing.”

Smallwood and the inspector made their way through the debris. They lifted the injured Mr. Jibbs off the pile of breakage and, supporting his weight, carefully walked back toward the lodging house. Mr. Jibbs' chest was heaving; his contorted face caught the lantern light; Endersby took hold of the miscreant's filthy hand as the two policemen carried him inside to the kitchen. Mrs. Kermode helped her cooks clear off a large table, where the inspector and Smallwood then lay the bloodied fellow down on his back. Mr. Jibbs moaned; his blood had soaked through from his wounds on his spine; his beard was embedded with bits of broken glass. Endersby bent forward, pulled apart the shirt top under Mr. Jibbs' frock coat and pressed his ear trumpet to the chest.

“He is barely breathing. Good woman,” the inspector said to Mrs. Kermode. “Can you fetch a surgeon? Does one live nearby, by chance?”

“Close enough, sir,” she replied. She wiped her hands and left the kitchen. Caldwell rushed in, his face and clothes powdered with dust.

“Ah, Caldwell,” Endersby beamed. “You escaped from that treacherous building.”

“Jumped sir, with some hazard, from the top part of the broken staircase to the first floor. A fall of five feet only, I reckon. But what dust!”

Mr. Jibbs opened his eyes. “Sweet Catherine,” he whispered. A convulsion shook his body. He lay for a moment, his eyes gazing up at the ceiling. Endersby leaned in toward the man's pale features. There, pink and thick, lay the scar. It ran from the lower part of Mr. Jibbs' right cheek, mounted over the nose, and carried on upwards in a bubbling slant of flesh to rest just under the left eye.
A hard knotted scar,
Endersby thought,
worm-like and certainly frightening in its aspect.

“Vicious,” said Smallwood, who held up the lantern to afford the inspector better illumination. Mr. Jibbs coughed. A great blast of air blew out from his lungs. His mouth trembled. Endersby leaned closer no more than an inch away from Mr.Jibbs' moving lips. “Caldwell,” Endersby said. “Have you your pencil and your …”

“Here, sir,” Caldwell replied bending down to join Endersby. From Mr. Jibbs' mouth, dying words trickled out in a dry whisper: “Not to worry, dear one. Not to …” A heave, a groan, then stillness. The body grew limp; the head fell sideways; his eyes — half-open — showing only the whites. Smallwood stood back. “Sad fellow,” he said. “He is your man, Owen?” Endersby looked hard again at the scar, thought about the gaff, the hat and the lace. “I have no reasonable doubt, Smallwood. I am confident I can present a conviction post-mortem with what clues we have gathered.” The inspector, Smallwood and Caldwell stood for a moment in silence, looking down at the body of Mr. Tobias Jibbs. A door shut in the hall and Mrs. Kermode's voice was heard speaking to someone. She entered the kitchen, leading in a tall thin man carrying a surgeon's black satchel. He was in poor but clean dress, his speaking voice, on introducing himself, was amiable.

“Mr. Eamon McClure. Surgeon. How do you do. Mr. Smallwood of Earl Street, sir? A face I recognize.”

“Good evening, sir. My colleague, Inspector Owen Endersby of the Fleet Lane Station House. He is in charge of this particular investigation.”

Endersby and McClure shook hands. “A dire chase has occurred and concluded with a fall, I understand,” said McClure, opening his satchel. From it he pulled out a soiled canvas apron, on which there was evidence of blood splatters from former procedures. The doctor removed his frock coat, put down his hat and pulled on the apron. He rolled up his sleeves and arrayed a number of small wooden instruments, the first of which was a long stick. Dr. McClure pried open the mouth to examine the tongue of the corpse. By this time the kitchen women had resumed their duties. They turned their backs and whispered near the hearth, stirring soups in their cauldrons. “Life continues,” mused Endersby, as he looked from one end of the kitchen to the other, where the body lay on the table: all its former dignity now under scrutiny. The other folk in the lodging house had given up their roles as spectators and, encouraged by Mrs. Kermode, returned to their rooms.

“Smallwood,” said Endersby. “Kindly lead Mrs. Kermode into the warmth of her parlour; this medical procedure is not one for a lady of business. Then, sir, fetch a wagon and horse. Once Dr. McClure has finished, we must, by law, carry the body to Fleet Lane and prepare for the coroner on the morrow.”

“Certainly, sir,” replied Smallwood. “Allow me and my sergeants to relieve you of the body once you are finished with the surgeon's examination. We would be obliged to aid you, lending you our wagon and horse.”

“I thank you, Smallwood,” answered Endersby. Smallwood and Mrs. Kermode left the kitchen. Then, turning his attention back to Dr. McClure, Endersby removed his second-hand disguise coat and pulled off his hat and gloves. “Caldwell, let us observe,” Endersby said.

“I am intrigued, sir,” said McClure, “by your peculiar uniforms. Are these what the penny crime rags call ‘undercover clothes'?”

“Precisely,” answered Endersby. “We indulge in many ruses to catch our culprits, sir.”

“Most clever,” said Dr. McClure. Pulling close two kitchen chairs, Endersby and Caldwell sat down to ask questions of the doctor and to record his answers. Taking a pair of scissors from the small satchel he had brought with him, McClure cut away the tops of the body's boots. A wave of fetid stink wafted as the right boot was slid off to reveal a most foul desecration of poor Jibbs' foot.

“Here, Inspector, here is the source of the terrible stench. Not uncommon among prisoners and soldiers I have tended.” The row of toes bent together, black and crusty in colour. On the largest toe, a greenish-hued, scaling mass made the appendage resemble a decayed cucumber. “It is the rotting disease,” explained Dr. McClure. “A wound of some kind, one unwashed and then festered, has been the cause. Such an infection kills the flesh, turns it this vegetable-green colour. It can spread up into the limb and cripple a man.”

“Painful, I imagine,” remarked Endersby. Caldwell wrote. He unfolded a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his nose.

“At times a pain similar to a burn; my father saw similar infections years ago as a surgeon on the slave ships out of West Africa.”

“A terrible institution, the sale of humans,” Endersby said, grimacing at the spectre of human suffering raised by the mention of slave ships.

Removing the other boot, McClure pointed to the thin ankles. Upon the mottled skin of each leg were displayed circles of blue broken skin.

“These markings are also familiar to me, Inspector,” McClure explained. He had taken a notebook from his satchel and, like Caldwell, was writing down the evidence of illness and abuse Tobias Jibbs had suffered while alive. “These are the blackening bruises from iron fetters, a fetter locked to each ankle like hand cuffs. You see them on the legs of prisoners who are held too long in their cells.”

“Such barbarities are frequently used on the hulks — the prison ships for transport — are they not, sir?” Endersby asked.

“In fact, they are used in them as a matter of habit, Inspector. All prisoners kept in those hellish holds are chained together each night with manacles. When the men are marched out to do labour, the manacles are worn, each ankle clamped. The pull and strain on a line of souls tethered in such a manner creates these internal injuries to the flesh.”

Dr. McClure finished his examination. “I officially announce that this man died from his fall, his spine broken. The blood in his mouth and throat suggest there was blood in his lungs, which may have effected suffocation.”

Dr. McClure shut his satchel. Endersby stood up and examined the pockets of Mr. Jibbs' frock coat. He then pulled off the leather necklace and opened the small pouch. A rolled piece of writing paper. Endersby recognized it as a letter fragment written in the hand of young Catherine Smeets. He read part of it out loud: “So, dear Uncle Bo, I am to be sent to London. Papa says I must live in a workhouse. I am afraid, uncle. I have no one now to help me.” He handed Caldwell the letter to read. “Sergeant, Mr. Jibbs has carried this letter with him all the while. It was the only one he received at one time from his niece.” Endersby then explained the rest of the story to the surgeon: “This letter proves how the culprit knew where to search for his beloved niece. You see, sir, Mr. Tobias Jibbs escaped from the hulk prison ships anchored at Greenwich. He may have killed a man named William More and taken his name as a disguise. Perhaps this terrible scar was the outcome of a fight in the hold of those hellish places.”

“And what of this sir,” asked Caldwell. He pulled out a square of yellowed material from the bottom of the pouch. “It appears to be a soiled piece of lace, Inspector,” remarked the surgeon. Half of the lace sample had rotted away. “What shall we make of this, gentlemen?” Endersby queried. Dr. McClure took the lace and held it close to the hanging lantern so all three men could see it more clearly. Endersby compared the lace he had found on the two murder victims: “It
is not
of the same bolt or design as the one Mr.Jibbs purchased in Rosemary Lane.”