The Art of Murder (23 page)

Pendragon glanced down, looking for a police report.

‘There was no investigation.’ Martins anticipated his question. ‘John Kinnear managed to keep it quiet.’

Turner glanced at Pendragon. The DCI was staring blankly at the professor.

‘Money talks,’ Martins said matter-of-factly.

‘He paid off the gardener?’

The professor nodded and shrugged. ‘But Kinnear realised his daughter was seriously ill and she was sectioned.’

‘And the gardener?’

‘Macintyre, Jimmy Macintyre. He was a patient here for a short time after he was attacked. He’s still alive, lives alone – in a housing estate in Braintree, a short distance from Ashcombe Manor.’

‘We would like his address before we leave, if you have it?’

Martins nodded and leaned forward on the desk, hands clasped together over the report. ‘Inspector, I fail to see the connection between Juliette Kinnear and your current investigation.’

‘Well, we’ll keep you informed of any developments there, Professor,’ Pendragon said crisply, and stood up. ‘Thank you for your time and co-operation. I take it we can have this,’ he added, waving the report, and before Martins could say another word, had turned towards the door. ‘The address for Mr Macintyre … I imagine your secretary would have that on file?’

‘Bloody odd,’ Turner commented as they strode across the gravel driveway back to the car.

‘Which part?’

‘Well, all of it, actually. But how did the Kinnears get away with covering up a serious assault?’

‘As Martins said, money talks.’ Pendragon tossed him the car keys.

‘So, what now?’ the sergeant asked.

‘We pay Jimmy Macintyre a visit.’

The country road taking them north-west towards Braintree was icy and treacherous. They drove slowly and stopped for a late pub lunch at a place called the Knight and Garter that was surprisingly good: a traditional ploughman’s and beer, rather than Korean, Ethiopian, or the other exotic cuisines favoured by so many pubs made over by their brewery.

They found the address extracted from the archives at Riverwell without too much trouble, and pulled up outside a tiny brick-and-slate council house. Its red-painted front door had faded to a fleshy pink; there were traces of snow on the roof, frost on the windows. The garden had been left untended and was overgrown with weeds. As they approached, the policemen noticed the
door was badly cracked and the letterbox simply a rectangular hole.

Pendragon rang the bell. The house remained silent. Turner stepped back on to the path and looked at the upper storey. There were no lights on, the curtains were all drawn. Pendragon rapped his knuckles on the door. Still no reply. He stepped back to join Turner and the sergeant had another go, leaning on the bell. Eventually they heard some shuffling sounds coming from the hall.

‘Who is it?’ The voice was frail, that of an elderly man.

‘Police officers, sir. Is that Mr Macintyre?’

A silence. Then the sound of the man clearing his throat. ‘What ya want?’

‘My name is DCI Pendragon. We’d like to have five minutes of your time.’

‘Why?’

‘We wanted to ask some questions about Juliette Kinnear. The woman who attacked you.’

A longer silence.

‘Mr Macintyre?’

‘Go away.’

‘Sir, we just need to ask you a few …’

‘I said, go away.’

Pendragon looked at Turner, who shrugged.

‘We’ve come a long way, sir,’ Pendragon said gently, giving it one last try. ‘Could do with a cup of tea.’

Silence.

‘Sir?’

Silence.

Pendragon let out a sigh and turned towards the path. The sergeant hovered close to the door for a second and
then retreated. They had just reached the end of the path when they heard a sound. Pendragon spun round and saw that the door had opened a crack. They caught a glimpse of Macintyre, one hand extended, beckoning them in.

Jimmy Macintyre hung back behind the door as Pendragon and Turner stepped into the dark hall. ‘Straight through. On ya right,’ he said.

It was very dark inside the house and it grew darker as Macintyre closed the front door. A faint red glow was the only illumination, produced by daylight filtering through flimsy crimson curtains. The place stank of rotting food and urine. There was no carpet, just grimy ripped old newspapers forming a trail from the hall into what passed for a living-room. They could just make out a tatty armchair, the foam stuffing protruding at half a dozen points along each arm. Beside this was a metal-framed dining chair.

‘Grab the chair from over there, young fella,’ Macintyre said to Turner as he lowered himself into the armchair. The sergeant did as he was told, removing a pile of newspapers from another spindly metal chair. Pendragon sat down to the left of Macintyre.

Gradually their eyes adjusted, but they could still make out little in the room. Macintyre fidgeted in the armchair. He had a walking stick, which he placed against his left leg. He sat back, looking down at his lap. ‘So, what do you wanna know?’ he asked, then coughed suddenly, a raspy, guttural sound that seemed to go on for a long time.

‘We’ve just come from Riverwell Hospital,’ Pendragon began.

‘Ah, I see. So you know the Kinnear girl is long dead.’

‘Yes, Mr Macintyre. We were given the outline of the story. About her disappearance in 1996 on a day trip.’

Macintyre coughed again, noisily.

‘We also learned that Juliette Kinnear had attacked you, and how that led to her being sectioned.’

The old man said nothing. He just kept looking down at his lap. All they could see of him was a dim outline.

‘For a lot of people, 1995 was a long time ago,’ Macintyre said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘Not for me. It was the thirtieth of November 1995, but it still feels like yesterday.’

‘Are you able to talk us through it, sir?’ Turner asked, trying to see a page of his notebook by holding it a few inches from his face. After a moment, he gave up and lowered it to his knees. He thought of asking if he could put on a light, but concluded it might upset Macintyre too much.

‘I ain’t spoken to anyone about it since I left the Kinnears’ employ.’

‘They paid you off?’

‘Oh, yes. I didn’t see much point in fighting ’em,’ Macintyre responded quietly, still staring down. ‘The girl was put away. They hoped she could be cured. I knew it would be in my own best interest to take “early retirement”, so to speak, and to keep me mouth shut. Officially I wasn’t stabbed, just had a bit of an accident in the grounds of the ’ouse.’

‘I see,’ Pendragon said. ‘Do you feel able to tell us more about the attack? What might have provoked it, for instance?’

Macintyre looked up sharply. ‘Provoked it? Nothin’
provoked it,’ he snapped. ‘I did nothin’. Absolutely nothin’. The Kinnear girl was mad. Didn’t need no provocation.’

Pendragon let the man calm down, allowed him to go at his own pace.

‘I was working on one of the flowerbeds. It was unusually mild that autumn. A busy time of year for a gardener, clearing away the leaves, turning the soil … Anyway, there I was behind the greenhouse. I knew the girl well. She used to come and talk to me sometimes. She was a strange kid, even before … She would paint in the garden. Crazy pictures, if you ask me. She’d paint the house and the gardens but the pictures looked nothing like anything I could see. Modern, I s’pose. Some folk seemed to think she was pretty good, but I could never see it meself.

‘Anyhow, that Sunday she comes out into the garden and sits on the wall to talk, just like she often did. I thought she looked a bit odd. The pupils of her eyes were huge. I know now, of course, that she had been taking something. Suddenly she says, “Mac … Would you let me paint you?” I laughed. “What the ’ell would you wanna paint me for?” I said. “Anyway, I reckon it wouldn’t look much like me when you’d finished.” She laughed with me at that. Then she jumped off the wall.’

He fell silent again.

Turner glanced over at Pendragon, but even though his vision had begun to adjust to the darkness he could barely see his boss. Pendragon waited patiently.

‘I saw a flash of something at the last moment. Didn’t realise it was a bread knife, of course. Not exactly
expecting it, was I?’ Macintyre’s voice had become almost inaudible. He seemed to realise this, shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. ‘Fourteen wounds,’ he said matter-offactly. ‘Lost pints of blood before a delivery boy just happened to notice me on the path. No one in the house had heard my screams.’ He let the final word trail away. Pendragon and Turner could hear the old man breathing heavily. ‘Sergeant?’ he said after a moment. Turner could tell Macintyre was looking at him, but could see almost nothing more than the vague shape of his face. ‘Could you please open those curtains a fraction?’

Turner glanced towards Pendragon, but could not make out his expression. Standing up, he picked his way through the gloom towards the red haze of the window, arms extended like a blind man. Then he felt the waxy fabric of the curtains between his fingertips, stopped and searched for the edge. Taking two steps to his left and running his hands along the fabric, he grabbed a fistful of curtain, and pulled it to his right.

Light flooded into the room. Turner spun on his heel, shading his eyes. He could see Pendragon with a hand at his brow and then lowering it before turning towards the hideously disfigured face of Jimmy Macintyre.

‘Fourteen wounds,’ the man said, his upper lip bisected by a scar that ran from where his left eye had once been, twisting it into a grotesque facsimile of a leer. ‘All of ’em to the face.’

To Mrs Sonia Thomson 15 October 1888

Now, Sonia … I hope you won’t mind my being so informal, dear lady. It’s just that, well, I feel we have grown to know each other quite well. I learned much about you from your loquacious husband, and you know more about me than anyone else ever has. Anyway, I have come to the part of my story in which I was finally able to put my ideas into action.

There is almost always a moment before beginning a new work in which there is a flutter of anxiety, a brief tremor of uncertainty. Can I do it still? Can I create? I’m sure I’m not the only artist or writer who has ever experienced such a thing. But, strange to report, on the morning of 31 August this year, less than two months ago, I felt no such trepidation. Indeed, I was so involved with my plans, so excited by the prospect of beginning my masterpiece, that I experienced none of the nervousness I might have expected.

I considered my notes and preliminary sketches.
The first victim: Mary Ann Nichols. Forty-three years old, five feet two inches, dark hair, grey eyes. A mother of four. Separated from her husband William. Well known locally as a ‘bride’ of no fixed abode. I checked my watch. It was 1.34 a.m. I pulled on my overcoat, picked up my bag and stepped out into the rain.

Heading straight for the Pav, I found the streets quiet. The music hall was closing up, but the brothel was open still. I took the stairs slowly and waited in the anteroom. It was empty and quiet. I picked up a newspaper and started to read. I knew Mary Ann worked here three nights a week. I had studied her routine and knew what to expect. At 2.15 she emerged from one of the rooms along a corridor to my left. As she strode by, I looked up. She was shorter than I had remembered and looked sick, malnourished. She eyed me lasciviously and paused beside me. ‘Just finished tonight, darlin’,’ she said, smiling, her pale lips pulled back over crooked incisors, the front two upper and lower teeth missing. ‘But I could spare time for you, sweetheart … if you’re interested?’

I shook my head and returned to the newspaper.

‘Suit yerself.’

She headed for the stairs and I heard the clink of coins as Mary Ann tossed them merrily in the air as she walked. She was clearly pleased with her evening’s work. Perhaps she had made enough to cover the fourpence she needed for a bed in the lodging house she frequented at 18 Thrawl Street.

I waited a moment before I carefully folded the newspaper, stood up and followed her down the stairs. Emerging on to Whitechapel Road, I just caught sight of my prey as she turned a corner into a narrow side street. I had an idea where she was headed. I quickened my pace and reached the corner just in time to see the woman duck into a narrow doorway that I knew led to a drinking den run by a tough Irishman named O’Connor, whom I had already had the misfortune to meet during the course of my research.

I decided to wait in the narrow street, standing silently in the shadows. There was only one way in and out of O’Connor’s place, and so I knew Mary Ann could not slip away without my seeing her. Thankfully, the rain had stopped and I was so charged up with excitement and expectation that the time seemed to pass quickly. And, sure enough, after half an hour the woman reappeared with a man on her arm. She was giggling drunkenly. The man looked more sober, but a little jumpy. He was young, pale-faced, with large, nervous eyes. I watched the pair turn into the lane in the opposite direction to Whitechapel Road. Keeping to the shadows, I followed as silent as a mouse.

I was soon lost in the back lanes, a maze of narrow streets and alleyways where the houses crowd in and shut out the sky. I had been in the East End for several weeks by this time, but was still unable to stomach the horrendous stench of the place. In these confined parts, where the roads ran with excrement
and rats larger than some cats I’ve seen dashed through the shadows, the smell was almost overpowering.

It was also very dark. The only light came from the moon high overhead. But that was little more than a pallid, sickly yellow semi-circle streaked with cloud. My senses were heightened by excitement and honed by my many previous nocturnal adventures. I could hear the couple a few yards ahead of me, their breathing and the few words they exchanged.

They stopped and so did I. I heard the rustle of clothing. From the shadows, I could just make out two indistinct shapes. Mary Ann was leaning against the wall, her hands above her lowered head. Then came a few muffled groans. Words of encouragement from Mary Ann followed by a low growl. More rustling of clothes, a giggle, and then footsteps retreating along the passageway. Very quietly, I slipped my bag to the floor, unlatched the clasp and withdrew an eight-inch blade.