The Female Detective (14 page)

I did not make a reply to the objection, but I could have announced that the French police, for instance, are not at all desirous of advertising their business, and that a French prefect of police would prefer to lose a man, and let the chance of retribution escape, rather than serve justice by admitting that a French political spy had been in London.

The silence of continental police prefects at that time is by no means to be accepted as an evidence that they missed no official who had been sent to England.

The case failed—miserably.

It could not be otherwise.

How would French police succeed, set to work in Bethnalgreen to catch an English murderer?

They would fail—miserably also.

There can be no question about it, to those who have any knowledge of the English police system, and who choose to be candid, that it requires more intellect infused into it. Many of the men are extraordinarily acute and are able to seize facts as they rise to the surface. But they are unable to work out what is below the surface. They work well enough in the light. When once they are in the dark, they walk with their hands open, and stretched out before them.

Had foreign lodging-houses, where frequent numbers of foreigners assemble, been inquired about, had some few perfectly constitutional searches been made, they might have led to the discovery of a fresh blood-stained floor—it being evident that if a spy were fallen upon from behind and stabbed, his blood must have reached the ground and written its tale there.

These blood-stains must still exist if the house in which the murder took place has not been burnt down, but I doubt if ever the police will make an examination of them at this or any other distance of time, owing to the distant date of the crime.

Experience shows that the chances of discovery of a crime are in exact inverse proportion to the time which has elapsed since the murder. Roughly it may be stated that if no clew is obtained within a week from the discovery of a crime, the chances of hunting down the criminal daily become rapidly fewer and fainter.

Let it not be supposed that I am advocating any change in the detective system which would be unconstitutional. Far from it. I am quite sure any unconstitutional remodelment of that force would not be suffered for any length of time to exist—as it was proved by that recent parliamentary protest against an intolerable excess of duty on the part of the police to which I have already referred.

My argument is, that more intellect should be infused into the operation of the police system, that it is impossible routine can always be a match for all shapes of crime, and finally that means should be taken to avoid so much failure as could be openly recorded of the detective police authorities.

Take in point the case I have been mentioning.

What evidence have the public ever read or learnt to show that any other than ordinary measures were taken to clear up any extraordinary crime?

It is clear that while only ordinary measures are in force to detect extraordinary crime, a premium of impunity is offered to the latter description of ill-doing, and one which it is just possible is often pocketed. Be all that as it may, it is certain the Bridge mystery has never been cleared up.

The Judgment of Conscience

He was in great poverty—yet a good citizen.

I came to know John Kamp over a very trifling affair—as you shall hear.

He was then about thirty years of age, and unmarried. I learnt very soon that he had a great desire to marry. Not any particular person. The desire appeared to be the result not of any individual passion, but the effect of reason.

I do not think I have said he was a shoemaker.

I am about to tell a romantic tale of this shoemaker, but I will not surround the narrative with any of the ordinary plaster-of-Paris conditions of romance. He was a plain, ungainly, and not remarkably tidy London shoemaker, earning a poor living, having but meat once a week—on Sunday to wit, and mealing on herrings, sprats, winkles, and such poor man's blessed food, all the week. Why do I call winkles, and herrings, and sprats blessed food? Simply because they are cheap and plentiful, and uphold the poor when otherwise they would sink under their low diet—sink not under the weight of it, but under its meagreness.

I never saw him drunk during the many months I knew him, I never heard a violent word pass his lips, and he was always following out some new train of thought.

He was one of the lower classes.

Perhaps there are many such men as he amongst the lower classes. I hope there are; for though many live and die without making their mark in the world's history, they have honoured their lives—and seeing what we see daily amongst all classes, why, the memory of a well-spent, if lost, life must be a very great comfort on a death-bed.

He was not a happy man, though his unhappiness it appeared to me did not arise from the injustice the world did him, but from the consciousness that he was debarred from doing good in his generation.

Pray do not misunderstand me—or him.

He did not go about like a man who has a grievance with the world because it has failed to comprehend him. He had nothing in his constitution of the cynic, either lachrymose or scoffing. But I am quite sure he was generally sorry that he could do the world no good, beyond that of living the life of a good citizen (a condition which he did not sufficiently value), and that the world had so treated him he could not benefit society.

I do not say he was right in feeling that the world had not treated him well. I am quite aware that society cannot go about finding youthful genius or guessing at it. I am not destitute of the knowledge that the world is willing to pay for certain genius, and handsomely; but that it is not disposed to foster it before it is known. But, nevertheless, I do not condemn John Kamp for feeling more bitterly towards the world than he spoke generally of it, and clinging to the belief that it had injured in neglecting him.

It is true men make themselves or are helped by their friends; but it does not follow that a poor, ignorant man, who suffers in after life because the powers of the land did not foster him when neglectful parents let him run wild—it does not follow such an one shall reason in this fashion.

Take his argument.

“I know I have that in me which would benefit the world, but my hands are tied with the ignorance of my youth, and I am powerless; and I must live powerless; and I must die powerless.”

What do you say to that argument? A wrong one to hold, but a very natural one.

It may be urged, however, that many men have raised themselves to eminence who held no higher social position than this John Kamp. But in their cases their early youth had as a rule been cared for—and a foundation to build upon had been made. Take Bloomfield, for instance—a genius who rose out of the menial trade to which Kamp belonged.

Again—the shape of his genius was one which called for help to demonstrate it. A man who has a genius for writing is set up with a quill, a quire of paper, an ink-bottle, and a penknife. A painter has to go farther in the way of an expensive nest of colours and a canvas; but when your genius takes the Eseulapian shape—when your thirst is to be a doctor, you cannot at once launch into the exercise of your genius—you must work through patient, expensive years, and then begin lowly and humbly to climb, not daring at first to use your knowledge, lest its novelty shall appear like ignorance, fighting for years and years, perhaps for a lifetime, before the world can look towards you, and cry out, “Behold him! he has benefited all men.”

To benefit the world—this it was for which John Kamp, shoemaker, and indeed cobbler, aged thirty, thirsted.

And as I write I remember the occasion upon which we first met. A crowd in the street is always an attraction to a detective, for it may happen, indeed generally does, that he is wanted to complete the performance.

I saw a crowd one night in the classic regions of Whitechapel, and making one of it directly, I found a woman in a fit, with a weakly-looking but clear-brained man superintending the unfortunate.

Neither born to command, nor used to that luxury, I felt certain directly I saw him, here he appeared to be in his element—to be doing what he knew it was within his province, and without that of those about him, to effect.

“Stand aside, mates!” I heard him say, as I approached; “if there's one thing more than another she wants, it's fresh air. Do stand aside, mates!”

This the “mates” proceeded to do by falling back about two feet, and then immediately advancing over one and a half.

“Look here, mates—don't hold her back like that.” These remarks were addressed to the men who were holding the wretched woman with an energy which would have arrested the vigour of a grenadier. “Hold her well up,” he continued, “and a little on one side, so that her head hangs a little on one side; if she gets anything in her throat she will choke if you hold her back, mates. P'r'aps it's one of them fits which comes on through want. Will one o' you, mates, go and get three-penn'orth of brandy?”

One of the mates did; a raffish-looking young man, whose true vocation very much I fear was that of the general thief; but, to the credit of humanity, even amongst thieves, I am bound to say he returned with the spirit (and some water) in a public-house basin.

The case was one of those ordinary fits which are in truth the result of want acting upon a frame which tends to epilepsy. Poor creature—dank, thin, ragged, haggard, we police people see such miseries daily, and until we get so used to it that the less amiable amongst us look upon them as nuisances.

I waited till the poor woman “come to,” as the expression goes, till once more she looked about her, as though she had been born into a strange world—till once more she recovered her poor wretched senses, and putting herself together, uttered some few shamefaced sentences, which sounded like excuses, and prepared to slink away.

“Come, mates,” said the impromptu doctor, “let's give her some coppers—let's make a collection.”

I grieve to say that doubt was rife in a moment, and that calumny, looking the good Samaritan in the face, said it was “all a do.”

And as every grain of calumny tells, the collection, I remember, amounted only to twopence-halfpenny, which he who had spoken handed (with some scorn flashing from his eyes at the crowd), to the poor old woman, who appeared more shamefacedly apologetic than ever upon receiving this douceur.

As for me, I followed the Samaritan, whom I saw by his clothing was a mechanic of a very ordinary character.

I followed him with no bad intent to the neighbourhood of the Tower, when he entered a house which was so poor and so temptationless that the door swung idly and without a lock.

That same evening I made some inquiries at the parlour-shop of a widow, who exhibited so little a desire to sell, and so great a desire to talk, that I looked upon the hundred and one articles she had for sale as mere commercial excuses—a kind of business-like umbrella for harbouring scandal.

I was not wrong. When I came to know the vicinity better, I ascertained that the Widow Green's was the street club, and one which emulated any social gathering of the sort at the west end, as far as dealing with reputations went. I calculated that a character was ruined per sixty minutes during business hours.

I learnt a good deal from the Widow Green, who by the way also played upon that piano of the poor, the mangle.

It appeared he was John Kamp, a nice young man, but objectionable on this score—that he was “a little orf 'is 'ed.”

This statement inquired into, it appeared that he was a respectable young man, looking after his sister, never getting too much (this was a delicate east-end mode of reference to strong drink), always paying his rent, though rather despising credit (this was a reference to his want of patronage of the parlour-shop, I saw); but what “were agin him were this—that he were crotchetty,” though nevertheless mending a shoe with punctuality to time and the best of thread and leather.

I need not say it was no difficulty for me to make acquaintance with the Kamps. I was engaged at that time (though it may appear to my reader an odd case to call for the operations of a woman detective) upon what has since taken the name of the great sugar-baking case, and therefore I was living in the neighbourhood of Aldgate and Whitechapel. And inasmuch as my professional abilities could only be exercised at certain hours, I had a good deal of time at my disposal.

The meeting with Kamp took place on the second day of my sojourn in that quarter of London, and it was on the third that I made his acquaintance, with the help of a pair of mendable shoes, which I bought of my landlady to her eminent suspicion, for my act was unusual.

I knocked as well as I could the two knocks which I had learnt was the dose for the Kamps; and, after some time, for the knocker was loose and askew, to say nothing of its having no anvil, the sister, as I afterwards learnt, came down to the door.

She was not pleasant to look upon, her jaw being so underhung as to give her at first sight that malevolent expression which is too suggestive of the bull-dog—but accustomed to search rather than glance at faces, I perceived very quickly that she was a pleasant, and (her mouth and jaw apart) an attractive young person.

I need not here dilate upon my first interviews with John Kamp, because I have more important matter to write about. Let me, therefore, but just say that I found he was an earnest-looking man as he sat at his hard work, and the faint, fog-drenched light fell upon his forehead, which was wide and massive, though coarse-grained, and framed with rather dull-looking and not too well kept soft, black hair.

It is a part of my profession to bring people out, and I soon effected that object with Kamp.

After a few days we got on very pleasantly together. He accepted perfectly my position as a visitor, and not a customer. He would look up from his work when I went in, and give a pleasant but rather worn smile, and then he would drop over his lapstone, and tap away at his work.

He was assuredly very unfortunate in many ways. Certainly superior to his trade, and not inclined to rest content in that place in which chance and his own will had placed him: he was forced even to yield an outward respect to his poor trade which he could not feel. He never attempted to take a high place in his trade, because, though a good workman, he had not regularly served his time to shoemaking. Forced early in life from a bad home, he had become errandboy at a shoe-shop, and here he watched the trade and ultimately practised it.

And as there are always men who avail themselves of all advantages, many of those master-makers who employed Kamp, had given him the worst pay for the best work, simply because he could not show an ordinary indenture.

I am afraid this system tended to make him more discontented with his lot than he would even otherwise have been.

On my third visit I found him operating on a thick-headed loading labourer, and pulling a back tooth from his heavy jaw with the ordinary pair of pincers with which he stretched his leather.

For you see, exactly as at an evening party, the gentleman most rallied and patronized is he who does more than anybody for the general amusement, so with John Kamp. The general neighbourhood pitied him in a small-beer kind of way as an oddity, and availed themselves of all those oddities which they could turn to their own advantage.

“Thank ye, mate,” said the heavy-headed labourer; and without a word to the sister he left the room.

“He did'not pay you!” said I.

“No; I never take any payment for medical advice,” he replied.

I admit the answer was a little bumptious, but he was a poorly-informed man, and it is not always the unlearned who alone are vain. And I would have you remark that when a poor man who makes but from fifteen to eighteen shillings a week refuses a payment which is justly
his
, there must be more in the abnegation than at first we see.

“But he would have had to pay a shilling,” said I, “had he gone to a dentist; you ought to have charged him sixpence.”

“Oh, he could have got an order from the relieving officer to the parish doctor, and had his tooth extracted for nothing.”

“But then he would have lost his time.”

“Yes, he would,” said Kamp.

By the way, it was the dinner hour, and Kamp had left his meal gratuitously to take out the labourer's tooth.

The sister and I did not get on very well together. It appeared to me that she resented my intrusion, though I am sure I in no way impeded them. The curse of poverty was evident in her, whereas the brother had gained a victory over it by his wisdom. For he was wise though he had little knowledge. I am aware that wisdom presupposes knowledge, but my experience tells me that much wisdom may exist accompanied by very little knowledge. Furthermore, my experience tells me that it too frequently happens that an immensity of knowledge is accompanied by no wisdom whatever.

Somehow I grew to like this John Kamp.

But his vanity was by no means flattered.

And by this sentence perhaps the reader apprehends a personal secret which may not already have been very difficult to learn.