Authors: Edward Marston
When a key scraped in the lock, he hoped that someone was bringing him a cup of tea to revive him. But it was not the custody sergeant who stepped into the cell. Instead, Inspector Robert Colbeck came in and looked down at the offender with more disappointment than sympathy. His voice was uncharacteristically harsh.
‘Why ever did you get yourself locked up in here, Brendan?’
‘It was a mistake,’ argued Mulryne.
‘Police records do not lie,’ said Colbeck. ‘According to the book, you have been charged with taking part in an affray, causing criminal damage, inflicting grievous bodily harm and – shocking for someone who used to wear a police uniform – resisting arrest.’
‘Do you think that I
wanted
to be shut away here?’
‘Why make things worse for yourself?’
‘Because I was goaded,’ said Mulryne. ‘Two of the bobbies that tried to put cuffs on me recognised who I was and had a laugh at my expense. They thought it was great fun to arrest an old colleague of theirs. I’ll not stand for mockery, Mr Colbeck.’
‘Look at the state of you, man. Your shirt is stained with blood.’
Mulryne grinned. ‘Don’t worry. Most of it is not mine.’
‘I do worry,’ said Colbeck, sharply. ‘I asked for help and you promised to give it. How can you do that when you’re stuck in here?’
‘The man to blame is the one who started the fight.’
‘You should have kept out of it.’
‘Sure, isn’t keeping the peace what I’m paid to do?’ asked Mulryne, earnestly. ‘I’m a sort of policeman at The Black Dog, excepting that I don’t wear a uniform. All I did was to try to calm things down.’
‘With your fists.’
‘They were not in the mood to listen to a sermon.’
Colbeck heaved a sigh. ‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Is there anything you can do for me?’ said Mulryne, hopefully. ‘Ask at The Black Dog. They’ll tell that I didn’t start the affray. I just got caught up in it. As for criminal damage, the person at fault is the one who dived head first through that window. On my word of honour, I did my best to stop him.’
‘I know you too well, Brendan. I’ve seen you fight.’
‘Well, at least get them to drop the charge of grievous bodily harm. Jesus! You should feel the lump on the back of my head. It’s the size of an egg, so it is. I was the
victim
of grievous bodily harm.’ He got up from the bed. ‘Please, Mr Colbeck. I’m a wronged man.’
‘Are you?’
‘I’m such a peaceable fellow by nature.’
‘Tell that to the policeman whose teeth you knocked out.’
‘I did apologise to him afterwards.’
‘What use is that?’ demanded Colbeck. ‘And what use are you to me while you’re cooling your heels in here?’
‘None at all, I admit. That’s why you must get me out.’
‘So that you can create more havoc?’
‘No, Mr Colbeck,’ said Mulryne, ‘so that I can find out where Billy Ings is hiding. He’s within my grasp, I know it. I did as you told me. I spoke to Isadore Vout, the bloodsucker who loaned him money when he lost at the card table.’
‘Did he know where Ings could be found?’
‘With a doxy named Polly Roach who lives in Hangman’s Lane.’
‘And?’
‘I paid her a call. When I asked her about Billy Ings, she spat out his name like it was a dog turd. They had a disagreement, you see, and he walked out on her. I fancy that he knocked her about before he went. He told Polly that he’d won a lot of money playing cards but she knows better now. It made her livid.’
‘I’m the one who is livid,’ asserted Colbeck. ‘You let me down.’
‘I could never walk away from a fight.’ He took his visitor by the arms. ‘Help me, please. If you don’t get me released, it will be too late.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Polly Roach has gone looking for Ings as well,’ said Mulryne, ‘and it’s not to give him her best wishes. There’s only one thing on her mind.’
‘Is there?’
‘Revenge.’
The Devil’s Acre was a comparatively small district but it was teeming with inhabitants, packed into its houses and tenements until their walls were about to burst. Tracking someone down in its labyrinthine interior was not a simple task, even for someone like Polly Roach who had lived there since birth. It had such a shifting population. She first tried the various gambling dens where William Ings was known but he had not been seen at any of them that day. Polly reasoned that he must have found himself a bed for the night and that
meant he paid someone to share it with him.
There was no shortage of prostitutes in the Acre. Clients could pick anyone from young girls to old women. Polly Roach knew from personal experience the sordid acts that they were called upon to perform. It was what set William Ings apart from all the other men who had paid for her services. He had made no demands on her. He came in search of a friend rather than a nameless whore who would simply satisfy his urges and send him on his way. Ings wanted a confidante, a source of sympathy, someone who would listen patiently to his bitter complaints about his private life and offer him succour.
Polly Roach felt that she had done just that. Over a period of several months, she had soothed his wounded pride. She had lost count of the number of times he talked about his unhappy marriage, his problems at work and his disputes with his neighbours. Until he met her, his life had had no joy or purpose. Polly had given him direction. Seeing how she could benefit herself, she had flattered him, advised him, supported him, even pretended that she loved him. If he had come into some money, she had earned her share of it and was determined to get it. William Ings was going to pay for all the time she had devoted to him.
Hours of searching for him eventually paid off. After questioning almost anybody she encountered, Polly met an old acquaintance who recognised the description of William Ings and said that he had seen him in the company of Kate Piercey. He was even able to give her an address. Incensed that she had been replaced by a younger woman, Polly fingered the knife under her skirt and went off to confront the man who had cast her aside so unfairly.
When she reached the tenement, she hastened up the stairs to the attic room and saw the light under the door. It was no time for social niceties. She kicked the timber hard.
‘Come out of there, Billy!’ she shouted.
To her surprise, the door swung back on its hinges to reveal the hazy outline of a small, dirty, cluttered room with bare rafters. What hit her nostrils was a smell of damp mixed with the aroma of cheap perfume, a kind that she herself had used in the past. There was an oil lamp in the corner but it had been turned down so that it gave only the faintest glow. Polly turned up the flame in order to see more clearly. A hideous sight was suddenly conjured out of the dark. When she realised that she was not alone in the room, she let out a cry of horror. On a bed in the corner, lying side by side as if they were asleep, were William Ings and Kate Piercey. Their throats had been cut.
Polly began to retch and her first instinct was to run from the scene. Self-interest then slowly got the better of fear. Though Ings was dead, she might still get what she wanted. She breathed in deeply as she tried to compose herself. Averting her gaze from the bed, she used the lamp to illumine the corners of the room as she looked for Ings’s leather bag so that she could take the money that she felt was hers. But she was too late. His belongings were scattered all over the floor and the bag was empty. In desperation, she grabbed his jacket and felt in the inside pocket but his wallet was no longer there. Not a penny of his money was left. Whoever had murdered them, had known exactly where to look. She gazed ruefully at William Ings. Her hopes of escape had bled to death. Polly Roach was condemned to stay in the Devil’s Acre forever.
When word of the crime reached him, Inspector Robert Colbeck took an immediate interest. Murder was not a rare phenomenon in the Devil’s Acre and, ordinarily, he would have been content to let someone else lead the investigation. But the fact that one of the victims was a middle-aged man alerted him and he persuaded Superintendent Tallis to let him look into the case. After collecting Victor Leeming, he left Scotland Yard and took a cab to the scene of the crime.
Policemen were already on duty, guarding the room where the victims lay and questioning other occupants of the building. There was no sign of Polly Roach. Additional lamps had been brought in so that the attic room was ablaze with light. When the detectives entered, the grisly scene was all too visible. In spite of the number of times he had seen murder victims, Leeming was inclined to be squeamish but Colbeck had no qualms about examining the dead bodies at close range. Both were partly clothed, their garments spattered with blood. The sheets and pillows were also speckled.
After inspecting the corpses for some time, Colbeck stood up.
‘At least, they did not suffer too much,’ he observed.
‘How do you know that?’ asked Leeming.
‘Both of them have wounds on the back of their heads, Victor. I think that they were knocked unconscious before their throats were cut. One neat incision was all that it took. The killer knew his trade.’
‘So I see, Inspector.’ He looked at the face of the dead man and quailed slightly. ‘Do you think it’s William Ings?’
‘Yes,’ said Colbeck, sifting through the items on the floor. ‘He matches the description that Mrs Ings gave me and nobody who lives in the Acre dresses quite as smartly as he did. This man is an outsider.’ Picking up a jacket, he searched the pockets and found a small brown envelope. ‘This confirms it,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
‘An empty pay packet from the Post Office. His very last wages.’
‘Does he have a wallet on him?’
‘That appears to have been taken,’ said Colbeck, putting the jacket aside. ‘It must have contained money. Judging by the way that it was emptied all over the floor, so did that bag.’
Leeming was annoyed. ‘We’ve lost one of our suspects to a thief.’
‘This was not the work of a thief, Victor.’
‘It must have been. They were obviously killed for the money.’
‘Not at all,’ contradicted the other. ‘The young lady died because she had the misfortune to be with Mr Ings at the time.
He
was the target. In my opinion, the murder was directly connected to the train robbery. He was silenced because he knew too much. Since Ings no longer had any
need of it, his paymaster took the opportunity to repossess the hefty bribe that must have been paid to him.’
‘These men are more dangerous than I thought,’ said Leeming.
‘They’ll go to any lengths to cover their tracks.’
‘Does that mean the other accomplice is at risk?’
‘Yes, Victor,’ said Colbeck. ‘Unless we can find him first.’
‘And how do we do that?’
‘To be honest, I’m not sure.’ He glanced at the policeman by the door. ‘Who discovered the body?’
‘A woman named Polly Roach, sir,’ replied the man.
‘I’ll need to speak to her,’ said Colbeck, recalling that Mulryne had mentioned her name. ‘I’ve reason to believe that she knew at least one of the victims. Where is she?’
‘Being held at the station, Inspector. I must warn you that she’s very jittery. Walking in on this has upset her badly.’
‘I daresay that it has. A lot of people are going to be upset when they learn what happened here tonight. The person I feel sorry for is the man’s wife,’ said Colbeck with a sigh. ‘I’m not looking forward to breaking the news to Mrs Ings.’
Maud Ings was about to retire to bed when she heard the click of her letterbox. Taking the lamp, she went to the front door to investigate and saw a small package lying on the doormat. Puzzled as to what it might contain, she picked it up and read the bold capitals that ran across the front of it –
FROM YOUR HUSBAND.
She was even more mystified. She put her lamp on the hall table so that she could use both hands to open the package. As she peeled back the brown paper, she found, to her utter astonishment, that it was covering a sizeable wad of five pound notes. The arrival of such unexpected bounty
was too much for her. Overcome with emotion, she burst into tears.
‘I want results, Inspector,’ shouted Tallis, rising angrily to his feet. ‘I want progress, not this incessant litany of excuses.’
‘We could not foresee that William Ings would be murdered.’
‘Perhaps not, but you could have prevented the crime by reaching him before anyone else did.’
‘That’s what I attempted to do, sir,’ said Colbeck.
‘Yes,’ snarled Tallis, ‘by employing that Irish maniac, Mulryne. Whatever possessed you to do that? The fellow is a confounded menace. When he was in the police force, his notion of making an arrest was to beat the offender to a pulp.’
‘Brendan was simply too zealous in the execution of his duties.’
‘Zealous! He was uncontrollable. I’m told that it took four officers to subdue him this evening. Was that another example of his zeal?’ asked Tallis with heavy sarcasm. ‘Why ever did you turn to him?’
‘Because he knows the Devil’s Acre from the inside.’
‘He’ll know a prison cell from the inside before I’m done with him.’
‘There were extenuating circumstances about the brawl,’ said Colbeck, ‘and, when the time is ripe, I’d like to speak up on Mulryne’s behalf. The reason that I engaged him is that he’s a good bloodhound. He did, after all, find the woman with whom William Ings had been living. Her name was Polly Roach. She was the person who raised the alarm tonight.’
‘What did she have to say for herself?’
‘She was very bitter when I questioned her earlier. Mr Ings had promised to take her away from the Acre to start a new life with him. Polly Roach offered him something that he could not find at home.’
‘I was in the army, Inspector,’ said Tallis, darkly. ‘You don’t need to tell me why married men visit whores. Our doctor was the busiest man in the regiment, trying to cure them of their folly.’ He sat down again behind his desk. ‘Now, tell me in detail what this Polly Roach said.’
Standing in front of him, Robert Colbeck gave him a terse account of his interview with the woman who had found the dead bodies and who had provided confirmation that one of the victims was William Ings. Wreathed in cigar smoke, Tallis listened in stony silence. His eye occasionally drifted to the newspapers that lay on his desk. When Colbeck finished, the Superintendent fired questions at him.
‘Do you believe this woman?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you find any witnesses?’
‘None, sir.’
‘How many people live in that tenement?’
‘Dozens.’
‘Yet not one of them saw or heard a stranger entering or leaving the premises? Is the place a home for the blind and deaf?’
‘People in the Devil’s Acre do not like assisting the police.’
‘So why did you rely on someone like Mulryne?’
‘Brendan is the exception to the rule.’
‘He’s a liability,’ said Tallis, acidly. ‘Whatever you do, make sure that the newspapers don’t get hold of the fact that you sought his help. I’ll have enough trouble keeping those
reporters at bay when they ask me about the murder.’
‘Would you rather I spoke to them, sir?’
‘No, it’s my duty.’
‘Of course.’
‘Yours is to find these villains before they commit any more crimes. What’s your plan of campaign?’
‘Courtesy must come before anything else, Superintendent.’
‘In what way?’
‘Mrs Ings has a right to be informed of the death of her husband,’ said Colbeck. ‘It was far too late to call on her tonight. It would only have given her additional distress if she’d been hauled out of bed to be told that her husband had been murdered.’
‘While lying between foul sheets beside some pox-ridden whore.’
‘I’ll try to put it a little more diplomatically than that, sir.’
‘And then what?’
‘It seems that the driver of the train has recovered somewhat, sir, so I intend to visit him to see if he can give us any useful information.’ Colbeck remembered that he would be seeing Madeleine Andrews again. ‘I think that it’s very important for me to question the man.’
Tallis narrowed his eyes to peer at him through the cigar smoke.
‘We are dealing with armed robbery and brutal murder, Inspector,’ he reminded him. ‘What the devil are you
smiling
about?’
Caleb Andrews was well enough to sit up in bed and sip tea from the cup that his daughter had brought him. Still in pain,
he moved his limbs very gingerly. His pugnacity, however, had been restored in full. Now that his mind had cleared, he had vivid memories of the moment when his train was ambushed, and he was anxious to confront the man who had knocked him down with a pistol butt. Madeleine came into the room to see how he was and, as they talked, she tidied the place up.
‘Why are you wearing your best dress?’ he wondered.
‘I always like to look smart, Father.’
‘But you usually save that one for church. Is it Sunday?’
‘You know that it isn’t,’ she said, repositioning the two china dogs on the mantelpiece. ‘Are you sure that you’re well enough to speak to Inspector Colbeck?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘I can always send word to Scotland Yard to ask him to postpone the visit. Would you like me to do that?’
‘No, Maddy. I want to see him today. Apart from anything, I want to know if he’s caught anybody yet. Those men deserve to be strung up for what they did to my locomotive.’
‘Frank Pike still has nightmares about that.’
‘I don’t hold it against him.’
‘His wife told me that he’s racked with guilt.’
‘Frank always was a sensitive lad,’ said Andrews, fondly. ‘None of us likes to go off the road like that. It’s the thing a driver hates most.’
‘You forget about your fireman,’ she said, adjusting his pillows to make him more comfortable. ‘All you have to worry about is getting better. Have you finished your tea?’
‘Yes, Maddy.’
‘Then I’ll take the cup downstairs with me.’
‘What time is Her Majesty due to arrive?’
Madeleine was baffled. ‘Her Majesty?’
‘That’s what all of this in aid of, isn’t it?’
‘All what?’
‘Your best dress, tidying up my room, clearing my cup away, putting on something of a show. At the very least, I expect a visit from Queen Victoria.’
‘Stop teasing me, Father.’
‘Then tell me why you’re making such an effort,’ he said with a lopsided grin. ‘You even changed the bandaging on my wounds so that I looked a little better. Why did you do that? Are you going to put me on display at the Great Exhibition?’
Seated in her armchair, Maud Ings received the news without flinching. It was almost as if she had expected it. Colbeck spoke as gently as he could be but he did not disguise any of the salient details from her. It was only when he told her the name of the other murder victim that she winced visibly.
‘And how old was this Kate Piercey?’ she asked.
‘Somewhat younger than your husband.’
‘Is that why he ran off with her?’
‘Does that matter, Mrs Ings?’
‘What was she like?’
‘I did not exactly see her at her best,’ he said.
Colbeck saw no point in telling her that the woman to whom William Ings had first gone was Polly Roach. The widow had enough to contend with as it was. To explain that he had abandoned one prostitute and immediately shared a bed with another would only be adding further to her misery. Bitter and bereaved, Maud Ings nevertheless had some sympathy for the man who had betrayed her. Colbeck did not wish to poison any last, lingering, pleasant memories of their marriage.
‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of such sad tidings,’ he said.
‘It was kind of you to come, Inspector.’
‘This has been a shock for you, Mrs Ings. Would you like me to ask one of the neighbours to come in and sit with you?’
‘No, no. I prefer to be alone. Besides,’ she said, ‘our neighbours were never fond of William. I don’t think many tears will be shed for him in this street.’
‘As long as you are not left alone to brood.’
‘I have the children. They are my life now.’
‘Family is so important at a time like this, Mrs Ings. Well,’ he said, relieved that there had been no outpouring of grief, ‘I’ll intrude no longer. You’ll be informed when the body is ready to be released.’
‘Wait!’ she said, getting up. ‘Before you go, Inspector, I need your advice. I can see that I’ve been living on false hope.’
‘False hope?’
‘Yes. Last night, before I went to bed, a package was put through my letterbox. Inside it was almost two hundred pounds.’
‘Really?’ Colbeck was curious. ‘Was there any note enclosed?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but there was something written on the paper. I still have it, if you’d like to see it.’
‘I would, Mrs Ings.’ He waited as she lifted the cushion of her chair to take out the brown paper in which the money had been wrapped. When she handed it to him, he read the words on the front. ‘At what time did this arrive?’ he asked.
‘It must have been close to eleven o’clock,’ she replied. ‘I thought at first that William had brought it. But, by the time I had unbolted the door and opened it, there was nobody
to be seen in the street. Having the money gave me the best night’s sleep I’ve had since he left.’ Her face went blank. ‘I was misled. From what you’ve told me, it obviously could not have been delivered by my husband.’
‘I fear not. By that time, his body had already been discovered.’
‘Then who could have brought the money?’
‘The person who stole it from Mr Ings.’
She was bewildered. ‘I do not understand, Inspector.’
‘I’m not certain that I do,’ he said, ‘but I can see no other explanation. That money was paid to your husband in return for vital information about the mail train. Somebody was clearly aware of his domestic situation. When your husband was killed, this person somehow felt that his widow was entitled to the money.’