Authors: Edward Marston
‘You are, Poll.’
‘Then prove it.’
‘Leave me be,’ he said, fumbling for his trousers.
‘Prove it.’
‘I’ve already done that.’
‘Not to my satisfaction.’
‘What more do you want of me?’ he demanded, rounding on her. ‘Because of you, I walked out on my wife and children, I gave up my job and I started a whole new life. I tried my best to make you happy.’
‘Then take me away from here.’
‘I will – in due course.’
‘Why the delay?’ she challenged. ‘What are you hiding from?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why this talk about it not being safe to leave here?’
He pulled on his trousers. ‘We’ll talk about this in the morning,’ he said, evasively. ‘I have other things on my mind now.’
She glared at him. ‘Are you lying to me, Bill?’
‘No!’
‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘You’ve been told everything you need to know, Poll.’
‘I’m your woman. There should be no secrets between us.’
‘There
are
none,’ he said, irritably. ‘Now stand out of my way and let me get dressed. I have to go out.’
Polly Roach had played the submissive lover for too long now. She decided that it was time to assert herself. When she got involved with William Ings, she had seen him as her passport out of the squalor and degradation that she had endured for so many years. He represented a last chance for her to escape from the Devil’s Acre and its attendant miseries. The thought that he might be deceiving her in some way made her simmer with fury. As he tried to do up the buttons on his shirt, she took him by the shoulders.
‘Stay here with me,’ she ordered.
‘No, Polly. I’m going out.’
‘I won’t let you. Your place is beside me.’
‘Don’t you
want
me to make more money, you silly woman?’
‘Not that way, Bill. It’s too dangerous.’
‘Take your hands off me,’ he warned.
‘Only if you promise to stay here tonight.’
‘Don’t make me lose my temper.’
‘I have a temper as well,’ she snarled, digging her nails into his flesh. ‘I fight for what’s mine. I’m not going to let you sit at a card table and lose money that could be spent on me. I’ve been in this jungle far too long, Bill. I want to live somewhere
respectable
.’
‘Get off me!’ he yelled.
‘No!’
‘Get off!’
Stung by the pain and annoyed by her resistance, he pushed her away and lashed out wildly with a fist, catching her on the chin and sending her sprawling on to the floor. Her head hit the bare wood with a dull thud and she lost consciousness. Ings felt a pang of guilt as he realised what he had done but it soon passed. When he looked down at her, he was repelled by her sudden ugliness. Her mouth was wide open, her snaggly teeth were revealed and he could see the deep wrinkles around her scrawny neck for the first time. Her powdered cheeks were hollow. Ings turned away.
He had never hit a woman before and expected to be horrified at his own behaviour. Yet he felt no remorse. If anything, he felt strangely empowered. He finished dressing as quickly as he could. Polly Roach could do nothing to stop him when he retrieved his belongings from a corner and stuffed them into a leather bag. After taking a farewell look around the tawdry bedroom, he stepped over her body as if it were not there and went out with a swagger.
Madeleine Andrews had refused the kind offer of accommodation in the neighbouring house, preferring instead to spend the night beside her father’s bed. With a blanket around her shoulders and a velvet cushion beneath her, she sat on an upright wooden chair that was not designed to encourage slumber. Every time she fell asleep, she was awake again within minutes, fearful that she might fall off the chair or miss any sign of recovery by the patient. In fact, Caleb Andrews did not stir throughout the night, lying motionless on his back in the single bed, lost to the world and looking in a pitiful condition. It was only his mild but persistent snore that convinced Madeleine that he was still alive.
She loved her father dearly. In the five years since her mother’s death, she had been running their home, taking on full responsibility and treating her father with the kind of affectionate cajolery that was needed. Madeleine was an attractive, alert, self-possessed young woman in her early twenties with an oval face framed by wavy auburn hair and set off by dimpled cheeks. She was calm and strong-willed. Instead of showing panic when told of the attack on her father, she had simply abandoned what she was doing and
made her way to Leighton Buzzard as soon as she could.
By the time that she arrived, her father had been moved to the spare bedroom in the stationmaster’s house and a penitent Frank Pike was seated beside him. It took her over an hour to convince the fireman that he needed to go home to his wife in order to reassure her that he had not been injured during the robbery. Still troubled in his mind, Pike had finally departed, given some hope by the brief moment when his friend and work mate seemed to rally. He accepted that it was Madeleine’s place to keep watch over her father. Both she and the fireman prayed earnestly that she was not sitting beside a deathbed.
It was well after dawn when Caleb Andrews started to wake from his long sleep. Eyes still shut, he rocked from side to side as if trying to shake himself free of something, and a stream of unintelligible words began to tumble from his mouth. Madeleine bent solicitously over him.
‘Can you hear me?’ she asked.
He puckered his face as he fought to concentrate. When he tried to move the arm that was in a sling, he let out a cry of pain then became silent again. Madeleine thought he had fallen asleep and made no effort to rouse him. She simply sat there and gazed at him by the light that was slanting in through a gap in the curtains. The room was small and featureless but the bed was a marked improvement on the table in the stationmaster’s office. Greater comfort had allowed the patient to rest properly and regain some strength. When his daughter least expected it, Caleb Andrews forced his eyes open and squinted at the ceiling.
‘Where am I?’ he whispered.
‘You’re somewhere safe, Father,’ she replied.
He recognised her voice. ‘Maddy? Is that you?’
He turned his head towards her and let out another yelp of pain.
‘Keep still, Father.’
‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘You were badly injured,’ she explained, putting a delicate hand on his chest. ‘The train was robbed and you were attacked.’
‘Where’s Frank? Why isn’t my fireman here?’
‘I sent him home.’
Andrews was bewildered. ‘Home? Why?’ His eyes darted wildly. ‘Where are we, Maddy?’
‘In the stationmaster’s house at Leighton Buzzard.’
‘What am I doing here? I should be at work.’
‘You need rest,’ she told him, putting her face close to his. ‘You took some blows to the head and you fractured a leg when you fell from the footplate. Your arm is in a sling because you have a broken collarbone. Be very careful how you move.’
His face was puce with rage. ‘Who
did
this to me?’
‘There’s no need to worry about that now.’
‘Tell me. I want to know.’
‘Calm down. You must not get excited.’
‘Frank Pike shouldn’t have deserted his post. He’ll be reported.’
‘Forget him, Father,’ she advised. ‘All we have to think about is how to get you better. It’s a miracle that you’re alive and able to talk again. I thought I might have lost you.’
She brushed his lips with a tender kiss. Though his face was contorted with pain, he managed a faint smile of thanks and reached up with his free hand to touch her arm. Still hazy,
torn between fatigue and anger, puzzled and comforted by his daughter’s presence, he struggled to piece together what had happened to him but his memory was hopelessly clouded. All that he could remember was who he was and what he did for a living. When he heard a train steaming through the nearby station, a sense of duty swelled up in him.
‘I must get out of here,’ he decided, attempting to move.
‘No, Father,’ she said, using both hands to restrain him gently.
‘Frank and I have to take the mail train to Birmingham.’
‘It was robbed yesterday. You were assaulted.’
‘Help me up, Maddy. We have to get there on time.’
‘There
is
no mail train,’ she said, trying to break the news to him as softly as she could. ‘The men who robbed you removed a section of the track. When you were knocked unconscious, Frank Pike was forced to drive the engine off the rails. He told me that it’s lying on its side until they can get a crane to it.’
Andrews was appalled. ‘My engine came off the track?’ Madeleine nodded sadly. ‘Oh, no! That’s a terrible thing to hear. She was such a lovely piece of engineering. Mr Allan designed her and I looked after her as if she was my own daughter – as if she was
you
, Maddy.’ His eyes moistened. ‘I don’t care what happened to me. It’s her that I worry about. I loved her like a father. She was
mine
.’
Caleb Andrews sobbed as if he had just lost the dearest thing in his life. All that Madeleine could do was to use her handkerchief to wipe away the tears that rolled down his cheeks.
The train that had sped through Leighton Buzzard Station
continued on its journey to Birmingham, passing the spot where the robbery had occurred and allowing its passengers a fleeting view of the scene of the crime before taking them on into the Linslade Tunnel. Among those in one of the first class compartments was Inspector Robert Colbeck, who took a keen interest in the sight of the wrecked locomotive that still lay beside the line. He spared a thought for its unfortunate driver.
Though it had given him a very late night, he felt that his visit to the Devil’s Acre had been worthwhile and he had been struck once again by the fact that one of the most hideous rookeries in London was cheek by jowl with the uplifting beauty of Westminster Abbey. Rising early the next day, he had travelled by cab to Euston Station where he bought two different newspapers to compare their treatment of the story.
Edward Tallis had been right in his prediction. For anyone involved in law enforcement, reports of the robbery did not make happy reading. The stunning novelty of the crime and the sheer size of the amount stolen – over
£
3000 in gold sovereigns – encouraged the newspapers to inject a note of hysteria into their accounts, stressing the ease with which the robbery had been carried out and the apparent inability of either the mail guards or the railway policemen to offer anything but token resistance. The Detective Department at Scotland Yard, they told their readers, had never mounted an investigation of this kind before and were therefore operating in the dark.
Robert Colbeck was mentioned as being in charge of the case and he was surprised to read a quotation from Superintendent Tallis, who referred to him as ‘an experienced, reliable and gifted detective’. When he remembered some
of the less flattering things that his superior had called him in private, he gave a wry smile. One point made by both newspapers was incontrovertible. No crime of this nature had ever before confronted a Detective Department that, formed only nine years earlier, was still very much in its infancy. They were in uncharted waters.
While the newspapers used this fact as a stick with which to beat the men at Scotland Yard, the Inspector in charge of the investigation saw it as a welcome challenge. He was thrilled by the notion of pitting himself against a man who had organised a crime of such magnitude and audacity. Most of the offenders he had arrested were poor, downtrodden, uneducated men who had turned to crime because there was no honest way for them to make a living. London had its share of seasoned villains, desperate characters who would stop at nothing to achieve their ends, but the majority who trooped through the courts were pathetic figures for whom Colbeck felt a sneaking sympathy.
This time, however, it was different. They were up against a man of clear intelligence, a natural leader who could train and control a gang of almost a dozen accomplices. Instead of fearing him, as the reporters were inclined to do, Colbeck saw him as a worthy adversary, someone who would test his skills of detection and who would stretch the resources of Scotland Yard in a way that had never occurred before. Solving the crime would be an adventure for the mind. However long it might take, Colbeck looked forward to meeting the man behind the train robbery.
Meanwhile, he decided to catch up on some lost sleep. The train was moving along at a comfortable speed but there were stops to make and it would be hours before it reached
Birmingham. He settled back in his upholstered seat and closed his eyes. It was a noisy journey. The chugging of the locomotive combined with the rattling of the carriages and the clicking of the wheels on the rails to produce a cacophony that tried to defy slumber. There was also a lurching motion to contend with as the train powered its way along the standard gauge track.
Because it offered more stability, Colbeck preferred the wider gauge of the Great Western Railway and the greater space in its carriages but he had no choice in the matter on this occasion. The company whose mail train had been robbed was the one taking him to Birmingham, and he was interested to see how it treated its passengers. His compartment was almost full and sleep would offer him a refuge from conversation with any of his companions. Two of them, both elderly men, were scandalised by what they had read in their newspapers.
‘A train robbery!’ protested one of them. ‘It’s unthinkable.’
‘I agree,’ said the other. ‘If this kind of thing is allowed to go on, we’ll all be in danger. Any passenger train would run the risk of being ambushed and we would be forced to hand over everything we are carrying of value.’
‘What a ghastly prospect!’
‘It might come to that.’
‘Not if this gang is caught, convicted and sent to prison.’
‘What chance is there of that?’ said the other, sceptically.
‘Detectives have already begun an investigation.’
‘I find it hard to put much faith in them, sir.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they have almost no clues to help them. According to the
Times
, these devils came out of nowhere,
stole what they wanted, then vanished into thin air. The detectives are chasing phantoms.’
‘Yet they claim that this Inspector Colbeck is a gifted policeman.’
‘It will need more than a gifted policeman to solve this crime.’
‘I agree with you there, my friend.’
‘My guess is that this Inspector will not even know where to start.’
On that vote of confidence in his ability, Colbeck fell asleep.
The Devil’s Acre was almost as menacing by day as by night. Danger lurked everywhere in its narrow streets, its twisting lanes and its dark alleyways. There was a pervading stink that never seemed to go away and an unrelenting clamour. Bawling adults and screaming children joined in a mass choir whose repertory consisted solely of a sustained and discordant din that assaulted the eardrums. Scavenging dogs and fighting tomcats added their own descant. Smoke-blackened tenements were built around small, shadowed courtyards, thick with assorted refuse and animal excrement. In every sense, it was a most unhealthy place to live.
Brendan Mulryne, however, loved the district. Indeed, he was sad that parts of it had recently been pulled down during the building of Victoria Street, thereby limiting its size and increasing the population of the area that was left, as those who had been evicted moved into houses that were already crowded with occupants. What the Irishman enjoyed about the Devil’s Acre was its raucous life and its sense of freedom. It was a private place, set apart from the rest of London, a
swirling underworld that offered sanctuary to criminals of every kind in its brothels, its tenements, its opium dens, its gambling haunts and its seedy public houses.
Mulryne felt at home. People he had once hounded as a policeman were now his neighbours and he tolerated their misdemeanours with ease. It was only when a defenceless woman was being beaten, or when a child was in distress, that he felt obliged to intervene. Otherwise, he let the mayhem continue unabated. It was his natural milieu. Unlike strangers who came into the Acre, he could walk its streets without fear of assault or of attracting any of the pickpockets who cruised up and down in search of targets. Mulryne’s size and strength bought him respect from almost everyone.
Isadore Vout was the exception to the rule. When the Irishman found him that morning, the moneylender was at his lodging, enjoying a breakfast of stale bread and dripping that he first dipped into a mug of black, brackish tea. Rich by comparison with most people in the area, Vout led a miserly existence, wearing tattered clothes and eating poor food. He was a short, skinny weasel of a man in his fifties, with long grey hair that reached his shoulders and a mean face that was forever set in an expression of distaste. He was not pleased when the landlady showed in his visitor. His voice betrayed no hint of respect.
‘Wor d’yer want, Mulryne?’ he said through a mouthful of food.
‘First of all,’ replied the other, standing over him, ‘I’d like a little politeness from that arsehole you call a mouth. Unless, that is, you’d like me to pour the rest of that tea over your head.’
‘Yer got no right to threaten me.’
‘I’m giving you friendly advice.’ Pulling up a stool, Mulryne sat beside him at the table and saw what he was eating. ‘Bread and dripping, is it?’ he noted with disgust. ‘And you, able to dine off the finest plate and eat like a lord.’