Read The Thieves' Labyrinth (Albert Newsome 3) Online
Authors: James McCreet
Those who knew Sir Richard Mayne, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, knew that he was a man of scrupulous fairness, piercing intelligence and impeccable morality.
However, when his office door at 4 Whitehall-place slammed with colossal force on that morning following the Waterloo-bridge death, they might also have reflected upon his fierce protectiveness of
the Force’s good name.
Waiting in the office that day was Mr Blackthorne, the Waterloo Bridge Controller. A not unimportant man himself, he was nevertheless somewhat cowed by the fearful bang of the door and the
uneasy silence that followed as Sir Richard took his seat behind the great oaken desk.
Minutes seemed to pass without the commissioner acknowledging his visiter. Instead, and seemingly deep in thought, he slowly folded a letter he had been holding as he entered – a letter
that had evidently caused him a degree of consternation. In the flat grey light from the window, he looked rather drawn and pale. Then, with a deep sigh, he finally looked up and into the expectant
eyes of the bridge controller.
‘Mr Blackthorne – I must begin by thanking you for accepting my invitation to converse,’ he said.
‘It is my honour, Sir Richard. We at the Bridge Company are most keen to aid the police in any way we are able.’
‘Except, it seems, in the pursuit of crime.’
‘I . . . beg your pardon?’
‘You know very well what I mean, Mr Blackthorne. I refer to the death on your bridge yesterday morning.’
‘The suicide, you mean? If that was a crime, it was one against divine law, not human. I see, or intend, no insult to your men . . .’
‘In the first instance, it has not been proved to me or to the Metropolitan Police beyond reasonable doubt that this
was
a suicide—’
‘Sir Richard – you may have read in today’s newspa—’
‘And in the
second
instance, perhaps you might explain to me why my constables were prevented from entering the bridge to satisfy themselves whether this was a suicide or
otherwise?’
‘Sir Richard – I need hardly remind you that the bridge is private property . . .’
‘And I need hardly remind you, Mr Blackthorne, that crime has no ownership. If a murder occurs in a private house or in a palace, it is the province of the law – of my men – to
seek out its perpetrators. You had no right to prevent their access.’
‘With all respect, I absolutely have that right. As bridge controller, I may close the thoroughfare any time I wish, whether for repairs or for an investigation.’
‘A crime was committed on that bridge, Mr Blackthorne. Where is the body? Where is the inquest? Where is the word of the law? You are preventing the hand of justice.’
‘Forgive me, Sir Richard; perhaps I have not made myself clear. The death yesterday morning was a suicide. There was nothing to investigate: no crime committed but against the self and no
law broken but the religious.’
‘You say there was nothing to investigate, but you called in your own investigator: this ludicrous mountebank Eldritch Batchem. Why would the Bridge Company go to such lengths for a mere
suicide?’
‘Sir Richard – as you may know, Waterloo-bridge has been termed “the noblest bridge in the world” by Canova. It is the pride of the city: a glorious feat of engineering.
Much as I am aggrieved to admit, it has also of late earned a reputation for . . . for the unfortunates who wish to leap from its parapets. We at the Bridge Company absolutely
resist
that
reputation. I have made clear to my toll-collectors that any suspicious death upon the bridge is to be reported to me directly. I do not wish to add murder to the infamy already heaped upon the
structure, and I intend to address any such ambiguity personally.’
‘So you are implying that you would have a murder more fortuitously termed a suicide by an amateur “detective” to protect the name of your structure?’
‘Certainly not! And I would have you know that Mr Batchem is a highly respected practitioner of the investigative arts.’
‘Respected by whom? Not by I or any of my detectives, who have spent years perfecting their vocation under the aegis of the law. This Mr Batchem approaches police work as an idle
hobbyhorse.’
‘I am sorry that you feel this way. I meant no slight to you, Sir Richard, or to any of your detectives. The truth is that your Detective Force is known to be . . . somewhat slow in its
investigations and I wished only to expedite—’
‘
Slow?
’
‘That is to say . . . the . . . er lengthy process . . . I mean, the machinations of the . . .’
‘I believe you wish to express that the Detective Force is a thorough and professional body of the finest investigators ever to walk these London streets. They take as long as necessary to
find the true solution. And they do not take out advertisements in
the Times
’s classified pages selling their wares like some common Bermondsey hawker of coals.’
‘Forgive me, Sir Richard. I see I have insulted you.’
‘I and the entire Metropolitan Police.’
‘Well, I can only state that the Bridge Company has already made generous concessions to the Force, whose constables may pass without toll along the bridge as many times as they wish each
day.’
‘Is this a threat, Mr Blackthorne?’
‘It is not. It is not. I have no wish to earn your antipathy further. May I offer the apologies of the Bridge Company on this matter, which I feel is actually a great misunderstanding. I
will take your concerns back to the company and you may be sure that the board will communicate formally with you shortly . . . if that would be a satisfactory resolution to this unfortunate
situation.’
‘I will wait for that communication, Mr Blackthorne – and for a change in policy. In the meantime, I have
this
to deal with.’ Sir Richard held up the letter he had
folded earlier.
‘Then I will show myself to the door, Commissioner. You are a busy man and I do not wish to inconvenience you further.’
Mr Blackthorne closed the door behind him with a soundlessness to rival the thunderclap of the commissioner’s earlier ingress.
Now brooding alone at his desk, Sir Richard rubbed his eyes and looked at the folded letter. He slipped it inside his waistcoat pocket and rang for his clerk, who appeared at one of the internal
doors to the office.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Arrange for the steam launch to collect me at Whitehall-stairs in five minutes.’
‘You will not take the carriage, sir? It is ready to leave.’
‘No. The launch will be quicker. I am going to the Custom House. Send a fast galley ahead to instruct the inspector general I am on my way.’
And with his stern expression unchanged, the commissioner of police took his coat and hat and went out to the stand by the riverside, glancing east along the brown waters to the pale arches of
Waterloo-bridge, half concealed even at that short distance by the steam and smoke of the city. On the police launch, he would unfold and read again the letter he had received that morning,
versions of which had already appeared in a number of morning editions:
Dear Commissioner Sir Richard Mayne
May I first introduce myself? You might already have heard tell of my recent efforts about the city, but I am Mr Eldritch Batchem: he who was engaged by the Waterloo
Bridge Company to investigate the late death upon the span. No doubt you will be astounded to learn that I have already found the solution to that little mystery, whose investigative process I
propose to delineate for you here, that you may derive some pleasure or enlightenment from my methods.
I admit that the evidence upon the bridge itself initially offered little aid to the skilled investigator, for the dampness of the fog upon the stone surfaces had obliterated my
opportunities to read any footprints. I did, however, find a quantity of blood in the middle of the roadway approximately above the fifth arch from the Surrey side. This had been diluted but
not dissipated by the atmospheric moisture, and I adjudged it to be the point of injury. No weapon could be found on the bridge.
A careful examination of the area around the blood stain turned up a lady’s silver earring in the eastern pedestrian recess nearest to where the body lay, and a handkerchief
approximately ten yards south of the body, both of which I dismissed as the kind of things lost on the span each day.
As you may have heard, the victim managed to stagger to the Middlesex toll-house, where he expired. Although the dying man was unable to convey anything coherent to the toll-collector in
his dying breaths, his corpse itself would provide me with the solution to the mystery. Thus I had it removed to a place where I could examine it away from the attention of the many
newspapermen seeking my intelligence on the matter.
Well, I made a thorough search of the victim’s clothes, which yielded the initials W.B. on sundry garments. In the left coat pocket, I was pleased enough to find a playbill for my
own forthcoming address at the Queen’s Theatre on Wych-street. In the right pocket, I found a bundle of blank Custom House unloading warrants signed by Principal Officer Gregory. Other
pockets revealed little of note: a pocketbook, a number of coins amounting to 4s 6d, and a small Sheffield penknife with pearl scales.
Perhaps your first thought, Commissioner, is that the penknife was used to inflict the fatal wound. You would be wrong in such an assumption, however: there was no blood on the knife,
and, in any case, what man would cut his own throat and then carefully fold away the blade before putting the weapon in his pocket?
No doubt you are also thinking that the unloading warrants suggest the victim was an employee of the Custom House. Though the body itself bore no such uniform, insignia or paraphernalia
of a waterside worker, I nevertheless examined the body and clothing closely and was perspicacious enough to find a small stone in the left shoe – a stone, mind you, of the exact colour
and dimensions of the gravel upon the Custom House terrace. This was my corroboration of what the warrants suggested.
As you might expect, my next action was to request that Principal Officer Gregory of the Custom House come to where I was examining the body and look at the dead man’s face in order
to identify it. It was thus with great melancholy that Mr Gregory said he knew the victim as one William Barton, a tidewaiter of the Custom House. The blank unloading warrants, said Mr Gregory,
had been stolen some days before, and the victim had been one of the suspects in that crime. (Note also the corroboration with the initials W.B.)
Commissioner – I will torture you no longer with the solution: William Barton was the victim of nothing more than suicide brought about by his own guilt and fear of impending
discovery.
‘What is the evidence?’ you may cry.
Well, there was not another soul on the bridge at the time of the incident. Each person who passed through the Surrey or Middlesex toll-houses was accounted for at the other end –
at least in the hour or so preceding the death, when the fog descended. The last was a costermonger with his barrow. Where there is no other suspect, there can be no suspicion of
murder.
Ah, but you will say the toll-keepers themselves could be suspects. They were, after all, the only two people on the bridge apart from the victim. Naturally, I took such a consideration
into account and examined both of the gentlemen for traces of blood. There was none, and also no opportunity for them to clean their hands prior to my arrival. Nor, indeed, was there any
obvious motive: nothing was stolen and there was no benefit for the toll-collectors in such a course of action.
‘What of the weapon that bisected his throat?’ you may ask – a question worthy of your position. Let us put ourselves in the position of the victim (as any good
detective must do). Here is a man who is suspected of a serious crime; he is in danger of losing his employment and being shamed before all of his fellows. He stands to lose his good name, and
possibly also any bond he may have put up in trust as an employee of the Custom House. Would not any man quail before such a fate? No – he simply takes his razor and walks out to the
loneliest place in London: Waterloo-bridge in a fog. There, he makes a single slash at his own neck, using the fatal momentum of his arm to fling the offending tool over the parapet.
‘Mere fancy!’ you mutter. ‘Supposition!’ you conclude. Not at all – the toll-keeper of the Middlesex side heard metal striking against stone. Since no other
metal article could be found on the bridge, we may assume it was the lethal article itself: the razor.
I trust that you will pass this letter on to your men in the Detective Force (if they do not read it in today’s issues) that they may benefit from my methods.
Most respectfully yours,
Eldritch Batchem Esq.
Sir Richard held the letter with whitened knuckles. Much as he would have liked to rip it into shreds and cast it into the river, there was much in it that deserved more attention. In the
meantime, the steam launch was finally approaching his destination: Custom House quay.
As usual, the river about that point was frenetically a-bustle. Steamships from Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Havre seemed to suckle like piglets at the embankment, spilling chattering
passengers and luggage down gangplanks onto the gravel and into the arms of Customs officers waiting to check for significant importations of china, books, instruments, millinery and sundry other
goods masquerading as personal effects. Fishing boats jostled for space among the larger vessels and, indeed, the Pool hereabouts was so dense with dark-bodied ships that there seemed to be almost
no visible water at all.
The bell of the police launch cleared a space in the traffic and finally Sir Richard was able to get ashore to crunch rapidly over the gravel for his appointment with the inspector general, who,
it must be said, was no more enthusiastic about his impending meeting than Mr Blackthorne had been.