Читать книгу A Scream in Soho - John G. Brandon - Страница 5

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Opinions in that particular portion of Soho in which the crime was committed differed as to the exact quality of the terrible scream that rang out at five minutes past one, precisely. Police Constable C. 1285, working a Soho beat, part of which forced him to inch himself through the gloom from Oxford Street the length of Dean Street to Shaftesbury Avenue, was positive that it came from the throat of a woman; anyhow, it stopped him dead. For a scream in the early hours of the morning in Soho, even from a female throat, to stop dead in his tracks a hard-boiled constable who had worked in that cosmopolitan quarter for years, had to be something entirely out of the ordinary, as, indeed, this one was!

He was passing the short entry into Soho Square at the time, and the sound came from the left of him; that is to say from the direction of the square itself. Male or female, it undoubtedly came from the throat of a person in mortal terror and, to judge by the curious gurgling note upon which it finished, the sound had been stopped by someone other than the screamer.

On the other hand, Detective Inspector McCarthy, but an hour or so after leaving Sir William Haynes, and at that moment in the act of switching out his light before stepping into bed, was very positive that the scream came from the throat of a man. Not a matter, it might be thought, of any great moment, but should that scream which penetrated the Cimmerian blackness herald a case of murder, as it certainly sounded to do, it could be of considerable consequence.

The inspector promptly flung up the window of his bedroom which fronted on to Dean Street, and peered out in the direction from which the sound had seemed to him to come. For all he could see he might just as well have switched out his light and peered under the bed.

Pulling an overcoat over his night attire and slipping an automatic pistol hurriedly into its pocket, he groped his way downstairs and was out in that thoroughfare in his slippered feet almost before the echoes of that ghastly sound had died away. To him, also, the direction from which the cry came seemed to be Soho Square, towards which he groped at such speed as he could make, thumbing back the safety-catch of his automatic as he went. The thing he had forgotten to bring was the one most necessary of all—his torch.

The windows of flats and other lodgings situated above the shops of Dean Street were being flung up rapidly, and heads of people not usually disturbed by such sounds were being thrust out of them. Not that they could see anything, any more than anyone could see them, but it is to be supposed that they got a certain amount of satisfaction from their futile effort to penetrate the impenetrable. Which served to show still more the terrible quality of that cry when, even in a neighbourhood where midnight screams were no strange sound, this one was unhesitatingly set down as an accompaniment, prelude would perhaps be the better word, to murder.

Just how many times in his career McCarthy had boasted that he could traverse Soho at any hour of the day or night blindfolded, or in the thickest fog, was borne in weightily upon him at this moment. Fog was one thing, and bad enough in the congested streets of Soho to rattle anyone. But this never-to-be-sufficiently-damned black-out business was the absolute frozen limit! For the safety of the populace it was necessary, he supposed, and therefore had to be endured, but how the divil any man was supposed to get quickly upon the track of crime committed in it was something more than he was prepared to answer.

His first crash was into a light standard which received the shock without murmur; his second was into someone who gave indignant tongue in a manner to which the word “murmur” could certainly not be applied.

By the feel of the obstacle it was the front of an extremely stout Italian lady who cursed him fluently in what McCarthy instantly recognized as the Neapolitan idiom of his dead mother. It was interlarded with many calls upon the Madonna mia, and many other of the better known saints of her native land. Uttering in the same tongue the soft, appeasing words which, we are told, turneth away wrath, and in which the lady recognized instantly the voice of the Detective Inspector McCarthy that staggered officer reassured her. She apologized handsomely and sent the inspector upon his way with the cheering personal opinion that the lads of either the Mafia or Camorrista were at it again!

At the corner leading into the square itself, McCarthy also bumped into C. 1285 who, all things considered, was also showing a fair turn of speed. He recognized the voice of the inspector instantly—aided possibly by the quality of some of the adjectives he was using.

“Where?” McCarthy snapped, when he, in turn, recognized the voice of the bumped.

“It seemed to me to come from the square, sir. By heaven, it was an awful scream!”

Into the square and round it the pair crawled, to find the windows of such places of residence as are still left there well up, and presumably filled with a wondering and shuddering audience. For the rest of it, the square might have been a large expanse of black velvet, for anything that could be seen in it.

At that moment there occurred one of those happenings which the inspector was wont to refer to as “the Luck of the McCarthys”. For all that, at the moment and in the circumstances, it might have seemed to him a manifestation of a beneficent Providence, to other persons concerned, such as the owner of the premises, the A.R.P. authorities and the fire brigades, it probably took on a totally different aspect. These things all depend upon the point of view.

At any rate, and without the slightest warning, a sheet of flame burst suddenly from the roof of one of the few old tenement houses left standing in the vicinity of the square, though rather back from it. It later transpired that some attic dweller, aroused from slumber by that ghastly scream, had darted out of bed in a more or less bemused state and knocked over a paraffin lamp which, despite superhuman struggle, promptly had the place in flames. Although the efforts of the firemen managed to prevent it spreading to other nearby buildings, the one in question was eventually gutted, and in the process lit the square and those who rushed into it almost with the searching light of day. It amazed the inspector to find how many hundreds of people had managed to find their way into it, and as for the audience at the surrounding upper windows, their name was legion.

By this time the pounding of heavy feet along the pavements and the constant shrilling of police whistles told both McCarthy and C. 1285 that further official assistance was upon the way. In the next few moments their force was augmented by a panting sergeant accompanied by two uniformed men; another minute saw that number enlarged by a still further force of both uniformed and plain-clothed men. McCarthy promptly took charge.

“Beat the square, every inch of it,” he ordered. “And lose no time about it. In a minute or two we’ll have the brigades here and what in the way of clues they don’t trample out of sight for ever, they’ll hose to blazes! Grab any person that looks in the least suspicious and hold them for interrogation.”

But although his orders were carried out with extraordinary alacrity and such thoroughness that scarcely a pin dropped upon the pavement would have been missed, and, additionally, was got through before the first of the fire-engines roared their way into the square, not one sign of anything appertaining to murder in any shape or form had there been found.

“Well, this beats Bannagher, and he beat the divil!” McCarthy muttered to himself. “We’ll try the entrance to the square,” he said to the sergeant. “It was from there that cry came, I’m more than positive.”

“I’d have thought so myself,” that grizzled officer returned perplexedly. “Though, mind you, Inspector, I was at the Oxford Street corner of Soho Street when I heard it. But that’s where I’d have said it came from.”

In the lurid light of the now fast-rising flames, they searched every doorway on their left hand, but it was not until they came to the deeply-recessed entrance of the last of the historic residences left of a time when Soho Square was as fashionable a place of residence as Berkeley Square is to-day, that they came across unmistakable signs of what they sought.

Two old and well-worn stone steps led up to a magnificently-carved and pillared doorway, above which was an ornate fanlight, carved in the centre with the date 1702. The lintels and the pillars supporting the porch were painted in a deep green, but the door itself was spotless white—except where both lintel and lower panels were liberally bedaubed with blood, some of which still slowly trickled down the smoothness of the heavily enamelled woodwork! In the light of the fire it looked like black ink, but not to the experienced eyes which gave it their keen survey.

The two worn wells in the centre of the old stone steps were literally little pools of blood which had splashed as far as the ornamental fencing, fronting stone steps which again led down to a basement. Turning the sergeant’s torch down there, McCarthy let out a gasp, and before anyone realized what he was at had darted down the steps to pick up gingerly a long three-edged stiletto, the blade of which was thick with blood!

That the weapon was of foreign origin he was positive. Near it, and caught in a piece of wire-netting which had been suspended above part of the basement for some purpose, was a tiny square of linen, surrounded by deep, but very fine, lace; a woman’s handkerchief. It, too, was heavily spotted with blood. But of the victim of what was obviously a ghastly and blood-thirsty crime there was no sign whatever!