Читать книгу Byways to Evil - Lloyd Biggle jr. - Страница 7

CHAPTER 4

The meeting with Chief Inspector Mewer was scheduled for two o’clock, and Thomas Tallmage, the doctor who, years before, had reduced a mongrel dog’s fracture for me, arrived shortly before two. He was now Sir Thomas Tallmage, one of London’s most distinguished physicians. He was tall and handsome, greying despite the fact that he wasn’t much older than fifty, the calm and poised master of any crisis because he had seen so many. He had been Lady Sara’s suitor for more than twenty years.

He once told me how, as a young doctor, he had attempted to persuade her father, the Earl, that his prospects, both for wealth and distinction, were excellent, and he would make a worthy husband for a nobleman’s daughter. The Earl cut him off with a laugh. “You don’t have to convince me, my boy. Convince her!”

Sir Thomas had never been able to, but he was still trying.

Lady Sara was her father’s favourite child. He would have left the peerage to her if the law had permitted it. He often announced, pridefully, that she did everything he could do, and did it better, except chase women. When she came of age, the Married Woman’s Property Act had not yet been passed, and a husband had absolute control over a wife’s money and property. Lady Sara told her father she wanted no man meddling with her patrimony. He decided he didn’t, either, and he settled a generous life income on her in such a way that her husband, if she acquired one, would be unable to touch the principal or even the income.

“The day before that happened, I had about four hundred suitors,” Lady Sara remembered with a laugh. “The day afterward, the number had dropped to four.”

She had nothing against marriage. She thought it a splendid institution for a man but not for a woman. Lord Byron had written, “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,/’Tis woman’s whole existence.” To Lady Sara’s extreme irritation, men were fond of quoting this to her, and she liked to point out acidly that they always quoted it out of context. Lord Byron’s lines were not for her.

There was so much she wanted to do with her life, so much to learn, so many things to accomplish, and when she looked critically at the lives of her women friends, she saw that marriage had all but consumed every one of them. Marriage left a woman little time for anything else. Even women of her own class, with no financial worries and houses full of servants, had to supervise constantly; dismiss inept maids and fight daily battles with housekeepers and butlers; conduct their own employment bureau so as to always have a full staff available; plan elaborate social occasions; struggle heroically with catastrophe when, with a dinner party in the offing, a cook or butler or housekeeper left without notice; look after their children’s welfare and education; work unremittingly to make certain their homes were efficiently and peacefully and economically run. To what purpose? So their husbands could be freed from all domestic concerns in order to occupy themselves with more important matters. Lady Sara chose to remain single and invest her large income in the work that was her vocation, her profession, and—yes—her religion, the detection of crime.

When I joined Lady Sara and Sir Thomas, they were already seated at the oaken conference table in her study. In the centre was the enormous cribbage board Lady Sara inherited from her father. At the moment there were only two sets of pegs on the board. One represented our investigation into the river thefts. Those pegs were still in their starting holes because we had not yet turned up a single clue. The other set represented the mystery of the two giants. The artists’ sketches provided enough information for a beginning, and Lady Sara had moved the pegs two holes forward.

The Shadwell murder had been left in Chief Inspector Mewer’s hands. I once suggested giving the Chief Inspector a cribbage board of his own to record his cases on, but Lady Sara said no, he wouldn’t know how to use it. This was probably true. I had never been able to understand how Lady Sara used hers. She had her own subjective system for rating her progress on cases.

Sir Thomas greeted me with friendly scrutiny. He liked to make jokes about the state of my health. He remarked, “Colin has been unusually reticent of late. Is he in love?”

“He has been reading Mrs. Humphry’s Manners for Men,” Lady Sara said. “In the last chapter, she lays down rules for speaking with royal persons, and Colin is grappling with the notion that during such conversations he must leave it to the royal person to originate subjects of discussion and never, under any circumstances, introduce a topic of his own. If you want him to talk, you have to suggest a subject and invite his comments.”

“But I’m not a royal person,” Sir Thomas protested.

“You are a knight,” Lady Sara said. “That, with your other qualifications and achievements, would fully entitle you to royal treatment if ‘royalty’ really meant anything.” She added thoughtfully, “It’s an asinine rule. Most royal persons have nothing in their heads but lumber. They’re completely incapable of suggesting subjects worth discussing. Quite apart from that, it was silly of Mrs. Humphry to include such a topic in her book. How many of her readers will ever have occasion to converse with royalty?”

“Not all royal persons are empty-headed,” Sir Thomas said loyally. “You’ll have to concede we are blessed with a great queen.”

Lady Sara shook her head. “Her Majesty’s only accomplishment is to be herself. She has never done anything else. She was popular in her youth, extremely unpopular in middle age, and now she is popular again. All of that has been the result of her being herself. In any situation that requires nothing more of her than that, she performs magnificently. A truly great queen should be able to reach beyond herself when a great occasion demands it.”

“What does the royal family think of you?” Sir Thomas asked.

“Princess Louise is a good friend,” Lady Sara said. “As you know, she is a talented artist, and we have interests in common as well as mutual friends in London’s Bohemia. When I first came out, the Prince of Wales thought I was fascinating until I made it clear that I thought he wasn’t. The others don’t think of me at all except when something I do is forced on their attention. Then they dismiss me with tones of deep regret.”

Like Lady Sara’s rooms upstairs, her study was furnished severely. There were no bric-a-brac. Everything had a place and a use. The books that lined the walls were on every imaginable subject. Although crime was Lady Sara’s principal concern, she was interested in everything about it, and since crime touched every sphere of human activity, she was interested in everything.

The two artists, Stephen Lynes and Evan Vaughan, had just arrived, and Lady Sara was still greeting them, when the Dowager Countess, Lady Ranisford, swept into the room. She was small, plump, and as unlike Lady Sara as could be imagined. She had come over from Connaught Place because Lady Sara had told her Sir Thomas would be there.

She brought with her Reginald Dempster, a cousin of hers and Lady Sara’s several times removed. He was a man about forty, slight of build except for an ample stomach, with a small, almost frivolous moustache. He was always impeccably dressed, and he had the air of waiting for some higher calling, although no one who knew him, least of all himself, had the slightest notion of what that might be. When he was younger, he had been, for a time, heir presumptive to a baronetcy. Then the present baronet remarried, taking a second wife much younger than himself, and in short order produced a large family that included several sons. This naturally was a considerable disappointment to Dempster and his wife—especially to his wife, since she had married him on the presumption of his inheritance. He lived on a limited fixed income, a legacy from an aunt. He was always short of money and apparently incapable of earning any even though he had received a Third in law from Oxford and had been called to the bar.

Lady Sara considered him both a bore and an ass, and years before she had, with effort, cured him of his attempts to borrow money from her. He both thought and spoke in clichés, which she found irritating. When he delivered himself of some such profundity as, “I can’t make head nor tail of it,” she would reply lightly, “That possibly is because it has neither a head nor a tail.” We had seen little of him in recent years except when we encountered him at the Countess’s home. The Countess tolerated him because she found him amusing. He was a wonderful source of gossip about persons of note, and if she needed someone to complete a foursome for whist, or she merely wanted someone to chat with, Dempster was always available. He had nothing else to do.

The Countess greeted Sir Thomas with formal affection, gave me a friendly nod, and graciously permitted Lady Sara to present the artists. Then she turned to Sir Thomas and asked, “Did you really see that unfortunate man?”

“A murder victim is beyond feeling,” Sir Thomas said with a rueful grin. “I’m the unfortunate one. Lady Sara routed me out at sunrise and hauled me off to a makeshift mortuary down by the docks. Yes, my lady, I saw him.”

“Was he really clawed by an animal?” the countess asked breathlessly.

“He undoubtedly was clawed. I should have said ‘by an animal,’ but I’ve suspended judgment because Lady Sara has promised to show me otherwise. We can’t start until Chief Inspector Mewer gets here.”

“Police officers,” the Countess said scornfully, “are never on time and never where they are needed.” She turned to me. “Did you see him, Colin?”

“The murder victim? I saw him last night, my lady.”

“What did he look like?”

“Like someone had fed part of him into a sausage machine,” I said.

She uttered a peal of laughter. “Dear Colin. He always has the right word.”

“He wasn’t pretty,” I said defensively.

“You can’t expect a corpse to be pretty. It is totally incapable of presenting its best profile, or rearranging its clothing to advantage, or striking a pose, or doing any of the silly things people are always doing to improve their appearances. This one sounds deliciously gruesome. Will you join me for tea, Sir Thomas?”

“No, thank you, Lady Ranisford. I must get back to my neglected work as soon as we deal with the Chief Inspector. Lady Sara would never admit it, but her patient, being dead, could have waited. My patients, being alive, have to be kept that way.”

“Lord Anstee is coming,” Lady Sara said. “You may be able to persuade him to stay for tea.”

The Countess stared at her. “Why would he be coming to town at this time of year? He hates London after the Season is over.”

“I asked him to come,” Lady Sara said.

Reggie Dempster was taking everything in with open mouth. Casual descriptions of hideously-mutilated corpses were obviously not his cup of tea, but he was coping as best he could. His mouth opened wider when the next guests arrived. The first was Chief Inspector Mewer, but his entrance went almost unnoticed because Lord Anstee, mutton chop whiskers fluttering, dashed in right behind him.

“Sorry I’m late, Sara, dear,” Lord Anstee announced. “The trains I take never run on time. Ah, Hildegarde!” He gave the Countess a sweeping embrace. “You are more charming each time I see you. Sir Thomas, you look too unhealthy to be a doctor. Better let me mix a tonic for you. Hello, Colin. Glad Sara hasn’t worked you to death. But it’ll come, it’ll come.”

Lady Sara greeted him with a kiss. “Did you bring it?” she demanded.

“Of course I brought it. Did you think I would come without it? But it still isn’t clear to me what you wanted with it. On the telephone, you sounded as though the Houses of Parliament would collapse, the Thames would reverse its flow, and war would break out with France if this museum piece weren’t placed in your hands at precisely two o’clock. I wouldn’t have dared not bring it. Sorry the train was late.”

Chief Inspector Mewer, always fearful that London would be ravished by crime while he was absent from his office, was becoming increasingly impatient. He harrumphed twice, but Lady Sara was too occupied with Lord Anstee to notice.

Lord Anstee handed her a package. “I removed the handle,” he said. “Awkward to carry on a train with the handle attached. Hope you can manage without it. I’d hate to think war broke out with France because I left the handle at home.”

“I can manage splendidly without the handle,” Lady Sara assured him. “As for the train being late—bosh. I know when your train gets in. You would have arrived early if you hadn’t made a detour to the Caledonian Club.”

“How did you know?” Lord Anstee demanded.

“By the whisky Mac on your breath. The odor—or perhaps you would rather I said ‘fragrance’—of Scotch whisky and ginger wine is unmistakable, and nowhere else are the whisky Macs as potent, and as fragrant, as at the Caledonian Club.”

Lord Anstee laughed sheepishly. “The Caledonian wasn’t so very much out of my way, and train rides are a dull, dry business. A man has needs, you know.”

“I do know,” Lady Sara said with a laugh. “To tell the truth, you weren’t even late. Would you like me to mix you another?”

“Thank you, no. For all your talent, you don’t have quite the right touch for mixing drinks. A moderate drinker never does.” He nodded at the package. “Now that you’ve got it, do you need me?”

“I may,” Lady Sara said. “The Chief Inspector is a hard man to convince.”

The Chief Inspector was on the verge of exploding with impatience, but there was further delay while the Countess settled the question of tea with Lord Anstee. She departed, finally, taking the still-awed Reggie Dempster with her, and Lady Sara got everyone seated around the oaken table.

Because of his sturdy build, the Chief Inspector should have dominated the scene. He dominated most scenes he was a part of, but on that occasion, sitting next to Lady Sarah, an earl’s daughter, and across the table from Lord Anstee, a marquis, he shrank noticeably. Not only was he ill-at-ease, but he seemed to be following Mrs. Humphry’s credo concerning conversation with royal persons. He was waiting for someone to address him before he dared open his mouth.

Sir Thomas had a look of anticipation on his face.

Lady Sara turned to the Chief Inspector. “Have you found any animal tracks?”

He shifted his feet uneasily. “Well—no. Last night’s storm pretty much settled that, but we’re still looking. One might have been left in a sheltered place. If it was, we’ll find it. We only need one. Doctor MacIver—he’s the divisional police surgeon—agrees with me. Only an animal could have clawed the man’s face like that.”

“Have you identified the man?”

“Yes. His name is William Havill, usually called Bill, and he was employed at the London Docks as a night-watchman. He had always been steady and reliable, and he never missed work—until last night.”

“Then he was killed on his way to work,” Lady Sarah mused.

“The market wasn’t on his way to work. He came down Broad Street from his home—he lived over in Limehouse—and he should have continued straight ahead to the Shadwell New Basin warehouses. There was no reason for him to wander down toward the market. We’re wondering if he encountered the animal somewhere along Broad Street and was trying to escape from it.”

“Probably he encountered his murderer—murderers, more likely—and they forced him into a place where there would be no witnesses when they disposed of him. The area around the market is pretty much deserted early at night, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Lord Anstee has brought something that will help you identify the animal. He has a remarkable collection of medieval torture instruments. This one is called a ‘Spanish Tickler.’”

She unwrapped the package Lord Anstee had given to her and took out a bar of iron about four and a half inches long and an inch thick. Curving out from it were four claw-like iron projections, each terminating in a razor point. There was a hole in the end of the bar where a round shaft could be inserted to serve as a handle.

Sir Thomas leaned forward and studied it intently. Then he smiled and shook his head in amazement. “You’ve convinced me,” he told Lady Sarah.

The Chief Inspector stared open-mouthed at the iron claws. He said nothing.

“It’s also known as a ‘Cat’s Paw,’” Lord Anstee said. “There are illustrations in early books showing how it was used. They would string a nude victim up, hoisting him high into the air by his thumbs or wrists, and then, with a long handle on this thing, they could rake his entire body with it—make a bloody mess of him in very short order. These points are sharp.”

Chief Inspector Mewer was still staring. “I’ll be—” He cleared his throat apologetically and then reached out a finger and tested the point of one of the iron claws. “You think something like this tore Havill’s face?”

“I’m sure of it,” Lady Sara said. “No animal would have raked both sides of his face simultaneously, and if he had raised his arms to protect himself, he wouldn’t have had the backs of both forearms raked—it would take an extremely awkward position to make that possible, try it. The claw marks would have gone across his arms, not down the length of them. Someone killed him with a vicious blow to his head. Then, with him lying on the ground dead, claw marks were produced on his face and the backs of his arms with an instrument like this. Because it was done after he was dead, there was very little blood.”

The Chief Inspector harumphed indignantly. “Then someone applied a fancy touch in an effort to confuse the police.”

“Possibly, but I doubt it,” Lady Sara said. “I take it you’ve found no reason why anyone would want to murder a steady, reliable worker like Havill. He couldn’t have been carrying much in the way of money or valuables. Since there were no witnesses, the police would have been confused enough without the claw marks. Someone had a reason for mutilating his face and arms. It may have been a ghoulish reason, but it was a reason. It does seem strange that there were no animal tracks, though.”

“But you just said there was no animal!” the Chief Inspector protested.

“There wasn’t. But if the murderers could mutilate the corpse with claw marks, they easily could have left a few fake animal tracks. It would have been the right artistic touch. I wonder why they didn’t.”

“I’m going to have a hard time convincing my superiors about this,” the Chief Inspector said ruefully. “Could I borrow this thing for a few hours?”

Lord Anstee nodded his assent.

“But don’t lose it,” Lady Sarah cautioned. “It is rare and immensely valuable to a collector.”

“It is that,” Lord Anstee agreed. “It is continental in origin, and I don’t think there is another in England—not even in the Tower of London.” He turned to Lady Sara. “Do you need me for anything else? Then I’ll have a chat with your mother.” He nodded at the artists and at the Chief Inspector, told Sir Thomas he was always happy to see him as long as he didn’t have to see him professionally, and added a cautionary remark for me.

“I’m afraid you’ll come to a bad end, Colin, brought up in crime the way you were. Keep an eye on him, Chief Inspector. With the training Lady Sara has given him, he can make a master criminal of himself any time he feels so inclined.”

The Marquis headed for Connaught Place to find Lady Ranisford, and Lady Sara took up the business that had started all of this, the giant axe murderer. She began by describing the circumstances under which each of the artists had come in contact with a giant. Then she asked them to show Sir Thomas and Chief Inspector Mewer their sketches. It took the Chief Inspector a full minute to grasp their import.

He demanded indignantly, “Are you suggesting there were two seven and a half foot giants?”

“I’m not suggesting it,” Lady Sara said. “I’m stating it. One giant had—probably has—a birthmark; the other, the executed murderer, had no birthmark but a mole. Because they looked remarkably alike, it wouldn’t surprise me if Hob Hagan had a brother, even a twin brother. And it was the brother you hanged, not Hob Hagan.”

“If you’re thinking we hanged the wrong man, that’s nonsense. He was caught bending over his victims with the axe in his hands.”

“There can be no question about that,” Lady Sarah agreed. “You caught the axe murderer, and you hanged the axe murderer. But you didn’t catch or hang Hob Hagan.”

“Several people identified him!” the Chief Inspector protested. “He admitted himself that he was Hob Hagan!”

“Let’s consider what we know about him,” Lady Sarah said. “Hob Hagan first came to the attention of the police in York. He injured some men who were mistreating a horse. He was a gentle, repentant sort of person, but he did resent jokes about his size. Everyone who knew him had the impression that he desperately wanted to live a normal life. The manager of a travelling sideshow approached him when he was in prison and offered to make him rich. Hagan would have nothing to do with him.

“He drifted on, and there were several police reports concerning violent behaviour committed in very similar circumstances. Someone was mistreating an animal, or someone tried to poke fun at his size. Finally he reached London, and in this violent city there were more acts of violence. There were reports of men being beaten by a giant but not severely and only with his fists. Probably they taunted him, but he had learned to react with restraint.

“Suddenly he acquired a knife and a drastically different personality. He badly injured a number of people before the report of his first murder entered the police files. There were two more such reports before he was caught standing over three victims with the bloody axe in his hands.”

“He confessed to all of the murders,” the Chief Inspector protested.

“Why wouldn’t he? He was caught in flagrante delicto. There was no way he could escape hanging, and he knew he could only be hanged once. But was he really responsible for all of those crimes, or was he taking the blame for his brother because he knew he was doomed anyway? Was Hob Hagan the gentle giant he appeared to be, or did he become as violent as the axe murderer and commit some of those murders himself?”

“You have a unique talent for thinking up police problems where there shouldn’t be any,” the Chief Inspector grumbled. “If there really is a brother, and he really is a gentle giant, why bother with him? We have enough criminals to worry about without that.”

“It is important to find out whether one giant or two has been committing violent crimes. Officially, Hob Hagan has been hanged. That’s a wonderful situation for a criminal to be in. It gives him licence to commit all the crimes he pleases. No suspicion can fall on him because he is already dead.”

“So what are we to do about it?” the Chief Inspector asked.

“Ask police everywhere to be on the lookout for a giant. He should be easily recognized if anyone sees him. If he has turned violent, we must try to find him before he kills someone else.”

“I guess we could do that without too much trouble,” Chief Inspector Mewer conceded. “It’s just that I’m not clear in my own mind what I would do with him if I got hold of him.”

“If you find him, let me know at once. I’d like to talk with him.”

“Well—I can do that.”

“I can tell you where a giant is,” Sir Thomas said.

We all turned to him expectantly.

“He is an Irish giant,” he said. “Officially, he measures seven feet nine inches tall, which is three inches taller than Hob Hagan. He lived during a period in the eighteenth century when there was a competition between anatomists to acquire interesting specimens. This giant, whose name was Charles Byrne, had a horror of suffering such a fate. He made elaborate arrangements to avoid that, but the eminent surgeon John Hunter coveted his skeleton and shamelessly bribed officials to obtain it. It is now in the Hunterian Museum. I can testify of my own knowledge that Byrne is a sedate, well-behaved skeleton, totally without such frills as birthmarks or moles, and the police have no cause to concern themselves with him.”

“Fifty or sixty years ago, there was a Norfolk giant named Hales,” Lady Sara said. “The most interesting thing about him was that he had a sister who was said to be only seven inches shorter than he was—and seven inches taller than any man in the county when her brother was out of it—proving that giantism can run in families.”

Chief Inspector Mewer cleared his throat twice and changed the subject. “Just this morning I convinced my superiors that there’s a wild animal prowling the docks. Now I have to explain why there isn’t any. They may decide to give me thirty days’ leave for my health.”

He left. Under his arm, and carried with exaggerated care, was the Spanish Tickler, which he couldn’t have broken by throwing from an upper storey window.