Bertie and the Tinman, page 14
“In Battersea Reach, sir. It was a stroke of luck.”
“Luck? That’s a rum word to use in the circumstances, Commissioner.”
He didn’t flicker an eyelid. “I mean, it was lucky that we recovered him, sir. In this cold weather a body tends to sink and stay on the riverbed for weeks before it rises. A bargeman happened to notice the heel of a boot projecting above the water level. Boots don’t usually float, so he took out a boat hook and made contact with something larger. He informed Thames Division, and they advised me.” Warren added on a note of self-congratulation, “I had already asked to be notified of every corpse recovered from the river.”
“Are there so many?”
“Twenty and upward, week in, week out, sir. Most of them are suicides or accidents. The watermen bring them in usually. We pay them a shilling for their trouble.”
I said, “Are you certain that this is Captain Buckfast?” Then I added hastily but emphatically, “It would not be appropriate for me to identify the body. There might be a constitutional difficulty about my attending a coroner’s inquest.”
Warren said reassuringly, “That has already been done, sir. I sent for two witnesses, people who knew Buckfast well: a Mr. Harry Sarjent of Newmarket, who was the late Fred Archer’s groom and valet, and John Parker, his gardener.”
“Sarjent is a capable fellow and a good witness,” I said, recalling how he had performed at Archer’s inquest and afterward brushed my hat and coat.
“You know him?” said Warren in some surprise.
Resourcefully, I answered, “I read his evidence in The Times.”
“Ah.”
“So there can be no doubt that this was Captain Buckfast?”
“Regrettably, none, sir. They identified the clothing first. Then they were asked to examine the personal effects. His pocketbook containing several of his visiting cards was still in the jacket, and a badge of the Seventeenth Lancers was attached to his watch chain. Finally, they viewed the body. They both remarked on a strange fact.”
“What was that?”
“The man pulled from the Thames was clean-shaven. My information is that Captain Buckfast possessed a particularly fine mustache.”
“That is correct.”
I believe I mentioned the whiskery exuberance of Sir Charles Warren’s own upper lip. In speaking of Buckfast’s loss, his hand crept protectively toward it.
I explained, “He recently shaved it off. I should have mentioned it.”
“The identifying witnesses were both certain that the dead man was Captain Buckfast, sir, with or without the mustache. And there was clear evidence of the attack that you described. Bruising about the head and shoulders.” Sir Charles took a deep, significant breath. “There can be no doubt, sir, that I am dealing with a case of murder.”
“No doubt whatsoever, Commissioner.”
Warren cleared his throat. “Then with your permission, sir—”
I raised my hand to interrupt. “Before we go any further, Commissioner, I would like to make something very clear to you. You have my permission to pursue this in whatever way you choose, so long as you keep me out of it.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Warren ended it by saying stiffly, “I was charged with certain responsibilities when I became Commissioner, sir, and the first of these was to prosecute crime. Murder is the worst of all crimes.”
I remarked, “I believe you also swore an oath of loyalty.”
“To the Sovereign, sir, if you’ll forgive me.”
I said, “I might forgive you, but will the Sovereign, if you provoke a royal scandal? With due respect, Sir Charles, I know that gracious lady rather better than you, and in her view there is one crime even more iniquitous than murder, and that is indiscretion—indiscretion by responsible individuals whose loyalty ought to be unswerving. Do I make my meaning clear?”
There had been a stirring of defiance, but I’d scotched it. One is obliged to, in such situations. Sir Charles Warren was new in the job, and no match for me. That speech is always a winner, whether you’re dealing with a protesting husband or a bumptious policeman.
After Warren had marched out, I spent some quiet minutes thinking about poor Charles Buckfast. I doubted whether his death would touch many people, and he was unlikely to receive an obituary notice from The Times. On the other hand, he was a Turfite who had never brought disrepute to the sport, and by all accounts he had been a loyal friend to Archer. He had served me loyally too. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and I wouldn’t rate him as the wittiest companion I’ve known, but he was brave and dependable, qualities not to be underrated in detective work. Notwithstanding the tragedy, you see, I was still thinking as an investigator, implacable in my resolve. This brutal murder wasn’t going to stop me; rather, it spurred me on. I owed it to Charlie to bring the case to a successful conclusion.
What next, then?
First, I required another assistant. After all, there are certain investigative duties it would be unthinkable for me to undertake alone. I needed someone of unquestioned loyalty, a good observer, brave and capable of outwitting the Squire and his murderous gang.
Why not a woman? Why not Myrtle Bliss?
In relation to the Squire, Myrtle had certain physical advantages over Buckfast that I’ve hinted at before. True, she was not much of a hand with a pen, but I didn’t require her to write out reports or take evidence. She was very responsive to me, which is a mark of intelligence.
In a sense, she was already on probation for the job. This evening, I would hear what she’d gleaned from her assignation with the Squire on Sunday. If it was of any use, I’d take her on as Buckfast’s replacement. I didn’t mind paying her the wage she’d get from the music halls.
I took an early dinner and left Alix to an evening of whist with our turtledoves. She urged me not to return too late from my Jubilee Committee meeting. As we sleep in separate rooms (and have for the past fifteen years), I was most unlikely to disturb her, but I assured her that I would escape at the first opportunity because I wanted to be at my brightest on her birthday.
I crossed the street to my club, the Marlborough, and consulted the Era, to see where “Miss Bliss and her Feathered Friends” were performing this week. I had a notion that I might visit Myrtle’s dressing room, but when I saw where she was engaged, I changed my mind. The Bell Music Hall is situated along St. George’s Street, in the dockland area of the East End, a street so notorious as the old Ratcliff Highway that its name was altered in an attempt to whitewash its reputation. A more notorious and dangerous locality could not be imagined.
So I remained in my club for a couple of hours and inevitably got caught in conversation and stayed longer than I intended. When I finally escaped, it was after ten. I hurried down to the rank in Piccadilly and asked the first hansom driver if he could get me to Mile End Road by eleven.
He trotted out that favorite saying of his trade: “That’s all right, sir—Archer’s up!”
I smiled grimly and said I hoped he was.
I don’t mind confessing that for some unfathomed reason that November night in the cab, I felt uneasy. “Archer’s up!” must have been said a million times and more to impart confidence. It troubled me. There’s something about the arrangement of a hansom, with the driver aloft and out of sight behind you and only the apron over your knees and the horse’s rump in front, that can give you a feeling of isolation. With a fog thickening every minute, blotting out the lamplight, your imagination doesn’t need much to take a macabre turn.
Progress was slow through the city. It was well after eleven when we got to Mile End Road. I instructed the cabbie to wait while I went upstairs. My knock on Myrtle’s door elicited no response. She was not back from the Bell.
I won’t prolong the description of what, for me, was a tedious wait for more than forty minutes. I went down to the street and talked to my complaining driver. He told me he went off duty at midnight, so I gave him a half-crown and promised a sovereign at the end of the hire. I was as cold and depressed as he was.
Having come this far, I was in no mood to give up. “Chewsdy about 11” was what Myrtle had written, and dammit, I’d rearranged Alix’s birthday to make the appointment.
When I heard the chimes of midnight, I told the cabbie to take me directly to the Bell.
This is the hour when the lodging houses have taken their quota, and unfortunates and ne’er-do-wells by the thousands wander the streets of the East End looking for staircases and doorways where they can huddle down for the night. Foreign seamen stagger out of the dancing rooms and public houses. It is the worst time for a young woman to be walking home, yet I doubted whether Myrtle could find—or afford—a cab.
To search for her in the fog was out of the question, so we made haste through Whitechapel, turned south across Commercial Road and Cable Street (all sinks of iniquity), and into St. George’s Street, where my heart sank. The Bell was already in darkness when we halted outside. I climbed out and crossed the pavement to the front. The doors were bolted, and several ragged families, cadaverous men and women with babies in arms, had already taken up residence against them. A creature of hideous description attempted to importune me.
I looked for the stage door, in hope that some of the artistes might still be leaving by that means. The door was closed, and the entrance filled by a huge man—probably a stevedore—who told me forcibly to be off, because that was his “doss.”
I returned to my cab and discovered the driver in animated conversation with a youth of markedly better appearance than the other denizens of this locality. It appeared that this uppish young fellow proposed to hire my vehicle. I stepped forward to disabuse him of the intention and discovered that he was the assistant manager (probably the barman, in reality) of the Bell and had just locked up for the night.
I asked when Miss Bliss had left, and he ventured the opinion that she must have departed at least an hour ago. No one was still inside.
I asked if he had actually seen her leave, and he had not. I said she had not come home, which led him to assume I was her father, which I found rather tiresome.
Quite off the cuff, I concocted a most ingenious story. I said I was a veterinary doctor and I’d been treating one of Myrtle’s parrots. This evening it had died, and I feared that the cause was psittacosis, which can affect humans, sometimes with fatal results (this useful information I had learned from my dear mama, who keeps an aviary at Windsor and won’t go near the parrots). It was a matter of the utmost urgency that I should examine the other birds.
Really, of course, I wanted to gain admittance to Myrtle’s dressing room to see whether she had left me another of her lavender-scented notes. She couldn’t possibly have forgotten our arrangement.
Upon receiving an assurance that he could share my hansom if he let me in, the young man took out his keys and made a determined move toward the family encamped at the front doors. They let us through. He said he would show me Myrtle’s dressing room, which he didn’t propose to enter himself, in view of the risk to his health. He found a couple lanterns and led me through the auditorium to a door at the side of the stage. The dressing rooms were to our right. Mrytle’s, I was informed, was the last one, and would I kindly make my own way back to the front of the building when I had finished?
I stepped to the door, opened it and shone my lantern inside. Two or three of the birds were picked out, sleepy, silent on their perches. Cocky rocked from one claw to the other and stared at the light, flexing his yellow crest.
I moved the lantern lower and had a momentary shock as the beam flashed back at me from the mirror over the dressing table.
This all happened within a few seconds, yet I recall it vividly as a series of impressions that might have taken minutes.
I thought dully, Cocky shouldn’t be here. She always takes him home.
Then I saw Myrtle’s corpse on the rug in front of me. There was blood. There was a hole in the side of her head.
I thought, I’ve got to get out. I can’t be found here. Whatever this means, it’s no place for me.
If that demonstrates a want of compassion, so be it. The compassion came later. In the shock of discovery, you think only of practicalities.
I backed out, and as the lantern beam flickered across the room, a voice said, “Hello, Bertie.”
There was no one there.
Cocky repeated, “Hello, Bertie. God bless the Prince of Wales.”
Myrtle’s letter: “Hes got a new trick to shew you.”
A new trick be damned. He’d give my name to the police.
I would have to take Cocky with me.
CHAPTER 14
Having persisted with me to this point, you know that I don’t shirk the facts of life when they are necessary to my narrative, and now you know that I treat the fact of death with the same candor.
I thought of issuing an instruction to the printer to mark the previous chapter with a black edge as a token of respect, and also as a warning to the unwary. After much heart searching I abandoned the idea. I have the greatest difficulty in bringing myself to read anything surrounded with a black edge, so how could I ask my readers to face what I could not?
Forgive me. After a death has occurred, one’s instinct is to talk about anything but the dreadful fact itself. I’m coming to it now.
I am at a loss to find words adequate to the horror of that grim November night. Don’t imagine that my life of privilege has spared me from bereavement. I am not unaccustomed to the death of close friends and members of my family. I know the process: the sense of shock, overtaken by numbness, turning to grief as the mind begins to accept what has happened. After that, despair may set in, or even loss of faith.
Myrtle’s violent death affected me in other ways. I was gripped by horrid sensations. I was appalled, afraid, and worse, I was convinced that I was responsible.
Responsible? you ask.
Allow me to explain. The killing of Charlie Buckfast had taught me how dangerous it was to tangle with the Squire and his gang. I was shocked beyond words at the viciousness of that attack. I was deeply distressed about Charlie, and I regretted sending him to Bedford Lodge. I’d miscalculated badly. On the other hand, I didn’t feel directly responsible for his death. No one could have foreseen that we were dealing with murderers.
Myrtle’s death was squarely on my conscience. True, I’d alerted her to the dangers. I’d told her that Charlie had been killed. But I’d still recruited her as my spy, knowing she was willing to take the risk. She had been blessed, or fated, with the confidence of the young. She had been generous hearted and unafraid, and I’d taken advantage of her cheerful acquiescence with this dreadful consequence.
Let us return to that room of death. As I related, immediately after the discovery, my reaction was to flee from the scene.
Cocky said for the sixth or seventh time, “Hello, Bertie,” and I knew I must attend to him first. I put down the lantern and transferred him to a cage. When I grasped him, he gave a screech, assuming, I suppose, that my purpose was strangulation. He submitted quite readily to being pushed through the wire door and was silent thereafter.
It was out of the question to escape by the way I had entered. The cabman and the assistant manager would be waiting at the front of the building. As yet, they had no suspicion of my identity. To the cabbie, I was just a “fare” he had picked up in Piccadilly; to the young fellow, an animal doctor. After what I’d just seen, it was vitally important that they remained in ignorance. However, I was in no state to keep up the pretense, and I was damned sure Cocky would give me away if they heard him.
I climbed out of a window in the property room by means of a conjurer’s card table. My feet located a convenient cask in the yard outside and I remembered to reach for the parrot cage before descending to terra firma.
My ulster was heavily stained with some sort of grease from the window frame, and I ripped the bottom of one trouser leg, which was all to the good when I got out among the ragtag and bobtail of St. George’s Street. Do you know, I believe I have Cocky to thank for saving me from being attacked and robbed? With the parrot cage and my beard, you see, I passed for a seaman. I received numerous invitations from tarts who called me sailor, but the thieves and garotters let me pass on the assumption that a seafaring man is likely to put up a fight.
Without much idea of direction, I stepped briskly ahead, alert for the sudden attack from behind. Groups of roughs were standing at many of the corners. Without being too obvious about it, I quickened my step and crossed to the other side whenever I saw such a gathering, and, I’m ashamed to say, I did the same when I spotted a constable’s helmet. However, the thought did not escape me that we owe a great debt to our gallant police, nightly patrolling these festering thoroughfares.
The scene stretched ahead, it seemed unendingly, tenements looming on either side, passageways cluttered with what might have been rubbish heaps until one heard a baby cry or a man mouth an obscenity. Doors were thrust open without warning, and bodies would stagger across my path in a shaft of light. Still the street women pestered me with offers that turned to taunts and curses as I stepped aside and hurried past.
My entire future was reduced to reaching the next lamppost in safety.
I marched on as rapidly as my steps would take me and at last discerned a slight improvement in the dress and behavior of people I passed. The street widened. Then, praise be, I recognized Tower Hill—not usually an auspicious locality for one of the blood royal—but a haven to me that night, for there, to my profound relief, I succeeded in stopping a cab. He wanted extra, of course. Had he known, I felt ready to offer him half the kingdom. He put me down in the Mall, and I returned to Marlborough House about one 1:45 a.m.
