Abracadaver

CHAPTER

6

FOR THE SECOND TIME in five minutes Thackeray eased a forefinger between his neck and the collar of Sergeant Flaxman’s shirt. Borrowed clothes! If they didn’t chafe you because they were so tight, they constricted your circulation somewhere. What was the matter with the Kennington Road Constabulary, that they couldn’t produce a set of toggery to fit an average—well, slightly larger than average—man? Were they all stunted, or worn thin by beat-bashing, or something? You would almost think they had got together to produce the least comfortable set of ‘plain clothes’ possible. They couldn’t have known he had tender skin in the area of his neck when they gave him the coarse flannel shirt. But knickerbocker tweeds! He had, on rare occasions, seen Londoners wearing such things; only in parks, though, never the seedier backstreets of Lambeth. Yet when the moment of choice came in the mess-room, and he stood in his underwear with a pile of discarded, undersized clothes behind him, there were just two survivors; the knickerbockers and a red velvet smoking-suit. Lord! What a picture that presented of the off-duty hours at Kennington Road! Knickerbockers it had to be, then, with a deerstalker and elastic-sided boots to match. And now he shrank into the shadows of the asylum wall, half-expecting some nervous passer-by to suppose he had just climbed over.

About twenty past six. Too early, perhaps, for anything dramatic to happen, but he could not afford to relax. There was a hint of October mist in the air, but from where he was, sheltering against a buttress formed by two rows of bricks, he could already see lights appearing at windows in the terrace opposite. No sign of life from Albert’s room yet; being a theatrical, he would be accustomed to a later start than most working men. The poor beggar was going to wake up stiff this morning, too; there wasn’t much to tempt him from a warm bed.

Activity at the end of Little Moors Place: three cats came running from the shadows to meet the milk-cart. The milk-woman hitched two large cans to the wooden yoke slung across her shoulders and moved to the first house to fill the jugs on the doorstep from her tin measure. The cats waited, mewing, for some to be spilt.

She was the first person he had seen in the road since he relieved P.C. Oliver on the stroke of six. A promising member of the Force, young Oliver. Hadn’t batted an eyelid at the deerstalker and knickerbockers. Recognised who it was straight away; perhaps the beard was the clue. Thackeray hoped it was nothing else. Section 11 of the Police Code was constantly in his mind: It is highly undesirable for detectives to proclaim their official character to strangers by walking in step with each other or in a drilled style, or by wearing very striking clothing or police regulation boots or by openly recognising constables in uniform or saluting superior officers. Just as well young Oliver himself had spent the night in uniform; Section 11 called for a rare amount of concentration. Years of experience. Even so, the lad might make a detective one day. He certainly had sharp powers of observation.

A postman now started at number one. What was that he was whistling? The fellow most have been at the Grampian the night before. ‘And that prevents yer feet from gettin’ sore’ indeed! A fine tune for a postman to be whistling. Why was it always the bobby who was a public laughing-stock? The song was in damned poor taste, too. Bad enough being prone to corns and blisters, without being reminded about them by damned-fool postmen. He shook his head indignantly, chafed his neck on the collar and swore to himself.

Not long after, he detected something distinctly odd in the postman’s behaviour. Having passed up the street, making his delivery as the milkwoman had done, the fellow marched back to number one and commenced his round again! And when Thackeray observed more closely, he saw that although the postman was carrying a letter in his right hand he did not deliver it. Instead he paused at the door, tapped the envelope against his chin, turned and moved on to the next house. The performance was repeated at each house in the street, and then the whole process began again at number one.

Decidedly irregular! Thackeray was contemplating casually crossing the road to scrutinise the postman more closely, when another figure appeared from the shadows, carrying a pole: the lamplighter. Best, in the circumstances, to wait till he had attended to the single lamp-post in the road, and gone. But would you believe it, instead of getting on with his work, the wretched man was leaning against the lamp-post and lighting a cigarette. Infuriating!

Then there was a most singular development: the postman abandoned his fourth sterile tour of the front doors and crossed to speak to the lamplighter. They were too far away for their conversation to be audible, but if only they would turn a fraction under the light it might be possible to see . . . Good Lord! The postman had removed his cap to reveal an unmistakable shock of upstanding grey hair. Major Chick. What the devil!

Thackeray pressed himself back behind the buttress, wrestling with the significance of what he had seen. A private detective masquerading as a postman? And in Albert’s road at half past six on a Sunday morning? Was this the way investigations were conducted in the private sphere? Really, some people would stop at nothing. What was the Major doing talking to a lamplighter, anyway? Was it even conceivable that Major Chick was no Major, but a postman masquerading as a detective masquerading as a Major? Or one of the criminal class masquerading as a postman masquerading . . . ? Diabolical to contemplate!

Footsteps unexpectedly invaded his deductions, a heavy, regular tread approaching on his side of the road. What on earth now? Little Moors Place was busier than the ruddy Strand. He was certain to be seen this time. Couldn’t avoid it. Damn the knickerbocker suit! If only there were some notice on the wall he could appear to be reading. He felt so infernally awkward, standing there in eccentric clothes, facing a row of houses where people were putting on their lights and getting dressed. Why, anyone could put the most appalling construction on his presence there. And—Heavens above!—it was a uniformed police officer approaching.

‘No action yet, Mr Thackeray?’

Jerusalem! Young Oliver again.

‘What the devil have you come back for?’

‘Me, Mr Thackeray? I’m on my way home. I live at number thirteen, you see, across the road. You can knock if you want any help. I’ll bring you over a cup of tea shortly.’

God help the Metropolitan Police! That lad had seemed so promising. ‘Just move on,’ Thackeray hissed, ‘and don’t stop until you’re inside your house with the door bolted and if you so much as think of putting a foot outside, I’ll . . .’

P.C. Oliver was gone. And so, curse it, was the light. Seconds later the lamplighter passed with his pole and turned into Brook Drive. Major Chick was presumably back delivering mythical letters; you couldn’t see a blessed thing with the gas off.

Perhaps an hour later his nostrils began to twitch. A delicious aroma was being carried towards him by the breeze. Kidneys and bacon, he was certain. Devilish cruel to an empty stomach, tantalizing it with the smell of other men’s breakfasts. How long would he have to endure this?

Several of Albert’s neighbours had emerged before full daylight and started for work; no Sabbath for them. But the curtains remained drawn at the upper window of number nine. The better light brought one bounty: the sight of Major Chick, exhausted by letter-delivering, standing at the end of the road making a lengthy inspection of his bag, which was plainly empty. Interesting to see where he would go when the genuine postman arrived.

With dramatic suddenness Thackeray was alerted to the arrival in the street of a black four-wheeler that was driven the length of the cul-de-sac, turned with a grating of wheel-tread that raised sparks, and brought back to rein outside number nine, with enough noise to bring the whole road to the windows. A black-coated figure in a tall hat got out, glanced along the street, and turned back to say something to somebody still in the cab. While he talked, he was drawing on a pair of black kid gloves, smoothing the wrinkles fastidiously over unusually long fingers. He turned, and his face was in sharp profile: hawklike, the features taut with purpose. Presently he knocked at the door of Albert’s lodging and was admitted.

What now? Approaching any closer to the carriage would certainly give Thackeray away. His instructions were to observe, not to become involved. He wished Cribb were there and had seen that face for himself, as odious a set of features as any in Newgate.

A movement caught his attention. Albert’s curtains were drawn back, confirmation that the visitor was, indeed, for him. Thackeray gazed at the windows, abstractedly twisting a button on his jacket until the tweed itself was screwed out of shape. Of course intervention was out of the question. The caller might be a doctor, or Albert’s agent, or someone with a perfectly legitimate reason for being there. Patient observation was the only possible course.

Some ten minutes passed, and the visitor emerged alone and walked briskly to the waiting cab. Was his business with Albert done, then? Apparently not, for he called his companion, a smaller, bearded man, from inside the cab. They waited while the cabman unstrapped an item of luggage from the cab-roof and lowered it to them. It was a large, black trunk, empty from the way they handled it. Between them they carried it to the door of number nine and were admitted.

Thackeray frowned, baffled. An empty trunk. What on earth could Albert want with such a thing? And why should it be delivered by two men in top hats and kid gloves arriving in a cab on a Sunday morning? He waited in growing disquiet.

Farther up the road Major Chalk waited, making notes on the back of a letter. And the cabman, after descending to fit a nosebag to his horse, lit a pipe, leaned against his cab, and waited too. Three small boys came from one of the houses, walked up the road, looked hard at the Major, strolled back in Thackeray’s direction, stopped to study him too, stared speculalively at the asylum wall and then stationed themselves by the carriage.

At length the door of number nine opened. A man backed out cautiously, feeling for the step with his foot. He was supporting one end of the trunk as before, but now his movements were ponderous. His companion stumbled after him, clearly feeling the effects of descending the stairs. No doubt about it: that trunk now contained something of quite considerable weight. One of the watching boys solemnly removed his cap.

‘Under our very eyes, eh Constable?’

Thackeray started in surprise. Major Chick was at his shoulder. ‘Lor’ lummee—’

‘No need for hysterics, man. I spotted your cover two hours ago. Thought I was a postman, eh? Never take a blasted thing for granted, Constable, least of all the Postal Service. Now, look here, I don’t know what Scotland Yard’s planning to do about this infamous affair. Personally, I’m ready to pursue the scoundrels all the way to the Continent, if necessary. One of my orderlies, the lamplighter—surprised you again, eh?—has lined up a cab round the corner in Brook Drive. I’ve room for you if you want it.’

Thackeray decided at once. ‘I’m greatly obliged.’

‘Very good. I’ll be aboard. We must be prepared in case the blighters separate, though. Basic strategy. If either of ’em makes a break for it on foot you’d better give chase, and I’ll follow the four-wheeler. Otherwise, you can meet me at the end of the road. Agreed?’

‘Er—yes.’ He was almost constrained to salute.

The Major moved off at a gait unlike any postman’s, but the men with the trunk were occupied raising it on to the cab-roof and could not have noticed. Thackeray leaned heavily against the wall, assimilating the developments of the last few seconds. Perhaps he was staking too much on the Major’s co-operation. Could the man be trusted? But really, when he considered it, he had no choice. The sight of that trunk being slowly manhandled out of the house and on to the waiting cab had made a profound impression on him. There was an awful possibility that he shrank from accepting. All he was certain about was that it was now his duty to follow the cab and its load wherever it was driven.

Then to his amazement and unbounded relief the door of the house opened again and Albert appeared, walking with a stick and supported by a small, grey-haired woman, undoubtedly his landlady. With the cabman’s help he was manoeuvred up the step of the cab, not resisting in the least. Then the horse was deprived of its nosebag, the two trunk-bearers joined Albert inside, the cabman flicked his reins and the carriage moved away. The landlady stood at her door fluttering a handkerchief.

Thackeray felt an overwhelming sense of deliverance at Albert’s appearance in one piece. In spirit he was beside the landlady waving his deerstalker. Only when the cab was turning the corner did sentiment give way to more practical considerations. Heavens! Albert had been abducted in front of him!

‘Just one moment!’ He ran over to the landlady, knickerbockers flapping. ‘I am a police officer. Your lodger—’

‘Not my lodger no more, duck. He just left.’

‘Yes, I know that. Did he tell you where he was going?’

‘Sorry, love. He just paid his rent and went off with his two friends. What’s he done then? Got himself inebriated? It don’t surprise me, you know. They’re all like that in the theatre. Well, did you ever?’

The constable was already pounding up the road towards the waiting hansom. Major Chick leaned forward to help him aboard and they set off at a canter in the direction of the river. ‘Tickle him with the whip, cabby!’ the Major shouted through the aperture in the roof. ‘I’ve never known a hansom that couldn’t catch a growler. Give the beast a tickle and we’ll soon have ’em in sight again.’ He turned to Thackeray. ‘Nothing like a chase, Constable. Gets the old claret coursing through the veins, what? Got your bracelets with you? We’ll need ’em when we’ve run this lot to earth.’

‘My what?’ inquired Thackeray.

‘Bracelets, man. Handcuffs. You can’t take chances with a pair of assassins.’

So the Major had been deceived by the trunk, too. ‘I think I should explain something, sir. Albert is on board that four-wheeler.’

The Major laughed grimly. ‘At the twopenny rate on the roof, eh? And we have to pay a shilling. Of course I know he’s on board, Constable. I didn’t imagine those scoundrels had packed their trunk for a week at Brighton, not the way they carried it. Why, I’ve been a pall-bearer myself, a dozen times—’

Thackeray broke in. ‘Albert’s alive and well, sir. He walked out to the cab himself.’

The Major received the good news in silence, pursing his lips and staring past Thackeray towards the gaunt exterior of St Thomas’s. As the cab started across Westminster Bridge he removed his Post Office cap and buried his right fist in its centre. ‘Alive and well, you say. Would have been my first murder case, you know, and dammit, I had it solved.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Thackeray. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way, sir. Perhaps we’re on to a case of kidnapping, though.’

The Major was dubious. ‘There’s nothing to compare with a murder, Constable. It would have been in The Times. Very good for business, a mention in The Times. You’re quite sure it was Albert? Easy to impersonate a limping man, you know.’

‘I’m quite sure.’

The cab raced under the shadow of Big Ben, weaving a devious passage through a line of almost stationary buses and vans. Occasionally a pedestrian or a bicyclist appeared unexpectedly in front of them. Not for the first time, Thackeray was conscious of the vulnerable position of passengers in hansoms, with traffic hazards almost within touch, while the driver sat secure and aloft in charge of their safety. Any mishap now could result in a most embarrassing situation, Westminster being B Division and Scotland Yard so near.

‘Do you really ask us to believe, sir, that you are a detective constable wearing a borrowed knickerbocker suit, travelling in the company of a private detective at a reckless speed through a Division not your own in pursuit of three innocent men and a trunk?’ A nightmare.

‘I can see them, I think,’ said the Major as they turned past the Guildhall into Broad Sanctuary. ‘If we get a clear run in Victoria Street we’ll catch ’em.’

‘I wasn’t instructed to do that, sir—unless they committed a serious crime, of course. My orders was to keep an eye on Albert. I’d be obliged if we could keep ’em in sight without overtaking ’em.’

The Major seemed satisfied. He gave instructions to the cabman and then turned back to Thackeray. ‘Very proper, too. Give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang ’emselves, eh? I might see my name in The Times yet.’

‘It would be my duty to intervene if I judged the young man’s life to be in danger, sir,’ said Thackeray. ‘You’ll pardon me for asking: how did you come to be in Little Moors Place this morning?’

‘Another surprise, eh?’ said the Major, recovering his spirit. ‘Well, I questioned scores of people at the Grampian last night. Heard some damned disquieting rumours. Performers unaccountably missing after they’d had one of those accidents we’ve been so troubled about. I may tell you that I had my doubts about you and your sergeant when I heard that. Dammit, man, you spirited Albert away pretty sharply last night, didn’t you? Well, as a consequence of all these stories, I decided to keep a watch on our friend Albert. His mother gave me the address.’

‘Did your questioning produce any information I should pass on to Sergeant Cribb, sir?’

The Major shook his head. ‘Deuced disappointing. You know, the class of person you get in music halls doesn’t impress me much, Constable. Very narrow existence. Ask ’em a civil question and they’re liable to become positively abusive. Precious little concern among ’em for their fellow artistes’ misfortunes, I can tell you. Hello! Enemy in sight. Not too close, driver!’

Four-wheelers were less common than hansoms in Victoria Street, but there must have been a dozen in the line of traffic that stretched ahead from the Army and Navy Stores to Victoria Station. Fortunately that trunk on the roof was as sure a sighting-point as a top-hat in church. The Major’s hansom pulled smartly into the main stream behind a phaeton. ‘Nice-actioned horses,’ he commented with a nod. ‘Making for Hyde Park, I dare say. Better class of person on this side of London.’

Past the station the traffic became less dense and moved at more of a canter as they approached Hyde Park Corner along Grosvenor Place. ‘Wouldn’t mind a turn along Rotten Row myself this morning,’ said the Major, but Thackeray was looking towards St George’s Hospital on his left. The journey continued through Knightsbridge and the Kensington Road. Here a certain tension was detectable in the Major. He smoothed the front of his uniform and fastened a button, replaced the cap on his head and arranged the strap of the post-bag symmetrically across his chest. Thackeray straightened his deerstalker, uncertain of the reason. It was made clear seconds later when the Major stiffened in his seat and executed a smart eyes right towards the Albert Memorial.

The cab with the trunk turned right in High Street, Kensington, into Kensington Palace Gardens. ‘This is a private road, postman,’ the cabman called down to the Major. ‘Shall I follow?’

‘If you please, but if they stop I want you to drive past slowly.’

As the hansom sedately pursued its quarry down the elegant avenue, Thackeray mopped his forehead with a large handkerchief. Where was the logic in this case? It would take a smarter detective than he to trace a connexion between these fine houses, neighbours of a royal residence, and Newgate jail. There wasn’t one without wrought-iron gates and gravel drive and steps up to the front entrance.

About two hundred yards from the Bayswater end, the four-wheeler turned into the drive of a mansion fronted by a white wall with eagle-topped pilasters.

‘Slowly past, and then halt fifty yards along the road,’ ordered the Major.

Thackeray thought he glimpsed Albert standing at the foot of the steps watching the trunk being unloaded, but it was difficult to observe anything in more than a flash between thickly planted conifers at the front of the house.

‘Philbeach House,’ read the Major aloud. ‘Means nothing to me.’ When the hansom was stationary he turned to Thackeray. ‘You won’t do much more observing unless you climb a pine-tree, Constable, and I don’t recommend that. What does Scotland Yard do now?’

Thackeray pushed open the door. ‘I noticed a gardener in the place next door. I’ll try to have a word with him.’

The knickerbockers were exactly right for Kensington Palace Gardens. The gardener actually doffed his cap. ‘Ah yes, sir,’ he replied. ‘That’s Philbeach House all right.’

‘And who is the owner?’

‘Why, Sir Douglas Butterleigh, the gin manufacturer. A millionaire, they say, and a very decent gentleman too, however he came by his money. He doesn’t live there, you know. Were you looking for him?’

‘As a matter of fact, no,’ said Thackeray. ‘Who is the resident there, then?’

The gardener cackled. ‘Now you’re asking! I’d say there’s twenty or more residents in Philbeach, by the comings and goings I see while I’m clipping my roses here. And very odd some of ’em are, sir. But that’s part and parcel of life in the theatre, so I understand.’

‘Theatre?’

‘Well, the music hall, Sir Douglas maintains a home for music hall performers who’ve come upon hard times. A very decent man.’