The Limehouse Text

11

Sometimes things fall through the cracks for all our efforts. After the funeral, the visit to K Division, Coffin’s penny hang, and the more than fascinating half hour in the company of Miss Hestia Petulengro, we had forgotten something important. Back in our residence near the Elephant and Castle, our butler would have awakened from his drug-induced sleep to find himself alone.

I have to say this for Jacob Maccabee. He has backbone. Did he send word to the office and say the patient was being neglected? No. He shaved and washed his face and combed his hair. He changed out of his sleeping suit, and when it became obvious that he could not get a pair of trousers over his bandaged leg, he slit a perfectly good pair and pinned them together after he got them on. Then, despite an aching limb, a pounding head, and Dr. Applegate’s admonitions, he attempted to go about his daily duties. When Barker and I arrived about six o’clock, there was the faithful servant, resplendent, preparing dinner, and pretty much all in.

“What in blazes!” Barker thundered. “Get back in bed!”

“Sorry, sir,” Mac said, toppling forward in a faint. We carried him to bed again.

Applegate arrived about an hour later. I was sure we were going to get a hiding with Mac dressed for work as he was, but he just shook his head at our unconscious manservant.

“Butlers make the worst patients,” he informed us. “Sometimes we have to tie them to the bed. You’d think they would relax and enjoy a needful rest, but no. Someone might be pilfering the sherry.”

Mac got a helping of laudanum for supper which left me to finish dinner, since Barker had a constitutional enmity to his own kitchen.

In my year of service, I had cooked a few meals for Barker. The previous year, in a cottage near Liverpool, I’d made rabbit stew with only a few bits of fur remaining in the dish. He hadn’t complained, but then, he wouldn’t. Now I was in a respectable kitchen and I wanted to prepare something edible, possibly even delicious. After all, Mac had just rather shown me up in the duty department, and I was already in disgrace after nearly losing Harm.

I learned something that night: it is not easy to prepare a meal one-handed. A one-armed man has difficulty cutting a loaf of bread or setting a table. Luckily, Etienne Dummolard was a genius at creating meals that could be served without much preparation. As Barker’s chef, he had been coming here for years, commanding the kitchen in the mornings and leaving meals for us the rest of the day while he worked at his restaurant, Le Toison d’Or. At six thirty, when I called the Guv down for dinner, the table was full of silver, steaming dishes, and a good cobwebby bottle of vin rouge I found in the cellar. Barker chewed his way through the meal without comment. He ate the bread I’d cut, he drank the wine I’d opened and poured, and he ate the meal I’d slaved over as placidly as a Guernsey cow would chew his evening cud. After that, he left the room without a word. I was beginning to think Mac’s position a little more difficult than I had been led to believe. The other thing I hadn’t counted on was that I would be cleaning up afterward, with only one good arm.

When I was finally done, I locked up for the night and turned down the gas. I went upstairs and changed into my night attire, then I lay back on my pillow and stared at the ceiling with its rows of alternating beams and plaster. I was done in and it wasn’t even eight thirty. I picked up my Mencius, which was such a sleep-inducing agent it might have been used on Mac instead of the laudanum. The next I knew, there was another commotion downstairs.

I jumped from the bed again. An hour and a half had elapsed, according to my clock. I looked about for some weapon and realized there was nothing in my room that would serve. Perhaps an irate assistant would be enough. I went downstairs.

“Thomas!” Etienne Dummolard greeted me from the back door. Four large suitcases stood at his feet.

“Etienne! What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like I’m doing here, imbecile. I’m moving in!”

I had never felt so relieved in my life. Dummolard could take over Mac’s duties. I wouldn’t have to cook another blighted meal.

“But what of the restaurant?” I asked. “What of Madame Dummolard?”

“She is here with me, of course!”

The back door flew open and in stepped Madame Dummolard, in a traveling cloak and hat, six feet in height and suitably proportioned.

“Mon petit chou!” she cried, and surged forward to plant a kiss on both of my cheeks. I might have restrained her, if only for the sour look Etienne gave me during the demonstration, but Madame is unable to be restrained. She prattled on in a stream of French so quick I only caught every tenth word, and fussed over the state of my arm.

“It is good to see you again, madame, but why are you here?” I managed to get in.

“Ah, Thomas, when M’sieur Dummolard told me the grievous state of affairs, I said, ‘Mireille, you must go and do what you can, you and your big, strong husband.’” The latter was directed to Etienne with a caress on his stubbly chin, which cheered his mood somewhat.

“This is the domain of M’sieur Mac?” she asked, reaching the front hall, with me still in her clutches.

“Yes, but I don’t think-”

She pushed open the door and walked to the bed where Mac lay, still in his suit and insensible from the opium. She clucked her tongue at the poor fellow’s injuries. Then she summed up.

“I am ready,” she announced. “I believe I can do good work here.”

“What kind of work is that, madame?” I asked.

“Ozkippur,” she announced solemnly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I will be your ozkippur. ”

“Oh, I see. I don’t know if Mr. Barker wants a housekeeper, but I am sure-”

“They arrive tomorrow morning.”

“Who does?”

“My girls, of course. A maid, a nurse, and a char. I can get more if we need them.”

“But Mr. Barker must first agree to it. I mean, who shall be paying for it?”

“That does not matter at all. Etienne will pay for it all,” she said breezily.

“What?” Dummolard demanded behind me, and before I could move I was being buffeted between the two of them as they commenced a rapid flurry of French like volleys of gunfire. Barker must have been able to hear all this two floors up but was too sage to come down. The fight ended as abruptly as it had begun, though I wasn’t sure who won the argument.

“Our room, it is up on the first floor, no?”

“We have a guest bedroom there, yes. It is at the end of the hall.”

“Take me there. Etienne, stop standing there looking sour. Make yourself useful. Carry the luggage.”

I led Madame Dummolard to the guest room, down the hall from my own. It was clean and serviceable, but it was obvious that it lacked a woman’s touch.

“It will do,” she pronounced. “We have had worse, have we not, Etienne? I shall bring some things to make this room pretty. Put the first of the suitcases down there, Etienne. Non, non, not there, cheri. Over here.”

I left them to it and fled the room. I made it all of about two steps, for in order to return to my room I must pass the staircase that led to Barker’s aerie. There was a pair of slippers on the stairs, slippers with feet in them. The rest of my employer was cloaked in shadow. I made out his form, sitting on one of the steps with his elbows resting on his knees and his fingers knit together in front of his face.

“Lad.”

I came up a few steps. “Yes, sir?”

“Is that she?”

“Madame Dummolard? Yes, sir.”

“What is she doing here?”

I explained what I took to be the situation. Afterward he sat for almost a full minute in thought.

“I suppose it solves the situation, after a fashion,” he said, “though it is not without problems of its own. I do not have time to interview servants. We shall try it for now. I do hope Madame is not talkative in the mornings. I detest vivacity in the morning. Good night.”

As it turned out, we saw nothing of her during breakfast. Three servants arrived that morning, one to look after Mac, one to clean the house, and the third to wait upon us. The char was a stout and hardworking Irish girl, and the nurse was English, but the maid was very French. I waited for the impending disaster, but she served breakfast without a word and Barker could not fault her anything. When he went out to look at his garden, Madame emerged from the kitchen and spoke to the maid in whispered French. Then they disappeared before the Guv returned. We struggled into our coats and left, like any other morning.

“Lad,” Barker said from behind his desk once we were seated, “I need you to go to Fleet Street this morning. Visit the General Register Office and take down whatever information you can on all deaths occurring around early January 1884. See if there are any unusual deaths in the days before and after New Year’s. Go to The Times and compare your facts to the reports in the back issues. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” I said stolidly, but inside, I felt it was the best possible news I could hear.

“Have yourself some lunch while you’re out,” he said, crossing to his smoking cabinet for the first pipe of the day. “We cannot have you digging among all those musty records on an empty stomach.”

Outside, I hailed a hansom cab, glad to quit the office. Employment and employers are good things on the whole, but there’s nothing better than to slip the knot and get away for a while on some errand or other.

A half hour later I was settled in a room inside that large pile of graying stones they call the Register Office, which contained the information of every birth, death, and marriage in the great capital of the empire. Here, in this impersonal hall, one’s entrance into the world was carefully recorded, as well as one’s exit. Here one’s joining in marriage was noted, and generations of Londoners can trace their ancestry through the aging pages of endless record books here, shelf after shelf and row upon row. I could see why some people would find this boring, going over dull records with their officious jargon, but I couldn’t help seeing what was really recorded: the miracle of birth, the mystical union of two people, and the eternal mystery of death.

I love research. Cyrus Barker’s idea of a fine time might be grappling a felon to the ground and clicking the darbies on his wrists, but I much prefer the collecting of cold, hard facts in libraries and public record offices until I’ve methodically built up a mountain of evidence that will prove someone’s guilt.

I took down the volume of deaths for December 1883 and January 1884, very conscious of the passage of time. December 1883 had been a few months after my sentence was completed and I had just come to London. It seemed a long time ago, now. Had Quong’s killer been waiting an entire year like a coiled spring ready for the text to show itself before striking again? Surely the book could not be that vital, could it? It looked to me to be little more than a few scribbles and stick figures.

I copied everything into my notebook and as I copied, I read. Quong had been found dead on the second of January, 1884. Quong, Chow, and Petulengro had all died within a few days of each other. They had died in various manners, however, and some might have been considered natural causes. Quong had been shot; Chow had passed away mysteriously on the line in Coffin’s penny hang; and Petulengro had died from a blow to the neck during a robbery. The common thread running through all the deaths was the location, Limehouse, and the inspector in charge of the investigations, Nevil Bainbridge.

I began investigating other murders that had occurred around the New Year. Lord Saltire had passed away in Park Lane but only after a protracted illness. Two children died stillborn that night, and one poor urchin had died of exposure, for it had been bitterly cold. There had been a woman stabbed to death in Whitechapel, but her killer, who turned out to be her common-law husband, had been apprehended. Lastly, a sailor in Millwall, the Isle of Dogs, had died in his bed. There was no need to record any of these cases in my notebook, as they had no bearing on the case, or so I thought until I was in the act of closing the book and my eye ran across something.

I pulled the book open again and almost frantically flipped through the pages. Yes, my eyes had not been deceiving me. The last fellow, Alfred Chambers, had passed away on the second of January of renal failure in the company of his wife. People die of kidney failure every day, I’m sure, but Mr. Chambers had been a first mate aboard the Ajax. I took down the entire report, though the death did not occur in Limehouse and was not investigated by Bainbridge.

Happy that I had uncovered something of possible interest, I made my way over to The Times and was soon in the back issues room, looking for reports of the killings. I only found two. One read “Chinese Found Shot in Limehouse Reach,” while the other read “Chandler Dies During Robbery.” Apparently Chinamen dying in penny hangs and men having kidney failure were not considered newsworthy.

I closed my notebook and devoted my attention to the idea of lunch. I found a pub in Fleet Street where all the journalists went, and had a nice steak and kidney pie and a cup of coffee. On the way back, I dawdled for a while in the bookshops of Charing Cross Road. Afterward, I went back to the office and found myself crowded on the doorstep by Inspector Poole. I opened the door for him, and he took one of the chairs in front of Barker’s desk, while I sat at my own. Barker seemed not to have moved since I left. Goodness knows what he had done or if he had eaten lunch. If he kept this up, Jenkins would have to dust him.

“Terry.”

“Cyrus,” Poole said. He looked as tight as a coiled spring. “I thought I would tell you that we’re letting Ho go free tomorrow.”

“I see,” Barker said. “There was no reason for having arrested him at all.”

“You know what sort of odd characters go into his place,” Poole said. “Anarchists, socialists, communists, exiles, Lascars, Orientals-”

“Enquiry agents,” I put in.

“Lad,” Barker warned. “Ho is not responsible for who walks in his door, Terence. He does not advertise in radical newspapers or cater to criminals. He runs an honest tearoom.”

“I have information that he has close ties with a criminal named Mr. K’ing. In fact, Commissioner Henderson believes it is possible that Ho is Mr. K’ing.”

Barker grunted. “That will be news to both of them. I never thought I would credit Henderson with too much imagination.”

“We’ve taken good care of him,” Poole insisted. “Better than most foreigners by a long chalk. Of course, anything you can do to help us in our enquiry would be helping him, as well.”

“I see,” the Guv said. “You want me to do your work for you, then you’ll release him.”

Poole frowned. “Look, Cyrus, I don’t think you understand how close you are to being arrested yourself. The old man’s considering it even now. There are many at the Yard who think that you killed Bainbridge yourself, you and the nipper here.”

“Nipper?” I interrupted. “There’s no need to be-”

“Look, Cyrus,” Poole went on, as if I weren’t in the room. “I’m up against it. You have no idea what sort of pressure I’m under to solve the case. I need help. I thought we might share information.”

“‘Share,’ is it?” Barker asked. I noticed his Scot’s accent always got a bit thicker when his blood was up. “You mean, you tell me what I already know, while I give you what has taken me days to uncover?”

For once, Poole smiled. “Something like that.” It broke the tension. We all chuckled over it. Even Barker gave up his stony reserve.

“What thought you of Bainbridge’s blotter?”

Poole tugged at his side-whiskers. “If what Bainbridge thought is correct, all the deaths that occurred just after New Year’s may have been the work of one killer, though he didn’t know who it was. We have your assistant, Quong; the Chinese sailor Chow; and the Gypsy who ran a chandler’s shop, whose name I won’t even try to pronounce. Beyond the fact that they were all foreigners, the only connection they seem to have had was a book. The book, the book, the bloody book! Didn’t you say in court it was a boxing manual? Who kills three people over a boxing manual?”

“It’s a rather special manual, Terence,” Barker explained. “It teaches, for one thing, a way to disrupt the body’s internal functions, killing someone without a sign.”

Poole grunted in disbelief. “You mean like the Chinaman, Chow, dead on the line without a scratch.”

“Precisely.”

“If such a thing existed, it could change my work considerably. How would we know a common heart attack from murder?”

“It gets worse,” Barker said, crossing his arms. “Death need not be instantaneous. With the training from the book, one could disrupt a system-let us say the circulative system-of someone in the morning merely by touch, and that person could die that night after a normal day’s activity. Or the next day or a week later.”

“Fantasy,” Poole scoffed. “It’s all Chinese bugaboo. I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Admittedly, I only read it in the book. I wouldn’t believe it myself without more proof.”

“I might have that proof,” I muttered.

They both looked at me, and it was a moment before the Guv spoke. “Explain.”

“Well, sir, I came across another murder, I think. It happened the second of January. A sailor named Chambers was found in his bed, dead from kidney failure. The inquest the next day ruled natural causes, but Chambers wasn’t just anyone. He was a first mate aboard the Ajax. I think he might have spent his first night ashore at Coffin’s with Chow. Chow might have given the book to Chambers for safekeeping, warning him that if anything happened to him to get rid of the book quickly.

“Chambers got rid of his effects the next day at Petulengro’s after Chow was found dead. I’ve got it all in my notebook and was going to type it up for you.”

“See that I get a copy,” Poole said.

“Certainly.”

There was a pause, and I got that feeling along my spine that things were about to get tense again.

Poole took in a bushelful of air and blew it out. “So, where’s the book, Cyrus?”

“Don’t ask me that, Terry.”

“Where is the book?”

“Are you asking me for Scotland Yard or the Foreign Office?”

“The book is evidence in several murders now. We must have it.”

“As you said, it’s just a book.”

“Then give me the blasted thing!”

Barker tilted his head back, as if looking up at the ceiling. “As I said before, I don’t have it to give. It is not currently in my possession.”

The inspector pulled one of Barker’s cigars from the box on his desk and bit the end off savagely before lighting it. Blowing out a puff of smoke, he leaned back in his seat. “I don’t believe you.”

“You know I deplore lying,” the Guv said. “A man’s word should be his bond.”

“That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t lie if it were important.”

“I am not lying to you, Terry. I do not have it.”

“But you did,” Poole insisted.

“I did.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I gave it to a Chinaman.”

“Quit playing games with me, Cyrus!” Poole snapped. “There are over five hundred Chinamen in Limehouse. Which one did you give it to?”

Barker said nothing.

“You know there’s only so much I can do to protect a friend,” the inspector went on. “If the Foreign Office told me to tear apart your offices, I’d have to do it. If they said, ‘Toss this fellow into Wormwood Scrubs,’ I wouldn’t be slipping you a key.”

Barker’s silence was worse than any words that might have been said.

“Have it your own way, then. If you want things official, then official they shall be.” Poole got up and stubbed out the cigar in the ashtray on the desk. “Your cigars are stale,” he complained.

On his way out, he buttonholed me. “I want a copy of that report. In fact, I want a copy of all the reports you found.”

“They are a matter of public record,” I retorted.

“You’re as bad as he is!” Poole bellowed and went out the front door with a slam that rattled the Constable hanging in our waiting room.

Jenkins gave a low whistle from the outer room. “Hope he’s off duty soon,” he pronounced. “There’s a fella what needs a stiff drink.”

Barker picked a cigar from the box and ran it under his nose. “They cannot possibly be stale. They are from Lewis of St. James’s.” He emptied the ashtray into the bin under his desk. “Now, where were we?”

“Thumbing our noses at Scotland Yard.”

“Don’t be cheeky. Type up those reports, there’s a good lad.”

As I inserted the first sheet of paper into the Hammond, a thought occurred to me. I knew who had the book. The only two Chinamen he’d spoken to that he knew were Ho and Old Quong. I’d been by the Guv’s side whenever he spoke with Ho, but I had been on the table when he had spoken with Old Quong. There was no doubt about it in my mind. The bonesetter had the text.