The Mangle Street Murders Read online

  ‘What about the blade you found in that girl’s body?’ I went to the bell rope and pulled it twice. ‘It matches exactly the one which Ashby said he sold and the one which killed his wife, and yet you claim that this proved the murders were committed by two different people. I cannot see the logic in that.’

  Sidney Grice drummed the arm of his chair with his fingers.

  ‘All murderers have a modus operandi,’ he said. ‘You know that as well as I. A woman who poisons for profit will, if she kills again, use the same poison. It is her tried and tested method. A garrotter does not become a bludgeoner, nor a strangler an axe-man.’

  ‘But these two women were killed in exactly the same way,’ Inspector Pound said. ‘They were both stabbed repeatedly with their throats cut, and through the heart, using the same or an identical knife.’

  ‘Sarah Ashby was murdered by an experienced killer,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘The fatal blow was the first. I asked at the mortuary if the body had been washed. It had not and yet there was surprisingly little blood from some of the deeper wounds, including the one to her throat. She was killed quickly and cleanly and then her body mutilated.’

  ‘But William Ashby was a shopkeeper,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Ashby was a trained soldier,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘What makes you so sure it was a professional killing?’ I asked as Molly came and took away the teapot. The bow of her apron was coming undone.

  Sidney Grice stood up.

  ‘Stand and face me,’ he said. ‘Now take this ebony rule and stab me in the chest with it.’

  ‘Oh, can I watch?’ Molly asked.

  ‘Go away,’ my guardian said.

  This was too good an opportunity to miss. I grasped the rule firmly and took a step towards him, bringing it down as hard and fast as I could.

  ‘Ow.’ My guardian winced and rubbed his arm as I drew the rule back for another assault. ‘Thank you, Miss Middleton. That is enough to prove my point.’ He took the rule from me and rolled up his sleeve to examine the damage. ‘No one used to fighting with a knife would use it like that. First, you held the knife high so that your victim could see it and have time to prepare an escape, defence or even counter-attack. Second, you delivered a swinging blow. This is slow. The victim can see it coming and, most commonly, raises her arm to fend off the blow. Also, you know enough anatomy, I should imagine, to have learned that the ribs are arranged in a louvred fashion, the slats pointing down so that a knife coming from above in an arc is more likely to hit a rib than to slide between them, and this is exactly what happened to our second victim.’ He rolled down his sleeve and re-buttoned the cuff. ‘The knife caught on the seventh rib, twisted and snapped off. An expert holds the knife low where it is more easily concealed – he can hold it at his side, for example – and he stabs upwards in an almost straight line, though there is always a slight bias from the killer’s shoulder towards the midline. The thrust is much faster, more difficult to anticipate and to ward off and, if he makes contact,’ Sidney Grice demonstrated with the rule on me, ‘the blade slides easily between the ribs and is directed straight to the heart. Death is instantaneous. The second nameless girl—’

  ‘She had a name,’ I broke in, ‘even if we don’t know it.’ He tutted.

  ‘The second girl had several lacerations to her arms where she had raised them to defend herself. Her killing was the botched job of a bungling amateur who was, judging – as one must – by the angle of the wounds, left-handed.’

  ‘As was William Ashby,’ I reminded him, and Sidney Grice sniffed.

  ‘That is the only similarity.’

  Inspector Pound drank his tea in one movement and I refilled his cup for him. He stirred the sugar in thoughtfully.

  ‘I have the greatest of respect for you, Mr Grice,’ he said, ‘and I would be the first to admit that you have been of great assistance to me over the years, but are you absolutely convinced that you are not saying these things to stop yourself from admitting that we made a mistake?’

  Sidney Grice sipped his tea. The cup looked quite large in his elegant hand. He said, ‘Admittedly, it would not do our reputations any good if we were wrong. It would destroy your hopes of promotion and it has not done my business any good to send a client to the hangman. Think what damage would be done if it were to transpire that he was an innocent man. But I have two engines propelling my life. The first is a love of money and the second is a hatred of lies, and I would sooner send myself to the gallows than sacrifice the truth. Remember how we let Samuel Wesley walk free, though we knew he had broken his own mother’s neck? If I had been prepared to swear that his handkerchief was found in the stables and not in the yard, we could have swung him and not lost a wink of sleep, and I would have pocketed the large reward that his sister was offering for his conviction.’

  ‘I admit I did try to persuade you to alter your evidence.’ Inspector Pound looked at the hearthrug.

  ‘Two murders,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘Two murderers.’

  Molly returned with a fresh pot of tea and three clean cups.

  ‘But why would Caligula confess to killing Mrs Ashby?’ I asked.

  Molly changed our cups.

  ‘For the same reason that he confessed to the Slurry Street killings,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘He wants the notoriety. It is what the French call a crime de copié. It all began with Springheel Jack. Every cutthroat in England claimed to be him as they stood on the trapdoor. It was their only hope of being remembered. How do we know that he did not murder the girl in the cellar before Sarah Ashby was killed and added her to his list when he heard about it? You wait until this latest murder reaches the Penny Dreadfuls and see how many lunatics and attention-seekers will confess to it. Go away, Molly.’

  Molly had been loitering behind him. She bobbed lopsidedly and went out slowly, leaving the door slightly open.

  ‘I hope you are right,’ Inspector Pound said. ‘All hell will break loose if you are not.’

  ‘I am right and, if you will let me, I will help you find that unfortunate girl’s killer.’

  ‘I will drink to that,’ Inspector Pound said as I poured us all another cup of tea.

  ‘Go away, Molly,’ my guardian shouted, and the door softly closed.

  42

  Boots

  Inspector Pound’s eyes were puffy and darkly rimmed. He was eating a pork pie over a gingham cloth when we arrived at his office.

  ‘Breakfast,’ he said.

  ‘The flesh of swine in the jelly of their boiled bones,’ my guardian said, ‘all encased in wheat and animal fat.’

  ‘The wheat sounds a bit disgusting, I grant you.’ Inspector Pound wiped his lips with a napkin tucked into his collar. ‘It tastes good, though.’

  The pie looked wonderful and after weeks of boiled vegetables and eggs, I would happily have eaten the scraps he deposited in his bin.

  ‘What news?’ Sidney Grice asked.

  The inspector put his napkin in a drawer.

  ‘The dead girl in Chandler Street,’ he said. ‘We have her name. Alice Hawkins.’

  ‘And how did you find that out?’

  Inspector Pound suppressed a smile.

  ‘Basic police work, Mr Grice. We asked her landlord. He lives in the house opposite.’

  ‘Did he identify the body?’

  ‘Yes. He was not very keen but when I told him that he could not let out the room again until the case was solved, he became more cooperative.’

  ‘Did he tell you anything about her?’ I asked.

  ‘Not much.’ The inspector tidied his moustaches with a thumb and forefinger. ‘She lived there about a year and he last saw her three days before the Ashby murder, when she paid the rent. Had an Irish accent and never gave him any trouble.’

  ‘Has Mr Rawlings examined her yet?’ Sidney Grice asked.

  ‘I had a word with him last night. Nothing surprising. Alice Hawkins died of her stab wounds some weeks before we found her. Twenty-seven to be precise. Chest
, stomach, hands and arms, face.’

  ‘Not forty then?’ I said, but neither man replied.

  ‘And all from above by a left-handed man,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘Or woman,’ I said, and Inspector Pound looked at me sharply.

  ‘You have a poor opinion of your sex.’

  ‘Marat, the French revolutionary, was stabbed to death by a woman,’ I pointed out, ‘and the Bible tells how Judith cut off Holofernes’ head.’

  ‘It was a man,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ I asked.

  ‘Because whilst the inspector was questioning my sanity I was looking at the floor. Blood is nature’s ink and there were, as we noted at the time, several prints on the flagstones, including a clear one of a left boot. I have rarely seen a woman with feet larger than Miss Middleton’s, but this was larger even than yours, Inspector, and your feet are enormous.’

  ‘My feet are not big,’ I said.

  ‘They would be if you did not squeeze them into such silly little boots.’

  ‘And mine are not enormous,’ the inspector said.

  ‘The same goes for you,’ Sidney Grice told him.

  Inspector Pound frowned. ‘Just a thought, Mr Grice, but do you think it possible that William Ashby also murdered Alice Hawkins? He had large feet as I recall.’

  ‘It would be very tidy if he had,’ Sidney Grice said, ‘but, as I have already explained, the two crimes were committed by different people. Quite apart from the different modus operandi, the best footprint on Miss Hawkins’ floor showed a small horseshoe-shaped defect. You will recall that I examined the soles of Ashby’s boots when we interviewed him. They had a number of gashes and scuffs as one would expect in well-worn footwear, but there was nothing of that shape on them nor, I might add, on the soles of James Hoggart’s boots either.’

  The inspector pursed his lips and said, ‘Hoggart could have had more than one pair of boots.’ And Sidney Grice raised his eyes and said, ‘I have thought of that, but Hoggart had small feet like mine. Find a man in large boots with a U-shape cut out of the left sole and I will wager that you have your man.’

  ‘I cannot send my men out examining the feet of every man in London,’ the inspector said.

  ‘Why not?’ my guardian asked. ‘They would be more usefully employed than they are at present. But we are wasting time. Come, Miss Middleton. There is obviously no tea on offer so we must find our own, and then we have work to do.’

  43

  Throats

  The front door was still hanging on one hinge when we went back to Chandler Street, and Sidney Grice was halfway through the gap when he froze and said, ‘I have a policeman with me and cutting a man’s throat is a capital offence even in this godforsaken area.’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘It ain’t me what’s planning on cutting throats. Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Sidney Grice.’

  ‘I know you. The man what ’ung poor Ashby.’

  ‘I did not have the pleasure personally but—’

  ‘What d’you want?’ Her voice was hoarse and broken by coughing.

  ‘Alice Hawkins.’

  ‘She’s dead and well you know it.’

  ‘And I intend to find the man that killed her.’

  There was a pause and then she said, ‘Come in.’

  Sidney Grice scrambled through and I followed, to see a girl, thirteen or fourteen years old, a baby cradled in her left arm and holding a long carving knife towards my guardian’s neck. She frowned when she saw me and said, ‘Some peeler you are.’

  ‘I am in disguise,’ I said and she laughed hoarsely, black-mouthed, before lowering the knife.

  ‘Can’t be too careful,’ she said. ‘That mad dago what did for Alice could come back any time for all I know.’

  Her dress was a patchwork of different materials, torn rags stitched clumsily together with string, and her feet were bare, black and scarred with two toes missing from the left. Her baby was parcelled in a piece of shredded cloth, only the back of its scabbed head visible.

  ‘How do you know he was a dago?’ my guardian asked and the girl rolled her eyes.

  ‘Everyone knows ’e is.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  She broke into a violent coughing fit, bending double to catch her breath. ‘Wouldn’t be ’ere to tell if I ’ad.’

  ‘Did you see or hear anything on the day she was killed?’

  ‘What day was that then?’

  Sidney Grice took a step backwards and scrutinized her.

  ‘When did you last see Alice?’ I asked.

  She tucked the knife into the rope belt around her waist and pulled her hair away from her face, pocked by disease.

  ‘Weeks ago.’

  ‘How many?’

  She twisted her mouth up.

  ‘’Oo counts? The weeks don’t mean nuffink to me. Oh yeah, I remember. It was just after we went to tea with the queen of China.’

  Sidney Grice looked heavenwards.

  ‘Do you live upstairs?’ I asked.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘How well did you know Alice?’

  She picked her ear.

  ‘She was too posh for me, ’ad her own room and a regular job she did. Always saying she was going to save up and get out of ’ere. Well, she got out all right, didn’t she? Cow.’ She bent over in another coughing fit. ‘When I was so starved I couldn’t do no milk she wouldn’t give me a penny to feed myself or the baby. Pissing cow.’ She spat on to the floor, white worm casts floating in a dark froth of blood.

  ‘What sort of work did she do?’ I asked.

  ‘Shopgirl.’

  Sidney Grice jerked to attention. ‘Where?’

  The girl looked at her finger and wiped it on her hair. She sneered her smeared lips and said, ‘Well, you ain’t much of a detective, are you? She worked in Finnegan’s.’

  Sidney Grice’s cheek ticked.

  ‘The curio shop on Mangle Street?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ She spat again.

  ‘Hell,’ he said and tugged at his ear.

  ‘Your baby is very quiet,’ I said and she looked blank, her eyes almost as dead as the child she was holding.

  44

  The Curious Curio Shop of Childe Finnegan

  The doors and windows of the Ashbys’ shop were boarded over now and there was no policeman on guard as we went into the curio shop across the road.

  My guardian picked up a stuffed monkey and said, ‘Are you the proprietor of this shop?’ The man behind the counter nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Childe Finnegan.’ He bowed. ‘At your service, sir.’

  Sidney Grice put the monkey down and said, ‘Alice Hawkins.’

  ‘Now there is a coincidence.’ Childe Finnegan straightened the funnel of a tin model steamer. ‘For I had a girl by that very same name work here until quite recently.’

  Sidney Grice rolled his eye and said, ‘And how long did Alice Hawkins work for you?’

  ‘Why from eight in the morning until eight in the evening.’ Childe Finnegan pulled the funnel up again and Sidney Grice groaned.

  ‘Is the whole world full of imbeciles?’

  ‘I myself have often thought so, sir.’ The mast collapsed.

  ‘How long ago did she start working here?’ I asked.

  ‘Last October as I recall,’ Childe Finnegan said. ‘The piece you are holding now is a magnificent shrunken head all the way from the Cannibal Islands of darkest Portugal.’

  I put it down. ‘And when did she leave?’

  Sidney Grice picked up a spear.

  ‘Oh, but she herself did not leave as such, miss.’ Childe Finnegan pushed the steamer away and put a Toby jug in its place. ‘She just never came back. That, sir, is a rhinoceros hunting spear from the island of Armenia.’

  ‘And I shall plunge it into your heart if you do not start making sense,’ Sidney Grice said.

  Childe Finnegan laughed. ‘You can
try, sir, and are most welcome to do so, but I have to tell you that I have no heart and never did for I was born without one.’

  ‘Then you two have something in common,’ I said. ‘But surely that is not possible.’

  ‘Indeed it is not,’ Childe Finnegan agreed. ‘The doctors were astonished for by rights I should have been dead before I was alive, but as you can see for yourself, madam, I am not.’

  I opened the lid of a music box and a rusty ballerina creaked upright.

  ‘What date did you last see Alice?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, the fifth of last month.’ Childe Finnegan frowned. ‘Careful with that genuine club of Hercules, sir. She came as usual, worked as usual and left as usual, and I was quite surprised that she did not come back as usual. I often wondered if she might have had an accident.’

  ‘Did you not try to find out?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Childe Finnegan said, ‘for I have never cared what happens to other people. It comes from having no heart, you see.’

  ‘Did you know William and Sarah Ashby?’ I asked.

  ‘That depends what you mean by know,’ Childe Finnegan said. ‘We would nod to each other across the street occasionally.’

  ‘Did Alice know them?’

  Childe Finnegan screwed up his nose and said, ‘There again, it depends what you mean by know. She would go over and chatter to them and I believe that she sometimes had supper at their house.’

  ‘So they were good friends?’ I asked.

  ‘We have no time for idle chitchat,’ Sidney Grice broke in, peering at a pickled cobra in a jar.

  ‘Three guineas to you, sir, for the very asp that killed Lady Godiva. No, madam, I could not say if they were good or not for if truth be told, I never liked her.’

  ‘Alice?’

  ‘Mrs Ashby. Goodness’ – Childe Finnegan threw out his arms so vigorously that he upset a basket of stuffed mice into a bamboo umbrella stand – ‘but she had a tongue. Sharp enough to shave a badger it was, always yelling and yawling at poor Mr Ashby. He held up a couple of mouldy specimens by their tails. ‘The actual mice that saved Rome.’