The Mangle Street Murders Page 4

  ‘That was a noble deed.’

  We were making good progress up a long straight road, the clatter of hooves on cobbles reverberating from the tall buildings either side.

  ‘And lucrative,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘The father of the boy who rightfully received the prize gave me two shillings for my services. It was then that I realized I could use my natural quick-wittedness, acute senses, superlative observational powers and prodigious intellect in the profitable pursuit of criminals.’

  The hansom slowed.

  ‘It must be very satisfying to see justice done,’ I said, and Sidney Grice puffed.

  ‘It is more satisfying to see people punished, but I do like to be sure they are the right people. Of course, the higher one moves up the social strata the more important this becomes. One can afford to make mistakes with the occasional prostitute, but you would have to be very sure of your facts indeed before you hanged a bishop.’

  We turned down a narrow alley before coming to a halt, and there was only just enough room for us to scramble out along the side of a high wall.

  ‘Wait for us here,’ Sidney Grice called up, but the cabby shook his head.

  ‘Not ’ere,’ he croaked. ‘It give me goose-flesh, it do, and it spook me ’orse, and a spooked ’orse ain’t no more use than a blind beggar’s dead fleas on these streets. I’ll be up there at the end of the alley.’

  ‘Mind the drain,’ Sidney Grice said as we went round the front of the hansom. ‘And watch out for the horse. Horses bite.’

  He rapped on a plain black door. The horse was reversing reluctantly.

  ‘Horses like to see where they are going,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘We do have horses in the country,’ I told him.

  ‘Quite so,’ he said, ‘but these are London horses.’

  He let the knocker fall again and a hatch slid open in the door.

  ‘Good afternoon, Parker.’

  ‘Mr Grice.’ The door was opened by a short man in a stained laboratory coat. ‘Come in,’ he said, but as we stepped forward he stopped us. ‘What’s this about? You know there’s no ladies allowed in here.’

  Sidney Grice turned to me. ‘I did warn you, Miss Middleton. You had better go and wait in the cab.’

  I reached into my cloak pocket and brought out a card.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ I asked.

  Parker screwed up his eyes and said, ‘No.’

  ‘It is a permit from Her Majesty’s Office of Structural Examiners to enter and inspect any building in the kingdom upon demand, and you would be committing an act of treason if you were to deny me access.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Parker said and stepped aside.

  We entered a square hallway with five doors leading off it.

  ‘Which case are you on?’ Parker asked. ‘It can’t be the poisoned vicar. Mr Cochran’s already got that one. Not the Duke Road double drowning, I hope. Getting a bit slimy, they are.’

  ‘Mrs Sarah Ashby,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘Oh, the chopping. She’s in Room Four.’ Parker took a ring of keys from his coat pocket and rattled them one by one in the lock.

  ‘That was a railway ticket,’ Sidney Grice murmured.

  ‘Possibly,’ I agreed, as Parker found the right key, swung open the door and said, ‘Are you sure you’re up to this, miss? I’ve known experienced peelers turn funny in this room. One of them toppled over, hit his head and ended up on a table himself.’

  I nodded. ‘Please proceed.’

  ‘Take my arm,’ Sidney Grice said, ‘and tell me the moment you feel unwell.’

  I felt unwell already, but I would not have admitted it for all the opium in Bengal. The stench of death had filled my nostrils.

  8

  The House of Death

  I hesitated a little for I knew that smell and the horrors that came with it.

  ‘I shall be perfectly all right,’ I said, rejecting the proffered arm as we went in.

  It was a large low-ceilinged room, sloppily whitewashed and lit by flaring gas mantles on windowless walls. There were a dozen narrow pine tables in a row in the centre of the room, each covered with a stained white sheet, the shapes unmistakeable beneath them and the smells all too recognizable – freshly opened bodies, rotting flesh and the eye-stinging sharpness of carbolic acid burning in my lungs.

  The body of a young man lay in the far corner and the sheet had slipped off his upper half. He had obviously been in a fire. His skin was blistered and his hair had been burnt off. But it was his face that shocked me. It was charred almost to the bone. I looked about for something to steady myself but there was nothing. I stood alone.

  We stopped at a table in the middle.

  ‘Here we are.’ Parker whipped back a sheet and the tortured face of a toothless old woman sprang out. ‘Oh, sorry. This is Mrs Ashton. Run over by an hearse in an hurry, she was.’ We went to the next table. ‘Here we are.’

  Parker clearly felt less flamboyant this time, for he lifted the cover back carefully to reveal a face. At first glance Sarah Ashby might have been slumbering. Her eyes were closed and her expression was one of peaceful repose. Her face was pale and haloed in long golden waves, her lips slightly parted as if in a contented smile. She might have been having a beautiful dream were it not for the place where she slept and the cut in her left cheek from the base of her little nose, almost to her ear, so deep and gaping that her back teeth grinned horribly through a second pair of lips in the parted muscles.

  Sidney Grice stepped to her side and peeled back the rest of the sheet, leaving it below her feet at the bottom of the table. Sarah Ashby was naked, unearthly white and spattered in dark blood, and her neck and body were punctured by numerous black gashes. He whistled silently.

  ‘Pretty thing, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Sliced up good and proper,’ Parker said with relish.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ I said.

  ‘Where are her clothes?’ Sidney Grice asked.

  ‘Gone to the incinerator,’ Parker said, and Sidney Grice looked at him sharply.

  ‘What? All of them?’

  ‘Of course. They weren’t no good to anybody else, the state they were in, all ripped and soaked in gore.’

  Sidney Grice closed his eyes briefly. ‘The man is an imbecile,’ he said, making no attempt to lower his voice.

  ‘Now see here, Mr Grice—’

  ‘Did you remove her clothes yourself?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘A grey dress with bone buttons at the back.’

  ‘Still fastened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘High- or low-necked?’

  ‘High. Why?’

  The floor was unevenly tiled and had been sluiced into sludgy puddles, and I saw that Parker had vulcanized galoshes on.

  ‘Was there anything in the pockets?’

  A long-legged spider ran over Sarah Ashby’s arm and slid on its thread to the floor.

  ‘Nothing valuable.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I don’t know. A handkerchief. A piece of liquorice. I ate that. It was no use to her and I gave it a wipe first.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of germs?’ I asked and Parker grinned.

  ‘Yes, and I’ve heard of fairies, but I never met anyone who’s seen one.’

  ‘Was she wearing any undergarments?’ my guardian asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Upper and lower?’

  Parker looked at the floor. ‘Please, Mr Grice. There’s a lady present.’

  ‘You may find this difficult to believe,’ I told him, ‘but I am already aware that women wear undergarments.’

  Sidney Grice grunted and said, ‘Both?’

  ‘Yes, both.’ Parker shuffled about. ‘No corsets, though.’

  ‘And did the rips in her clothes match the wounds?’

  ‘As far as I remember, yes, but I…’ Parker’s mouth stayed open but he did not finish his sentence.

/>   ‘So you didn’t take her clothes off and find far more wounds than you expected?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘No. You do not think,’ Sidney Grice told him and, turning his attention back to Sarah Ashby, took her left hand in his. ‘Such doll-like fingers,’ he said, bending and straightening them all at once, then twisting each a little and wiggling them side to side.

  His nails were filed neatly short. He seemed lost in thought. Her nails, I noticed, were chipped but clean, but something was wrong.

  ‘Where is her wedding band?’ I asked.

  ‘She wasn’t wearing one,’ Parker said.

  ‘But her finger has a white ring around it.’

  ‘I cannot help that,’ Parker said. ‘If she was wearing any jewellery I would of handed it in as regulations require. Mr Grice knows me well enough to know that.’

  ‘What is this?’ Sidney Grice raised her right hand. ‘See that?’

  The nail of her right index finger was cracked and something was caught in it.

  ‘It looks like a hair,’ I said.

  Sidney Grice clipped a pince-nez on his nose.

  ‘Not a hair.’ He put her hand down and rooted through his satchel for a small pair of steel tweezers and a white envelope, lifted her hand again and tugged something out. ‘Look.’ He held it up to the light.

  ‘A yellow thread,’ I said as he deposited it in the envelope, licked and sealed the flap, and scribbled a note on the back.

  Sidney Grice crouched and lifted the hair to examine an ugly laceration in Sarah Ashby’s throat. It ran all the way under her left jaw.

  ‘This is very important, Parker,’ he said. ‘Has the body been washed or wiped at all?’

  ‘No. That’s not in my job and the women only wash people what are being reclaimed by relatives and the like.’

  ‘You are sure?’

  Parker nodded.

  ‘That is quite a wound,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But it did not kill her.’

  Sidney Grice turned to me. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I have seen something similar,’ I said, ‘when two sentries at barracks in Bombay had an argument over a local girl. I helped my father to suture him. For a throat to be cut fatally, the thick blocks of muscles over the carotid artery or jugular vein have to be sliced through. This is not deep enough.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘So what did kill her?’

  ‘I am not sure,’ I said. ‘She has so many wounds.’

  ‘Forty,’ Parker said. ‘I’ve counted.’

  ‘I am amazed that he can,’ Sidney Grice muttered, and pointed to a wound below Sarah Ashby’s left breast, an oval crater about two inches across. ‘That is what did it. Hand me my bag, Miss Middleton.’

  He took out a thin steel spatula, flattened at both ends, and he passed it gently into the hole. ‘See how far it slides? That is a good six inches. The blade would have penetrated the abdominal wall and up through the diaphragm straight into the heart. She would have died instantly. It angles a little to the left as well, so we are looking for a left-handed killer. Help me turn her, Parker.’ The two men twisted Sarah Ashby on to her right side. ‘You are in my light, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ I went to stand in a greasy stain at the lower end of the table and he ran his fingers through her hair again.

  ‘Just as I thought,’ he said. ‘A slight depressed fracture of the occipital skull but no injuries to her back.’ They let her lie back again. ‘So what do we have? One wound to the face and one to the neck and thirty-eight to the chest and stomach, one fatal. Notice anything odd about the wounds, Miss Middleton?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘They are of two distinct types.’ He pointed with the spatula. ‘Long slashes and smaller stabs. The stabs are unusual. Obviously, skin tends to distort and spring back again when cut, but the overall impression is that they have a wavy outline. You can see it quite clearly here where the tissues are firmer on the shoulder. Almost S-shaped.’

  Sidney Grice walked down to her feet.

  ‘That is odd.’ He bent down. ‘Her great toe is bruised. Was she wearing any boots, Parker?’

  ‘No boots or stockings,’ Parker said.

  ‘You are sure?’

  ‘Sure as eggs is not potatoes. What are you doing?’

  Sidney Grice had taken hold of Sarah Ashby’s knees and forced them apart. He leaned forwards and peered upwards.

  ‘Show some respect.’ Parker curled in disgust as Sidney Grice moved slightly to one side.

  ‘No sign of any traumatic penetration,’ Sidney Grice observed.

  ‘For the love of God,’ Parker said, covering his mouth with a filthy hand and taking a step sideways.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ Sidney Grice asked, straightening his back.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I think it is time to go.’

  ‘I couldn’t disagree less,’ Parker said, wiping his dirty palms on his dirtier coat.

  ‘To Mangle Street?’ I asked.

  ‘Home.’ My guardian produced a bar of soap and a little towel from his bag. ‘It will be too late by the time we get to Whitechapel and we are more likely to miss or even destroy the evidence in the dark. No, Miss Middleton, I was thinking of a nice cup of tea, and I am sure you could do with a bite to eat.’ He went to a tap on the wall.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind a drink myself,’ Parker said.

  ‘Then I shall not detain you any longer,’ Sidney Grice said as he dried his hands and packed his things away.

  ‘No I meant—’

  ‘I am fully aware of what you meant.’ Sidney Grice put some coins into Parker’s hand.

  ‘Why thank you, Mr Grice.’

  ‘And if that impostor Cochran shows his face do not let him anywhere near her.’ Sidney Grice turned to me. ‘Only last month he poached my decapitated architect and got two pages in the Evening Standard for a case that even you could have solved.’

  ‘It must have been idiotically simple then,’ I said.

  My guardian lifted the sheet over Sarah Ashby, pausing when he reached her head.

  ‘The face of an angel,’ he said, letting the sheet fall.

  ‘Did we pass the inspection?’ Parker asked as he showed us to the door.

  Outside, the light was already failing and I was glad that it was cold. My shaking could be passed off as a shiver.

  9

  The Same Moon

  We made a quiet couple at either end of the dining-room table.

  ‘Do you usually dine alone?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I always dine with a book. This is a particular favourite of mine – A Brief Study of African Parasitic Worms – beautifully illustrated with coloured drawings.’

  ‘Does it not put you off your dinner?’

  ‘Why should it? I am not planning to eat one.’

  I sipped my soup, but I have never liked tomato. It looks like blood and smells like sweat to me.

  ‘If I had known more about the subject three years ago,’ Sidney Grice continued, ‘I might have been able to prove that Lord Jennings went much further up the Ivory Coast than was believed at the time, and thus saved his companions from the charge of deserting him and being drummed out of their regiment.’

  I tried some more soup. My guardian had finished his and turned a page, bringing out an ivory-encased pencil and placing it parallel to his knife.

  ‘How did you know my father?’ I asked, and Sidney Grice’s eye fell out. He caught it deftly and put it into his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘I shall not divulge any information about your father.’ He produced a black patch out of his jacket, like a conjurer with bunting, and tied it over the socket. The effect was mildly comical but his expression was not. ‘Except that I owe him a great debt which I am partially repaying by tolerating your presence in my house.’

  ‘You are too kind.’

  ‘I am not at all kind but I do honour my obligations.
’

  He mopped his bowl with a piece of bread.

  ‘What was my mother like?’

  ‘A famous beauty.’ My guardian sprayed a few crumbs over the white starched tablecloth. ‘And the thinly disguised heroine of a trashy novel. Her eyes, it was said, were like sapphires in the sun, and her hair was burnished gold.’

  ‘Not mousey like mine?’

  He wiped his lips with his napkin and replaced it on his lap. ‘Not in the least. Nor was she scrawny.’

  I put down my spoon.

  ‘But what was she like as a person? My father never spoke of her.’

  ‘That is not for me to say.’

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘Please do not ask me about them again. For reasons I cannot divulge it is not appropriate.’

  ‘But—’

  He raised his hand and turned back to his book, grunting to himself as he pencilled a note in the margin.

  ‘Who is Mr Cochran?’ I asked.

  ‘Never mind who he is.’ He pointed the blunt end of his pencil at me. ‘I will tell you what he is. He is a posturing, vainglorious, publicity-seeking, self-opinionated, jumped-up, inobservant, illogical, ineffectual, grasping braggart.’

  Molly came, a little breathless, to clear the plates.

  ‘This soup was tepid,’ Sidney Grice told her, not even glancing up from his book.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘That is not an endorsement,’ he said. ‘Nothing should be tepid. Tea should be hot and drinking water cold. Do you even know what tepid is?’

  ‘Indeed I do, sir,’ Molly said. ‘Cook was telling me it is how she feels about you. So it must be a good feeling.’

  My guardian tsked as Molly brought three covered dishes from the dumb waiter and put them on the sideboard to serve us boiled potatoes, cabbage and carrots. I waited to see if my guardian would comment, but he was tucking into his food before she had even closed the door.

  ‘Are you not hungry, March?’

  ‘Very,’ I said, ‘but I was waiting for the meat.’

  ‘Have you not seen enough meat today,’ he asked, ‘without wanting to put some more into your mouth?’

  I picked up my knife but put it down again.

  ‘What is it now?’ he asked.