The Hangman's Child (30 page)

'Then,' said Verity gently, 'if someone said her boots were lost by her being in the water, or knocking against bridges or outfalls, they'd be wrong?'

"Course they would!' Chaffey said with sudden animation. 'Who's saying that? Never the doctor?'

'Mr Inspector Fowler,' said Verity grimly. 'Now Mr Chaffey, I ain't no wish to offend nor distress. However, a body that's knocked in the outfall or the river, might it be marked?'

Chaffey seemed to fear some revelation.

'There's always damage, Mr V. Bruising. Consequential on being washed through tunnels or against bridges and ships.'

'So it'll be some comfort to you to know, Chaffey, that your sweetheart had hardly a mark. One that might have been a belt worn round the hip. There couldn't be marks that faded?'

'Marks is apt to deepen in colour after death, Mr Verity, not fade.'

'What I thought, Mr Chaffey. Then she got nothing to speak of.' Chaffey drained his glass, professional pride overcoming private mournfulness.

'Mr Verity, when ladies drowns, it shrinks them here, in the tips of the bosoms.'

Verity shook his head.

‘I
never saw. Nor had no wish to.'

Chaffey stared at the long mahogany bar through the smoke-fogged air.

'You saying she never drowned, sir?' Verity sighed.

'No, Mr Chaffey. She drowned all right, water in her lungs.' 'But not where she was found?'

The sergeant's face seemed rounder and redder in the heat of the bar, while Old Stock's eyes flicked from one partner in the conversation to the other. He wiped a gleam of perspiration from a pointed end of his waxed moustaches.

'Mr Chaffey, I knew before I went there she couldn't drown where she was found. Matter of fact, that's why I went.'

Old Stock gave him an interrogatory leer.

'What you saying exactly, Mr Verity?'

'Simple, Ma.' Verity patted the old woman's hand. 'Flood tide that night was eleven. Your Joanne was high enough on the mud for the outfall to wash her there but too high for the river to take her there on the ebb. But the outfall couldn't have washed her there neither. She was seen alive at two in the morning and the sluices that might have washed her there weren't open again before she was found. I saw her in The Strand at two - in the same black dress and with her boots on.'

'What you saying, sir?' the old woman persisted.

'I'd say, Mrs Stock, she drowned somewhere private. And she was got rid of quick by someone who never bothered over tides nor sluices. Nor boots nor marks.'

Chaffey gave a small sob.

'I was her sweetheart when I had a sov in hand. She got no right to finish like that.'

'Still, you being sweet on her, Mr Chaffey, might count against your evidence.'

Chaffey wiped an eye with the corner of a spotted handkerchief.

'She was a found-drowned, Mr V. Hundreds every year. That's what counts against. A vestry give half a crown to the finders and not much for the inquest. Unless she'd had her throat cut as well, Dr Pargiter's paid just to confirm drowning. If Mr Fowler and the police got nothing to say, there's an end.'

'You think she met foul play, Mr Chaffey?'

The young man looked at him closely.

'You ever known, Mr Verity, a young person that could bear to stoop over a sink with her head in the water until she gave up the ghost? Without someone holding her under? Either holding her under in one go - or bringing her up time to time?'

He slid his legs out from the table and pushed into the crowd of drinkers. Verity polished his hat-brim on his sleeve, staring at the young man who was now out of earshot.

'That's much what I thought, Mr Chaffey,' he said to himself. He turned to Old Stock. 'You'd oblige me, Ma, by not mentioning this to anyone else just yet.'

He got up and went after Chaffey, leading him back.

'You got no notion, Mr Chaffey, how obliged I am. If you and Mrs Stock was able to join me in a further nip of Holland, I shan't distress you. Just a matter I'd like to put to a man of your learning and experience.'

They sat down and watched the aproned waiter refill the glasses. Verity gazed at the young medical assistant.

'How's it look, Mr Chaffey, when a man's run through by a stiletto blade?' Chaffey frowned.

'I seen one or two, Mr V. Not a usual knife. Hard to tell it's been done. Symmetrical wound. Wedge shape that you'd hardly see. That's how us that practises the medical arts knows it can't be a knife with a back but sharp all round, stiletto.'

He reached thankfully for his hot gin.

'But why wouldn't you see it, Mr Chaffey?'

'With something like a stiletto, the wound closes up as the knife comes out, Mr V, skin being elastic. Hardly a mark to be seen with a blade so narrow. It's damage to internal organs that finishes a chap.'

Verity took his hat off and mopped his face with his red handkerchief. Chaffey shifted a little on the tall oak bench.

'Then there's the hands, Mr Chaffey. You ever know a poor devil attacked by a knife and didn't try to push it off?'

Chaffey shook his head, happy to be an authority consulted by the law. He brushed back his love curl.

'Cuts to the hands is usual, sir.'

'They are,' Verity said enthusiastically. 'Why, Mr Chaffey, all that time I was before Sebastopol, you no idea how many of my poor friends was coopered by sabres and bayonets. I never knew one, when he come to the end, didn't fight steel with his hands if he had nothing else. Instinct for life, Mr Chaffey, is what it is.'

Chaffey looked at him uneasily.

'That stiletto blade now, Mr Chaffey. Much blood from it?' 'Skin closes up on withdrawal, Mr V. Don't really bleed then.' Verity shook his head, marvelling at medical investigation. 'And yet, Mr Chaffey, when Handsome Rann coopered Pandy Quinn, Rann had blood all down his shirt.'

Chaffey's dark eyes went wide and he looked alarmed. 'Blood from the knife, Mr V,' he said quickly. Verity nodded.

'Must be, Mr Chaffey. Handsome Jack coopered Pandy, then wiped the knife all down his shirt special, so's he could be arrested. Still, I expect the inquest was told all about the cuts that Pandy had on his hands?'

The young man swallowed.

'Not as such. Couldn't use his hands, p'raps.'

'Tied behind his back, I daresay?'

'That'll be it!' Chaffey snatched at the opportunity.

'Then I daresay Dr Pargiter must have told the inquest about rope marks on Pandy's wrists.'

Chaffey made a sound that was just short of speech.

'He didn't,' said Verity helpfully, 'did he? The marks Pandy had were bruises that might come from holding a man down. Now, Mr Chaffey, you ever hear of two men rolling round the floor fighting and one of them - with no help from anyone else - holding the other down and tying him up?'

Chaffey said nothing but Old Stock intervened.

'Play fair, Mr Verity! Chaffey put you straight on Pretty Jo. Ain't that enough?'

Verity's face flushed with resolve. He picked up his hat.

'He might speak for Miss Joanne, bringing the house down on them that murdered the poor little soul. Say nothing, Ma. I'll be back when I know the rest.'

He got up, pushing his way to the cooler air of the summer night. Cat Clare was at one of the tables. She slanted a look of contempt at her natural enemy, thin lips pursed and blue eyes narrowed. Verity paid no attention. He wondered what formalities were required in arresting an officer of a rank superior to his own.

29

'Stand where you're seen, Handsome Rann!'

It was Atwell's voice on the far side of the door, then two of them murmuring together. They could see him through the keyhole or the crack of the door which would show a wedge-shaped section of the room, widening to include the window and far wall. The chair and the mattress were in this section. Only the table with hand-mirror and hairbrush, long strands of a woman's hair twined in its bristles, was beyond surveillance.

He had expected his interrogation to begin at once. Instead, he was left all night, hearing only intermittent movements in the passageway. Perhaps they had left him alone to soften him up. More likely, Brass was asking Policeman Fowler for permission before beginning his lethal work. Fowler might require the silencing of Miss Jolly to make the destruction of the others safer.

That night, half-formed plans for escape filled Rann's mind, each examined and rejected. The room would hold him fast. Next day or the day after, they would choose Maggie or Samuel or Miss Jolly and the screaming would begin, ending each time in death. Even if Maggie or Samuel told all that they knew, the interrogators could not be certain until the final cut.

He could scarcely move from the uneven mattress. Every board in the attic room seemed to creak. Somewhere after midnight he moved softly to the window.

'Back in yer pit, Handsome Rann. I have to come in, you get a smacked head to keep you dancing for a week!' It was Hardwicke.

‘I
gotta use the necessary closet,' Rann said brusquely.
‘I
got the right to that!'

The door was unlocked. He was taken to an evil-smelling drain at the end of the passageway. They brought him back and left him in the dark. The boards creaked as he settled on the mattress again. A ray of light shone through the crevice of the door as they checked that he was there and nowhere else. Then the door was locked and it was dark.

From under his huddled shape, he took the tortoiseshell hand-mirror which he had purloined from the small table, beyond the view of the door, as they shut him in the darkness. In the gloom, he had swayed aside a little and pushed the mirror under his jacket as he passed. It was a simple design, a wooden handle and frame, a thin sheath of tortoiseshell, a round glass six inches across.

A clock chimed three. He drew his finger round the bevelled edge of the glass. The tortoiseshell frame overlapped it by quarter of an inch, holding it in place. With his thumb-nail, he tested this edging, trying to splinter it and work the mirror-glass free. There was a snick as it yielded a fraction and then snapped back into place. He listened but guessed that Hardwicke had heard nothing.

He tried it again, drawing blood under his thumb-nail. He prised it a fraction. The lining cracked and yielded a splinter of thin shell. After that, it lifted more easily from the edge of the glass. With the side of his thumb, he snapped off an inch of narrow edging. By the time the clocks struck four, the smooth bevelled glass was fixed only by the glue holding it to the wooden base of the mirror.

As he had hoped, the glue was dry and brittle. Cautiously, trying not to break the wooden backing, he took it in both hands. Then he lay and waited for an early market-cart in the street below. While the iron-rimmed wheels rattled on cobbles, he forced the glass away from the frame with a muffled crack of wood.

Anxiously he slid his hands over the mirror-back. But the tortoiseshell was smooth and undamaged. Face-down, the mirror would look intact. He waited on the mattress as the summer dawn grew stronger beyond the barred window.

Hardwicke and Atwell came in with bread and coffee. As he heard the door open, Rann got up and let them see him crossing to the little table, its surface hidden from them by his back. They would hardly expect him to work the trick while they were coming in. Hardwicke, burly in his red waistcoat, took him by the arm.

'Get back over there, you lying little toad!'

‘I
gotta brush my hair,' Rann said, with the woman's hairbrush in his hand. 'I gotta right to that as well.'

Hardwicke spat into the coffee before handing it to him.

'You gotta right to cry like a baby at the things I'll be doing to you, Jack Rann. That's all you got left now.'

Atwell, thin, bald, and humorous, snatched the brush from him.

'Gob in his drink again, Mr Hardwicke, less he should scald hisself!'

But neither of them bothered to pick up the empty tortoiseshell frame of the mirror. It crossed Rann's mind that perhaps a man of Hardwicke's stupidity had no more idea of being photographed as he ravished or punished Joanne than any other dupe set up for blackmail at the introducing-house.

‘I
ain't a liar,' he said quietly,
‘I
seen them photographs. You got up in costume with a belt and whip and her tied up. I wasn't there when you did it to her but I can give you all the details. How d'you think I'd know if I hadn't seen pictures? There's a thing like an old pillar and her tied to face it. And now she's dead. S'pose the inquest finds some marks still there on her backside from what you done to her and puts it together? Your game won't be all brandy then, will it?'