The Murder Pit
‘She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want,’ said Walter, his voice flat. He wore a proper collar and tie, a dark suit, a bowler hat over his thin, blond hair. He seemed out of place in the city.
‘Maybe just for a minute, eh, Birdie?’ I asked. ‘Come and say hello.’
Birdie said nothing; still she smiled, but her eyes fell to the floor.
Ahead of us the conductor cried, ‘All aboard!’ and gave his whistle a toot.
‘Come now,’ said Rosanna, gripping her sister-in-law’s arm and marching her towards the train. She must have been pinching real tight as Birdie let out a little gasp.
‘You can get the next one, Birdie,’ I said, following along. ‘Come on, they’re waiting for you.’
‘He can’t tell you what to do, girl,’ said Walter. ‘He doesn’t own you.’
Just as they reached the train, Birdie’s boot caught on a missing cobble. She fell, crying out as her head struck the wet flagstone, but straight away she was up onto her hands and knees and reaching out for her hat. It seemed to me that the little woman was used to falling.
‘Get up!’ ordered Rosanna, taking Birdie’s arm and yanking her hard to her feet. Birdie gasped again.
‘You’re hurting her,’ I said.
‘I’m not hurting her, I’m helping her.’
Birdie’s smile was gone, her eyes full of tears. It was only then, with her hat off, that I saw the scar at the back of her head where her hair should be. It was about the size of an egg, a shocking bright red of sore, livid flesh, the hair above and below gummed with yellow pus. It seemed as a whole patch of her scalp had been torn off.
‘What happened to your hair, Birdie?’ I asked as clouds of steam rose around our feet.
‘Got it caught in the mangle,’ said Rosanna, pulling the hat from Birdie’s hand and fitting it on her head so it covered the scar. ‘Didn’t tie it up right, did you, silly girl?’
Birdie looked at me. Her eyes flicked real quick at Rosanna, then back at me.
‘It hurt, Norman,’ she said, her voice so soft and low.
‘Who did that to you?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t do it,’ said Birdie.
‘It was the mangle,’ said Rosanna. ‘Now, come. Get on the train.’
‘Your mama misses you, you know,’ I said as a couple of men in black overcoats pushed past us to the carriage door. ‘Why not just come and say hello? Just real quick.’
Birdie was opening her mouth to speak when Walter seemed to explode with rage. He smashed his fist hard against the panel of the train, a wild look in his eye.
‘Stop talking about her mama!’ he bellowed. ‘She doesn’t want to hear about them!’
He stepped forward and took hold of my coat, but he was slow and before he’d got a proper grip I swung my arm, knocking his hands away. For a moment he looked surprised, then the fury returned and he started toward me again.
‘Calm down, Walter,’ ordered his sister, getting hold of his arm and pulling him back. ‘Get on the train.’
She pushed him to the door. He did as she told him, like her touch had made him go soft. As he climbed into the carriage, his too-short britches rode up his legs, showing his dirty grey drawers tied at the ankles.
‘She doesn’t want to see them, Mr Barnett,’ said Miss Ockwell, now guiding Birdie aboard the train as well. ‘You’ve given her the chance. She’d have said if she did. Ask Mr Arrowood to send the documents and any questions to our lawyer, Mr Outhwaite, forty-two Rushey Green. We’ll see she signs.’
She climbed into the carriage and slammed the heavy door. I watched them through the window as they took their seats. The train wasn’t fitted with lights, but I could see Birdie sat between them on the bench, her hands clasped on her lap. Her mouth hung open, her eyes looking down on her knees. She seemed so alone. Walter sat by the window nearest me, his elbow rested on the ledge, his eyes shadowed by the rim of his bowler.
The conductor gave two blasts on his whistle. With a great hiss of steam and a clanking of the wheels, the train moved off. At the last moment before they were gone, Birdie looked up at me again. Now she didn’t smile: instead her brow furrowed and her lips tightened. It was the saddest look I’d ever seen.
Chapter Five
As we walked along Blackfriars Road, the guvnor was silent. He tapped his walking stick against the kerb, humming Mrs Barclay’s sad song to himself. I kept quiet, knowing he was pondering our next step.
‘Tell me again what happened at the station,’ he said at last, shaking his head as if to loosen a tangle of thoughts inside. ‘Exactly. Every detail.’
As I went through it, he asked me about their faces and how they stood, how they looked at each other, how they spoke. I knew he’d ask, and on my way back to meet him I’d gone over the details in my mind, describing it to myself lest I’d forget. The guvnor saw people clearer than me, clearer than most people. It was why he was a good detective. He was always trying to improve himself, always reading books on the psychology of the mind and buying pamphlets and papers to follow the big cases as were going on. Lately he’d been into a book by Mr Carpenter about unconscious cerebration, as he was fond of explaining to us, but his favourite for the last couple of years was a book on emotions by Mr Darwin. He’d studied all the pictures in there, learning all the different ways emotion is displayed in the body.
‘It’s clear they control her,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘But more important is why she didn’t answer your questions when she had a chance. Perhaps she didn’t want to disagree with either of you. That would fit with what the Barclays told us about her being meek.’ He ran the tip of his walking stick along the railings next to the pavement. ‘Or she might be unsure of her own mind. It’s likely she’s not used to making decisions for herself.’
‘I wasn’t sure she understood what I was asking.’
‘Her parents said she understands everything. It’s talking she’s not clever with.’
He paused as we reached a pea soup man, his belly gurgling. Then he shook his head and walked on.
‘And Walter said, “He can’t tell you what to do,” did he? That’s interesting. He could have said, “Ignore him, Birdie.” He could have told you to leave her alone. But he chose to say it this way. It suggests he’s concerned about who has the power to tell who what to do. The Barclays say he’s rather slow. Did he strike you that way?’
‘Hard to say, sir. His voice is flat and he seems a bit clumsy. Looked like his sister had charge of him.’
‘I thought the same when we were at the farm. I wonder if he’s concerned about people telling him what to do. And he said, “He don’t own you.” Is that how he sees marriage, I wonder?’
We stepped onto the street to avoid a bent old woman carrying two great sack bundles over her shoulders. A bit of carpet was tied over her head; her filthy overcoat trailed along the greasy street. Behind her wandered a bloke sucking on the bones of a pig’s trotter.
‘Keep up!’ she croaked.
He darted after her, his black suit shining with filth under the gas lamps.
‘Walter’s temper worries me, Barnett. Was he really going to assault you?’
‘Looked like it.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that scar, either. Did Birdie confirm it was the mangle?’
‘She said, “I didn’t do it.” I don’t know if she meant she didn’t tie her hair up or that it wasn’t her fault.’
A boy turned into the street ahead of us, a tray of muffins hanging around his neck. His cap was torn and too big for him; his smock was stained.
‘Lovely muffins!’ he cried at the streams of tired folk trudging along with their carts and sacks.
‘Hello, lad,’ said the guvnor, a great smile lighting his face.
‘Mr Arrowood!’ cried the boy.
It was Neddy, the lad we used now and then when someone needed watching or messages needed taking. He was eleven or so, maybe twelve or ten, and always up for earning a bit of money: his ma liked a drink too much to bring in food regular so it was down to him to feed his two little sisters. Neddy lived on Coin Street, same as the guvnor, but we hadn’t seen much of him that winter. There’d been an arson attack on the guvnor’s building six month before, and him and his sister Ettie had been staying with his oldest friend Lewis as they waited for the builders to repair their rooms.
‘Oh, but it’s good to see you, my dear,’ said the guvnor, giving the lad’s shoulders a squeeze. ‘And how’s your family?’
‘Always hungry, sir. The more I get the more they want, far as I can see. The little one got right chesty over Christmas. Had to get the doctor in for her.’
‘Is she better?’
‘Still cries a lot, sir.’
The guvnor peered through his eyeglasses at the boy’s face. We were just between the light from two street lamps.
‘When’s the last time you had a wash?’
‘This morning,’ said Neddy, wrinkling his nose.
‘Ha!’ laughed the guvnor. ‘Here, give us a couple of muffins, you little imp.’
He took the muffins from Neddy and handed over a coin. Then he fished in his waistcoat and pulled out a shilling. ‘Take that in case you need to get the doctor in again.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Should have some work for you soon, my boy,’ he said, handing one of the muffins to me.
‘It’s rock hard,’ I said. ‘How old are these?’
‘Old enough, Mr Barnett,’ said Neddy with a smile. One of his front tooths was missing from the Fenian case; his hair fell into his eyes.
The guvnor laughed. He loved that little lad.
‘Mine’s still warm,’ he said, taking a bite. ‘You took the wrong one, Barnett. Anyway, we’ll let you know about that work, Neddy.’
‘Any time, Mr Arrowood. You let me know.’
We watched him dart after a couple of other punters.
‘So Birdie looked in low spirits in the train?’ he asked, shoving the last piece of warm muffin in his gob.
‘That’s what it looked like to me. And I felt she wanted to show me too. But I couldn’t swear by it. It was dark, and she only looked up quick.’
‘We can all recognize grief,’ he said. ‘Mr Darwin says it’s universal: raised inner eyebrows, furrowed forehead, lowered mouth corners. The Hindoos, the Malays, the ancient Greeks – all the same. If we couldn’t recognize sadness in others we couldn’t sympathize. And what would society be without sympathy, Barnett?’
‘Like London sometimes, sir.’
We reached St George’s Circus, where I was going to take a different road back to my rooms in The Borough.
‘Now, what of Mrs Barclay?’ he asked me, stopping by the church stairs. He uncapped his pipe and pushed down the tobacco with his thumb. ‘What restraint, though? Surely the greatest insult to a mother is to tell her she’s done wrong by her daughter?’ The guvnor was getting worked up now, his brow arched in excitement. ‘And then she passes that note.’
‘Who passes a note?’
‘Why Mrs Barclay. You didn’t see?’
He laughed at my surprise.
‘It was when they bumped: she slipped it into Miss Ockwell’s hand in the confusion. You didn’t see?’
‘I said I didn’t see.’
‘I thought it best not to ask her about it at the time. If she was hiding it from Mr Barclay, the chances are she’d deny it.’ He lit his pipe, his eyes a-twinkle under the gas light. ‘Meet me at London Bridge station tomorrow at half past midday, my friend. We’re going back to Catford. We’re going to help poor Birdie with whatever trouble she’s in.’
I watched him as he walked off towards the Elephant and Castle, his great behind juddering like a shire horse. I smiled to myself. The guvnor had finally got interested.
Chapter Six
Arrowood was in a cheery temper the next day when I met him at the station. I could tell he’d been up to something but he wouldn’t say what; he just tapped his finger on his hooter with a wink. I wondered if maybe he’d been seeing a woman. I hoped so. I was sure Isabel wasn’t coming back, and him holding out for her so long only caused him frustration. He never once blamed her for leaving him: he knew he’d driven her away, but now the hope she’d come back kept him going and drove him mad at the same time. He was sure the lawyer she’d taken up with in Cambridge was pushing her into it. The lawyer was younger than him, more reliable, more comfortable. The lawyer gnawed at him as bad as Sherlock Holmes himself, eating him from the inside, giving him acid in his gullet and cramps in his belly. The man was a bleeding macer, a bug hunter, a pissening hound, and the very thought of him brought on the guvnor’s gout, made him itch his arse furiously when he sweated, caused him murderous headaches after a night in the Hog.
There were no cabs at Catford Bridge and the lad at the pub was out so we had to walk to the farm. Nobody passed us on the lane, and we had to stop regular for the guvnor to catch his breath and curse his shoes. The dogs started barking before we reached the gate, but we went the way the lad had taken us, round the back of the barn and coming into the farmyard at the far side. Still they ran at us, barking and snarling, wild and angry. The guvnor flinched as the ropes brought them up just short, his hand on my sleeve, taking care to stay behind me as we approached the house.
A man we hadn’t seen before answered the door. He had a jaw like a bootscraper, his face lined and weather-beaten, his head bald under his brown cap. One arm hung limp by his side, the hand cupped in his pocket. It had to be Godwin, the other brother.
‘Afternoon,’ he said, his eyes moving from the guvnor to me and back. He spoke like a drunk, with only one side of his face moving. The dogs kept up their noise behind us.
‘I’m Mr Arrowood, this is Mr Barnett. We’ve some official business with Birdie Ockwell.’
‘I know who you are, Mr Arrowood, but Birdie won’t see you.’ Though his words were slurred he spoke correct, like his brother and sister. ‘I think my sister told you that already.’
A crashing sound came from inside the house, then, buried beneath all the barking, a woman shouted.
‘Dogs!’ cried the man. They stopped for a moment, then started up again. The man picked up a stone from a pile as lay by the door and hurled it at them. They jumped back, whining.
‘We’ve come all the way from London,’ said the guvnor. ‘It really is most important we talk to her.’
‘You’re to do it through Mr Outhwaite.’
‘We cannot do that, sir,’ said the guvnor, trying on his kindest smile. ‘We’ve no choice but to return until we see her.’
‘You don’t want to become a nuisance, old chap.’
The guvnor thought for a moment, then said, ‘I’m going to be honest with you, Mr Ockwell. We aren’t lawyers. Birdie’s parents sent us. They’re worried she hasn’t answered their letters. They wanted us to talk to her, to make sure she’s content. All we need is five minutes with her and then we’ll never come again.’
‘So there’s no inheritance?’ asked Godwin, lifting his hand to wipe away some spit from the droopy side of his mouth.
‘I’m afraid not. I said we were on legal business, that was all. Miss Ockwell assumed we were lawyers. I’m afraid I didn’t correct her.’
‘Three rail fares that cost us.’
The guvnor fished in his purse and pulled out a shilling and a sixpence. ‘I’m sorry for the trouble, sir.’
Godwin took the coins. ‘Now bugger off, and don’t come back or you’ll taste my shot.’
‘Just five minutes, Mr Ockwell. Please.’
‘Tell her parents she’s happy as a lark,’ said Godwin, and slammed shut the door.
The guvnor cursed. He looked up at the windows then around the yard, at the wretched buildings and farm rubbish strewn all over the place. At the corner of the house he spied a rusty iron rod. He hurried over to collect it, then, making sure he was out of range of the dogs, began hammering on a milk urn as stood by the door.
‘Birdie!’ he cried with each blow. ‘Birdie! Birdie!’
The hounds became frantic, tearing and pulling at their ropes.
‘Come along, Barnett!’
I took up a stone and started beating an old tin bath as was half-filled with water, shouting Birdie’s name along with the guvnor.
We’d been whacking away for a minute or two, when suddenly the guvnor stopped.
‘Up there,’ he whispered, stepping away from the house so he could see better.
In a window above the parlour was a ghostly face. It was the same window the feather was thrown from the first time we visited.
‘Is that you, Birdie?’ called the guvnor gently.
The face moved towards the glass.
It was her. The glass was grimy and uneven, but it was her all right. She gave a quick smile, then looked behind her into the room. We could see her head, her hair covered in a dark scarf, her shoulders. Her mouth hung open. She raised her bandaged hand as if to wave, but held it there like she wanted us to see it.
‘Open the window!’ called the guvnor.
She bent her head below the ledge and came up again, fiddling with something on her lap. Then she pressed the open page of a magazine to the glass, showing us a picture.
‘What is it, Barnett?’ asked the guvnor.
‘I think it’s the Royal Pavilion. In Brighton.’
‘Open the window, Birdie!’ called the guvnor once more. ‘Talk to us!’
As he spoke, the front door opened. It was Godwin again.
‘I warned you, Arrowood,’ he said softly. In his good hand was a shotgun.
He raised the gun at us, the butt planted on his belly. He was panting, his face red: there was something unhinged in his eyes as told me he’d lost control of himself.
I stepped back, pulling Arrowood with me.
There was a roar and smoke was all around us. It caught in my throat, making me choke; my ears were ringing. As I tried to get hold of my senses, Godwin quickly turned the shotgun around and lashed out at me with the butt.
It cracked me in the side of the head, sending me staggering towards the raging dogs. I just caught myself in time, jumping back out of their reach while Godwin swung out at me again with the shotgun. This time he missed.
‘The next shot’s in your shoulder, Arrowood,’ he hissed, his eyes burning. He thrust the shotgun barrel in the guvnor’s chest. His finger was on the trigger; his shoulders jerked compulsively. ‘Leave us alone!’ he bellowed.
The boss was pale.
‘C-calm, sir,’ he stammered, pulling me back by my arm. ‘W-we’re l-leaving.’
We quickly backed away, along the side of the house, past the barn. Ockwell watched us all the way, his shotgun following our movement. When we’d turned the corner and were out of sight, we ran.
We only slowed when we reached the lane. The guvnor was short of breath, his steps quick, his ankles weak. He looked back at the farm buildings again, then stepped up on a fence to see the fields running along the road. Behind us, in the stock sheds, a ruckus of pig squealing started up. We walked on, down the hill.
‘What now?’ I asked as we reached the bottom and started back up the other side.
He clutched my arm as we climbed the slope. He was puffing hard. ‘I think we’ll pay the parson a visit. They usually know everybody’s business. Perhaps he can talk to Birdie.’
We’d just got to the brow when we heard the sound of a horse and cart behind. It was Godwin, whipping his horse, hurtling up the hill towards us.
‘Christ,’ I said.
The horse was galloping, its head tossing, its eyes bulging. The lane was banked high on either side with hedgerow: there was no way off, nowhere to hide.
‘Has he got his gun?’ asked the guvnor, moving behind me.
‘I can’t see. It’s not in his hands.’
In moments the horse and cart reached the brow and came flying toward us. We pressed ourselves against the wet thorns of the bank, trying to get out of the way. Godwin clutched the reins tight, a scarf wrapped round his mouth, a cap low over his eyes. He stared straight ahead like we weren’t there, a grimace on his face, his long jaw jutting forward like a Brixton tram. The cart passed inches from our feet.
And then he was ahead, charging towards town and disappearing around the corner.
Chapter Seven
It was almost dark when we reached the village. As we passed the pub, we spied a fellow leaning against a woman in the dark of the side alley. Night was falling and we couldn’t make them out too clear, but we heard him murmur something in her ear and she laughed in a loose, half-cut way. The guvnor stopped to have a better look. There was a shuffling as the bloke pulled her skirt up over her knees, then he started to thrust up against her. She let out a squeal, holding her bonnet to her head with one hand and gripping his shoulder with the other. He grunted; his cap jerked to the floor. His limp arm hung by his side.
I pulled the guvnor away.
‘Well, well,’ he said when we were further down the road. ‘Clubbing you must have excited him. I hazard that wasn’t his wife he was wooing.’
We walked along the side of the green, the grass silver with frost in the fading light. A gravedigger was working alone on the far side of the churchyard, swinging a pick at the frozen turf. The old bloke looked over as we walked up the path to the parsonage, tipping his cap and taking a moment to rest.
The parson opened the door with a great smile.
‘How nice of you to call,’ he said when the guvnor had introduced us. His voice was quite hoarse. ‘I’m Sprice-Hogg, parson here at St Laurence’s. I think I saw you the other day at the station.’
He invited us into the parlour, where a warm fire was smoking.
‘Now, before we talk let me have some tea brought,’ he said. ‘And a little mutton, perhaps? I was about to eat.’
‘Please don’t go to any trouble,’ said the guvnor.
‘No trouble at all,’ said the parson with a smile. ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it. From Hebrews.’
‘Ah!’ said the guvnor. ‘A favourite quote of my father’s, Reverend.’
He left us warming our hands. The room was big and gloomy, and there wasn’t enough furniture to fill it. A small writing desk, a sofa, and a high-backed chair were on one side. An old dining table was at the other. On the mantel stood a picture of Jesus Christ knocking at the door of a poor English cottage.
The parson returned with a tray of food. The maid followed, carrying a teapot and cups. She was a solid young woman, very broad in the shoulders and thin in the ankles, with just a little curve to her back that wasn’t going to get any better as she got older.
The meat was fatty and a little past its best, but I was feeling weak from the cold and it was good to get it down. As we ate, the parson talked about the renovation of his church, the organ fund, the history of his bell. His face held a kindly look, and on his nose were little round spectacles. His thick, white hair was golden in the gas light, the edge of his moustache wet from the teacup.
‘That was very tasty,’ said the guvnor, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He sipped his tea and held down a burp. ‘Are you married, Reverend?’
‘Oh, no, no,’ laughed the parson, picking up a decanter of port from the desk and pouring out three glasses. ‘The parish keeps me occupied.’
‘It seems a prosperous place,’ said the guvnor.
‘We’ve become a London suburb. The newcomers are building the big houses, but we have an older community and some areas of quite poor housing. Agricultural wages are so very low these days, I’m afraid. The farmers always complain they can’t find workers.’
‘Perhaps they should pay more, Reverend,’ I said.
‘Many farms are in debt, Mr Barnett,’ answered the parson, finishing his port quick and pouring each of us another glass. ‘So, tell me. What brings you to Catford?’
‘We’re private investigative agents,’ explained the guvnor.
‘Good heavens! Are you investigating a case here?’