The Murder Pit
The guvnor told him about the Barclays’ worries and the difficulties we’d had trying to speak to Birdie.
‘We saw her in the upper window today,’ he said, taking out his notebook and pencil. ‘She pressed a picture of Brighton Pavilion to the window. D’you have any idea what that might mean, Reverend?’
The parson shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea. But the Ockwells are a good family. I can’t imagine they’re preventing her seeing her parents.’
‘You told the Barclays that Walter had a violent history,’ I said.
‘Yes. A bad story, that was. He’d been to market at Lewisham to sell some pigs and somehow lost the money. He hasn’t a full share of good sense at the best of times but he’d taken too much brandy and got himself into a rage. Set about one of the local men with a stick. The chap lost an eye. He was quite wild, they say: a few fellows had to hold him down until the police came. The constables found the money in Walter’s wagon. He was in prison for two months for that. It’s was all over the papers.’
‘How did his first wife die?’
‘She was walking up a hill behind a loaded wagon. The axle broke and the whole lot fell on her, broke her spine. She died a few days after. It’s a rather common story on the farms, I’m afraid. Even a child knows that’s something you should never do.’
‘Was Walter with her when it happened?’
‘Yes, but there was no suggestion he was responsible, except for not maintaining the wagon, of course.’ He poured us more port.
‘D’you think he’s a danger, Reverend?’
‘Not usually,’ answered the parson, standing to get his pipe from the writing desk. ‘But he can have quite a temper when he thinks someone’s making fun of him or if he’s taken a drink. He’s a strong fellow. The Ockwells had been having some financial troubles and losing that pig money would have been hard for them. The farm’s been in decline since old Mr Ockwell died. They only moved from arable to pigs in the first place because of the grain imports. Nobody expected meat would be next. Free trade and all that, Mr Arrowood. Quite a disaster. Godwin took out a loan to buy a patent for a moveable steam engine a few years ago. Thought he’d lease it out but the damn thing turned out to be quite useless. That’s when he was attacked with apoplexy – you noticed his speech?’
The guvnor nodded as he scribbled away in his notebook.
‘I don’t know how they keep going, frankly. They’ve been lucky to keep their workers.’
‘Who knows them best around here?’ asked the guvnor.
‘The family have always kept to themselves. They were packed off to boarding school when they were young, so they didn’t really get to know the local children.’
‘And Birdie? D’you think she’s happy?’
‘She’s so quiet. It’s hard to get a word out of her at church.’
‘Does she attend regularly?’
‘She didn’t attend at all for the first few months. Then she came regularly for a few weeks, but she seems to have stopped again. Rosanna always attends. She’s extremely pious, always has been, and she’s had her own disappointments, of course. Her fiancé died a month before her wedding. This was when her father was alive. Then she was all set to go to university to study medicine when Godwin got them into further debt.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s borne it all with such strength.’
There was silence as the guvnor wrote it all down. Finally he looked up: ‘And Godwin’s wife?’
‘Ah. The beautiful Polly Gotsaul. She used to attend every week, but she hasn’t been for more than a year. A nervous disorder of some kind, I’m told. Makes it difficult for her to leave the house.’ He sighed. ‘I used to so enjoy looking on her heavenly face from the pulpit.’
‘Do either of them come down here to the shops?’ I asked.
‘Rosanna does the shopping.’
The maid pushed open the door, a tray in her hands. The draught from the hallway came in quite strong, blowing an envelope off the mantel and directly into the coal fire.
‘Sarah!’ cried the parson, leaping from his chair and hurrying over to the grate. Quick as a mouse he took hold of the tongs and fished the letter out, blowing down the flames. ‘You’ve done it again, you careless girl! How many times must I tell you not to put my letters there?’
‘Sorry, sir,’ she said, her head bowed. The tray trembled in her red hands, rattling the knives.
‘Well, get on with it,’ he growled.
She passed us each a plate of fruit cake. The parson poured more port, while she poured him a mug of milk from a jug.
‘Do you know Birdie Ockwell, Sarah?’ asked the guvnor, his mouth full.
‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘I seen her in church but only that. My sister works up there in the dairy, sir.’
‘And what does she say about Birdie?’
‘Don’t know as she does, sir. She’s sick with the diphtheria. Hasn’t been there for two week at least.’
‘Could we talk to her, Sarah, d’you think?’
‘She ain’t well, sir. Ain’t really with us.’ She bit her lip. ‘Won’t be long, so says the doctor.’
‘Ah,’ said the guvnor. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. She covered her face with her hands and turned away.
‘Watch the door!’ the parson barked after her. He drained another glass of port, then took a big swallow of milk. He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve told her about the draught a hundred times. Some of them just won’t learn anything.’
We sat in silence for a few moments, staring into the fire.
‘So, private agents,’ he said at least, recovering his cheer. ‘How exciting! Did you read how Holmes rescued the young Lord Saltire? What a genius! I suppose you study his methods, do you?’
The guvnor took another drink before answering.
‘Holmes is a deductive agent,’ he said at last. ‘He relies on clues and documents: footprints, marks on the wall, shipping tables and so on. The Saltire case was solved by examing bicycle tyre tracks.’ He stopped as if remembering something. His eyes narrowed, his voice dropped. ‘Tell me, Reverend, are you familiar with the case of the naval treaty?’
‘Yes, quite astonishing. If not for Holmes we’d be at war this very day.’
‘That’s certainly a popular opinion, sir, but there’s an interesting detail in that story. Easily missed. Holmes admits that he’s helped the police on fifty-three cases, and only claimed the credit for four. That means Watson hasn’t written the other forty-nine. It seems rather a lot of cases to keep hidden away given his great appetite for publicity, don’t you think? I can’t help wondering about all those cases. Could it be that on those occasions his method failed him?’
‘Failed him? How?’
‘Holmes works by physical clues and his famous logic, but I’ve found in my work that many cases do not have clues. Instead, they have people, and people are not logical. Emotions are not logical. To solve those cases you need to get inside the person. You must understand their pain, their confusion, their desire for recognition. You must try to see how they see the world, and I’ll give you ten to one they don’t see it as you do. I’ve nothing against Holmes, Reverend, it’s just that he believes emotions are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I work differently. I’m an emotional detective. I try and solve my cases by understanding people.’
‘Bravo, Mr Arrowood!’ exclaimed the parson, tossing the remainder of the port down his throat. ‘I’ve some knowledge of the criminal mind in my work as a magistrate too, you know. My experience has taught me that we don’t talk enough about Hell to the criminal classes. About the woe unutterable, unimaginable, interminable. If we did, perhaps there’d be less crime in this world, don’t you think?’
Arrowood peered at him over his eyeglasses, his open lips wet with port. He seemed to have gone blank.
‘Ah, but I’m on my hobby horse again,’ said the parson. ‘Please, tell me all about your work.’
For the next half-hour the guvnor told him stories of our cases, while the parson fed us port and drank just as much himself, always following it with a clutch of his chest, a clear of his throat, a drink of milk. He seemed thrilled by it all, gasping with surprise, choking with delight. He asked question after question. The guvnor was happier than I’d seen him for a long time.
‘You’re a fascinating man, Mr Arrowood,’ said the parson, walking us through to the front door where two cricket bats danced in the corner. ‘I’ve had a delightful evening.’
‘William,’ said the guvnor. ‘Call me William.’
‘Good Lord! And I’m also William. Call me Bill!’
They looked at each other with such affection it seemed they might break into a Mazurka.
‘May I ask you a favour, Bill?’ said the guvnor. ‘Would you have a word with Birdie about this business? Perhaps drop by at the farm?’
‘Of course I will, William, although I’m sure the Barclays are mistaken. Miss Rosanna would never allow Walter to prevent Birdie seeing her parents. Now, you must call in next time you’re in Catford. Here, wait. Let me lend you a book I authored on the bells of Kent and Surrey.’ He pulled a blue volume from a small pile by the front door. ‘Have you read it?’
‘No, I haven’t, Bill,’ said the guvnor as he inspected the cover. ‘I must have missed it somehow.’
‘I’d like to know what you think of it. Come for tea the next time you’re here. Any day at all. It’s been such a delight. Promise me. I’ll be offended if you don’t.’
‘What an excellent evening,’ said the guvnor as we walked along the new tramlines towards the station. ‘He’ll be an ally, I think. And we might need one in this place.’
The moon was clear in the frozen sky, the trees and buildings picked out in silver and grey. Nobody was about but for three men up ahead, pulling a tarp over a wagon stood outside one of the building sites. When they noticed us, they quickly tied off the ropes, whispering to each other as they worked. There was something in the way they moved that wasn’t right – I’d seen it too many times before.
‘Maybe trouble, sir,’ I whispered, gripping the cosh in my pocket.
‘Keep walking,’ he murmured, increasing his stride.
They stood by the wagon, watching us get near. Though their caps were pulled low over their faces, I recognized the two overgrown builders from their grizzled beards. It was Skulky and Edgar. The other fellow, shorter but thickset, wore a scarf under his bowler and over his ears. He had his arms behind his back; the outline of a cudgel jutted from the tails of his coat.
‘Evening, lads,’ I said.
They didn’t reply. As we passed, the short fellow pulled the stick from behind his back. I turned quick, the cosh in my hand.
‘Leave it, Weavil,’ growled Edgar.
The short bloke stepped back behind the cart.
We walked on quickly, the men’s eyes on our backs all the way.
‘D’you think they meant to rob us?’ I asked when we were sure they hadn’t followed.
‘I hope that’s all it was,’ he said, glancing back.
We hurried toward the station, the guvnor lurching and stumbling from the port. In his gloved hands was clasped the parson’s book on the bells of Kent and Surrey.
Chapter Eight
The guvnor was abed when I got to Lewis’s house in the Elephant and Castle next morning. His sister Ettie went to rouse him while I waited in the parlour. There were no lamps lit and the fire was cold. Crates of the guvnor’s books and crockery were piled here and there between the stained and threadbare furniture; a bunch of old swords from Lewis’s shop was stacked against the wall.
When the guvnor came down, his eyes were barely open. A great stink of fish and stale grog filled the room, and from his face the colour of pork fat and the sweat that speckled it I could see he’d gone to the Hog on the way home last night. I should have known he’d stop there to poison himself with cheap gin after getting such a start on with the parson. Ettie, wearing a tight frown, folded her arms over her thick jacket as she sat. He opened his mouth, to ask for tea no doubt, but seeing her eyes fire up he shut it again and looked at me. His hands shook as he reached for the laudanum on the side table.
‘We need to get another payment, sir,’ I said.
He nodded and took a sip. He burped.
‘William, please control yourself,’ whispered Ettie.
He nodded again, took another sip, shut his eyes. I bit my lip, trying to prevent the smile as was forcing itself on me. I’d often seen him like this after a night in the Hog, where most times he’d end up in the arms of Betts, the woman who worked the punters there in the back room. Betts had offered him comfort since Isabel left. Though he suffered for it next day, I knew it to be a good thing for him. He was a man as sometimes needed to hurt himself a little to stay balanced.
‘Are you off to the mission today, Ettie?’ I asked, giving the guvnor time to settle himself.
She nodded, pushing a finger under her scarf to give her neck a bit of a scratch. Ettie spent half the week working for a mission that visited the slums and provided refuge to young women who’d been forced to work the streets by their menfolk. They had a campaign against the three most notorious slum landlords too, the ones who supplied only a couple of privvies for three hundred or more people and were happy to let open sewers run through the middle of their courts. Thomas Orme Smith, Samuel Chance and Dr Bruce Kennard were they, with Orme Smith owning the worst slum of all, a dark and diseased warren named Cutlers Court. The mission sent letters to the papers and held vigils outside their houses, embarrassing them before their neighbours. It caused a lot of bad feeling, and there were many in London hated that mission and the women associated with it.
‘We’ve two new girls in,’ she said, sitting forward. As the guvnor reached for the laudanum again, she snatched it from the table. ‘Last night we had bricks through the refuge windows again. Some people in this city are unforgiveable, Norman. As if those women haven’t had it hard enough already.’
Her eyes were bitter and it made me sorry. It was my city, from my first breath through all the good and bad things that ever happened to me. London was part of me, and I felt shame for what it could do to people
She breathed in deep and made herself smile.
‘You know I’ve known you for over six months and never met your wife, Norman? We thought you might visit over Christmas.’
‘She’s been away,’ I said, feeling my voice change.
‘Where?’
‘It’s been…’ I started to say, but then a terrible weariness came over me and I couldn’t go on. I’d lived with the secret for so long it felt like the truth was frozen inside.
I shook my head, realizing that it wouldn’t be my decision in the end. Ettie was looking at me like she could see something of my thoughts. I turned my eyes back to the cold, grey ash in the hearth. The wind rattled the windows.
‘Did you manage to see Birdie yesterday?’ she asked after a while.
As I told her what had happened, the guvnor’s shakes began to ease and the colour came back to his face. He drank from a jug of water at his side. Again and again his cheeks inflated with a parade of silent burps.
‘It doesn’t sound as if you know any more than the Barclays told you,’ she said when I’d finished.
‘Of course we do,’ growled the guvnor. ‘Every step takes us nearer. That’s how these cases work.’
‘Does that apply to our builders, William?’ asked Ettie, suddenly vexed. ‘Are we nearer getting our rooms back each day they do no work?’
‘They’ve promised they’ll be back this time.’
‘We can’t impose on Lewis much longer. Please, William. It’s not fair.’
‘I’m doing my best!’
‘They’re playing you for a fool. Why don’t you take Norman to see them?’
‘No, Ettie!’ cried the guvnor.
‘Will you talk to them, Norman?’
‘If you want,’ I said, my voice hollow.
She heard my tone and her face fell.
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘I’m happy to do it, Ettie.’
I looked away. Whenever I started to feel easy, one of them’d remind me how they really saw me. I was his rough. What else could I be with these worn-out boots, this voice thick with the Bermondsey slums? Though I only lived in that foul court for six years, it seemed I’d never escape it.
‘Norman, I’m sorry,’ she said, her face as serious as I’d ever seen it. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Really.’
She looked at me for a while, not knowing how to fix it, then went off to make some tea. The guvnor rested his head on the antimacassar and shut his eyes, working at healing himself.
Soon Ettie came back with the tray. I took a biscuit: the guvnor took four.
‘She’s asking for our help,’ he said when he’d refreshed himself. His face was sombre. ‘I’m sure of it. It kept me awake last night, seeing her up there, that picture, wondering what it means.’
‘But she didn’t actually speak?’ asked Ettie.
‘No, but I felt her sadness so clearly. Her fear. Norman felt the same when he saw her on the train. Sometimes all we have to work with are our feelings.’
‘Our feelings can lead us in the wrong direction, William, as well you know.’
‘Remember that book I was reading on crowd behaviour?’ He peered down at the pile of books by his chair and pulled out a green volume to show us. ‘Le Bon writes that emotions are contagious. I can’t say I properly understand how it works, and I’m not sure he does either, but there’s no doubt that emotions can be transmitted from one heart to another if we attend with care. Music can do it, can’t it?’
‘I suppose,’ said Ettie slowly.
A screaming started up in the road just outside the house, a child. The guvnor flinched, clutching his head. Then a woman’s scolding voice, then a man’s gruff roar joined in. They fought on and on as Lewis’s three clocks, each out of time with the others, ticked on the mantel.
‘We need to get to her, damn it!’ he cried suddenly, his fist banging down on the side table. ‘She couldn’t be more vulnerable! And that scar on her head might just be the start of a terrible journey. We have to think of something, Norman.’
‘Why don’t I go up there and try?’ asked Ettie. ‘They might react differently to a woman.’
‘No, Sister.’
‘But why not? The Ockwells aren’t going to let you in, that much is clear. The Barclays have tried the police and they won’t help. You’ve no other way to get to her.’
‘This is our work, Ettie. Walter has a history of violence. I don’t want you up there on your own. Anyway, why would you have more success than us?’
‘Women can sometimes do things that men cannot,’ she said, her chest rising in indignation. ‘What other choice have you, William? She’s asking for help. You said it yourself.’
He gazed vacantly at his sister across the room, pondering. His stomach groaned like a lonely cow. Finally he turned to me.
‘Remember those two labourers we saw the other day in the farmyard? The ones chased by the dog? Let’s see if we can find them in the fields. They might be able to tell us something. But first run down to the shop and get us a kidney pudding, will you, Barnett? And a dozen oysters.’
Chapter Nine
We happened to find a butcher’s cart on its way to the Ockwell farm as we set out from the station that afternoon. He dropped us in the dip before the lane rose to the farm entrance, out of sight of the house, and there we pushed through a hedgerow. The field to our right was full of pigs, their heads bent, guzzling a scatter of turnips on the ground. The ground was frozen hard.
We followed a path between a small woodland and a paddock, where a couple of sulky horses stood, their bodies wrapped in coal sacks. They glanced at us with a hungry look in their eyes but didn’t come over. That suited me fine: I never believed a horse was a man’s friend like some folk said. A London horse is a slave, that’s what I always thought, and if you looked deep enough into their eyes you could see how they’d like nothing more than to give you a good kick up the arse.
Now we could see the barns up the hill. We moved on to the fields on the other side, making a wide circuit around the edge of the farm. There was nobody about. A dozen scrawny cows; some winter cabbages; another pig field of hard mud and low huts. The guvnor was limping, puffing, sneezing, unhappy with so much walking. After another ten minutes we found ourselves on a small path through a copse, a field on one side, a stream on the other. The water was black and half-frozen over, the trees above bare but for a handful of rooks crying out. Soon we could see the lane ahead.
‘Damn these shoes,’ complained the guvnor, wheezing proper now. His boots had got burned in the fire at his rooms, and, being a bit tight with his money over certain things, he’d been loaning a pair of Lewis’s shoes that didn’t fit him too good. ‘I was hoping Ettie would get me a pair for Christmas. She gave me another bible.’
I broke a couple of pieces of toffee from the slab in my pocket and handed him one. His scarf was wrapped around his chin, his bowler pulled so low all I could see were his puffy eyes and running nose. For a few minutes we worked on the toffees.
‘Monogrammed,’ he said at last. ‘Just like the last one.’
‘Is Petleigh still visiting her?’ I asked.
‘He came before New Year with a plum cake. I’ve never met anyone who plays cards so badly. He’s even worse than you.’
Isaiah Petleigh was an inspector with Southwark Police. He’d helped us with a few cases over the years and caused us problems on a few others. A few months back the inspector had taken an interest in Ettie and started calling upon her.
‘What does she think of him?’
‘I don’t know, Barnett. Ettie’s Ettie. She gets on.’
‘You lost, masters?’ came a voice.
It was an old woman, sat on a fallen tree behind a big mound of ivy. Her hands were wrapped in rags, and layers of old skirts covered her legs. She wore a most fantastical coat, like a stuffed blanket, red and gold and purple and tied round the middle with a rope.
‘Don’t get many gents walking through, is all,’ she croaked, her eyes shining bright from her sooty face. Further back in the copse, next to a narrow track, was a wooden caravan, its doors open, black pots hanging from roof hooks and a tin chimney poking out the top. A nag in a ragged coat stood chewing a pile of straw. ‘You the new land agent?’
‘No, madam. I’m Mr Arrowood. This is Mr Barnett.’
‘Mrs Gillie,’ said the crone.
‘D’you know the people who own the farm over there, Mrs Gillie? The Ockwells?’
‘Been stopping here all my life, sir. Knew old Mr and Mrs Ockwell since way back. He’d be turning in his grave if he saw the place now. She can’t be too happy neither, in her bed knowing all what’s going on. Richest farm round here, it was. Place’s a ruin these days. Fields ain’t draining proper; fences held together with string. Them pigs ain’t happy neither.’
‘How d’you know the pigs aren’t happy?’ asked the guvnor.
‘Spend too long lying down. A happy pig snorts merry, like. A merry snort. Like you, I shouldn’t wonder, like you when you’ve had a skinful.’
‘I never snort, madam.’
The old tinker laughed, showing us the most awful mouth I’d ever seen. There was only one tooth you could see in there, growing up from the bottom and separating halfway up, where the two parts twisted, one behind the other, like two burnt black twigs.
‘D’you see much of the family, mum?’ I asked her.
‘Don’t have nothing to do with them, not since the old master died.’ She nodded back towards the village and sighed. ‘My Mr Gillie was beaten on the road over there a few year back. Old Mr and Mrs Ockwell took him into their house. Poor old bugger didn’t last the week.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear it,’ said the guvnor.
‘What’s your business with them?’
‘We’re private investigative agents, working on a case.’
The old woman looked at us for a time, her jaw moving like she had a bit of pork rind in her mouth she was working on. A frozen cat padded out from behind the caravan and rubbed its back against her legs. Below her skirts she wore a pair of old soldier’s boots, cracked and worn and bound round with leather cords.