‘You know what this means?’ asked Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Amos Cheadle.
Best knew that he wasn’t expected to answer the question so merely looked attentive.
‘Another Camberwell,’ announced Cheadle. ‘That’s what it means.’
Best nodded. ‘Looks like it, sir.’ In fact, the comparison was a bit of an exaggeration. In Camberwell, a few years back, no fewer than sixteen dead babies had been found within a few weeks.
‘I wants you … ’ As usual, Cheadle’s huge frame had been gradually slipping down his shiny, leather-covered chair and, as usual, he shot himself upright and leaned forward. ‘I wants you to go in there,’ he said bluntly.
‘Take on the case?’ said Best. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘No, I wants you to go in there – undercover. Get lodgings near a suspect house. Do some shadowing. Nose around.’
Best was startled. Cheadle pre-empted him, shaking his head slowly so that his large and luxuriant moustache swayed and quivered hypnotically. ‘It’s no use getting the divisionals to do it. Too many people knows them.’
‘What about Sergeant Relf, sir?’
One time he wouldn’t have dared question the orders of Scotland Yard’s most astute detective and most ill-educated man. One time he would have suspected this was one of Cheadle’s attempts to bring his fastidious and ‘arty’ sergeant down to earth. But times had changed. The recent disgrace brought on Cheadle’s beloved department had simultaneously diminished the spirit of the old warhorse and put Best, proven to be one of the few honest Scotland Yard detectives, in a more favourable position. It had also made promotion to inspector imminent. Or should have done.
‘Relf’s h’otherwise engaged,’ said Cheadle. ‘And I wants you’ – he heaved himself up again ‘to ’elp bring back our good name. Besides,’ he added with some venom, ‘this is detective work, ain’t it? This is murder.’
Well, it might be murder but it had been going on for a long time. Dead, new-born babies were frequently found discarded in small parcels all about this great capital city and had been for many years. It was only when the numbers found in one place became outrageous and the authorities were unable to ignore the situation that it was felt that something should be done about it. They were pressured into action and there was a flurry of activity for a while. Something certainly had been done about ‘the Camberwell business’ – Mrs Waters, baby-farmer, had been hanged.
On that occasion it had been two local uniformed officers, Sergeant Relf and Constable Tyers, who had taken action and become the heroes of the hour. Soon after, when there was an outbreak in Islington, Relf and Tyers had been put into lodgings in College Street, several doors from the ‘suspected house’. They reported ‘nothing suspicious happened’ due, Relf was certain, to the suspects knowing they were being watched and were being extremely careful since the recent baby-farming convictions – not to mention the subsequent execution.
Later, Relf and Tyers were prominent witnesses before the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Protection of Infant Life which in turn had brought about legislation to see it didn’t happen again. But, the laws passed were weak and the problem widespread so, of course, it did.
Scotland Yard detectives had made one or two half-hearted sorties into this arena both before and after the legislation – with little success. Now, however, when the department’s stock was so low, they needed to show how much they cared.
Best felt he’d made a good start by actually finding lodgings with Mrs O’Connor, right next door to one of the ‘suspect houses’. Mrs O’Connor’s standards of cleanliness were adequate but not quite up to those of the fastidious Sergeant Best and he found the dingy decor rather depressing. But his landlady was a cheerful, friendly enough soul – once she had got used to the idea of having a respectable gentleman lodger who was not ‘engaged during the day’. Indeed, she had only consented to take him when he had offered more than her ‘moderate terms’ and promised not to get under her feet.
Her partial-board cooking turned out to be really quite good if a little on the over-substantial side. One would think her lodgers were Irish navvies rather than one thirty-year-old bank clerk, a youthful assistant in a high-class gents’ outfitters, and himself – a recuperating invalid with an artistic bent.
Painting watercolours offered Best a legitimate excuse to hang around the garden during the day. Here he could keep an eye on the house next door while, hopefully, making some casual acquaintances among the staff and residents.
But it proved a little difficult to sustain the pretence that the unkempt and overgrown plot, littered with various rusting domestic and garden implements and straddled by washing lines, was a picturesque subject. He thanked heaven for the clumps of Michaelmas daisies run wild by the fence and hung about with sprays of dog roses, though he was coming to the end of the number of times he could attempt to reproduce their riotous abandon in watercolour.
Thank goodness that he had also established that resting in his room was part of his pretended invalid regime. Fortunately the room overlooked the street, so from its window he could watch the comings and goings at the house next door while bringing himself up to date on this baby business – and re-reading Helen’s letters for the third and fourth time.
From the start it had struck him how cruel this assignment was for him. Emma had died before they could have children, a miscarriage only hastening her death from the scourge of consumption. Now, he longed to become a father but he longed for Helen even more and children were part of the problem between them. Still, she was coming home from her studies in Paris at last. Only a week and two days to go!
Best stabbed his brush angrily at his painting. He hated all this baby-farming business and despised the heartless women who became involved in it – and he wasn’t a man usually given to despising.
‘You look ever so cross,’ said a voice from the next door garden. ‘Won’t it come right?’
It was Nella. Bigger than ever, her brown dress now held together with safety pins at strategic points, and carrying a heavy basket of washing. It was hard to despise Nella. He decided to plunge straight in.
‘Thinking about children,’ he confessed.
‘Oh,’ said Nella, plonking the basket on the grass and looking ruefully down at herself. ‘I don’t think about nuffink else, do I?’ She smiled wanly. ‘Ain’t got no choice.’
‘Don’t you want the baby then?’
‘T’aint that. Didn’t expect it, did I?’ She glanced anxiously back at the house then picked up a pink woollen shawl liberally embroidered with blue flowers. For a moment he thought she was going to fall over but she managed to steady herself and straighten up to pull a peg from the bag stretched around what had once been her waist.
‘And you’re too young,’ nodded Best. ‘But once you’ve got it, I bet you’ll be pleased.’
‘I’ll be glad it’s come all right. So will they.’ She nodded towards the house then reached down for another shawl.
‘Will you be able to look after it?’ he enquired casually while mixing pale-rose pink yet again.
She shook her head. ‘Oh no. I ain’t keepin’ it,’ she insisted. For a moment she looked sad, then she brightened and smiled. ‘It’s going to ever such a good ’ome. Rich people. It’ll have lots to eat. Lovely clothes and never, ever, ’ave to work.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Best, not daring to raise his eyes from his rose-pink mix now grown too red for his purposes. ‘Are you sure that’s going to happen?’
She frowned, perplexed. ‘Course.’
He wasn’t sure how to handle the next question so dithered then eventually just murmured, ‘Why’s that?’ But she had moved too far to hear him when she’d noticed that Martha, the dark and dumpy older girl he’d seen around, was striding down the garden towards her.
Murphy made an incongruous city clerk, thought Best as he watched the man tuck into his lamb chops. He had attempted to constrain his robust frame with a smooth, tight, dark suit but the effort only made his ruddy cheeks look ruddier, his rugged features more rugged and had thrown into prominence his crinkly fair hair and flinty blue eyes. His spare time was more appropriately occupied helping out Patrick, his friend from back home, with his house-clearing activities.
‘Lovely chops, Mrs O’Connor,’ said young Eddie Linwood. ‘You must have a good butcher.’
Always the right word, thought Best, looking up from his supper which was, to his relief, smaller than that of the others on the grounds that he was recuperating and was not, at present, a working man. No wonder Linwood did so well at his job, charming wealthy customers while taking their measurements. The contrast between the sparky, sleek and dapper youth and the stolid Murphy couldn’t be more pronounced.
‘I certainly have,’ said Mrs O’Connor. ‘I’m a lucky woman in that respect.’ Being Irish, Best realized, gave her some immunity to the seduction of soft words, having been weaned on the crack. But she liked to please her lodgers and appreciated Linwood’s effort, particularly since he was an Englishman to whom compliments did not come so easily. ‘Kind of you to say so.’
She turned her attention to Best about whom she was clearly still a little curious, despite his efforts to merge into the background. ‘Didn’t I see you having a word with that poor child, Nella?’ she said. ‘Be careful there, won’t you now?’
‘Yes,’ said Best nodding casually, then added, ‘Why are they working her so hard in her state – and why is she so nervous? I was only passing the time of day.’
‘She’s over time,’ said Mrs O’Connor bluntly as she stacked the plates, ‘and they’re not getting their money’s-worth out of her. That’s why. So they’re thinking of getting it back in kind – if you’ll excuse the expression.’ She banged the used cutlery down on top of the dinner plates. ‘Kind is one thing they’re not. You can be sure of that.’
Her gentlemen lodgers were a little taken aback by her unusual vehemence but Linwood soon broke the silence.
‘Oh, I meant to mention, Mrs O’Connor,’ he said. ‘Would you be so kind as to hold my supper for me tommorrow night?’
‘To be sure. Swimming again, is it?’
‘Yes!’ The lad was excited. ‘I’m racing in the three hundred yards handicap at the Wenlock Baths.’ He turned to Best. ‘You should come along, it’ll be great sport.’
‘I might do that,’ he said, ‘if I’m feeling up to it.’ He’d let it drop to Linwood that he could swim and the lad already saw Best, smartly dressed and with his up-to-date, gleaming, Derby shoes as something of a fellow spirit. This, despite the fact that the detective sergeant had done his best to tone down his natural exuberance to fit in with his invalid and unemployed status.
The conversation drifted on to other matters such as the progress in positioning and raising Cleopatra’s Needle beside the Thames.
‘I still think it would have been better on the green,’ said Mrs O’Connor, referring to one of the first proposed sites on which a mock wooden needle had been tried out. ‘Opposite the House of Commons with a bit more space around it – wouldn’t it have looked grand?’
There followed vigorous debate about the proposed contents of the two urns to be buried in the obelisk’s pedestal. All agreed that Mappin’s shilling razor, hairpins and ‘sundry items of ladies adornment’ were acceptable, given that such vanities were often found in ancient burial sites and were easy to understand. Dr Birch’s famous translation of the needle’s hieroglyphics, the current newspapers and the assorted Bibles, were also generally deemed to be quite a reasonable idea – always supposing the person who eventually dug them up could read English. But, Linwood thought, the Alexandra feeding bottle and children’s toys might prove a great puzzle to future archaeologists and the idea of the inclusion of a Bradshaw’s Railway Guide caused great hilarity all round.
‘Sure, and won’t they think it’s written in code and contains the secret of how we lived,’ laughed Mrs O’Connor. ‘There’ll be fellas spending the rest of their lives working out what it all means!’
‘And as for those photographs,’ said Best, enjoying himself. ‘Who’s to say that these “ladies” are the twelve most beautiful women in Britain?’
‘It’s all such a nonsense,’ agreed Mrs O’Connor.
This was a topic on which Linwood held the most firm views. ‘Mrs Penelope Wynslow, she’s the best.’
Suddenly Murphy sprang to life, ‘Martha next door,’ he exclaimed with some heat, ‘she’s prettier than any of them.’ He took a large spoonful of jam roly-poly, thrust it into his mouth then looked around as though challenging anyone to disagree. All were too surprised to do so.