THE NIGHT WAS misty, the river lightly covered, the streets apparently floating. Bridget hurried along from Aldgate, glad to see a few people about, people out late. Reaching Commercial Road, she made good progress. She turned right into Back Church Lane, seemingly a deserted thoroughfare at this moment. But a soft sound intruded after a matter of seconds. Through the mist by the light of a lamp she glimpsed movement on the other side of the street, the movement of someone walking in advance of her. A solitary man, vaguely seen, he disappeared into the night darkness when he left the light behind. She stopped to let him get well in front of her, remembering a silent person who had brushed by her last night.
She stood quite still for a minute, then went on her way to Ellen Street. The time was eleven-thirty, and she knew the risk she was taking each night was bound to increase. Someone would take note, someone artful enough to lie in wait for her and vicious enough to strike her down, rob her of her handbag and even strip her of her clothes. Everything one had, even the shabbiest garment, was coveted by people poorer than herself.
When she reached Ellen Street, her spine was suddenly attacked by icy fingers. He was there, still across the street, she knew he was. He had stopped to wait for her, listening to her footsteps. Bridget picked up her skirts and ran. Strong though she was, and fearless up to a point, she knew when it was wiser to run. And she ran like the wind, skirts high. Reaching her front door, she opened it by pulling on the latchcord, flung herself in, closed the door and bolted it.
The gentleman left behind hadn’t moved. He’d only listened. He smiled and resumed his walk, going south.
Bridget went through to the kitchen. The gas mantle showed a small yellow glimmer. She turned the little tap and light flooded the mantle. The first thing she saw was a note on the bare table. She picked it up and read it.
Dear Bridget,
Fred’s come to lodge, which me and Daisy hope you’ll be pleased about as we agree a policeman lodger is a safegard for us and will keep you and Daisy sound in yore beds at night and happy by day. Fred will make sure you and Daisy is protekted from all comers and come to meet you at night at Aldgate and see you safe home, it’s wot a policeman lodger is for which is good forchune for all of us because of evil-doers being about like they are. You can sleep sound tonight to start with. Fred is safegarding you, Billy.
Bridget read this homely message a second time before taking the frying-pan off its hook and mounting the stairs at a rush. She thumped on the door of the middle bedroom.
‘You in there, Fred Billings, you in there?’ She thumped again. ‘You in that bed, are yer? Well, get out of it and come out ’ere so’s I can knock yer down the stairs. Fred Billings?’ No answer. Fred had woken up but was wisely lying low. Bridget turned the handle of the door. It was locked. She kicked it, and it shivered. ‘Locked yerself in, ’ave you, you coward? Some copper, I don’t think. Get out of that bed and unlock this door, you ’ear me, you sneakin’ flatfoot?’
Daisy, woken up, dug herself deeper into her own bed.
‘Oh, lor’, poor Fred,’ she said to herself, ‘even if ’e dodges Bridget now, ’e’ll get it twice over in the mornin’.’
Her bedroom door opened. Out of the darkness came Bridget’s voice.
‘Daisy?’
‘I ain’t ’ere,’ breathed Daisy.
‘You’re ’ere all right, and so’s that ’orrible copper.’
‘No, ’e ain’t, ’ow can yer say such a thing?’ said Daisy, voice somewhat muffled since her head was under the blankets. ‘I’m by meself.’
‘I know that. I’d spank yer for an hour if you weren’t,’ said Bridget, ‘and then sell you for cats’ meat. Where’s your key?’
‘I don’t know, I couldn’t find it,’ gasped Daisy.
‘It should be in the little vase on yer mantel-piece,’ said Bridget.
‘I forgot,’ said Daisy, and she heard Bridget moving about. There was a little rattling sound. That was the key in the vase Bridget was shaking. ‘Oh, ’elp, what d’yer want it for, Bridget?’
‘It opens the door of the middle bedroom,’ said Bridget.
‘Bridget, you can’t go in Fred’s room, it won’t be decent.’
‘It won’t be peaceful, either,’ said Bridget. ‘If I don’t throw ’im down the stairs, I’ll throw ’im out of the winder.’
‘Oh, lor’,’ breathed Daisy, and dug herself deeper.
Back went Bridget to the middle bedroom. She slipped the key into the lock. That is, she made the attempt but it wouldn’t go forward. The other key was in. She rattled the handle. She turned it. The door opened. The gas mantle was on, but the bed was empty, the clothes turned back.
‘Oh, yer bugger, Fred Billings! Show yerself, you coward.’ She looked under the bed. Empty space greeted her. She rushed out of the room. ‘Fred Billings!’
‘Oh, evenin’, Bridget, I’m in here, the lav,’ called Fred.
Bridget turned and hit the lav door with the frying-pan.
‘What yer doin’ in there?’ she yelled.
‘Just hidin’,’ said Fred. ‘It’s a bit late for an argument. How about if I made an appointment to see yer first thing in the mornin’?’
‘If you don’t come out of there inside a minute,’ yelled Bridget, ‘you won’t live to see the mornin’!’
‘Bridget, that would be grievous bodily assault and chargeable,’ said Fred.
‘No, it wouldn’t, it would be aggravated assault committed on an univited intruder, and such aggravation ain’t chargeable. D’you ’ear me, Fred Billings?’
‘If I come out,’ said Fred, ‘would yer mind telling me what’s goin’ to happen?’
‘You’re goin’ to get a piece of me mind,’ said Bridget.
‘Oh, right. Right. I’ll face up to that.’ The lav door opened and Fred showed himself. ‘Well, ’ere we are, Bridget.’
The gas mantle in the middle bedroom gave light to the landing and to the picture of Bridget in her hat and coat, and Fred in his nightshirt. Bridget looked flushed and fulsome, and Fred looked ready to go back to bed.
‘Gotcher, you bugger,’ said Bridget, and produced the frying-pan from behind her back.
‘Not now, eh, Bridget?’ said Fred. ‘Like I pointed out, it’s a bit late, yer know. Save it till mornin’, what d’yer say?’
‘You sneaked in behind me back,’ said Bridget, ‘and now you’re standin’ on me landing in yer nightshirt.’ She went for him then. Fred slipped to one side, stuck out a bare foot and tripped her. Down she went. Wisely, Fred disappeared into his rented room. Just as wisely he locked the door, and even more wisely he left the key in. Bridget, up on her feet, hat and hair lopsided, thought for a second about smashing the door down with the frying-pan, then decided against it.
‘I’ll get you in the mornin’, Fred Billings, see if I don’t,’ she yelled.
‘Right you are, Bridget, see you then,’ called Fred. ‘Oh, ’ave a good night.’
Bridget had an uneasy first hour, in fact. She kept dreaming about being followed home in the fog by a silent man, she running with all her might but making little or no progress, and finally falling. Each time the fall woke her up. The recurring dream finally ran itself into oblivion, however, and then she slept undisturbed.
Chief Inspector Dobbs, having gone to bed with his two suspects on his mind, came out of his sleep at three in the morning. He jerked awake and found himself fully conscious, his thoughts quite free of the drowsy patterns of sleep.
The man known only as Godfrey. He hadn’t come forward, nor had anyone who knew him offered information about him. Why? Because it wouldn’t pay him to show himself, nor pay his friends and acquaintances to give him away? Why, yes, why? Simple. He was a wrong-doer, of course, a wrong-doer of the kind to make informers wish they’d kept their mouths shut. There were London cripples who hadn’t been disabled at birth or by accident.
Now what kind of wrong-doer would take up with an attractive Irishwoman who was on the game?
A pimp.
That was it, a pimp, and of the kind who’d go along with Maureen Flanagan’s wish to retain an air of respectability out of her regard for her family and her ambition to go back to them sometime. She wouldn’t accept the chains of full-time prostitution, and was so determined about that as to keep her job as a laundress.
Pimps were a peculiar and degenerate breed of men, charming to newcomers but vicious if established women cheated or tried to break the chains.
Godfrey, as Flanagan’s pimp, would have given her use of a room for the entertainment of clients she either picked up herself or he found for her. Her agreement with him would have allowed her to work only at intervals, say two or three times a week, and only during the evenings. That would be in keeping with what one had discovered so far about her outlook and her character. It was on the cards that she sent most of her part-time earnings to her family, allowing for what she had to pay the pimp.
‘That’s it, the bugger’s a pimp. Did Flanagan try to escape him?’
Daphne turned in the bed.
‘Charlie?’
‘Woke you up, did I, Daffie? Sorry. I woke up myself and talked out loud. Sorry.’
‘Mmm,’ murmured Daphne, and curled up and went back to sleep.
Chief Inspector Charlie Dobbs, not unhappy with his assumptions and conclusions, relaxed and let himself fade away.
Bridget, up and dressed by eight the following morning, pounced as Fred emerged from his room. He was now every inch the uniformed constable, helmet on, rolled cape under his arm.
‘Mornin’, Bridget,’ he said.
‘’Aven’t you forgotten something?’ asked Bridget.
‘Have I?’ he said.
‘Yes, yer luggage,’ said Bridget. ‘Get it out of that room and take it with you.’
‘Could I leave it till later?’ asked Fred ‘I’m due at the Commercial Street station in fifteen minutes.’
‘I read a note left by Billy last night,’ said Bridget, standing in Fred’s way. ‘What’s all this stuff about you safeguardin’ me and Daisy?’
‘I’ll make that me conscientious duty,’ said Fred.
‘If that’s a joke, it ain’t funny,’ said Bridget. ‘Where was yer safeguardin’ self last night when I ’ad to run from a bloke who stopped to wait for me in Back Church Lane last night?’
‘What sort of bloke?’ asked Fred.
‘Well, as I can’t see in the dark, I don’t know if ’e was square or round or what. But I know ’e was there, on the other side of the street, waitin’ for me, and breathing ’eavy.’
‘Bridget, that wouldn’t make ’alf a reasonable complaint. Who’s goin’ to believe you could hear his ’eavy breathing from across the street? Did he follow you?’
‘Course ’e did,’ said Bridget.
‘How’d you know?’
‘Me female intuition,’ said Bridget. ‘Some copper you are, some safeguarder too, lyin’ in a bed you wasn’t entitled to while I ’ad to run for me life.’
Fred frowned.
‘I don’t like you havin’ a job that keeps you out late,’ he said.
‘Oh, you don’t, don’t you?’ said Bridget.
‘No,’ said Fred, ‘it shouldn’t be ’appening. Around here, there’s demented characters on two legs that come up out of holes in the ground at night lookin’ for young women like you. Now, this suspicious bloke, you’ve got some sort of a description, ’ave you?’
‘No, course I ’aven’t, I told you,’ said Bridget. ‘I only caught a glimpse of ’im in misty lamplight. And listen, don’t make up yer mind that you’re lodgin’ ’ere. You’re movin’ out this evening, and just for now you’d better go off to yer job quick before I do you an ’orrible injury.’
Fred wisely departed without more ado, thus challenging the popular concept of the time that all coppers were brain-dead.
Bridget went down to join Daisy and Billy at the breakfast table. Breakfast was just porridge and tea. Bridget helped herself to what was left of the porridge and put sugar on it.
‘I’ve got something to say to you two,’ she said.
‘But you saw me note, didn’t you? said Billy, who’d slept through last night’s racket.
‘I saw it all right,’ said Bridget, ‘and you both ought to ’ave yer heads examined. That copper safeguardin’ us? Who thought that up?’
‘Fred,’ said Billy.
‘He ought to be arrested, then, and put away somewhere quiet so’s ’e could count buttercups and daisies,’ said Bridget.
‘But a policeman lodger could be a sort of guardian,’ said Daisy.
‘Oh, we need a guardian, do we?’ said Bridget. ‘I ’ope you two didn’t connive at gettin’ Fred Billings into this ’ouse while my back was turned.’
‘Us?’ said Daisy.
‘Us?’ said Billy.
‘If you did, you can connive at gettin’ ’im out again,’ said Bridget.
‘We can all ’ave a talk tonight,’ said Billy. ‘Only could yer refrain from chuckin’ saucepans about?’
‘And could you get a new copper stick from somewhere, Bridget?’ asked Daisy. ‘Only you went and lost our old one.’ She quivered under Bridget’s fierce look. ‘No, p’raps not.’
‘Come to think of it, I’d like to ’ave a copper stick in me ’and tonight,’ said Bridget.
‘Thought you would,’ said Billy, and winked at Daisy. Daisy smothered a giggle.
‘You getting anywhere?’ asked the Chief Superintendent of Chief Inspector Dobbs.
‘Slowly,’ said Dobbs.
‘Can you hurry it up?’
‘Not without falling over my feet,’ said Dobbs.
The Chief Superintendent smiled.
‘That’s a common failing with the Force according to certain newspapers,’ he said. ‘Well, in your own time, Charlie. But how do prospects look?’
‘Not unfavourable,’ said Dobbs.
‘Leave it to you, then,’ said the Chief Superintendent, who was one with Dobbs in the latter’s refusal to make public the possibility that Maureen Flanagan was a part-time pro. If the press got hold of that, nothing would stop them from reminding their readers that the Ripper’s victims were women who sold themselves. The case would take on a hellishly fanciful aspect.
The Chief Inspector called Sergeant Ross in. He had an easier relationship with Ross than with Inspector George Davis, who, in any event, was currently investigating a case of suspected arson. Sergeant Ross listened to his guv’nor’s new assessment of the bloke known as Godfrey. He considered it, reflected on it, and decided he liked it.
‘A pimp?’ he said. ‘I’ll go along with that. No wonder the geezer hasn’t come forward. It’s odds-on he was trying to make a full-time pro of Flanagan, that she wouldn’t play and threatened to break with him. End of Flanagan. Pimps don’t allow desertions. They’re smilers carrying knuckledusters in their pockets. Remember Mrs Pritchard telling us what a cheerful character Godfrey was? And when you come to think of it, what she said of Flanagan’s attitude to him fits that of a woman who liked her pimp. They all like their pimps to begin with. It’s the pimps who seduce the new ones and get them on the game. But why, I wonder, did Flanagan bring hers to the house to meet the Pritchards?’
‘Let’s suppose he called on her without being asked to,’ said Dobbs. ‘It would’ve been in character, a pimp wanting to find out exactly what her background was like. And she herself might have decided to introduce him to the Pritchards to give the impression she was going steady with him. Very respectable, that would have looked. And mentioning him to her mother – she might even have had some weird female idea of actually marrying him and turning him respectable. Would you think she might, my lad?’
‘I’m slightly dubious, guv,’ said Ross.
‘So am I,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘I think Maureen Flanagan had sense enough to play her cards carefully. You’d better toddle off to Vine Street.’
‘Vine Street station?’
‘Yes. Get round there and find out what they know about the pimps of the West End, and if they’ve got anything on one we only know as Godfrey. If they have, we want his address. Make sure you get it.’
‘Right, guv.’
‘Off you go, then,’ said Dobbs.
‘I’m on my way,’ said Ross, and departed. His head and shoulders returned. ‘Might I ask if you consider Pritchard’s now an also-ran?’
‘No, he’s still in the running,’ said Dobbs.
‘Reasonable,’ said Ross, and went.
Ross returned later, notebook marked with scribbles.
‘Sit down,’ said the Chief Inspector. Ross seated himself. ‘Well?’ said Dobbs.
‘Pimps mostly stay under the surface—’
‘I know that.’
‘But they bob up occasionally.’
‘I know that too, don’t I? Get on with it.’
‘There’s a file at Vine Street—’
‘I’ll chuck my inkwell at you in a minute,’ growled Dobbs.
‘There’s several names,’ said Ross, ‘but no Godfrey Who.’
‘I hope you can do better than that,’ said Dobbs.
‘On the happy side, guv, it’s recorded that a woman called Maureen Flanagan was stopped in Drury Lane one evening and given a warning on suspicion of being a street-walker and accordingly a public nuisance.’
‘Yes, that’s a lot better,’ said Dobbs. ‘When was this?’
‘The evening of 15th October,’ said Ross, ‘which—’
‘Hold on,’ said Dobbs, ‘what’s going on at Vine Street? Maureen Flanagan’s name must have been printed on the front page of every newspaper when she was murdered. Why didn’t Vine Street pick it up and let us know they’d got a mention of her in some constable’s notebook?’
‘My point exactly when I put the question,’ said Ross. ‘It seems the name didn’t register. It might have done with the constable in question, but he happened to be on his last week of duty when he stopped and warned Flanagan, and he’s now halfway to Canada with his family. He’s emigrated.’
‘You look as if you think that’s helpful information,’ said Dobbs. ‘It’s not, it’s the worst case of inconvenient emigration I’ve ever heard of. But let’s see, she was warned on the 15th of October?’
‘That’s the date,’ said Ross, consulting his notebook.
‘Well now, my son, 15th of October was the day when I think the unfortunate lady got the wind up. So what did she do? I’d say she had a meeting with her pimp and pointed out she wasn’t going to risk being arrested. That would have meant an appearance in court and her name in the papers. Her pimp, of course, treated her to a bucketful of reassurance, along with his most charming smiles. That may have eased her worries for a little while. But I’d say she had another go at him, perhaps several, and during the last one he went over the top, like pimps do when they’re crossed.’
‘Whoever he is, he’s not known to Vine Street,’ said Ross.
‘Perhaps, my lad, we’ve got his name wrong.’
‘Not according to Pritchard and his old lady,’ said Ross.
‘Did you list known names?’ asked Dobbs.
‘Such as were given, guv, and such being standard practice according to—’
‘Yes, I know. Read ’em out.’
‘Right. Gus Robbins, Pinky Schmidt, Frankie Zapparelli, Jimmy Morris and Sidney Whelan. They’re known. Then there’s two suspected of pimping. Baz Gottfried and Walter Reynolds. Looks like Godfrey Who has never broken surface.’
‘Does it look like that?’ asked Dobbs.
‘You asking or saying, guv?’
‘I’m asking,’ said Dobbs. ‘And I’m asking who’s got a name like Baz?’
‘It’s what Vine Street’s got as the first name for Gottfried,’ said Ross. ‘German immigrant, I suppose.’
‘Gottfried,’ said Dobbs.
Sergeant Ross hit himself with his notebook.
‘Well, I’m a ruddy cuckoo,’ he said. ‘Godfrey, of course.’
‘Well, it’s what Flanagan called him,’ said Dobbs. ‘Right, telephone Vine Street this time. Ask them if they’ve got the address of this suspected pimp, Gottfried. If they haven’t, ask them for the addresses of a couple of known West End ladies of the bedchamber. One of them might know Gottfried and where he keeps himself under the surface. Get through now. Give ’em my compliments.’
‘That’ll help, of course.’
‘Hurry it up,’ said Dobbs.
Sergeant Ross made the call and came back with the information that Gottfried’s address wasn’t known, but the addresses of two West End ladies of the bedchamber had been given.
‘Shall we go to work, guv?’
‘Yes, put your hat and coat on,’ said the Chief Inspector.