Despite his age, despite his recent illness, despite the case being Shadwell’s and not Wapping’s, despite all these dreary facts, it was in John Harriott’s rooms at the River Police Office that a meeting was convened the next morning. The man’s force of personality was still great enough to ignore the niceties of jurisdiction.
Horton saw how irritating Edward Markland of Shadwell found this continuing reality: that John Harriott was in some unfathomable way still the senior magistrate in the area, the man to whom the press and the politicians and the populace turned at times of crisis. Harriott was old, but he was still the man who had tamed the Thames.
Yet Markland behaved himself. He would continue to do so, Horton believed, because of another truth, a peculiarly sour one. Harriott was dying. Everyone knew this to be the case. His infirmity hung in the room like the stench of rotten cabbage in the street. Markland smelled it as well as anyone. All he needed to do was exploit Harriott’s most useful asset – his constable Charles Horton – and who knew what would happen at the old man’s demise?
It was a warm May morning. Wapping had been awake for hours, and Charles Horton had barely slept. He was wearing the same clothes as the night before. He had returned home for a few fitful hours, lying awake alongside his sleeping wife, listening to her breathe, the memory of the awful skull beneath Mrs Johnson’s burnt face vivid in his mind.
Despite the early hour there was a ticklish sense of panic out in the streets, and he could sense some of it in Harriott’s impressive office, with its leather chairs and fireplace and its massive desk by the riverside window. People outside were talking of the Monster again – and in their telling, he came back, the same Monster that had dispatched the Marrs and then the Williamsons three years before. Walking past the mammoth white walls of St George’s in the East the previous night, Horton had seen a group of men stamping on the cobbles of the street at the crossroads where John Williams had been interred – the Williams that the Shadwell magistrates, Markland included, had decreed was the Monster. There was no logic to it, but Horton had understood the need: to stamp on returning devils, to send them back to Hell. For a moment, he had almost joined them.
Unwin the coroner planned to hold his inquest today, upstairs at the Jolly Sailor, the same venue as for the Marr inquest. Harriott had invited Unwin to this meeting, along with the surgeon Salter, who performed the coroner’s medical inspections. Harriott had asked Salter to give his preliminary view and in a calm, dispassionate way the surgeon was doing so. The bodies of the Johnsons remained in their home, for now.
‘The man found in the kitchen died from injuries to his head,’ Salter said. ‘The older woman died when she was pushed into the fire, which must have still been alight, judging by her injuries. The younger woman died either by a cut throat or an assault with a maul, or both.’
Salter was a methodical man, Horton knew, but he was also an unimaginative one. He was reading from his notes as if he were reading from a church Bible at a family funeral. He did not draw conclusions. That was not for surgeons. They cut open, they took out or they severed, they sewed up, they moved on. Salter’s was a descriptive mind, not a speculative one.
When Salter finished, Harriott cursed under his breath. Even Markland, who had seen the injuries that Salter described, looked grey.
‘With your permission, sir,’ Horton said to Harriott, and the magistrate nods. ‘Dr Salter, the girl downstairs. Had she been interfered with in any way?’
The surgeon’s face was calm, but Horton could see it in his eyes: a species of fear at the demonic intensity of these deaths. Perhaps the surgeon was not so devoid of imagination after all. Even Salter could detect the smell of older murders, drifting back across years.
‘I take it you mean: had she been ravished?’
‘Yes.’
‘For God’s sake, Horton.’ This from Markland. ‘Is this necessary?’
‘Answer the question, doctor,’ said Harriott, with a scowl towards his fellow magistrate.
‘There is no way of telling,’ said Salter. ‘Not without a full investigation of the body. And that is impossible at the house.’
‘Am I to understand, then, that you have not examined the bodies unclothed?’
‘Of course not, constable. I would not do so at a private residence.’
‘And how do you account for the lack of any blood?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You have stated that you believe the causes of death to have been either physical injury or burning. Yet there was no blood in the house. The floors were clean. How do you account for such a thing?’
Salter frowned.
‘I cannot account for it.’
‘You would expect a great amount of blood, then?’
‘Yes. I can only imagine that the killer cleaned up after himself.’
‘There are not even stains.’
‘No. There are not.’
Unwin broke the uncomfortable silence.
‘Can I suggest that Salter brings the bodies here for a full inspection? I will postpone the inquest until then.’
‘It would seem the doctor has further work to do,’ growled Harriott, and Salter’s face reddened. Horton did not feel sorry for him. ‘We have a room that has been used for such purposes before. He can use that.’
‘It is agreed?’ said Unwin, still trying to rescue Salter. ‘How much time will you need?’
‘A day. Perhaps two,’ said Salter, his voice a whisper.
‘Then if we are willing, I will postpone the inquest until the day after tomorrow.’
‘Very well,’ said Salter, and fell silent. Harriott glared at him, then turned back to Horton.
‘What do we know of the deceased?’ he said.
‘Very little as yet,’ said Horton. ‘The master of the house is . . . or was . . . one Benjamin Johnson. I’m told he worked as a clerk for the East India Company.’
Harriott baulked at this.
‘The East India Company?’
‘Yes, sir. Perhaps you could assist with dealing with the Company?’
‘Assist how?’ asked Markland, somewhat put out.
‘I have personal history with John Company,’ said Harriott, glancing down at his left leg without further comment. If Markland had bothered to read Harriott’s memoirs he would have known that the magistrate’s left leg had been ruined in service of the Company in India. Horton found it interesting that Markland did not know this.
‘Markland, have your men interrogated the neighbours?’
‘They have, Harriott. Of course.’
‘And their findings?’
Markland frowned at being asked to report in this fashion, but then he consulted an elegant leather notebook. A look passed between Harriott and Horton. Edward Markland, it seemed, had taken to writing notes.
‘Mrs Johnson’s name was Emma, the daughter was called Jane. The neighbours say they were a pleasant enough family, the wife particularly. She seems to have been generous with her money and her time, both of which she seemed to possess in decent amounts. The mother took in some sewing, and the daughter did some work alongside her.’
‘Any other family?’
‘The wife has a sister, living in Putney.’
‘And were there any witnesses to the events?’
‘None at all. No unusual noises, no raised voices at all.’
‘Though there is a menagerie next door,’ said Horton, causing Markland to glance at him with irritation. ‘Unusual noises are not uncommon on that street.’
Markland appeared not to have noticed the strange shop next door, and did not relish having its presence pointed out to him.
‘No one seen coming or going?’ asked Harriott.
‘No,’ said Markland, looking away from Horton.
‘He was careful.’
‘Assuming he worked alone,’ said Horton, and Harriott looked at him.
‘You think there was more than one man involved?’
‘I have no idea. But there is nothing to suggest there was only one man.’
‘Who discovered the bodies?’ asked Unwin.
‘The servant, a girl called Amy Beavis. She lives with her father over towards Whitechapel.’
‘I suggest Horton goes to speak with her,’ said Harriott. ‘He is good with servants.’
Horton had little idea what this might mean, but nodded in any case.
‘Your thoughts, Horton?’ This from Markland.
‘My thoughts, sir?’
‘Have you developed a picture of the case?’
‘By no means, Mr Markland. It is far too early for such things. I will need further time to investigate.’
‘Well, time is something we do not have,’ said Markland. He rose, and placed a hat on his head. ‘There is a frenzy of chatter in the streets. People believe the killer of the Marrs and Williamsons has returned. Nonsense, of course – Williams is dead. But the uneducated and the idle thrive on gossip. I must return to the Shadwell office. Horton will report to me any developments. Is that agreed, Harriott?’
Harriott grunted, a noise that Horton knew could signify almost anything.
‘Well, then. I will go and speak to the gentlemen of the press, and try to calm the populace. Gentlemen.’
Markland left, and Unwin made his own farewell, leaving with the silent and stone-faced surgeon. Horton and Harriott were left alone.
‘He will calm the populace, will he?’ grumbled Harriott. ‘My word, sometimes I think Edward Markland imagines himself to be Bonaparte.’
‘He certainly seems to desire an empire,’ said Horton, without thinking. He looked at the magistrate, embarrassed by his revealing insubordination. Harriott smiled, though the smile was an old, ill and tired thing.
‘You have made an enemy of the surgeon, constable,’ said Harriott.
‘So it would seem, sir.’
‘Tell Markland everything,’ the old magistrate said. ‘But tell me first.’
Amy Beavis did not live in Whitechapel, despite what Markland had said. Her address was actually Dorset Street, a place of moderately ill repute in Spitalfields, somewhat to the north of Whitechapel and a fair walk from Wapping.
The dwellings on Dorset Street were old and dilapidated, decent houses from the last century or earlier that had declined into common lodgings, a warren of the old and sick and infirm. Horton estimated that three or four dozen of the rooms on the street would be taken by whores, another three dozen by common criminals, and perhaps the same amount by weavers from old families who had failed to ascend to anything better. Some of these people were on the street, and a desperate lot they seemed.
He found the right door and told the vicious, ancient landlord within that he must speak with Mr Beavis.
‘Beavis? You’ll get no benefit, speaking to Beavis,’ came the mysterious reply. He was shown, with surly reluctance, to a flight of stairs which looked like a line of dominoes falling down a steep hill. He made his way upwards, gingerly.
The door on which he knocked was opened by a girl whose face was so beautiful that it seemed to light up the gloomy place. Her hair was finely cut, her skin was clean and clear, and her eyes held none of the wrenching despair of the people he’d seen outside in the street.
‘Miss Beavis?’ he asked.
Her eyes widened, and she nodded, carefully.
‘Miss Amy Beavis? Servant to Mrs Emma Johnson?’
Her hand came to her mouth, and she stared at him, terrified. It was answer enough.
‘My name is Horton, Miss Beavis. I am a constable of Wapping. I am sent to ask you some questions about the Johnsons and their terrible fate.’
The door swung wide, and an ancient was revealed, dressed in grey underthings and swinging what looked like a poker.
‘I see you! I see you!’
‘Sir, please, I only . . .’
‘Come at last, have you? Come at last? Where is it?’
The old man shoved past him out into the hallway, and looked up.
‘Roof still there. Roof still there.’
He turned back to Horton.
‘Where’s your machine, Jacques? Where’s your bloody machine?’
The girl was beside him now, rubbing his shoulders while he glared at Horton.
‘Come now, father. Come now. This is not Jacques.’
Her voice was soft, precise, well spoken, purest silk to the East End rasp of her father.
‘Not Jacques? Of course it’s Jacques! He’s come for me, and he’s not having me.’
‘Sir, my name is Horton, not . . .’
‘Barbarian!’
This with a shout and a lunge, accompanied by a shriek from the girl, but the lunge was in truth more like a fall. The poker went to the ground as the old fellow collapsed into Horton’s arms. He was as light as new-baked bread, and smelled like ancient dried leaves.
‘Please, sir,’ the girl said. ‘Please. Bring him within.’
‘Bloody Jacques. Come to bloody take me away. Bloody Jacques,’ muttered the old fellow, but he already seemed half-asleep.
Horton took the man under the armpits and half-dragged, half-lifted him into the room. Within, there was a bed next to a fireplace, a single armchair, a dresser with some plates and bowls upon it, a small table with a pile of books. A cheap and ancient etching hung on the wall, which must once have depicted St Paul’s but was now little more than a round blur inside a fog.
‘Please sir. On the bed.’
Horton took the old man over to the bed, and laid him down upon it. Once horizontal, the old man’s eyes opened again, and his hands reached for Horton’s throat.
‘Jacques! You’re not taking me in your machine! No, Jacques! I’ll bloody kill ye!’
Horton felt a scratch as one crooked finger flicked over the skin of his neck, but then the man’s eyes closed once again, his hands fell back and his head lolled into the foul-smelling pillow. He began to snore. The girl sat in the armchair and put her head into her hands.
‘Oh, forgive him, sir! Forgive him! He is overtaken by strange fancies.’
‘Pray, do not concern yourself, miss. There is no damage done. But who is this Jacques? And what is his machine?’
Her hands dropped to her lap, and she looked at her father. It was an awful look in one so young: full of the desperate love of the mother, but infected by the helpless despair of the young burdened with impossible responsibility.
‘They are fancies, sir. I know not where they come from. He believes a Frenchman named Jacques is to come for him in a flying machine. When he comes, the roof will fly away, and he will be taken into the sky, leaving me behind.’
‘Should he not perhaps be seen by a mad-doctor? Perhaps at Bethlem . . .’
‘Oh no! No, sir! Not that place!’
‘It is not so bad, now it has moved to new premises.’
‘You can have had no experience of madhouses, sir.’
She was wrong in that, but Horton said nothing of it.
‘Miss Beavis, I wish to speak to you of the Johnsons. I understand you were a domestic servant to them.’
She looked away from her father and directly at him. She really was astonishingly beautiful. Her eyes were an Irish green, and her dark hair, worn loose this morning, had more lustre in it than anything else in this benighted building.
‘What am I going to do?’ She glanced at her snoring father, and then back at Horton. He might, if she’d asked just then, have offered to take her in, so gloomy was her pretty countenance.
‘Miss Beavis, I understand your situation is poor. But I must seek to . . .’
‘They were all dead when I found them.’ She spoke without looking at him; those green eyes were fixed on something not in the room, not even in the moment. Perhaps she could hear the beat of Jacques’ flying machine. ‘They had been away for some days. Mrs Johnson had taken to going away. She liked to rent rooms by the sea. Said it did her complexion the power of good.’
‘They did not take you with them?’
‘No, because Mr Johnson usually stayed in town. He worked, you see.’
‘At the East India Company?’
‘Yes. He worked hard, did Mr Johnson. Always bringing home files and papers and suchlike.’
‘So Mrs Johnson and her daughter would take the sea air regularly?’
‘Oh yes. Four or five times a year.’
‘How long have you worked for them?’
‘Three years. I was their first servant. Mrs Johnson said she was very proud of me. Bought me clothes. Even paid for me to have a tutor.’ She looked at him directly now. ‘I didn’t always speak like this. Mrs Johnson said it was proper for a lady like her to have a well-spoken servant. And she wanted me to be a friend to Jane. Oh God. Jane.’
She cried.
‘She was . . . he had . . . oh my God. Oh my God.’
Horton moved towards her and squatted on his haunches in front of her. She grasped his hand, as if it were a rope and she were floundering in the sea.
‘When did Mrs Johnson leave?’
‘Two weeks ago. She said Mr Johnson would be staying, but then he told me he’d decided to take some time off, and was going with her.’
‘When was this?’
‘Two days after she left.’
‘Mr Johnson told you himself that he was going?’
‘Yes. I was at the house. I was cleaning. It was the middle of the day. He came into the house, and packed a bag of clothes. He said Jane had taken sick, and he was leaving immediately. I was to keep an eye on the house, he said, and clean it every third day, prior to their return.’
‘So when you visited yesterday, that was the first visit for three days? And, what, your third or fourth visit since Mr Johnson left?’
‘Yes, sir. My fourth, I believe.’
‘Were you concerned by Johnson’s news?’
‘Concerned for Jane? Yes.’
‘Did Mr Johnson also seem concerned?’
‘Yes. He seemed greatly disturbed.’
‘Was he alone? When he visited you?’
‘He was alone when he came into the house. But when I saw him to the door, another man was waiting. In a carriage.’
‘Did you recognise him?’
‘No.’
‘Did he introduce this man?’
‘No. I only caught a glimpse of him in the carriage. Then Mr Johnson climbed in, and they left.’
‘Did they have any other family? Mr and Mrs Johnson?’
‘Mr Johnson, no. At least, none that he ever told me of. Mrs Johnson had a sister down in Putney. She spoke of her often, but never visited, as far as I know.’
‘Did Mr Johnson speak of his work?’
‘No. Never.’
‘Did you notice if anything was missing from the house?’
He noticed something in her eyes when he asked this, something that hadn’t been there before. A different kind of fear. A watchful variety.
‘No, sir. I do not believe anything was missing.’
Had she taken something from the house? She would not be the first servant girl to do so. He wondered what she had been paid by Mrs Johnson. Then he thought of her in that house, alone with the dead, terrified and upset, and despised himself for his suspicions. But those suspicions, once winked into existence, would not quite subside.
‘Was anything disturbed?’
She breathed in, sharply.
‘My apologies. Of course things were disturbed. I mean, in those rooms where there was no violence. Did you notice a disturbance?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did Johnson keep a safe? Anywhere he might have locked up valuables?’
‘No, sir. He had a desk in his bedroom. A bureau, with a lock on it.’
‘It was closed when you attended?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And the key?’
‘I know not, sir.’
She looked again at her father, and seemed very small indeed in the ancient armchair. But her look seemed oddly mannered, as if intended as a distraction.
‘What am I to do now, sir?’
She turned those green eyes on him. He noted, mournfully, how much those eyes and that face would be worth to a Covent Garden panderer, and feared for her.
‘If I can help, I will,’ he said, knowing how little the words were worth.
There was still a substantial crowd outside the Johnson house, and it would only swell. In two days the coroner would bring his inquest jury to look at the house and the bodies, just as he had done with the Marr family. They would be marched down the Highway between crowds, and it may yet prove necessary for the Bow Street magistrates to send a few uniformed patrolmen to calm the crowds with their presence. Horton knew how ceremonial such a show would be. Bow Street patrolmen did not wear uniforms other than to intimidate the public.
The Shadwell magistrates had improved one thing since the first Highway murders – there were now officers in front of the house to stop people going in to gawp. The poor dead Marrs had been laid out in their house like fish down at Billingsgate, for all and sundry to come and view. The Johnsons had, at least, been spared that posthumous humiliation.
The house in daylight was clean and peaceful. The shutters were up for the day’s business on the shops either side. He could see, for the first time, that one was a fishmonger which seemed to sell mainly oysters, while on the other side of Johnson’s house was that odd confection of a place with the animals, which turned out to be a kind of chandlery which also contained a menagerie of creatures for sale. A marmoset monkey sat in a cage in its window looking forlorn in an ugly green outfit. It screamed at Horton as he walked up, and there were other growls and screeches from within.
He went into both shops and asked if they had heard or seen anything suspicious on the day before the killings. Neither had. The wife of the fishmonger confirmed what Markland had said about the family, while the old Irishman who ran the chandlery-cum-menagerie said he’d argued with Mrs Johnson many times about the noise from his shop. When a carriage pulled up outside the shop, almost blocking the Highway as it dropped off even more squawking creatures, Horton imagined being the shop’s neighbour. ‘I don’t go outside much,’ said the proprietor. I’m not surprised, thought Horton. You’d get the rough side of most of your neighbours’ tongues. He went to the rear of number 37, as he had the previous night.
He had to do some persuading of his own to get through the door, though he suspected the constable knew perfectly well who he was and, like so many of his fellows, resented him for what he did and how he did it.
The bodies had gone from the kitchen and the parlour – Salter must already have arranged for their transport to the Wapping office. There was still a lingering humanity to the place. Mrs Johnson had been a house-proud woman – the rugs looked like new, emphasising the total absence of any blood to stain the fabric or the wood beneath.
Flies had made themselves known. It took a minute or two for the low buzzing to become obscene, and Horton pondered opening a window to let in some air. But the only window was facing the street, where onlookers waited. They would only be persuaded to climb inside if he gave them an entrance.
So. A quiet scene, it had been: the daughter sitting in the chair, the mother . . . what? Was she in here already, or was she brought in here? The girl was tied to a chair, was killed. The mother was driven into the fire – so was she alive when her daughter was killed? Did the killer hold her face into the flame while she struggled? Did he make the daughter watch?
He went to the door into the hall. The only rooms downstairs were the parlour and the kitchen. He stepped out into the hall, and walked upstairs. There, he went first into the smallest bedroom: that of the daughter. He checked under the bed, looked in a drawer or two, opened the wardrobe. Jane Johnson had few things, but they were all well looked after and of decent quality. She had inherited a care for things and an eye for them from her mother.
He went into the main bedroom. He had given instructions to Markland that nothing be removed from the house, but had little confidence that this will have been observed. Anything of obvious value would have been liable to being picked up by a poorly paid parish constable. In this, Shadwell’s parish constables were no different to anyone else’s.
He sat on the bed, looked around the room: the bed, the cupboard, a little set of drawers, an elegant and unexpectedly expensive dressing table.
He got up and looked at the table. It was a very fine piece of furniture, even to his untutored eye. There were bottles of perfume upon it, and he took the most expensive-looking one and inspected it, but it said little about Mrs Johnson beyond its obvious value. Various mysterious ointments and waxy-looking substances were hidden in containers which may or may not have been made of ivory and ebony – expensive again, but all built for uses which Horton could not understand. The dressing table occupied a female world in which he was an ignorant tourist. But it seemed Markland’s constables had behaved themselves; he would have expected the items on this table to have found their way into pockets by now.
The dressing table had three drawers with locks, all of which were open. In one of the locks there was a key attached to a heavy-feeling gold chain. Again, it had been left untouched. The clasp of the chain was broken, and there was a tangle of blonde hair wrapped within it. Horton opened the drawer. It was empty. He opened the other two drawers, and saw they contained an untidy collection of letters and bills.
He imagined Mrs Johnson sitting here while her husband sat in his own little office, poring over his own books and correspondence, while their daughter slept in the other bedroom.
He placed the key in his pocket and went out of the bedroom, and into the third little room. He had seen the small bureau as described by Amy Beavis on his first visit to the house. The room was as calm and tidy as everything else in this place. The desk of a City clerk, and a meticulous one at that.
He tried the lid, expecting to feel his fingernails bend against its unyielding weight. But to his surprise it opened. It was unlocked.
Within, no letters remained to be sent, or even to be read. Benjamin Johnson had not been disturbed in any work here. The desk had an end-of-day appearance, as if a careful man had tidied up his place of work after its completion. A quill lay next to an inkpot and some paper. Three books sat in an orderly pile. At the top of the pile was the first volume of the Reverend Daniel Lyons’ The Environs of London. Beneath that sat a thin and rather old volume with a grand frontispiece written in Latin, and, perhaps, in Greek. He had neither language. The final volume was also thin, but more recently published, it would seem. It bore the title Mathematicall Preface, and its pages were much scribbled upon. The author of this book was given as ‘Dr John Dee’, a name which tickled at the edges of his memory, but did no more.
It was an eclectic set of titles. He picked the books up. They felt heavy in his hands and oddly warm, as if Johnson’s reading of them had left behind some memory of itself. He noticed that pages had been torn out of one of the books, The Environs of London. He put the books in a satchel he had brought with him, and then turned to the final object in the room, the one he had been avoiding until now.
The maul leaned against the wall under the window, exactly where he had found it the night before. As if it were on guard. Horton picked it up in both hands, felt its malignant weight and inspected its face and handle, remembering that other maul which he himself had retrieved from number 29.
But that maul, the property of a sailor, had been old and worn. The handle of this one was shiny and new, and although its flat face was too covered in the matter which once constituted the mind of Benjamin Johnson, its pick-axe face was untouched and clean. The maul was brand new.
An unlocked drawer. A pile of books. A terrible instrument. Clean floors and walls. The stories of the house whirled round his head while he stood in front of the window holding the maul, as if he might smash his way outside.