I stopped home for three hours of sleep and two cups of coffee, to prepare for the long day ahead before returning to Wapping. While the commissioner of Wrecks would be responsible for raising the Princess Alice and determining the cause of the accident, Director Vincent would want my impressions from the night before and would ask Wapping to give what assistance we could. Knowing the director as I did, I guessed he would be at the division early this morning, and I wanted to be there when he arrived.
But as I crossed the main room, I saw Vincent standing inside my office, his lean frame silhouetted against the window that overlooked the Thames.
Director Vincent was exactly my age, thirty-one. The second son of a baronet and a former correspondent for the Daily Mail, he had a public school education and a fastidious code of ethics that the Parliament Committee had depended on to refurbish the Yard’s credibility after last autumn’s scandal. I had not always appreciated him, nor he me. During one particularly unpleasant half hour, he had compared me to a rabid bear barreling through the woods. But during the case of the river murders, we’d found a wedge of common ground. Now, we trusted each other—at least enough that he chose me to fill the role of acting superintendent.
As I crossed the threshold, Vincent turned. His expensive hat was in his pale hands, held at his waist, and his voice held both sympathy and regret. “You must have had a hellish night.”
“It was over by the time I arrived,” I said as I removed my coat. “The Princess was sunk, and there was nothing we could do but hand out blankets and ferry people to shelter. If it wasn’t for fishermen and lightermen and their boats, we’d have lost even more. And the commissioner of Wrecks sent some men,” I added. I had reasons to dislike and mistrust Commissioner Rotherly, but I gave credit where it was due. “Beckton Gasworks gave us two dry railway sheds. Thank God they did, or people would have died of exposure.”
“It renews one’s faith, doesn’t it?” Vincent asked. “People rallying round.”
“I’m guessing a lot of Londoners know people on the Princess. The problem is we don’t know their names.”
“I understand.” Vincent put his hat on top of a stack of papers on the desk, unbuttoned his overcoat, hung it on the rack, and took a seat. He wore a fashionable coat and trousers of fine gray wool, tailored to his lean, lithe form, with a white, starched, stand-up collar above a silk tie.
“Do you have any sense of how it happened?” he asked as we faced each other across my desk.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to repeat the watchman’s allegations that it was the Bywell Castle’s fault for speeding down the river. Too often, civilians blamed a larger ship regardless of the circumstances. “Nothing beyond what I wrote in my message.”
Vincent tipped his head. “Thank you for sending it as soon as you were able.”
Despite myself, I felt one side of my mouth crook, and in his eyes, I found an answering flicker. One of Vincent’s early gripes with me was that I did not communicate with him “in a timely fashion.” As Ma Doyle would say, Vincent didn’t need to have his fingers in the pie, but he wanted to know when it was being taken out of the oven, and I’d learned to do things differently.
“Two Yard men had family members on board the Princess Alice,” Vincent said unhappily. “One, a nephew; the other, a son-in-law.”
“Did they survive?”
Pain deepened the furrows in his brow. “The son-in-law is still missing. The nephew is almost certainly drowned. He was only seven years old and didn’t know how to swim.”
That was true of most Londoners, young and old alike. The Thames wasn’t a place one swam voluntarily. I knew how, but only because when I was sixteen, I’d been thrown into the river, a rope around my waist, to learn. As the dockmaster said, he might rescue the cargo, but he wasn’t bloody jumping in to save me when I fell off a lighter.
“And the women in their skirts,” Vincent added.
“They’re a heavy weight,” I agreed. “Nearly impossible to swim in.”
Vincent rested his elbows on the chair arms and templed his fingers, peering at me over them. “Do we have an estimate regarding how many souls were lost?”
“Upward of five hundred. The evening ebb current was probably three or four knots, so the bodies will be spread out along both shores.”
He stilled. “Good lord. So many on board.”
“It was a perfect day for an outing,” I said regretfully.
“We’ve been inundated at the Yard, of course. People who can’t locate their family members and friends are clamoring to file cases of missing persons.”
“It would help if the bodies from the south shore could be brought over so people don’t have to travel back and forth.”
Vincent frowned in perplexity. “I assumed that was being done. You said all the bodies were being transferred to the gasworks sheds.”
I shook my head. “You can’t move an unidentified corpse from one county to another. It’s an old law, not generally known.”
“I can’t imagine it’s germane very often, but it’s certainly a hindrance here. I’ll see if we can suspend that temporarily.” Vincent crossed one limb in its pressed trouser leg over the other. “I know that the Wrecks commissioner usually oversees these matters, but I’m assigning you to oversee the investigation, reporting to me.” I stiffened, but Vincent appeared not to notice. “You’ll need to coordinate with Rotherly, of course. He’ll be handling the practical matters of raising the Princess Alice, retrieving bodies, and helping the families identify and claim them. But the Home Office and I are tasking you with discovering how this happened.”
That was going to irritate Rotherly to no end. He didn’t like me any more than I liked him, and he would perceive this unusual step as an affront and a threat to his authority.
“May I ask why?” I asked.
“I’m concerned this may have some correspondence with the Sittingbourne disaster.”
That caught me up short.
I hadn’t made the connection, but like the Princess Alice disaster, the railway accident had taken the lives of average Londoners, both wealthy and working class, traveling for pleasure to the sea and back.
“I see,” I said, leaning back into my chair. “You think they’re related? That … they’re not accidents?”
His face was nearly expressionless, but I knew him well enough to understand this meant he was deeply concerned. “There was exploded dynamite found underneath one of the railway cars,” he replied. “It seems the dynamite was used to destabilize the track. Men only discovered it yesterday, as they finished sifting through the wreckage. As such, the investigation falls under the province of the Home Office and the Yard rather than the railway investigators and the Board of Trade.”
“Dynamite,” I echoed hollowly. Vincent knew, as I did, that the only people in England who could reliably obtain dynamite were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. They were supplied by the Fenians, the arm of the Brotherhood in America, where the situation was very different. There, the Brothers were free to raise funds openly and speak out for the cause of Irish freedom, and after the Civil War ended, they recruited thousands of Irish veterans who had military training and access to arms and explosives. Indeed, the Brotherhood’s use of dynamite was so established that no other group of malcontents would use it lest it be misinterpreted.
My stomach coiled tight as a rope around a winch at the idea that the Irish might be behind Sittingbourne and the horrifying scene I’d witnessed last night. “Has the Brotherhood claimed responsibility for it?”
“No.” Vincent’s fair brow knitted. “But, Corravan, you recall the Brotherhood’s bombings in Edinburgh eighteen months ago.”
I winced. “Four of them within a fortnight.”
“The prelude to them was several months of violence in Cowgate,” Vincent said.
The poor Irish part of Edinburgh. Like Whitechapel here.
I shifted uneasily in my chair. “So you’re drawing a connection to the looting and murders in the Chapel and the Sittingbourne crash and possibly the Princess Alice?”
“You have to admit they follow a similar pattern,” Vincent replied. “Stiles seems to think that the Whitechapel violence has to do with the Cobbwaller gang, not the IRB. However, given that these are all violent acts with the effect of stirring up fear in London, we have to acknowledge the possibility that the Cobbwallers and the IRB might be acting together.”
I fell silent, turning this over in my mind. I doubted that the Cobbwallers would be calling attention to themselves this way. And the mercenary Cobbwallers and the political Brotherhood might both be Irish, but I didn’t think it likely they’d be acting together. However, it wasn’t impossible; I didn’t know enough to speculate. “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said slowly. “But so far as I remember, no one was killed in the Edinburgh bombings. They were in empty shops and a church. Only a few people were even injured. The purpose seemed to be for Luby to show what he could do. The Sittingbourne and the Princess Alice—well, this is a wholly different scale of destruction.”
“I know.” He sighed. “But there’s the dynamite at Sittingbourne. And as you may remember, in the aftermath of Edinburgh, Timothy Luby issued a statement that he would no longer rely on words to convey his message. ‘Only deeds,’ he said. That could be interpreted any number of ways.”
So this disaster on the river might be the second of a series, I thought. And Luby might not say a word until he was finished with the rest.
“You understand the gravity,” Vincent said.
I choked down the sudden thickness in my throat. “God, yes.”
We were silent for a moment.
“Do you have any idea where Luby is?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “We’re looking. Edinburgh and Manchester divisions are keeping their eye out as well, but he knows how to keep his head down.”
“Aside from the timing, which I agree is suspicious, is there any proof that the Brotherhood caused the Princess Alice?” I asked.
“Not yet.” Vincent ran his hand absently along the front of his waistcoat. “And we won’t know for some time if dynamite was on board the Princess. I’ve asked the Wrecks Commission to postpone raising the ship, to prioritize retrieving the bodies. It’s the only humane thing to do.” I nodded, and he continued. “I want you to oversee the work of compiling the lists of the survivors and the dead. If this was an attack, I wonder whether particular passengers were the targets.” The difficulty of that must have registered on my face, for he added, “I know there were hundreds. I left a message at the Yard for Stiles to come here straightaway. A temporary reposting. I thought you might appreciate his assistance.”
Relief eased the tightness in my chest. “Stiles can compile the lists. You can direct people looking for family members here.”
“I would keep those lists private,” Vincent cautioned. “Once a survivor’s identity is certain, we can publish it in the papers, which will aid families in finding their relations. But keep the list of the dead for your own use, at least for the time being. Some of the corpses may be difficult to identify, and we don’t want to make an error.”
“Of course,” I said. “If Stiles begins that task, I can get on with discovering how this happened.” My mind was already making a short list of people I should attempt to speak to: the two captains, certainly. But also first mates, stewards, and pilots for each of the ships, if they came through it alive. If not, I’d need to seek out some of the surviving passengers and witnesses from the shore.
“Very well.” Vincent took a breath that flared his nostrils, and with the air of someone resolving to cope with the matter at hand, he continued, “The captain of the Bywell Castle was waiting for me at the Yard this morning. He’s utterly distraught, of course. I settled him in one of your interview rooms.”
That was one fewer man I’d have to find. “Would you like to be present?”
Vincent shook his head. “He already spoke with me—albeit in a rather incoherent fashion—in the cab on the way here. And I must make my own reports to the Parliamentary Review Commission this morning. They’re already asking for details of this, as well as of Sittingbourne. And I must explain why I have asked you to take the lead. There shall no doubt be some picayune grumbling, which I shall do my best to allay.” As Vincent stood, I rose as well, passing him his coat from the rack. At the door, he paused. “Do keep me informed. Frequent reports, please. Daily, if possible.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “What is the captain’s name?”
“Harrison. Thomas Harrison.”
“And have you heard about the captain of the Princess Alice? Is he alive?”
“No news as yet, which worries me.” He placed his hat on his head. “His name was Grinstead. I fear he went down with his ship.”
“By God, I hope not,” I said. Aside from hoping the man survived, it was always best to have the captain’s account.
Vincent nodded before turning away.
As I resumed my seat at my desk, watching Vincent approach the front door, it swung open, and Stiles entered, paused to exchange a greeting with the director, and came toward my office.
“Corravan,” he said as he reached the threshold. His expression was somber. “Dreadful business.”
“I’m bloody glad you’re here,” I said.
“From what I gather, it’ll take weeks to untangle this debacle.” Stiles undid the buttons on his coat. “Vincent said you have a possible murder as well. An unidentified man.”
The disaster had swept the man from the East Lane Stairs out of my mind. “Yes, I do. But for today, we need to focus on the Princess Alice and put procedures in place for gathering the names of the survivors and the dead.”
“Of course,” he said in his usual agreeable way. “What can you tell me about the crash?”
I recounted everything I’d seen the previous night and the substance of what Vincent had told me, concluding, “I’ll talk to the captain of the Bywell Castle and ask Andrews to find me the captain of the Princess Alice, if he’s alive. The first mate or chief steward, if he’s not. I hope one of them made it.”
Stiles grimaced. “No doubt it’ll be a muddle, with witnesses from the two ships. Conflicting accounts and all that.”
“It was all confusion last night in the dark,” I said. “I’ll send everyone I can spare this morning to help the commissioner of Wrecks with the recovery of corpses. Beckton Gasworks offered us the use of two sheds, one for survivors, and one partitioned in half, so the corpses could be separated into men and women, to minimize searching. The next step is to begin compiling passenger lists. I’d like you to take that on. We can release the names of survivors to the newspapers. The list of the dead we’ll keep for ourselves for now.”
Stiles’s eyebrows rose in agreement. “God forbid we misidentify someone. It’s only going to become more difficult as the bodies decompose in the water—or out of it.”
“I know.” I paused. “Vincent told me the Yard has been overrun with people asking about missing relations.” My mind jumped to the dead man on the stairs. “Speaking of which, did anyone come to the Yard, looking for a missing man yesterday?”
As usual, Stiles followed my train of thought. He shook his head. “Two missing women this week, but no men. How certain are you that he was murdered?”
“He’s better dressed than most drunkards and has a cheating pocket in his left sleeve.”
“Ah. A gambler, then.”
“And not a single person within half a mile remembers seeing him. Oakes thinks his head might have been struck with something round, not the edge of the step, and there’s a bruise on his back.” I found the sketch among my papers. “Here’s his likeness for you to use.”
“Thank you. I left the Yard’s copy there, in case someone came looking.” He pocketed it carefully. “Is the body still at the morgue?”
“So far as I know. They’re going to be busy.”
“Yes, of course.” His face sobered.
A rumble of conversation in the outer room made me glance at the clock. Half past eight. All the men would be present, and they’d be prepared for a difficult day.
“Put advertisements in all the major papers, asking crew members of both ships to come forward to give statements,” I said. “It’ll save time hunting them down.”
Stiles nodded.
“And let Captain Harrington know I’ll be with him shortly. He’s in the first room. I don’t like to make him wait, but I want to assign the men their duties. I’ll speak with him afterward.”
“Of course. But—er, I believe his name is Harrison, according to the papers.”
“Ah.” I scrubbed my hand over my head to rouse my brain. “Yes, right.”
I gathered all the men together before our large map and showed them precisely where the disaster had happened, describing what had been done thus far. Pulling only Sergeants Trent and Andrews aside, I sent everyone else out with orders to assist however they could in the task of retrieving bodies, identifying them, and getting the names to Stiles. All fifteen of them nodded to a man, despite the grim prospect and the rain that was beginning to pelt our windows.
As the room emptied, I asked Trent to remain at the front desk to make a record of inquiries by family members and to tell any witnesses I’d be with them as soon as I could. I turned to Andrews. “Can you find me the captain of the Princess Alice? Man named Grinstead. Vincent says he may have gone down with his ship, so if you can’t find him, find the first mate, the steward, or the pilot.”
“Yes, sir.”
And now, at last, it was time to speak with Captain Harrison.