When the clear cold sunshine slides between the shutters of the attic at Buckingham Street the next morning, the first thing it finds is a pile of jack-towels discarded on the floor. White towels they must have been, but they’re stained now with blotches of a rusty deadened red. Slowly, slowly, the sun inches obliquely through the silent room – the corner of a table, a chair, the beautiful coil of a sleeping black cat – until it finally edges across the bed, and touches the two bodies lying there. They are together, there is no doubt about that, but they lie now slightly apart, their naked limbs barely meeting. One is a man. His face and body show the signs of recent violence – old bruises ripened to a greenish yellow, weals and grazes all but mended – but there is also a new bandage bound tightly about his hand, and a smudge of deep scarlet where new blood is still seeping through. The other is a woman, her black skin luminous against white sheets bleached almost dazzling by the strengthening sun.
I suspect you’ve been expecting this. I suspect, in fact, that you’ve been expecting it for a good deal longer than at least one of the two people involved. But the fact that it has now happened is only half of the story. You will want to know how, and you will want to know why – or at the very least, why now.
So we will back-track, just for a moment. Charles clearly did not bleed out his life in the mud of the City Road as you might have feared. But by the time he came to, his assailant was long gone and he was staring, somewhat dazedly, into the face of one of the early-morning coffee-vendors so common in that part of town. The man was shaking him vigorously by the shoulder, worried – clearly – that he had a corpse on his hands. His barrow was pulled up against the kerb behind him, smoke rising gently from the charcoal burner, and even with his hand pulsing like underground thunder, Charles was almost overwhelmed by the glorious smell of freshly made coffee. The man helped him roll over and lever himself up, and it was only then – with the man’s staring eyes round with fear – that he realized, finally, what had happened. The little finger of his right hand was gone. Severed below the knuckle with one slicing incision. Strange what the mind does with such explosive irrevocable information – all Charles could think was how expert this cut must have been – how sharp the knife – not who did this, or what the consequences might be. You don’t die of such a wound as that, even in Victorian London, but there was a lot of blood on the pavement and more still throbbing from the wound. Was it the medical or the police training that kicked in next? Or merely the adrenalin? Who knows. Whichever it was, Charles managed somehow to staunch the worst of it with the coffee-seller’s handkerchief, and then stagger with him to the nearest cab-stand, where the man was clearly mighty glad to see the back of him. Nor was the cab driver particularly pleased at the prospect of a haemorrhage all over his hansom, and Charles had to pay well over the odds for the fare – ‘You’re goin’ to get blood all over me seats, mate. That’ll take hours to get off. Three shillin’s to the Strand – take it or leave it.’
It was near five when he got back to Buckingham Street, and Molly had clearly just got up – she hadn’t yet put on either her apron or the ungainly cap that covered her hair. He had no idea what he looked like and loomed at her out of the night like a dead man, his coat drenched and the blood still running down his arm where he was holding it clutched to his chest. He’d seen terror on her face once before, but for some reason he didn’t have the energy to analyse, he did not see it now. His mutilated hand looked far worse in the glare of the lamp, but the girl did not flinch. The wound was bathed and cleaned, brandy poured, bandages brought, and hot water carried up to his room so he could wash. Only he could not wash, because he couldn’t use his right hand. So the girl came back and stood behind him as he sat in the tub and the water around him ran red and redder still. As the brandy kicked in and the pain dulled, he shut his eyes and tried to close his senses down to only the smooth rhythmic rasp of the cloth against his skin. He willed it to be neutral – willed it to be nothing more than an impersonal physical sensation entirely distinct from the girl – but every now and again he felt the quick edge of a fingernail, or the lightest skim of the fabric of her sleeve, and as his body started to respond, he sensed the pressure shift to his shoulder, his neck, his chest, and knew that her face was only inches from his own. And then, without warning, the movement stopped and when he opened his eyes he saw there were tears in hers. What could he do but what he’d once dreamed of doing, and touch that cheek. The girl, in her turn, pushed her face hard against his hand like a cat, and as the two moved slowly together, a rush of energy ripped through Charles’ body and all pain was forgotten in a surge of desire.
And now it is morning. The air is still; motes of dust catch in the sun. Thunder is dreaming of rabbits, and his small whimpers and twitches are the only noise in the otherwise silent room. Until a bell rings somewhere downstairs and the girl starts awake, aghast at the light, and what that tells her about the time. There are half a dozen tasks already neglected, and she slips quickly and silently from the bed, gathers up her clothes, and leaves without a sound. Charles stirs and turns over, aware, somewhere deep in his sleep, of a shift, and an absence. When the door opens ten minutes later, the breakfast tray is borne by Billy, who puts it down, none too quietly, on one of the packing cases and starts to move about the room, muttering self-righteously about the mess. He picks up the towels and starts to fold them for laundry, but comes to an abrupt halt when he sees the stains. He looks across at Charles, and sees that the hand lying on the pillow is swathed in bandage and the shirt lying half in and half out of the hip-bath is rinsed with red. His eyes widen and he hovers for a moment in almost pantomimic hesitation, before turning and all but running out of the door. By the time Abel Stornaway has scaled the stairs, Charles is sitting up and pouring coffee with his left hand, and spilling at least half of it on the floor as a result.
‘Good heavens, Mr Charles!’ wheezes Stornaway, his hand still on the door-handle. ‘Should I send Billy for the doctor?’
Charles smiles weakly. ‘Another brandy would be more to the purpose, I suspect, Abel. But no – there’s no call to trouble the doctor at present; he would only tell me to do what I’ve already done. Would you please ask Molly’ – this with a slight flush – ‘if she would come up in half an hour and bind the wound again, and in the meantime I will need Billy to help me get dressed.’
‘Ye’re never going out in that state.’
Charles leans over and lifts his pistol-case from the box where it has been all this time, then looks up at Stornaway.
‘It would appear,’ he says drily, ‘that I’ve been in a far more vulnerable state than this for the best part of a week, had I but known it. But I am ignorant no longer. Tulkinghorn has made a serious mistake in showing his hand so crudely. If I didn’t know Cremorne had something dire to hide before, I do now.’
He flicks open the case with his left hand and looks at the gun. ‘Abel, am I right in thinking you know your way round one of these?’
‘Of course, Mr Charles,’ says Stornaway, somewhat taken aback. ‘I had a pair of Nocks me’sel until only a year or so back. And your great-uncle swore by his Manton flintlocks. Finest gun-maker in England, that’s what he allus used to say.’
‘Excellent. This one hasn’t been fired for a while, so I need you to clean it and have it ready for me by the time I’m dressed. I’ve let myself get out of practice – quite possibly dangerously so.’
Dressing, eating, bandaging, all take far longer than he has patience for, and somewhere in the midst of it all he has a strange flash of almost gratitude towards his attacker that he did nothing worse – nothing that might have condemned him to such maddening slowness for ever, and not just for the time it will take this wound to heal. But the feeling is fleeting; he knows this was only ever meant as a warning, and that if he encounters the man again there will be no question, and no vacillation: it will be death, or nothing. By midday he’s finally making his way through the crowded back-streets and alleyways between the Haymarket and Leicester Square to a long whitewashed passage which leads in turn to a large low brick building with a rather battered sign over the door that says GEORGE’S SHOOTING GALLERY, &c. Inside he finds half a dozen gentlemen at the targets, each stripped to his shirt, and all being assisted with weapons, powder, shot, and the occasional refreshment, by a strange little man with a large head, and a face smeared with gunpowder, dressed in a greenbaize apron and cap. He spots Charles straight away and comes limping towards him – well, not exactly towards him, for he has an odd way of shuffling round the room with one shoulder against the wall and heading off at a tangent to where he really wants to go.
‘Nice to see you, Mr Maddox, sir,’ he says. ‘The guv’nor ain’t here at the moment, but I expect him shortly.’
‘Can I pay for fifty shots?’
‘By all means, Mr Maddox. The stall at the end is free at the present – that’s your preference, as I recall?’
‘It is indeed, Phil, thank you.’
The little man helps him off with his coat, noticing – but knowing better than to remark – that his client’s right hand is tightly bandaged, but also that someone has so contrived it that it appears he should still be able to hold a gun. And indeed he can, as five minutes’ shooting proves. Firing the pistol is not an issue, though aiming it accurately quickly proves to be. Charles becomes increasingly red-faced and irritable as shot after shot goes wide, and the slick gentlemen in the stands next to his slip him condescending glances. He could out-shoot the lot of them – yesterday. It’s as he feared – he’s resisting admitting it, but the injury is not as insignificant as he insists, and his usual sure aim has quite deserted him. Not to mention the fact that he’s still in severe pain and took a shot of brandy to numb it, neither of which are helping matters. Fifteen minutes later he wipes away the sweat beading on his brow and goes over to the rough oblong table near the door, where Phil is now busying himself preparing coffee, no doubt in anticipation of his master’s return. Charles throws himself into a chair and casts the gun on to the table in front of him. Phil says nothing and concentrates instead on boiling the water, and stirring the coffee grounds. The need for conversation is obviated, in any case, by the arrival of the gallery owner, a fine hearty-looking man of fifty or so, with a barrel chest and a slow and deliberate tread. He looks every inch the old soldier, from his weather-beaten face to his upright army bearing, and though he is clean-shaven now (every morning, by Phil), at moments of anxiety or reflection you will see him smooth his upper lip with his hand, as if his military moustaches were still there. He takes a seat beside them, nodding to Charles and making no more remark than his assistant on the bandage – now touched with blood – about his hand. He takes out his pipe and lights it with slow solemnity, then Phil pours coffee for the three of them and his master sits back with his mug and sets his pipe between his teeth. He takes his time, but eventually he leans forward with his elbow on his knee and stretches his neck a little. ‘How’s the aim?’
Charles shakes his head. ‘Hopeless. I didn’t make the mark once.’
Phil seems to be avoiding his master’s eyes, and the latter fans his cloud of smoke away in order that he may see Charles more clearly. ‘In my experience,’ he says at last, folding his arms upon his chest, ‘a good aim is a matter of mind, eye, and hand, marching in step, the one with the other. Now it seems to me, Mr Maddox, sir, that your mind is what it ever was; your eye, the same.’
‘But not my hand,’ says Charles grimly, holding it out before him and feeling the change of position in a throb of pain. A thin runnel of red has leached from beneath the bandage and stained his cuff.
The trooper nods, his face serious. ‘What accident have you met with, sir? What’s amiss?’
‘I no longer have all five fingers on my right hand. I thought it would make no difference to my grip. But alas, it seems I was mistaken.’
The trooper nods, then takes his pipe from his lips for a moment and knocks the ashes out against his boot.
‘It’s a question of balance, I should say,’ he says finally. ‘Balance and weight. You have been accustomed to hold the pistol in a certain way. Now you must make an adjustment. A compensation. D’you follow?’
Charles shrugs. ‘I’ve been trying to do so, but my shots still go wide.’
The trooper swallows the rest of his coffee, then puts his mug down and gets lumberingly to his feet.
‘If we give our full minds to it, sir, we may come upon an answer.’
The two of them return to Charles’ stand and start again. For a good while they seem to be making little progress – shots fly as wide as they had before – but then the trooper hits on the idea of holding the gun with both hands.
‘’Tis not how the gentlemen do it, sir,’ he says. ‘But needs must. Needs must.’
It feels odd at first, and Charles does indeed receive scornful glances from those at the other stands who have not yet abandoned the gallery for luncheon at their club, but there’s no doubt of its efficacy. The second hand gives him precisely the measure of control and counterweight he needs, and he has just made his first mark when the two of them are distracted by footsteps in the passage and a commotion at the door.
The trooper casts an eye in that direction, evidently concerned, but Phil has forestalled him. Charles cannot see who it is and can only – for a moment at least – register Phil’s low tones, and Phil’s grimy hand on the door. No one is more surprised than he is when it becomes obvious from the noise that the intruder is a woman. She is young and, to judge by her accent, French.
‘You know who I am,’ she says in a shrill and angry voice. ‘You take my money many times – it is money as good as any man’s – I demand to enter dis place!’
‘I’m sorry, madymosselle, but orders is orders. The commander says I am to refuse you entry. And round ’ere, what the commander says goes.’
She has by now so far encroached on Phil that Charles can see her profile against the wall. She is a black-haired woman, with large wary eyes, and a drawn and hungry look, and flesh so thin and taut that the bones of her face seem to press against the skin. It’s clearly not the first time the Frenchwoman has been there – or made trouble when she has; the trooper frowns, and folds back his sleeves, then makes his stately measured way to the door.
‘You will not gain entry here, mistress.’
The woman laughs out loud in rather an affected manner, and stands her ground.
‘I will not, eh?’
‘No,’ he says heavily, ‘you will not. Even if I have to carry you out. Make no mistake, I don’t want to do it. I would rather treat a lady such as yourself with the respect she is due. But if I must, I will. You may be sure of that.’
She looks the trooper up and down, knowing that even her ferocious determination is no match for a man of his training.
‘I will not forget zis,’ she says scornfully between clenched teeth. ‘You have not use me well. You have been mean and shabby – as mean and shabby as that miserable lawyer in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. You will be sorry to cross one such as I!’
She turns on her heel, and with what she clearly imagines to be an aristocratically contemptuous flick of her cloak, she is gone.
The trooper shakes his head and returns to Charles.
‘My apologies, Mr Maddox, sir.’
‘It’s no inconvenience to me. But I admit to some surprise at seeing a lady here.’
‘She’s no lady, sir,’ says the trooper, ‘though I might have called her one, out of courtesy. I have all sorts, here. Mostly they come for skill, like you, but some just for idleness. There are even ladies of title and fashion who come here merely to amuse themselves between morning calls and the milliner’s. I keep a case of pocket pistols in the drawer there, expressly for the purpose. But when you own a place such as this, you have to be on your guard. I have a long nose for such as she – such as come with revenge in their hearts and dreams of score-settling and I know not what. She is one of those, sir, if I am not very much mistaken, and a dab she is at hitting the mark. I don’t know much of women, Mr Maddox, but she’s an erratic, that one, that much I do know. I don’t want her on my conscience.’
This is quite considerably the longest speech Charles has ever had from the trooper’s mouth, and he can see from the creases on the broad brown forehead that the Frenchwoman, whoever she is, has been troubling him for some time.
‘I’m sure she means nothing by it. It’s no doubt just her way – they are an impassioned and capricious race. I don’t think you need worry unduly.’
It sounds trite, even to his own ears, but it seems to go some way to reassure the trooper. Though, as we shall see, he will be far better advised to take no notice whatsoever of Charles’ advice, and remain fully and vigilantly on his guard.
When Charles returns to Buckingham Street the house is silent. Billy has been dispatched on afternoon errands and Abel is nowhere about. He hesitates for a moment, wondering what best to do, then goes quietly down the back stairs towards the kitchen. He hasn’t seen Molly on her own since – since then – and feels he has to cross that line – establish how the two of them are to go on. But when he reaches the half-closed door he’s stopped in his tracks by the most ordinary and at the same time the most astounding thing in the world. The sound of a girl’s voice. Molly is singing. But there are no words, only a low cadenced humming to a melody unlike any Charles has ever heard before – indeed unlike any conventional European notion of what a ‘melody’ actually is. But whatever it is, the sound seems to reach inside his head and ring to a deeper rhythm than four-four time. He stands listening, wondering if she’s done this before and it’s just that he has never heard her. He knew the girl could not speak and thought – wrongly it seems – that she was incapable of any sound. Something else he has assumed, and must now re-assess. But this small check – insignificant as you may think it is – is still enough to make him reconsider, and then retreat silently back the way he came.
Up in his great-uncle’s room he finds both master and attendant sleeping peacefully over the subsiding fire. Charles pokes the smouldering coals and retrieves the newspaper from the floor at Stornaway’s feet. Then he pours himself more brandy-and-water and sits down on the sofa. It’s a long time since he’s sat doing nothing, but yesterday is catching up with him. We would call it post-traumatic stress and wonder how he could possibly cope with such a serious injury without analgesics, but all such concepts are equally alien to Charles. He sits back and closes his eyes for a moment, lulled by the alcohol, the warmth, and the soft pattering of the fire. When he opens them again, the room is in darkness.
‘I let you sleep. You looked to be rather in need of it.’
Charles starts. It takes him a moment to recognize the voice, though he has known it all his life. Stornaway has gone and Maddox is watching him quietly from the other side of the hearth. The long dark shadows cast by the low firelight give his face an austere, almost classical air.
‘Are you intending to tell me what has happened to you, or am I required to guess?’
Charles struggles to sit up, forgetting – but not for long – that he can’t put any weight on his right hand.
‘I was – waylaid. By Tulkinghorn’s hired henchman.’
‘You are sure of that?’
‘As sure as I can be. He’d been sent to warn me off, and took a little personal memento with him to make sure I took the point.’
He holds up his hand.
Maddox raises an eyebrow. ‘A rather brutal tactic, but without doubt an effective one. There is no infection?’
Charles shakes his head. ‘The girl is a very efficient nurse. The wound is clean, and I know what to look for.’
Maddox nods, reflectively. ‘I, too, lost many things in the course of my career. My faith in my fellow men, my freedom on occasion – albeit temporarily – and once, and once only, something more important than either of those things. But I never suffered a loss quite so tangible as yours. Your sangfroid, if I may say so, is admirable.’ And he is, indeed, looking at Charles with an expression in his eyes his nephew cannot remember seeing before.
Charles shrugs, though his new-found self-possession is clearly not quite all Maddox believes it to be, for there are hot tears prickling his eyes now. He’s spent so much of his life managing for himself and expecting nothing from those around him – so long without a mother, in the coolness cast by a distinguished but distant father – that kindness always comes to him as a shock, and it’s kindness that has undone him now, not pain, however intense, or self-pity, however justified.
‘At least I know now that I’m not wasting my time,’ he says eventually, and then explains, as concisely as he can, what he discovered at the Graham Arms.
‘But you have no clue as yet as to what this package contained?’ says Maddox thoughtfully, when he has finished.
‘No,’ says Charles, ‘but whatever it was, it terrified Cremorne enough to get Tulkinghorn involved – and Boscawen killed. This, my dear uncle, is no ordinary case of petty blackmail. There’s something base and corrupt at the bottom of it all – something Cremorne absolutely cannot afford to come to light. That’s why I know it’s no coincidence I was attacked as soon as I left the rat-killing. I’ll bet this thug has been following me for days and knew exactly what Milloy was going to tell me.’
‘No doubt.’
They are silent for a moment; the only sound the prim ticking of the ornate French clock on the mantelpiece.
‘There’s something else—’ begins Charles tentatively. He’s been wondering whether to mention this – in fact, ever since he saw the butchery done to Lizzie’s ravaged body he’s wanted to talk to Maddox, get advice from Maddox, elicit from Maddox some part of the unparalleled insight he has into man’s inhumanity to man. But in the two days since the murder, the Maddox he needs has been all but gone. But now, at last, the great Regency thief-taker has returned, and the flailing madman who took his place is stilled.
‘What is it, my boy?’
‘Do you remember the police coming here yesterday?’
Maddox frowns. ‘No – or at least—’
He stops, and the old terror creeps back into his face – the terror of knowing how much he no longer knows, of how black the blank spaces are becoming – and Charles realizes his mistake.
‘No matter, Uncle,’ he says quickly. ‘It was just—’
‘But I should know – if there are officers of the law in this house – my house – then I should be the one to—’
Maddox’s voice is catching that slightly hectic edge that Charles knows he must at all costs avoid. Not just for his uncle’s sake, but his own.
‘Really – it is no matter, Uncle, I doubt they even crossed the threshold. They were merely enquiring as to my whereabouts the previous evening.’
Maddox looks sceptical. ‘And why should they wish to know that?’
‘Because I discovered a body yesterday. A girl I know – a whore – was murdered.’
‘There is nothing so very extraordinary about that, I fear.’
‘The point is not that she was killed, but when she was killed, and how.’
‘Go on.’ Maddox’s voice is clear again and his gaze steady; his mind has teetered but swung back from the shadow.
‘I saw her a few days before. The only reason I found the body at all was because I’d arranged to meet her there. She was going to tell me something – something about Sir Julius Cremorne. I don’t know what, but I’m guessing it had something to do with what I found out at the Argyll Rooms. Because despite Cremorne’s public reputation for high principles and a happy family life, he’s been regularly debauching a whole host of young women.’
‘That, I am afraid to say, is not so very unusual either. At least among those of Sir Julius’ class. But I admit it is hardly something a man in his position would want bruited abroad.’
‘But this girl wasn’t just killed. She was slaughtered. With the same skill, and no doubt the same knife, that opened William Boscawen’s throat, and was subsequently used on me.’
The details are soon given: first Boscawen, then Lizzie. The scene in Agnes Court plays again, reel by reel, through Charles’ head. For some reason he finds himself recalling more than he remembers seeing at the time, but it’s not so much the horror of it now as the utter banality. The clothes folded neatly on the chair. The boots placed by the fireside. Maddox is all silent calculating attention as he talks, his eyes half-closed, nodding now and then. When Charles has finished, Maddox does not respond straight away but takes a deep breath and stares into the fire. After a few moments – just when Charles fears he may have lost him once again – he starts to speak.
‘Did you find your finger?’
The question is so ludicrous – so darkly black-comical – that Charles doesn’t know how to react. Is this his uncle’s infamous wit, or is it just another example of his inability, so frequent now, to tell the acceptable from the offensive?
‘Well, I—’ he stammers.
‘It is a perfectly serious question, Charles. Did you find your finger?’
Charles gapes at him. ‘I can hardly say I looked for it.’
‘But it was nowhere obvious – nowhere about you when you came to your senses?’
‘No – but the rats may well have had it by then. You know what it’s like on the City Road.’
‘All the same,’ says Maddox. ‘And you are sure that some of this unfortunate girl’s internal organs were missing?’
‘Most of them were lying in pieces about the room, but I was told later at the police-station that the heart was definitely absent.’
‘And the breasts were also removed?’
‘Both of them. One was lying by her feet, along with what appeared to be her liver. Though there was so much disembowelled flesh I cannot really be sure.’
Maddox nods. ‘You perceive the pattern?’
A pause, then, ‘No, Uncle, I cannot say that I do.’
Maddox sits back. ‘Men such as this – men attracted to the point of compulsion by violence so extreme it violates every natural instinct or moral constraint – they are very rare, but they do, in my limited experience, exhibit very similar characteristics, both as a sub-species and as individuals. By the latter I mean that each murderer will have his own habits, and his own preferences, whether it be weapon, setting, victim, or some other little ritual or attribute which may elude the eye of even the most experienced of detectives. As to the former, I have encountered more than one instance – like the present one, indeed – where the perpetrator has felt himself compelled to take something from the victim, not so much a memento mori as a memento delectare – a way of reviving the illicit excitement generated by the crime long after the actual deed has passed. You will recall, I am sure, our conversation about the Ratcliffe Highway killings, and the watch that was taken from the body of the landlord of the King’s Arms – an obvious instance of an otherwise meaningless piece of pilfering that can only be explained by the murderer’s need to retain a material keepsake. But I am sure that you, as a scientist, are at least as well-qualified as I could be to venture an opinion on this subject.’
Charles, perhaps unsurprisingly, is in no state to offer an opinion on anything of the kind – if Maddox is right, even the pieces of the puzzle he thought resolved will need to be put back together in a new configuration. He’s been assuming all along that Tulkinghorn hired some Cockney bludger to do his dirty work, but is it possible that Cremorne committed these crimes himself? He could have found out from Tulkinghorn where Boscawen was lodging, and he could just as easily have followed Lizzie home and slipped into the courtyard unseen in the small hours. And he could – equally easily – have followed Charles to the Graham Arms. But was that really the voice he’d heard when he was lying face-down in the dirt? It didn’t sound like a man of Cremorne’s age – or one of his rank for that matter – and Charles is sure there was no stammer. But his recollection is fragmentary at best, and the voice never much more than a whisper.
Maddox, meanwhile, has settled more comfortably in his chair. ‘Perhaps I might join you in a brandy, Charles?’
‘Of course, Uncle,’ says Charles, getting quickly to his feet. He pours the brandies and when he hands Maddox the glass his grasp is firm.
‘I agree,’ Maddox resumes, ‘that it is a reasonable hypothesis to presume, until contradictory facts intervene, that these killings were each the work of the same perpetrator. Our next task, therefore, is to ascertain what these crimes tell us about the man who committed them. There is one fact, of course, that obtrudes immediately on our notice.’
He looks at Charles, who takes a sip of brandy in an endeavour to buy time. Maddox smiles, and continues, placing his fingertips carefully together.
‘Perhaps “fact” is too strong, since the available evidence is not extensive enough for a robust deduction, but I posit that the individual with whom we are dealing is a swift, skilled and ruthless killer. Of men. He is, by contrast, a slow, cruel and utterly depraved murderer of women. A man who takes his time to inflict the utmost pain and degradation on his female victims, and who clearly derives an intense and degenerate gratification from so doing. That, to me, suggests a man who has – to say the least – an unhealthy relationship with the fairer sex. A relationship founded on the desire to dominate, and humiliate. Further investigation of Sir Julius’ habits and history might, therefore, be instructive, especially as—’
He stops, and frowns, then waves a hand quickly back and forth in front of his face, as if swatting a fly. But it is winter, and there are no flies. Charles sits forward and puts a hand on his arm. ‘Uncle? Is everything all right?’
‘I was about to say something, but it is eluding me.’ He raises his hand again and covers his face, as if the light is dazzling him. ‘What was that? Who’s there – I know there’s someone – show yourself – damn you – show yourself—’
He reaches blindly for his cane and makes to seize it, but Charles forestalls him, then moves quickly to the bell and rings for Stornaway. By the time he arrives, Charles can barely keep Maddox in his chair. The old man is kicking and biting and bawling profanities so disgusting Charles can hardly believe he ever knew such words, far less used them. He’s almost embarrassed to have Stornaway hear all this, but apparently with no reason: he’s either heard it all before, or can dissociate it entirely from the man he has served and revered for over half a century. It’s a lesson, of a kind, and despite being in no fit state to fend off the vehemence of his uncle’s blows, Charles does what he can to help, and they finally manage to bring Maddox back to some sort of calm. Stornaway silently motions Charles away and kneels down in front of his old master.
‘There now – is that better for ye? Would ye like me to bring ye anythin’? Some water perhaps?’
Maddox eyes him with a leering look, then nods and slips his gaze away. Stornaway looks up at Charles. ‘I’ve noticed he’s allus worse as the day draws on. But I think we’ll be a’right now, Mr Charles, if ye have other things to do.’
It’s the gentlest, most courteous dismissal you could ever devise, but it’s a dismissal all the same. Charles nods and is turning to go when Stornaway calls to him.
‘Mr Charles, ye’ve dropped some’at here.’
Stornaway bends down behind Maddox’s chair and hands Charles a slip of twisted paper. It’s in his uncle’s handwriting. Not, alas, the confident flowing hand of his maturity, but the weak looping scrawl that’s a sad gauge of Maddox’s deteriorating grasp – both of his pen and of his mind. This scrap certainly seems to have been written from a clouded place: as far as Charles can see it’s nothing more than a string of random numbers and letters.
‘Do you know what this means, Abel, if it means anything?’
Stornaway takes the paper and looks at it, then nods. ‘Aye, it does. It’s a reference to one of the newspapers in those boxes downstairs. He devised a system a’ his own for organisin’ ’em. He’d have me file anythin’ as might prove to be useful. And many’s a time it was.’ He sighs. ‘There’s a pile down there I never got round to doin’. Don’t suppose I ever shall now.’
‘Can you find it for me – this newspaper?’
‘I’ll do me best, Mr Charles, but it looks to me that there’s some’at missin’ here. There should be seven figures, not six. But I’ll go see if Billy’s back and can sit with the boss, and then I can get to it rightaway.’
Narrowing the reference down to one of the boxes in the office proves to be fairly straightforward; working out what, in all the solid stack of newsprint it contains, Maddox wanted Charles to see is quite another. Stornaway can give him no further guidance, beyond saying that the papers have not been logged in chronological order, but according to the nature of the crime as Maddox defined it. Charles is left with the prospect of a dreary evening that may, in the end, lead him nowhere. Nonetheless he has the fire lit in the room, and asks Billy to bring up a decanter of wine and his dinner, when it’s ready. Then he brings down a more comfortable chair from the drawing-room and settles himself by the oil-lamp to read. As he makes his way through the box, page by page, he finds he is confronting the painful reality of his uncle’s slow and painful descent into the dark. The sheets are covered with annotations in black ink, but as with his uncle’s handwriting, so with his subject matter: there is a terrible distance between the confident magisterial comments that mark the older newspapers, and the impenetrable scratchings on the more recent ones. In consequence it takes longer than it should to decipher exactly what crimes this box records, but when he does, Charles’ heart starts to beat a little faster and he grips the page he’s holding until the elderly paper crackles in his hands.
The crime referred to hereunder is archetypical of that committed by the ‘sequential killer’, by which I mean it exhibits a gratuitous brutality, allied with an extreme, not to say excessive, ceremoniousness in the way the corpse has been performed upon, plundered, and positioned.
NB: This man will kill again, and has very likely killed before: investigate the possibility of earlier instances.
The date at the head of the page is August 1817 – far too early to have any bearing to the Cremorne case, but it’s the theory, the thinking, that has Charles turning up the lamp and emptying the box on to the floor. He’s sure now that this is what his uncle was trying to tell him – that a crime so elaborate as the murder of Lizzie Miller cannot possibly be a single unique act. That it must, in fact, have been preceded by other similar outrages – killings that display some of the same characteristics, if not the same degree of premeditated cruelty. Now he knows what he’s looking for, everything suddenly accelerates. Within minutes he has the pile of print in two groups – those too old to be relevant, and those recent enough to be plausible. He rearranges the latter heap chronologically and works backwards in time – six months first, then ten, a year. And then he finds it. No more than a paragraph, at the bottom of a column entitled ‘Accidents, Inquests, &c’. The story in question clearly sits under the third of the three categories, though a mere ‘&c’ hardly seems strong enough to contain it:
A dreadful murder took place last Monday week, in the vicinity of Church Street, St Giles. The mutilated body of Mrs Abigail Cass was discovered shortly after midnight by a Police-constable of the St Giles sub-division. We are assured that the unfortunate lady was of unblemished character, and appears to have been the victim of a spontaneous and frenzied attack by an assailant armed with a knife. It is not known what led to this awful crime, and every effort is being made to bring the killer to justice.
Were it not for Maddox’s notes, Charles might never have noticed it – there’s nothing, after all, so very unusual about this report, which resembles a dozen others appearing in the London press every day. Though there is perhaps a coded message here you would not habitually find – the writer is clearly signalling that this was no common streetwalker, and words like ‘mutilated’ are rare, even for the more sensational papers. It’s irritating not to have the name of the officer who found the body, but that’s an omission that can soon be remedied. But what was a respectable woman doing in that part of town in the first place, and what link can there possibly be between her and a whore like Lizzie? And what can either of them have to do with the strange persecution practised by William Boscawen, and the violent death meted out to him by way of retribution?