Dead Image E-Book

Joan Lock

• Herausgeber: The Mystery Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The explosion was heard twenty miles away. It killed boatmen and wrecked the exotic villa of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the fashionable St John's Wood artist. But what caused the 1874 Regent's Park explosion? Fenian bombs? Sabotage by rival railways or other firms? Or was it something personal? And whose was the other body found in the canal? An artist's model? The missing King's Cross barmaid? Or another victim of the so-called Thames murderer? As he struggles to find the answers, Scotland Yard's Sergeant Ernest Best straddles the conflicting worlds of art, wealth and privilege and that of the poverty-stricken London boatman in an intriguing mystery that will change his life forever. The first book in the Detective Sergeant Best series.

Leseprobe

By the same author

Non-Fiction

Lady Policeman

Reluctant Nightingale

The British Policewoman: Her Story

Marlborough Street: The Story of a London Court

Tales from Bow Street

Blue Murder? Policemen Under Suspicion

Dreadful Deeds and Awful Murders: Scotland Yard’s First Detective 1829–1878

Scotland Yard Casebook: The Making of the CID 1865–1935

Fiction

Dead Born

Death in Perspective

Dead Letters

Dead End

Dead Fall

Dead Loss

Dead Centre

Chapter One

When it happened it was that quietest of times when the night is nearly done and most people are as removed from daily cares as they are ever likely to be.

When it happened, those nearby were catapulted from the depths of their slumber by a thunderous roar and a shudder which could be heard and felt twenty miles away. In a darkness more dense after the blinding flash which had accompanied the terrible noise, houses rocked and started to collapse around their terror-stricken and confused occupants.

Those who were able rushed, panicking, on to the streets, convinced that it must be an earthquake or even the end of the world. For some, it was.

Faces lit up at the sight of her as she hurried towards the park that early October evening in 1874, not only because she was porcelain pretty in her pale-blue ensemble, but also because of the light in her eyes and her eager step. Later, people were to remember seeing her and smiling with pleasure.

In her right hand, she held a blue and white striped parasol which served more to ward off the soft mist of autumn rain than to protect from the waning evening sun. In her left, she carried a small, plaid carpet bag.

Strictly speaking, she knew she should not have brought the bag. Strictly speaking (given the beginnings of a seasonal nip in the air) it would have been more sensible to wear her warmer, chestnut-brown ensemble. But blue made the best of her and the style was extremely becoming, with its severely straight front and froth of frills and flounces spilling out behind her as she hurried towards the canal bridge. Such an occasion demanded such a dress.

Further east down the canal, narrow-boat steerer, Charles Baxton, was wearily contemplating the stack of goods waiting to be loaded on to his craft at the City Road Wharf. His garb was of the style common to many of his fellow boatmen: grimy corduroy breeches, short canvas smock, neckerchief, and heavy, Blucher boots. He was far from elated by the prospect of what stretched before him that evening: the loading of sacks of sugar, currants, nuts and beans; drums of benzoline, bundles of boarding and barrels of gunpowder – making sure he got them in the right order. Heaviest things in first. Each customer’s orders kept together as far as possible to aid fast unloading. Speed was essential on the fly boats.

As she neared the meeting place the girl in blue spotted the smart young man waiting for her. He was leaning on the railings of the canal’s most handsome bridge, his head down, watching idly as a black-and-white-liveried boat glided beneath him. He seemed to be frowning. Did he think she wasn’t coming? She called out to him but her breathless voice failed to carry.

Why did he look so serious? Had something gone wrong? Not just serious, she realized as she came closer, but also intense – almost angry in fact. In fact, when he finally turned around, he looked quite ferocious. Then his expression softened rapidly into a welcoming smile. Was that just how he looked when deep in thought, she wondered? Or had he really been angry? They had a lot to learn about each other. She smiled back and ran towards him joyfully.

It was ten minutes past nine at the still-bustling, gas-lit quayside. Baxton and company load checker Joseph Minchin were surveying the now fully loaded Tilbury with some satisfaction. It did sit rather low in the water, that was true – hardly surprising given its twenty-ton cargo. But it was all clothed-up with a spanking new tarpaulin and ready to go at last. They were not to know that all their efforts were to be in vain. Nor that their toil would later be picked over and analysed by men who had not done a day’s physical work in their lives.

It was raining lightly when, just before midnight, Baxton’s boat slipped out of the City Road basin, turned left into the Regent’s Canal and entered the first of the five locks he had to negotiate before they came to the long and peaceful stretch of canal which wandered through Regent’s Park. Then he would be able to get tucked up for a while.

Once through that first lock, the Tilbury became one of a chain of five fly boats hooked together – to be pulled along by the Ready, a busy little steamtug already puffing away and lighting up the darkness with its firefly-spray of sparks. Baxton’s boat was the central bead in this mobile necklace, and his chief task was to prevent his craft from colliding either with the canalside bank or the other boats in the chain. Not easy in the dark.

The darkness also robbed the work of one of its few compensations – the variety of the passing scene. But the lack of visual diversion threw into relief the sounds and smell of the night-time canal. The splash of steering poles, the rustle of rats, and the pungent smell of compost heaps and smouldering autumn-leaf fires from the gardens of the big houses in Noel Road which hung above them to their right.

Too soon, came the long, narrow, Islington Tunnel. Pit dark with foul air and as silent as death. Once in there, the only sound to break the eerie stillness was the occasional splosh of sludge dropping into the water from the slimy ceiling. The glow from the narrow-boat cabin fires and oil lamps seemed to add to the oppressive atmosphere rather than relieve it – throwing sinister shadows on to the dank brick walls.

‘In the sweet by-and-by, we shall meet by that beautiful shore,’ sang out a lone voice from a boat up ahead. The refrain was picked up by William Taylor, Baxton’s ebullient assistant, and then gradually the rest of the line joined in until their song reverberated all around them, warming them like a cloak. They often sang their way through the tunnel. American revivalist hymns were favourites, their throbbing melancholy seeming somehow most suitable.

‘Gather with the saints at the river, that flows by the throne of God!’ shouted Taylor encouragingly when silence overtook them again. Soon they were back in full and glorious song, but, as the end of the tunnel drew near, they remembered to tail off to a whisper. The cottagers who lived just by the exit did not feel the same need for the Lord’s comfort in the early hours. They might complain again and company jobs were precious. As it happened, most land-bound folk regarded canal boatmen as Godless and immoral. But, if hymns are any help in gaining entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven, they may have eased the way of some later that night.

The Islington Tunnel behind them, the little fleet glided silently by the towering warehouses huddled around the Battlebridge basin and approached the lair of their arch rivals – the railways. Here, the lines of the Midland went both under and over the canal and the railway goods yards were all around them – enemy country. It was starting to rain again as St Pancras double lock and basin came into view. A hive of activity day and night, this was where the railways and canals pretended they were not engaged in a deadly war and exchanged goods for destinations only served by the other.

Some of the smells wafting towards Baxton’s boat were pleasanter now: newly sawn timber, rich and cloying brewery malt and the peculiar sweetness of curtains of macaroni hung out to dry, which intermingled with less attractive odours from the canal itself and the reek of benzoline from their own cargo.

Soon be time for breakfast. Baxton smiled in anticipation at the thought. Meanwhile, the lad was brewing up. At one time there had been talk of banning their small fires and lamps but common sense had prevailed. How could they operate without them? They needed the light to see what they were doing and to brew up – never mind give them a little warmth in the cabins on the damp and bitter nights. Their life was hard enough already.

Additional little fireflies of light emanated from boatmen’s pipes, but 35-year-old Baxton had never been a smoker. Now that Mary and the kids were living on land, he needed all his money to help keep them there. Charlie and Lizzie were actually going to school and it was the image of Lizzie reading aloud to him from a Sunday school tract that helped keep him going on this endless trail. His children would be able to read. Anything would be possible then. No narrow-boatman could wish for more. That, and breakfast soon.

An easy and quiet section of canal led up to Kentish and Camden Towns’ timber yards and foundries and the hardest part of the night’s work; a triple set of double locks. These they entered two by two, giving the crews the chance to have a gossip on the quayside between tasks.

They were making good time was the general opinion. Loads were discussed and compared and the cussedness of the City Quay loaders deplored. It was clear who had the heaviest load – Baxton. Good thing his boat was in the middle. Edward Hall, the dashing skipper of the Limehouse, asked William Taylor, Baxton’s cheerful second man, whether he had noticed the stunned look on the face of the foreman of the railyard when he saw how heavy-laden they were? Taylor said he had and both men laughed at the memory. Typical landsman. Typical railway man. Thought he knew better.

On their way again, the convoy was soon riding a long curve north-westwards. Baxton, Taylor and the lad took it in turns to man the tiller and eat breakfast. A rapid succession of bridges looming darkly overhead as they did so: the Southampton, the Gloucester Avenue, the Grafton and, finally, Water Meeting Bridge.

Water Meeting Bridge was the scene of their trickiest manoeuvre. The Ready led its string of narrowboats into a sharp right turn as they entered the wider canal which curved around the north side of Regent’s Park.

‘That’s a mighty heavy load, there,’ remarked a policeman to his fellow constable as the middle bead of the necklace emerged from beneath Water Meeting Bridge. The steamtug was already out of sight around the corner so, the PC was later to state in evidence, he was unable to confirm whether it was puffing out showers of sparks at the time. He did notice, however, that smoke was issuing from the cabin chimney of the Tilbury.

The tricky right turn negotiated, the steerers, or the captains as they liked to call themselves, drew a collective sigh of relief. Shoes off, time to take breath. No more locks for a while, no tricky turns, just the peaceful, almost rural, surroundings of Regent’s Park. At sparse intervals, the footbridges of the Outer Circle passed overhead and only the occasional animal call from the Regent’s Park Zoo broke the night silence. The captains began to look to their bunks.

Indeed, just before it happened, Edward Hall, captain of the Limehouse which rode just behind the Tilbury, had already undressed and was snuggling down on his straw pallet.

Patients at the nearby Hospital for Nervous Diseases were fast asleep, as were most of the rich and famous in the elegant St John’s Wood villas which overlooked the park and canal – among their number the well-known poisons expert, Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor, and many of ‘The Wood’ artistic colony. Not at home, however, was the colony’s flamboyant and enormously successful leader, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who painted lightly clad maidens reclining in Roman bath-houses in a manner which encouraged wealthy Victorian males to take a sudden interest in all things ancient. He was away in Scotland, quite unaware of the calamity about to overtake his appropriately Pompeian-style villa.

Just before it happened, the night gatekeeper of the North Lodge adjacent to Macclesfield Bridge (quite the most handsome on the Regent’s Canal) went off duty. The son of the lodge-keeper, however, was lying on his bed fully clothed having got up too early for his task of taking the park gardeners’ morning roll call.

Just before it happened, there appeared to be some problem on board Baxton’s boat. A flash of light, shouts, fire, smoke.

Then it happened.

With a blinding flash and a roar so loud it was heard in Bermondsey, Peckham Rye and even faraway Chislehurst, Baxton’s boat exploded.

For a mile around, the shock waves caused beds to rock to and fro, doors and shutters to burst open, glass to shatter, ceilings to fall, plaster to fly and the panic-stricken occupants to rush into the streets, fearing an earthquake – or the end of the world. Fortunately, The Times was later to report, when it happened most people were lying down ‘in the position which soldiers are taught to assume to avoid the force of explosives’.

As Baxton’s boat exploded, it was passing under Macclesfield Bridge – not only the most handsome on the canal but also quite the most sturdily built. Slabs of stone-facing, decorative iron railings and ten fluted, cast-iron columns were hurled into the air. With them, went the cargo of Baxton’s boat, kerbstones and fencing from the towpath, canalside trees and portions of the roof and wall of the North Lodge which then smashed down on the nearby buildings. In particular, they smashed down on Holford Park, a huge mansion on the south side, and, on the north, the villa of Mr Alma-Tadema with its Latin greeting Salve inscribed on the lintel.

Like Mr Alma-Tadema’s servants and children, the other narrow-boat captains had been lying down in a blast-avoiding manner. That of Jane, which led the procession, suddenly felt his sons crashing down on him, while the master of the Dee found himself in the water. Edward White, the captain of the Limehouse, was knocked out of his bed against the stove and, as his craft sank beneath him, lost consciousness.

At the zoo, The Times later reported, the monkeys appeared to have successfully avoided the falling glass. But the giraffes were found huddled together in terrible fear while the elans, true to their timid nature, ‘suffered very much from their panic’.

Much of what had been hurled into the air by the violent explosion had come straight down again to land in the canal and on what remained of Baxton’s boat. Once there, the earth and debris acted as a dam, cutting the canal into two separate stretches of water. Perched crazily on top of the 20-foot-high pile of wreckage were the fluted iron columns, spilling out their brick fillings.

At dawn, boatmen and firemen were to be seen poking about with poles and grappling hooks in the now shallow water around the sunken Limehouse and the fragments of Baxton’s boat.

Hundreds of sightseers peered down on the scene from the high canal banks and over the raw edges of what had once been a bridge. Some held umbrellas to keep off the slanting rain which, along with the steady spillage from a fractured water-main and drainage pipe, was turning the piled soil into a muddy, slippery morass. Flames shooting from a broken gas main added a mournful glow to the grey, early morning scene.

Policemen and guardsmen from the nearby barracks tried to keep the growing crowd in check and out of danger as they craned forward so as not to miss any part of this terrible scene.

The almost holiday atmosphere abated momentarily and the crowd grew silent as rescuers staggered uncertainly up the slope supporting two covered stretchers carrying the bodies of William Taylor and the lad. Of skipper Baxton there was no sign. It wasn’t until four in the afternoon, just as the rain eased a little, that the searchers came upon a solid object trapped beneath the remains of the Limehouse: the mangled body of Charles Baxton. A gruesome bonus for those who had braved the rain to keep watching or had just arrived on one of the special Regent’s Park Explosion omnibus outings.

Now that all the victims had been accounted for and there was only merchandise to be retrieved, the work proceeded with less urgency. The gathering dusk slowed it further and some helpers began to call it a day.

It was then that they found the fourth body.

Chapter Two

Sergeant Ernest Best of the Detective Branch contemplated the bodies lined up on marble slabs and exclaimed, ‘What do you mean, you don’t know who they are! They worked for you, didn’t they?’

‘Only the captain,’ said the Grand Junction Canal traffic manager shaking his head. ‘He takes on his own crew.’ He shrugged his gaunt shoulders. ‘All we ask is that there are at least three of them.’

Best sighed. That made things very difficult. How was he going to begin on identifying the extra body if no one knew who the bona fide corpses were? It seemed ridiculous. ‘But surely the other bargees know who they are?’

‘No, not really.’ Thornley paused, then corrected Best carefully, ‘The boatmen come from all over the place.’ The Sergeant said nothing and waited. The man looked unhappy, as if suspecting that much of this trouble was going to come right down on his head. ‘They meet up here and there at the locks.’ He tugged at the stiff collar constraining his scrawny neck. ‘But don’t necessarily get to know each other’s names.’ He paused before adding, ‘Well, not their real names anyway. Sometimes, just their nicknames.’

‘Because they’re on the run?’

Best knew that, like the railway construction sites, the canals had a reputation for giving sanctuary to men who had good reason for forgetting their real names.

‘No, not necessarily.’ The traffic manager looked mildly offended. ‘There’s not as much of that as people think, you know. A lot of them are good family men. It’s just, well, it’s just their way.’

They were in the mortuary of the Marylebone Workhouse which Charles Dickens had described as ‘a kind of crypt devoted to the warehousing of parochial coffins’. The mournful Thornley looked right at home in such bleak surroundings but Sergeant Best did not. It was not so much the vividness of his black hair or his extraordinary greeny-grey eyes and immaculate clothes, but the strong feeling of life emanating from him – despite his serious concentration on police business. Despite even the deep sadness at the heart of him.

‘The boatmen think he might be Birmingham Joe – or Jack,’ offered Thornley, pointing to the youngest and most badly burned of the three stocky bodies. ‘But, I don’t know … the lads are the hardest to recognize. So many of them – and they come from … well, from all over,’ he trailed off.

The three bodies lying before them on the marble slabs had been sluiced down to remove some of the grey canal mud. It was a warm day and as the water drained off and the dampness evaporated they started to look more human. Hair began to spring away from heads and cheeks in a disconcerting manner and clothing to take on its proper hue. Best preferred bodies not to look so human.

‘Let’s start with the man you do know, shall we?’ he said briskly. ‘This is the captain, yes?’

Suddenly, tears welled into Thornley’s eyes. He was touched, Best suspected, by genuine pity at the sight of Baxton’s badly burned hands and smashed skull – and the heavy knowledge of the trouble the Grand Junction Canal, and thus himself, could be in.

Signalling young PC Smith to follow him with his notebook, Best snapped out, ‘Charles Baxton? Yes?’

Thornley pulled himself up and responded, ‘Yes. Charles Baxton. Been working for us for – for quite a few years. In his mid-thirties, I’d say, and he’s from Loughborough, in Leicestershire.’

‘Family?’

Thornton nodded sadly. ‘Yes. Wife and four children, too, they tell me.’

‘God rest his soul.’

‘Yes.’

‘And this one? What have you got?’

Alongside the remains of Charles Baxton was the body of a man in early middle-age. One side of his face was adorned with mutton-chop whiskers, the other was merely raw flesh.

Thornley glanced at his notebook. ‘The men say they think his name might be Tailford or Taylor. The captain of the Dee thinks he might be from Braunston or Brierley Hill.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘I’m not sure. Leicestershire, I think.’

‘Make sure you get all the details of these clothes,’ Best murmured to Smith. ‘This is fustian,’ he said, feeling the man’s dark jacket. ‘And don’t forget the buttons – whether they are brass or bone and so on. It’s specially important when their clothes are so similar.’ It was a lesson Best had learned from bitter experience.

PC John George Smith looked up from his notebook and nodded earnestly. He realized he probably knew more about clothes than the Sergeant ever would but he was grateful just to be there. Having been specially selected merely on the basis of his good handwriting and tolerable spelling, he was anxious to make the most of this opportunity.

When they came to the lad, the traffic manager could offer no suggestions apart from, ‘Maybe Birmingham Joe,’ again.

A silence fell on them as they stood before the woman’s body. Her hair was fair, her body young and slight but her face had been destroyed. Relatives attempting to identify her were in for a terrible shock, thought Best. As disfigured as she was there was still, somehow, an air of prettiness about her – or delicacy rather. Certainly her fair hair and white skin came as a marked contrast to the rest of the group who were all stocky, muscular and as dark as gypsies.

Best broke the silence by enquiring bluntly, ‘Baxton’s wife – or woman d’you think?’

‘Oh, no. Neither.’

‘How on earth can you be so sure?’

‘Women aren’t allowed on board.’

Best was incredulous. ‘You’re not telling me I haven’t seen dozens of women on these boats?’

‘Not these particular boats,’ corrected Thornley, his voice gaining confidence from the fact that he was at last able to speak with some authority. ‘You would have seen them on family-run boats, not on company boats like these. We only employ men, and no strangers are allowed on board – particularly women.’

His blind faith puzzled Best who had never heard of a rule which didn’t get broken. ‘Not beyond the realms of possibility that he would give his woman a ride, though, is it?’

Thornley reddened and shook his head. ‘You’ve seen the size of the cabins on these fly boats. The whole craft has to be especially narrow to get through the canals going north and with a full crew and such a heavy load …’

‘Wouldn’t be absolutely impossible, though, would it? I’ll grant you she may be a bit young to be his wife but she could be his daughter, though, or more likely …’

Thornley shook his head and said firmly, ‘One thing I do know, she couldn’t have been on board at City Road.’

‘All right, ‘ Best conceded. He felt sorry for the man. ‘But you don’t see what’s going on once they’re underway, do you?’ he added softly.

There was a strained silence. Thornley clearly did not want to make an enemy.

He was rescued by PC Smith who murmured quietly, ‘Seems quite good quality, this petticoat, sir?’

Best glanced at what once had been plain white petticoats prinked with pale blue ribbons, then switched his surprised gaze to the constable. ‘You experienced in these matters, Smith?’

John George blushed. ‘No, sir. Well, I mean, the lace and everything – seems quite expensive.’ He pointed to one of the silky blue ribbons, now recovering some of their sheen having been released from their muddy coating. ‘New, don’t you think, sir?’

Best continued to gaze bemusedly at the well-set-up Smith. Maybe the lad was merely very observant and thus a potential new local detective. God knows they needed some with some brains. Or maybe this handsome, blond, blue-eyed young lad just enjoyed fingering ladies underwear. Folks were funny, he had discovered since he joined the Force. Much funnier than he had ever imagined and rarely what they appeared to be.

‘My mother takes in washing, sir,’ Smith offered helpfully, ‘from quite well-to-do people. So, when I lived at home I saw a lot of clothes …’

The Sergeant contemplated this intelligence for a few moments before saying, ‘Well, young man, I think your mother should come in and give us her considered opinion on this underwear before we issue the description to the newspapers, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir,’ PC Smith gulped.

‘And …’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘No word about this to anyone.’

‘Oh no, sir. Of course not.’

‘As far as the newspapers are concerned we have no suspicion she might have been on one of the boats. She just happened to be in the canal when it was dragged. After all,’ he said, reasoning with himself, ‘she could just be a suicide. Plenty of people throw themselves into the canals. Might have gone in somewhere else and been dragged along by a boat. She could have been on the bridge when it exploded,’ he went on. ‘Doesn’t seem to be burned, does she?’ he asked suddenly.

Smith shook his head.

‘Be interesting to know if she is with child, though, wouldn’t it?’

Smith didn’t know whether he was supposed to respond to this so confined himself to a guarded nod, hoping that his mother was not supposed to divine this as well.

‘While we’re waiting for the good surgeons to reveal all, we’ll get some plain-clothes men out and about talking to the boatmen and the artistic folk of St John’s Wood – see if anyone is missing. But discreetly, mind you. You know what people are.’

PC Smith couldn’t believe his luck, ‘You mean I can come too, sir?’

Best grinned. ‘I do.’

The now quietly plain-clothed PC Smith in a modest, dark-grey suit, and the not-so-discreetly garbed Sergeant Best surveyed the scene of the explosion and had to agree that the Press were right. What had saved the pretty little Italianate villas and whitewashed Gothic houses from utter devastation was that they had been set well back from the Regent’s Canal deep cutting. Nonetheless, in such an oasis of peace and sylvan rural charm such an occurrence must have seemed doubly shocking.

Best knew that St John’s Wood was a mecca for artists and writers. He had read how James Tissot dispensed iced champagne to his wealthy patrons at his leafy Grove End villa. He had also seen paintings in which lightly clad languid and comely Grecian and Roman young ladies were draped against Doric columns or on tiger-skin rugs – all rumoured to have been posed in Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s spacious garden or in his remarkable oriental studio.

The idea of meeting such people was exciting and, PC Smith had to admit, the mildly Bohemian-looking Sergeant Best probably fitted into this background better than he did. But he still found it hard to get used to the way Best’s smile would suddenly flash and his eyes sparkle when he was amused or his interest had been aroused. Best seemed aware of the uneasiness his foreign-seeming vivacity engendered, for no sooner had his face lit up than he would suddenly switch off the lamp, letting his mouth harden a little – which, had he known it, only served to buttress the impression of quixotic foreignness.