Death in the East Read online

  ‘They say Devraha Swami did just that: prayed and meditated all night, and that during his prayers, he had a vision. It seems one of the Hindu gods, the god of medicine, or maybe cookery, gave him the recipe for the elixir – if not of life, then of something that could at least restore life to the damned such as us.

  ‘Anyway, by some miracle the poor bastard survived the night. But the next morning he was in a bad way. Devraha Swami left him with some villagers and told him he’d return soon. He went off into the hills and collected the ingredients as the god had instructed, then boiled them up while praying. He then gave the potion to the man to drink.’

  ‘And that cured him?’

  ‘No. It made him vomit up his guts. Did you really think it would be that simple? That night, though, the swami sat beside him and prayed, and once more, the man survived the night. Better still, the pangs had lessened. The next day, the swami repeated the ritual, leaving the man with villagers while he went off to gather the ingredients for his potion. Again the man drank it and again he was sick as a dog, but gradually, over the course of seven nights, he recovered.’

  It sounded promising. Stripped of the mumbo jumbo, it appeared the old monk had stumbled upon a herbal remedy which counteracted the withdrawal symptoms and, unlike kerdū pulp, banished them once and for all.

  ‘And he wasn’t tempted by the O again?’

  ‘Actually he was. A few months later, so the story goes, the poor sap returned. He’d fallen back into his old ways. He beseeched the swami to help him once more. This time, though, the old man refused. Told him to go take a running jump, so to speak.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely. This isn’t the Church of England, Wyndham, with its love and forgiveness. This is sensible, hard-nosed Hinduism. You mess up once, they’ll help you. You do it again, you’re on your own. You don’t believe me? Ask our friend Brother Shankar. He’ll tell you the same. The cure is a one-time thing. Once you’re clean, staying so is up to you. The monastery never takes you in twice.’

  I nodded slowly in appreciation. It stood to reason. There were a million opium fiends out there, most of them wishing they were free of the drug. Why should the monastery continue to waste its time on men who lapsed back into sin when there were so many others needing their help? And there was a valuable lesson there too, namely if the universe gave you a chance for redemption, you’d bloody well better take it, because second chances were rare and third chances were non-existent.

  It was a lesson I’d already learned the hard way.

  FIVE

  February 1905

  East London

  My first view of Bessie had been of her head poking out of the second-storey window of her ramshackle tenement, bold as the bust on the prow of a ship, and aiming curses at the crowd in the street below. She had the dark hair and sharp features of a Boudicca and the tongue of a dock worker, and she couldn’t have been much older than twenty.

  But when you saw her close-up, it was the eyes you really noticed: deep and brown and quick. You couldn’t read them, but one glance from them and you knew, you just knew, this girl was smart, smarter than most men at any rate, and that given half a chance she’d show you just how much smarter. She was pretty too, but the eyes: the spark within them and the window they afforded into the mind beyond, they made her special.

  She shared the lodgings at number 42 Fashion Street with a cat, a caged canary and a half-dozen other folk: all of them poor, and most of them behind with the rent.

  Bessie, though, was different. She worked as a live-out housekeeper for a man named Caine. He was a businessman, of sorts, involved in the trade of all manner of things to and from the four corners of the empire. He also owned a number of dwellings around Whitechapel, the usual decrepit, tumbledown flophouses, which he rented out by the room and packed to the rafters. Bessie was one of his tenants and she collected the rents from the rest of the house on his behalf, making a bit of extra cash on the side.

  The morning I first met her, she was overseeing the eviction of one of them, a chap called O’Keefe, whose rent arrears, in Bessie’s view had, like his soul, become irredeemable. And given his tendency to drink through every shilling that came his way, it was hard to disagree with her.

  O’Keefe of course didn’t quite see it that way. He claimed he was down on his luck, which was true, and had promised to make full restitution by the next Friday, which almost certainly wasn’t. Not being a fool, Bessie had thrown him out and he’d taken his complaint to the court of the street, raging at the injustice of it all. Bessie’s response had been to throw his belongings out of the window.

  I’d waded in to see what all the fuss was about and she’d spotted me, shining in my new uniform. ‘Wait there, Constable,’ she said, in a tone that left me little choice in the matter. The head disappeared and a minute later, the whole of her came striding out of the front door.

  ‘I want you to pack this useless bastard off on his merry way. ’E’s been evicted and now ’e’s causin’ a scene.’

  I couldn’t help but feel that at least part of the responsibility for any scene-causing had lain with her propelling his suitcase and half the contents of a wardrobe out of a window two floors up, but it seemed wise to keep my opinions to myself.

  In the end, I hadn’t had to do much at all. O’Keefe was hardly a stranger to the police. He’d spent more than the occasional night in the cells and had little appetite for another visit. After a few minutes more of muted protest, he’d moved on and the crowd melted away.

  For me and Bessie though, things only spiralled from there.

  I’d arrived in London a month earlier, wide-eyed and wet behind the ears. To the East End, where I had an uncle who was a magistrate. We’d met but once in my seventeen years, but kin is kin, and he’d obtained for me an opening with the Metropolitan Police.

  For a middle-class boy from the middle of nowhere, the East End was an education, and Bessie provided a lot of the lessons. The week after O’Keefe’s eviction, I saw her again, this time outside the police station in Leman Street. Maybe it was fate, or maybe she’d been waiting for me. Either way, the next thing I knew, I was buying her a gin in the Ten Bells.

  She was a little older than me and troublesomely pretty. Before long, I was calling on her, two or three times a week and, as they say, twice on Sundays.

  For the next few months I was happy. God knows what she saw in me. Maybe it was innocence. More likely it was the uniform. My uncle, however, when word reached him, was in no doubt: what she saw was the chance for social improvement. Invoking the name of the Lord, and of my dear departed father, and stressing the shame I was heaping on both, he made it clear that my prospects were dependent upon his patronage, and that those auspices were in turn dependent upon my ending things with Bessie.

  Of course I argued my position, raged like any young fool who believes he’s in love would, pointed out those of Bessie’s virtues which might bolster my case: her honesty, her intelligence (and kept quiet on those other qualities which, in my uncle’s eyes, might damn her straight to hell). I offered to introduce her, bring her round for tea so that my uncle might see that she wasn’t some scheming Jezebel … and yet it all counted for naught. My every assertion and contention dashed on the rock of his intransigence, as they were always destined to.

  I spent the next week in personal purgatory. Finally I did as he commanded. I told myself I had no choice. The shameful truth – that it was nothing but the betrayal of Bessie, and of my feelings for her – I buried deep down. In the aftermath, my guilt was tempered with a sense of relief. The end of my relationship with Bessie meant the continuation of my prospects. Love sacrificed on the altar of expediency. I expected Bessie would see it as treachery. My uncle saw it as plain common sense.

  I ended it. In the kitchen of the house in Fashion Street, on a bright, grim September day. I told her that our relationship was inappropriate. She took it without tears or lamentation, without the gnashing of teeth o
r the smashing of crockery. She had too much self-respect to put on such a show for the neighbours. Instead she reacted with a cold, caustic dignity. And a month later she married Tom Drummond.

  There was no sign of Whitelaw, Bessie, or for that matter anyone else in Grey Eagle Street. I took that to be a good sign. Had she been seriously hurt, there would have been people here: a constable at least, and the obligatory gawkers.

  I considered what to do next. I should have returned to the station house in Leman Street, but the thought of going there having let both attackers escape didn’t exactly fill me with joy. Besides, assuming I was correct and that Bessie hadn’t been badly injured, the chances were Whitelaw would have escorted her home, back to 42 Fashion Street.

  I made my way there and rapped on the door.

  The fall of heavy footsteps emanated from the corridor beyond, then a thin slash of yellow light pierced the darkness.

  ‘Yes?’

  The voice was a growl.

  ‘Police,’ I said. ‘Open up.’

  The door opened wider. In front of me stood the considerable frame of Tom Drummond: minor thug, waster and Bessie’s husband. Most people around here knew Tom Drummond, the police certainly did. A docker by trade and a drinker by nature, he was the sort of chap who fancied himself as a leader of men, but whose men had had the good sense to desert. Steady work was never easy to come by in Whitechapel, and Drummond, like thousands of others, often found himself scrabbling around in search of piecemeal day jobs. When, more often than not, he didn’t find it, he’d make his way to the Bleeding Hart public house on the Bethnal Green Road and drink himself happy on his wife’s money.

  Drummond’s tired shirt was open at the neck, its sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His trousers, patched on one knee and held up by a pair of greying, fraying braces, appeared to have escaped from a suit that should have been put out of its misery several years ago.

  ‘What do you want?’

  You could normally smell the alcohol on him from a distance of twenty feet, but tonight it seemed he’d abstained. Maybe he was turning over a new leaf. Or maybe he’d just run out of cash.

  ‘Your wife,’ I said. ‘Has she been brought back here?’

  He gestured behind him with a nod. ‘She’s upstairs. One of your lot brought her in ten minutes ago. He’s up there with her.’

  I pushed my way past him into the hallway beyond. The air smelled lived-in, streaked through with the scent of too many human bodies. A door opened down the corridor and an old, creased-faced woman peered out.

  ‘Close the door and mind your own business, you old cow!’ roared Drummond. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. Get back to looking after your old man.’

  I caught the look of shock on the woman’s desiccated face before it disappeared and the door clicked shut.

  ‘Bloody Yids,’ said Drummond by way of explanation, as he led me to the stairs.

  Whitelaw was standing in the doorway on the first floor. He turned at the sound of us ascending the stairs, coming out of the room and closing the door. He seemed surprised to see me.

  ‘Wyndham? What are you doing here?’

  It wasn’t a question that needed an answer, and when none was forthcoming, he turned to Drummond behind me.

  ‘You,’ he barked. ‘Get downstairs, put the kettle on the stove and make your wife a cuppa.’

  Drummond’s face flushed. I guessed he wanted to protest, possibly with his fists, but his brain quickly worked out that taking a swing at a copper or two could land him in a cell … or a hospital. In the end he thought better of it and slunk back down the stairs. Whitelaw turned to me.

  ‘Did you get ’em?’

  I shook my head. ‘They split up. I chased one onto the railway lines, but he gave me the slip at Shoreditch.’

  I expected a dressing-down, but after a moment the irritation on his face cleared to an expression of resigned equanimity.

  ‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ he sighed. ‘Your woman in there isn’t saying much of anything.’

  ‘Bessie’s not hurt then?’

  It was a mistake to use her name, and I realised as soon as I’d said it.

  ‘You know her then?’

  ‘I’ve seen her around.’

  ‘Anyway, she’s fine. A few bruises, but no bones broken. I daresay she’s had worse from that husband of hers.’

  ‘She know who attacked her?’

  ‘That’s just the thing.’ Whitelaw lowered his voice. ‘She ain’t sayin’ a word.’ He paused. A thin smile played on his lips. ‘But maybe she’ll speak to a handsome young copper like you.’

  I knocked and entered with Whitelaw a step behind. Shadows danced on the bare walls as the weak light from a solitary candle did battle with the darkness and flickered in the breeze from the door.

  In the centre of the room, beneath blankets and on an old brass bed that sagged halfway to the floor, lay Bessie, her hair still damp, and with one arm over her eyes. In a corner, hanging from a stand and covered with a black rag, was the canary’s cage, just as I remembered it. I wondered where the cat was, but then cats came and went of their own accord. They knew better than to conform to the ways of men.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Mrs Drummond,’ I said, martialling all the officiousness of my office.

  The hand moved to reveal swelling around her cheekbone. She raised her head and looked over. For a second, I feared she was about to use my Christian name. Whitelaw would surely pick up on something like that.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m Constable Wyndham,’ I said, moving into the light so that she might get a better view. ‘You might remember I assisted you when you needed rid of a tenant, last year.’

  The statement was for Whitelaw’s benefit.

  She nodded slowly. ‘I remember.’

  Her voice was hoarse and subdued.

  ‘Do you know who attacked you?’

  ‘I didn’t see his face.’

  ‘Then tell us what happened.’

  Bessie lay back. Behind me, the floor creaked as Whitelaw shifted his weight.

  ‘I was coming back from work … on me way home when … I didn’t rightly see what happened. A man came up from behind an’ grabbed me round the throat. I tried to scream but he held his hand over me mouth. So I bit him. Then another bloke appeared an’ the next thing I know, I’m lyin’ on the ground, screamin’ bloody murder, an’ the two of ’em are fightin’. Then you two fine gentleman show up blowin’ yer whistles an’ come runnin’ to me rescue.’

  ‘The one who attacked you,’ said Whitelaw. ‘What did he want?’

  She gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘What they always want, I ’spect.’

  ‘And the man who came to help you?’ I asked. ‘Did you get a look at him?’

  ‘No,’ she said definitively. ‘Like I said, I was too busy screamin’.’

  ‘Quite a stroke of luck for you that a good Samaritan just happened to be passing when you needed him?’ said Whitelaw.

  ‘More importantly,’ I said, ‘why did he run off when we got there?’

  The candle flickered once more.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t want gettin’ involved with the police?’ she said. ‘Maybe he’s bin in trouble with you boys before? Can’t say as I blame him. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of honest coppers roun’ here … An’ still have a coupla fingers left over.’

  The last comment seemed to touch a nerve with Whitelaw.

  ‘So a man collars you in the street, and you can’t tell us anything about him. Another man just happens to come to your rescue and then scarpers and you can’t tell us anything about him either?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said.

  I tried a different approach. ‘Do you normally come back from work so late?’

  ‘I work the hours my employer tells me to.’

  ‘And who might your employer be?’ asked Whitelaw.

  ‘Jeremiah Caine.’

  I felt Whitelaw stiffen at the mention of t
he name. Caine was a man of some stature in these parts, which is to say he was rich, happy to throw his money around and not particularly scrupulous in whose direction he threw it, just so long as it achieved his ends. They said he harboured ambitions to become a Member of Parliament. His pockets were certainly deep enough, and, rumour had it, those pockets contained a prize collection of coppers, from common beat constables to detective inspectors.

  ‘I’m his ’ousekeeper.’

  ‘She’s his rent collector too,’ I added.

  ‘And why shouldn’t I be?’

  A note of defiance crept into her voice. Or was it wounded pride?

  If Bessie Drummond had come into this world with the twin misfortunes of her sex and lowly birth, then the gift of intelligence had only made matters worse. Where a man, born into similar circumstances, might find in his intellect an opportunity for advancement or improvement, in a woman it led mostly to suspicion, and sometimes a smack in the mouth.

  Beside me, Whitelaw had fallen mute. Mention of Jeremiah Caine seemed to have sucked the wind out of his sails.

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t recognise either of them?’ I asked.

  Bessie gave me a look of towering indifference – a look to be bestowed on the likes of a street sweeper or a bus conductor – as though the time we’d spent together had never transpired, banished from memory and from the record. It stabbed at my heart, but I could hardly blame her for that.

  ‘It was dark an’ it was wet, an’ a man had just attacked an’ thrown me to the ground,’ she said acidly. ‘You’ll forgive me for not having paid more attention to what either he or the other one looked like.’

  ‘Easy now, dear,’ said Whitelaw. ‘The constable’s only trying to help you.’

  Bessie stared at him.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if my words were inappropriate.’

  ‘What did she mean by that?’ Whitelaw asked as we descended the stairs.