Burton & Swinburne 1 - The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack (26 page)

“Ah-ha! You intend a spot of clue-hunting, like Edgar Allan Poe's detective, Auguste Dupin?”

“Yes, something like that.”

While crossing Waterloo Bridge, their conveyance broke down and they had to hail a second vehicle. This-a horse-drawn “growler”-took them the rest of the way across the river, past the railway station, onward down London Road and New Kent Road, and into the tangled streets of Elephant and Castle.

They stopped and disembarked on the corner of William De Montmorency Close. Burton paid the fare and shut Swinburne up when the poet started to complain.

“Never mind whether it's a shilling or not,” he said. “Look over there! Something's up!”

Swinburne followed his friend's gaze and saw, farther along the road, a crowd of people gathered around a redbrick terraced house.

“Is that our place?”

“I fear so.”

They approached the throng and glimpsed police helmets among the hats, bonnets, and caps. Burton pushed through and tapped one of the uniformed men on the shoulder.

“What's the story, Constable?” he asked.

The man turned and gave him a doubtful look. Burton was dressed and spoke like a gentleman but had the appearance of a battered pugilist.

“And who might you be, sir?” he asked, haughtily.

“Sir Richard Burton. Here's my authorisation.”

A voice in the crowd exclaimed: “Blimey! They've sent a `Sir.' Now we're gettin' somewhere! You'll collar the bugger what done away with the nipper, won't you, yet lordship? We want to see the devil crapped, we does!”

The crowd cheered.

“Crapped?” whispered Swinburne.

“Hanged,” translated Burton.

“I'm not sure about this, sir,” said the constable, hesitantly.

“Who's your superior?” demanded Burton. “Take it and show it to him.”

The policeman looked again at the paper Burton had handed to him. He nodded. “Just a tick, sir.” He left them and entered the house.

“Murdered!” said the man in the crowd. “And not even ten years old.”

“A little angel, 'e was,” came a woman's voice.

“Aye, wouldn't say boo to a goose,” agreed another.

“Fancy killin' a nipper!”

“It ain't English!”

“It's one o' them bleedin' foreigners what done it, I'll lay money on it!”

The constable appeared in the doorway and indicated that Burton should enter the premises. The king's agent, with Swinburne in his wake, pushed through the onlookers and stepped into the house.

“Upstairs, sir,” said the policeman, handing back the document.

They ascended. There were three bedrooms. A dead child lay in one.

A man stepped forward with outstretched hand. He was small and slightly built but with a wiry strength about him. His brown moustache was flamboyantly wide, waxed, and curled upward at the ends. His lacquered hair was parted in the middle. He possessed grey eyes, with a monocle clenched in the right.

“Thomas Manfred Honesty,” he said. “Detective Inspector.”

“A reassuring surname for a policeman,” observed Swinburne.

Burton shook the man's hand. So this was Trounce's erstwhile tormentor!

“I'm Captain Burton, acting on behalf of His Majesty. This is Algernon Swinburne. He's assisting me.”

Honesty looked askance at Swinburne, who fluttered his eyelashes.

“Ahem! Yes, well, the boy,” the detective spluttered, waving his hand toward the prone figure. “William Tupper. Orphan. Age uncertain. Ten years? Chimney sweep. Damn shame. Pitiful really.”

Burton stepped over to the corpse and crouched beside it. The boy was tiny, even for his age. His thin neck was covered in blood; its source, a small hole at the base of the chin.

“Stiletto,” offered Honesty. “In. Up. Pierced the brain.”

“No,” countered Burton. “A swordstick, such as gentlemen carry. A stiletto blade typically has a triangular, round, square, or diamond cross section without sharpened edges, whereas the rapier style of blade, which is most often used in swordsticks, is either diamond shaped in cross section, with or without fluting, or a flattened hexagonal; in either case, with sharpened edges. Look closely at this wound, Inspector-you can see it was made by a hexagonal blade which cut as well as pierced as it entered.”

Honesty dropped to his knees and leaned close to the boy, adjusting his monocle and peering at the grisly hole above the larynx, his nose just inches from the wound. He whistled.

“Agreed. Rapier. But swordstick? Why?”

“In this day and age, can a man walk down the street in possession of a sword without being accosted by the police? No. It had to be disguised.”

“Point taken. Sorry. Pun unintended. And this?”

He indicated the boy's forehead. There was a small bruise between the eyes, with a pinprick in its centre.

“I don't know,” answered Burton, “but it looks like the mark left by a syringe.”

“Syringe? An injection?”

“Or an extraction.”

The Yard man stood and scratched his chin. “Syringe first? Swordstick second?”

“No, Detective Inspector, the syringe mark is a few days old. Look at the yellowing of the bruise.”

“Hmm. Unconnected then. Though odd. Very odd. And the motive?”

“I was on my way here to question the boy. I think he was killed to stop him talking. Right now, I'm afraid I can't tell you any more than that, but I'm working in harness with your colleague, Detective Inspector Trounce, and will report to him. The two of you can then confer over this dastardly affair.”

Honesty sniffed. “Pouncer Trounce. Good man. Has imagination. Too much. You can't tell me more?”

“I have more facts to gather before I can piece together the full story and present a report.”

“I want to be involved. Don't like this. Children murdered. It's wrong!”

“When the occasion arises, I'll be sure to let you get a shot at those responsible, Detective Inspector Honesty.”

“Good. Better come downstairs. Another fact for you.”

“Downstairs?”

“The kitchen,” said Honesty. “Mr. and Mrs. Payne. Householders. Let the room. How could the boy afford it?”

“The League of Chimney Sweeps paid his rent,” explained Burton. “It's an admirable organisation.”

He and Swinburne followed the Yard man down the stairs. The poet looked around eagerly, soaking in the atmosphere of the murder scene, the raw emotion of it.

They trooped through the hall and into the small, narrow kitchen, which smelled of boiled cabbage and animal fat.

“A moment, Constable Krishnamurthy,” said Honesty to a policeman.

“Yes, sir,” came the response, and the uniformed man stepped out of the room, revealing, behind him, the figures of Mr. and Mrs. Payne.

They were frozen in midmovement: the old woman standing, pouring tea, which had overflowed the cup and saucer, pooled across the kitchen table, and dribbled to the floor; the man in midstep, his right hand holding a sandwich raised to his mouth. They were both looking toward a door that opened onto a small backyard.

Burton examined them for a moment, staring into their motionless eyes.

“Transfixed by psychic magnetism,” he said.

“I see,” responded Detective Inspector Honesty. “Mental domination.”

“Yes. I'll bring them out of it.”

For the next few minutes, the Yard man looked on in bafflement as Burton chanted and waved his hands about in front of the immobilised couple. Slowly, blinking in confusion, they regained their wits and were led into the parlour, where they sank into chairs. They remembered a knock at their back door, a man with white skin, white hair, and pink eyes-and nothing else.

When Honesty revealed to them the fate of their young lodger, the woman became hysterical, the man spat expletives into the room, and Burton and Swinburne left.

They passed through the crowd outside, ignoring the questions shouted at them, and swiftly walked away.

“You should have foreseen this, Richard,” advised the poet, his voice uncharacteristically grim. “Oliphant read your notes.”

“I know. Confounded fool that I am!” cursed Burton. “I never considered that the bastard would come here first and do away with the poor little soul. How the hell could I have overlooked the possibility? I'll never forgive myself!”

“Don't be an idiot. You overlooked it because infanticide is unimaginable,” offered Swinburne. “No one normal would consider such an option. But Richard, when I say you should have foreseen it, I don't mean to censure you because you didn't; I mean to suggest that this new role of yours requires a different way of thinking. You have to attune that phenomenal intellect of yours to deviant possibilities like this.”

“You're right, Algy, but I must confess: I'm doubting myself. First Monty Penniforth, now Billy Tupper; how many more innocent lives are to be lost due to my negligence?”

Swinburne suddenly hopped up and down and screeched: “For crying out loud, Richard, you didn't gut the cabbie or stab the child! Others did-and you have to stop them before they commit further atrocities!”

“All right! All right! Come on, let's check the missing boys' rooms. Maybe we can get some idea of why they weren't returned like Tupper and the others.”

The second address supplied to Burton by the Beetle was less than half a mile away, on Tainted Row, which, despite its name, was a fairly respectable street of once handsome Georgian houses, now mostly divided into flats and individual chambers. Their destination was a three-storey residence that stood on the corner. Its various rooms were rented out by the landlord, Ebenezer Smike, to the League of Chimney Sweeps.

Smike was a careworn-looking individual, with a sallow complexion and uneven eyes, gaunt cheeks, and a long asymmetrical jaw, all of which gave his face a peculiarly bent quality. The fact that he regarded his visitors from the corners of his eyes, with his face slightly turned away, accentuated this impression. He wore a long threadbare dressing gown of a bilious green hue, and beneath it a pale yellow shirt, black and white chequered trousers, and a pair of worn tartan slippers.

“The League is still paying rent on the rooms,” he explained as he led them up the stairs, “though they stand empty. I ain't touched 'em. Here you are.”

He opened a door, revealing a small chamber containing a bed, a table and chair, a wardrobe, and a water basin.

Burton stepped in and surveyed the room; looked at the clothes in the wardrobe-a shirt, a waistcoat, a pair of trousers, and a pair of soft shoesand at the comb, tin soldier, and bag of bull's-eyes on the table. A sootstained flannel hung over the edge of the basin. A well-thumbed penny dreadful-Robin Hood's Peril--lay on the bed.

“This was Benny Whymper's room,” said Smike.

Two small boys had appeared and were standing behind the landlord, watching the proceedings.

Swinburne smiled at them and asked, “Are you lads sweeps, too?”

“Yes, Mister,” said one.

The next room, Jacob Spratt's, was almost identical to the first. A pair of slippers poked out from beneath the bed; a mirror leaned against the wall over the washbasin; a tattered notepad containing childish drawings, mainly of locomotives, lay on the table.

Swinburne examined himself in the mirror and groaned.

“I've modelled for the Pre-Raphaelites,” he muttered, “but I don't think they'd want to paint me today. I look awful!”

The final room, which had belonged to Rajish Thakarta, contained a great many toy soldiers which the boy had cleverly carved from pieces of wood. His penknife was on the table, alongside a tattered book embossed with Sanskrit lettering. Burton recognised it as the Bhagavad Gita.

The wardrobe contained rather more clothes than those in the other rooms, including a small sherwani, the long coatlike garment common to South Asia. The boy obviously clung to his roots, though an orphan and far from his homeland.

As they moved back into the hallway, Burton stopped and looked thoughtful. He glanced at Swinburne, then at the two little chimney sweeps who were sheltering shyly behind Ebenezer Smike, then went into each of the three rooms once again and looked at the footwear in each.

He came out and suddenly squatted on his haunches and smiled at the two boys. Swinburne grinned, amazed at the way his friend's habitually ferocious expression seemed to melt away.

“I have two shillings, lads,” said Burton. “Would you like to earn them-a bob apiece?”

“Not half?” they both hollered enthusiastically. They pushed past their landlord to stand before him.

“What do we have to do, Mister?” asked one.

“What's your name, son?”

“Charlie, sir; this is Ned.”

“Well, Charlie and Ned, all you have to do is answer a question.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Were the three boys who occupied these rooms tall?”

“Oh yes, sir!” they chorused.

“Regular giants, they were!” cried the youngster named Ned.

Burton nodded. “So older, eh?”

“No, not a bit of it! Just big 'uns, is all, sir!”

“Good lads,” encouraged Burton. “Now, I have another question. If you think carefully about it and answer it truthfully, I'll add a sixpence each.”

“Crumbs!” breathed Charlie.

“First of all,” said Burton, “do you know the other boys who've disappeared recently?”

“Yes, Mister.”

“I'm aware that most of them have come back. It's the ones who haven't that I want to ask you about.”

“That'll be Jacob, Raj, and Benny, and Paul Kelly, Ed Trip, Mickey Smith, Lofty Sanderson, Thicko Chris Williams, and Ben Prentiss,” said Charlie, counting the names off on his fingers.

“And Aubrey Baxter,” added Ned. “He was snatched the other night.”

“And those boys,” said Burton, “were they tall, too?”

“I say! They certainly were!” cried Charlie excitedly. “They're some o' the tallest sweeps in the League, ain't that right, Ned?”

“Excepting Aubrey, what's a nipper like us, yes; beanpoles, the lot of em!” responded Ned.

“Thank you, boys-here are your wages.”

He placed the coins in their eager little hands and rose to his feet, turning to Ebenezer Smike as the children scampered away as if afraid he might change his mind and demand the money back.

“Thank you, Mr. Smike. We won't take up any more of your time.”