The Detective and the Devil (5 page)

He found the right door and told the vicious, ancient landlord within that he must speak with Mr Beavis.

‘Beavis? You’ll get no benefit, speaking to Beavis,’ came the mysterious reply. He was shown, with surly reluctance, to a flight of stairs which looked like a line of dominoes
falling down a steep hill. He made his way upwards, gingerly.

The door on which he knocked was opened by a girl whose face was so beautiful that it seemed to light up the gloomy place. Her hair was finely cut, her skin was clean and clear, and her eyes
held none of the wrenching despair of the people he’d seen outside in the street.

‘Miss Beavis?’ he asked.

Her eyes widened, and she nodded, carefully.

‘Miss Amy Beavis? Servant to Mrs Emma Johnson?’

Her hand came to her mouth, and she stared at him, terrified. It was answer enough.

‘My name is Horton, Miss Beavis. I am a constable of Wapping. I am sent to ask you some questions about the Johnsons and their terrible fate.’

The door swung wide, and an ancient was revealed, dressed in grey underthings and swinging what looked like a poker.

‘I see you! I see you!’

‘Sir, please, I only . . .’

‘Come at last, have you? Come at last? Where is it?’

The old man shoved past him out into the hallway, and looked up.

‘Roof still there. Roof still there.’

He turned back to Horton.

‘Where’s your machine, Jacques? Where’s your bloody machine?’

The girl was beside him now, rubbing his shoulders while he glared at Horton.

‘Come now, father. Come now. This is not Jacques.’

Her voice was soft, precise, well spoken, purest silk to the East End rasp of her father.

‘Not Jacques? Of course it’s Jacques! He’s come for me, and he’s not having me.’

‘Sir, my name is Horton, not . . .’

‘Barbarian!’

This with a shout and a lunge, accompanied by a shriek from the girl, but the lunge was in truth more like a fall. The poker went to the ground as the old fellow collapsed into Horton’s
arms. He was as light as new-baked bread, and smelled like ancient dried leaves.

‘Please, sir,’ the girl said. ‘Please. Bring him within.’

‘Bloody Jacques. Come to bloody take me away. Bloody Jacques,’ muttered the old fellow, but he already seemed half-asleep.

Horton took the man under the armpits and half-dragged, half-lifted him into the room. Within, there was a bed next to a fireplace, a single armchair, a dresser with some plates and bowls upon
it, a small table with a pile of books. A cheap and ancient etching hung on the wall, which must once have depicted St Paul’s but was now little more than a round blur inside a fog.

‘Please sir. On the bed.’

Horton took the old man over to the bed, and laid him down upon it. Once horizontal, the old man’s eyes opened again, and his hands reached for Horton’s throat.

‘Jacques! You’re not taking me in your machine! No, Jacques! I’ll bloody kill ye!’

Horton felt a scratch as one crooked finger flicked over the skin of his neck, but then the man’s eyes closed once again, his hands fell back and his head lolled into the foul-smelling
pillow. He began to snore. The girl sat in the armchair and put her head into her hands.

‘Oh, forgive him, sir! Forgive him! He is overtaken by strange fancies.’

‘Pray, do not concern yourself, miss. There is no damage done. But who is this Jacques? And what is his machine?’

Her hands dropped to her lap, and she looked at her father. It was an awful look in one so young: full of the desperate love of the mother, but infected by the helpless despair of the young
burdened with impossible responsibility.

‘They are fancies, sir. I know not where they come from. He believes a Frenchman named Jacques is to come for him in a flying machine. When he comes, the roof will fly away, and he will be
taken into the sky, leaving me behind.’

‘Should he not perhaps be seen by a mad-doctor? Perhaps at Bethlem . . .’

‘Oh no! No, sir! Not that place!’

‘It is not so bad, now it has moved to new premises.’

‘You can have had no experience of madhouses, sir.’

She was wrong in that, but Horton said nothing of it.

‘Miss Beavis, I wish to speak to you of the Johnsons. I understand you were a domestic servant to them.’

She looked away from her father and directly at him. She really was astonishingly beautiful. Her eyes were an Irish green, and her dark hair, worn loose this morning, had more lustre in it than
anything else in this benighted building.

‘What am I going to do?’ She glanced at her snoring father, and then back at Horton. He might, if she’d asked just then, have offered to take her in, so gloomy was her pretty
countenance.

‘Miss Beavis, I understand your situation is poor. But I must seek to . . .’

‘They were all dead when I found them.’ She spoke without looking at him; those green eyes were fixed on something not in the room, not even in the moment. Perhaps she could hear the
beat of Jacques’ flying machine. ‘They had been away for some days. Mrs Johnson had taken to going away. She liked to rent rooms by the sea. Said it did her complexion the power of
good.’

‘They did not take you with them?’

‘No, because Mr Johnson usually stayed in town. He worked, you see.’

‘At the East India Company?’

‘Yes. He worked hard, did Mr Johnson. Always bringing home files and papers and suchlike.’

‘So Mrs Johnson and her daughter would take the sea air regularly?’

‘Oh yes. Four or five times a year.’

‘How long have you worked for them?’

‘Three years. I was their first servant. Mrs Johnson said she was very proud of me. Bought me clothes. Even paid for me to have a tutor.’ She looked at him directly now. ‘I
didn’t always speak like this. Mrs Johnson said it was proper for a lady like her to have a well-spoken servant. And she wanted me to be a friend to Jane. Oh God. Jane.’

She cried.

‘She was . . . he had . . . oh my God. Oh my God.’

Horton moved towards her and squatted on his haunches in front of her. She grasped his hand, as if it were a rope and she were floundering in the sea.

‘When did Mrs Johnson leave?’

‘Two weeks ago. She said Mr Johnson would be staying, but then he told me he’d decided to take some time off, and was going with her.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two days after she left.’

‘Mr Johnson told you himself that he was going?’

‘Yes. I was at the house. I was cleaning. It was the middle of the day. He came into the house, and packed a bag of clothes. He said Jane had taken sick, and he was leaving immediately. I
was to keep an eye on the house, he said, and clean it every third day, prior to their return.’

‘So when you visited yesterday, that was the first visit for three days? And, what, your third or fourth visit since Mr Johnson left?’

‘Yes, sir. My fourth, I believe.’

‘Were you concerned by Johnson’s news?’

‘Concerned for Jane? Yes.’

‘Did Mr Johnson also seem concerned?’

‘Yes. He seemed greatly disturbed.’

‘Was he alone? When he visited you?’

‘He was alone when he came into the house. But when I saw him to the door, another man was waiting. In a carriage.’

‘Did you recognise him?’

‘No.’

‘Did he introduce this man?’

‘No. I only caught a glimpse of him in the carriage. Then Mr Johnson climbed in, and they left.’

‘Did they have any other family? Mr and Mrs Johnson?’

‘Mr Johnson, no. At least, none that he ever told me of. Mrs Johnson had a sister down in Putney. She spoke of her often, but never visited, as far as I know.’

‘Did Mr Johnson speak of his work?’

‘No. Never.’

‘Did you notice if anything was missing from the house?’

He noticed something in her eyes when he asked this, something that hadn’t been there before. A different kind of fear. A watchful variety.

‘No, sir. I do not believe anything was missing.’

Had she taken something from the house? She would not be the first servant girl to do so. He wondered what she had been paid by Mrs Johnson. Then he thought of her in that house, alone with the
dead, terrified and upset, and despised himself for his suspicions. But those suspicions, once winked into existence, would not quite subside.

‘Was anything disturbed?’

She breathed in, sharply.

‘My apologies. Of course things were disturbed. I mean, in those rooms where there was no violence. Did you notice a disturbance?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Did Johnson keep a safe? Anywhere he might have locked up valuables?’

‘No, sir. He had a desk in his bedroom. A bureau, with a lock on it.’

‘It was closed when you attended?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the key?’

‘I know not, sir.’

She looked again at her father, and seemed very small indeed in the ancient armchair. But her look seemed oddly mannered, as if intended as a distraction.

‘What am I to do now, sir?’

She turned those green eyes on him. He noted, mournfully, how much those eyes and that face would be worth to a Covent Garden panderer, and feared for her.

‘If I can help, I will,’ he said, knowing how little the words were worth.

There was still a substantial crowd outside the Johnson house, and it would only swell. In two days the coroner would bring his inquest jury to look at the house and the
bodies, just as he had done with the Marr family. They would be marched down the Highway between crowds, and it may yet prove necessary for the Bow Street magistrates to send a few uniformed
patrolmen to calm the crowds with their presence. Horton knew how ceremonial such a show would be. Bow Street patrolmen did not wear uniforms other than to intimidate the public.

The Shadwell magistrates had improved one thing since the first Highway murders – there were now officers in front of the house to stop people going in to gawp. The poor dead Marrs had
been laid out in their house like fish down at Billingsgate, for all and sundry to come and view. The Johnsons had, at least, been spared that posthumous humiliation.

The house in daylight was clean and peaceful. The shutters were up for the day’s business on the shops either side. He could see, for the first time, that one was a fishmonger which seemed
to sell mainly oysters, while on the other side of Johnson’s house was that odd confection of a place with the animals, which turned out to be a kind of chandlery which also contained a
menagerie of creatures for sale. A marmoset monkey sat in a cage in its window looking forlorn in an ugly green outfit. It screamed at Horton as he walked up, and there were other growls and
screeches from within.

He went into both shops and asked if they had heard or seen anything suspicious on the day before the killings. Neither had. The wife of the fishmonger confirmed what Markland had said about the
family, while the old Irishman who ran the chandlery-cum-menagerie said he’d argued with Mrs Johnson many times about the noise from his shop. When a carriage pulled up outside the shop,
almost blocking the Highway as it dropped off even more squawking creatures, Horton imagined being the shop’s neighbour. ‘I don’t go outside much,’ said the proprietor.
I’m not surprised
, thought Horton.
You’d get the rough side of most of your neighbours’ tongues.
He went to the rear of number 37, as he had the previous
night.

He had to do some persuading of his own to get through the door, though he suspected the constable knew perfectly well who he was and, like so many of his fellows, resented him for what he did
and how he did it.

The bodies had gone from the kitchen and the parlour – Salter must already have arranged for their transport to the Wapping office. There was still a lingering humanity to the place. Mrs
Johnson had been a house-proud woman – the rugs looked like new, emphasising the total absence of any blood to stain the fabric or the wood beneath.

Flies had made themselves known. It took a minute or two for the low buzzing to become obscene, and Horton pondered opening a window to let in some air. But the only window was facing the
street, where onlookers waited. They would only be persuaded to climb inside if he gave them an entrance.

So. A quiet scene, it had been: the daughter sitting in the chair, the mother . . . what? Was she in here already, or was she brought in here? The girl was tied to a chair, was killed. The
mother was driven into the fire – so was she alive when her daughter was killed? Did the killer hold her face into the flame while she struggled? Did he make the daughter watch?

He went to the door into the hall. The only rooms downstairs were the parlour and the kitchen. He stepped out into the hall, and walked upstairs. There, he went first into the smallest bedroom:
that of the daughter. He checked under the bed, looked in a drawer or two, opened the wardrobe. Jane Johnson had few things, but they were all well looked after and of decent quality. She had
inherited a care for things and an eye for them from her mother.

He went into the main bedroom. He had given instructions to Markland that nothing be removed from the house, but had little confidence that this will have been observed. Anything of obvious
value would have been liable to being picked up by a poorly paid parish constable. In this, Shadwell’s parish constables were no different to anyone else’s.

He sat on the bed, looked around the room: the bed, the cupboard, a little set of drawers, an elegant and unexpectedly expensive dressing table.

He got up and looked at the table. It was a very fine piece of furniture, even to his untutored eye. There were bottles of perfume upon it, and he took the most expensive-looking one and
inspected it, but it said little about Mrs Johnson beyond its obvious value. Various mysterious ointments and waxy-looking substances were hidden in containers which may or may not have been made
of ivory and ebony – expensive again, but all built for uses which Horton could not understand. The dressing table occupied a female world in which he was an ignorant tourist. But it seemed
Markland’s constables had behaved themselves; he would have expected the items on this table to have found their way into pockets by now.