The Incendiary's Trail (15 page)

‘Wait. Am I to understand that I could be under obligation to the police as long as this case remains unsolved?’

‘We are hoping that your role will lead to its rapid resolution. If you wish to be free, you will do all in your power to bring the perpetrator or perpetrators – whomever they may be
– to justice as quickly as you can.’

‘I see I have little choice. You will have considered, of course, the possibility that I will simply flee my obligation and disappear?’

‘Naturally. But the cost to you would be too great. You would have to flee this city. You would lose your home and possibly your wealth. You would be a fugitive. Alternatively, you could
do what is required of you and consider it little more than a minor irritant. Your letter from Sir Richard is your guarantee.’

‘And my alternative is to be tried for crimes for which there is no strong evidence. Perhaps I should wait for justice to take its course.’

‘I believe I can promise you that you will be found guilty,’ said Inspector Newsome. ‘This choice of action is your only one.’

‘It seems I am compelled to agree.’

And so – to expedite the story – the man calling himself Noah Dyson was released from Giltspur-street. He returned home in the company of Mr Bryant (Inspector Newsome’s man)
and Benjamin; he changed his clothes, and within half an hour was in the eastern districts in pursuit of the scarred man and his own eventual freedom. Though he did not know Mr Bradford from his
description, he did indeed know whom to ask.

Let us not imagine, however, that he was at all trusted by the police officers merely because they held a noose above his neck. Mr Bryant stayed with Benjamin until Noah returned, and other more
covert measures had been put in place to ensure complicity in the agreement.

TWELVE

I need hardly describe the public phrensy that attended the capture and trial of Mr Bradford towards the end of that week. Sir Richard Mayne had caught his murderer, and the
Metropolitan Police enthusiastically released a version of the story so that the newspapers could glut themselves on the already infamous case. Sketches of the bully – looking variously
brutal and bemused depending on the artist – appeared in
the Times
, the
Illustrated London News
and the
Observer
, not to mention the broadsheets being sold by patterers
on every street corner of the metropolis. As might be expected, many of these scandal-mongering sheets emphasized sensation at the expense of verity. The following – by my own hand, and
written for the common taste – is a finer example than many of the less literate specimens abroad at that time:

We know the facts of the case to be somewhat different. After Noah had delivered the bully to a watch house, Inspector Newsome had been notified and had arranged to interrogate
the prisoner. Mr Williamson had also been summoned, the questioning had taken place and the guilt of Mr Bradford had been satisfactorily decided upon. In rapid succession, his fate had been sealed
by a judge and Newgate gaol was to be his temporary home until the day of his execution.

The public had naturally attended every step of the process, for the ‘Lambeth Murder’ had eclipsed even that of Daniel Good in the popular imagination. The streets were animated with
the cry of the patterers and the brisk trade in their broadsheets. The murderer himself had become evil incarnate, walking invisibly among the innocents of London, likely to strike again at any
moment. It was the very motivelessness of his crime that evoked the common fear. Not for theft did he kill, nor jealousy, nor any explicable reason that might give hope to those who barred their
doors at night. What manner of monster was it who would slaughter for no reason and how many more like him peopled the midnight streets?

They could not know, of course, that the murderer was the simple, red-faced Bully Bradford, that lumpen instrument of a darker force, who was a murderer only by ineptitude. In the nightmares and
fear-thrilled narratives of the milliner’s girls, the magdalenes and below-stairs gossips, he was Death himself. Murder itself had stalked the back alleys during that period of his brief
liberty, and the murderer was the demon in every shadow.

In such times, it is the writer who emerges triumphant. The literate clamour for information of the crime: its details, its effects, its investigation. The illiterate look to the patterer for
their lurid narrations and fanciful elaborations: the poetry of Mr Bradford, his true confession, his final letter to his poor mother in which he thoughtfully delineates every horrific image of his
crime. And it was men such as I supplying the lines, feeding the hunger for information and the thirst for sensation.

For Sir Richard Mayne, the Metropolitan Police was covered with glory – but there were others for whom the case was far from closed. Indeed, another crime was already smouldering, set
alight by a spark from the first: the murder of Mary Chatterton.

Two such horrific murders had seldom occurred in rapid succession, and the metropolis was soon to be a-fire with the news of more murder, the fear of murder, the anticipation of murder. Yes,
Bully Bradford had been captured, but his impending execution and the grisly details of his crime had created an insatiable appetite for the macabre and violent. Mary Chatterton’s death had
come like a welcome meal to feed that hunger.

Unlike poor Eliza-Beth, whose appearance was so rare as to be something worth paying for, Mary was known to many – and feared by more. She was a ‘character’ whose name –
at least wherever London’s smoke drifted – was as well known as Nelson. There were street girls who might not know Her Majesty the Queen herself if they met her outside the King’s
Arms, but who revered ‘Mother’ Mary Chatterton as a greater monarch. Those of them who could read would have seen the following in
the Times.

It was not only the gin shops and penny gaffs that were animated by the news. There were men in private clubs and men in robes of one sort or another who paled when they read of
the murder. Certainly, Mary was dead, but the nature of her murder and the liberty of the murderer was something to bring pallor to the cheeks of those men with secrets – men, more to the
point, who had the ear of Sir Richard Mayne. The police commissioner was informed personally by a number of them that the capture of this villain was of the utmost priority.

As for Mr Bradford, he was safely ensconced in the ‘Stone Jug’ to think about his crime. Though gaol was an occupational risk for men of his sort, he could not help struggling with
the enormity of his situation. In a very short time, he would be standing at the gallows with many thousands of eyes staring at him and Mr Calcraft fitting the noose to his neck. Perhaps people
would throw fruit and harsh words, as he himself had done at many a hanging. This, even more than the fear of death, was what filled him with fear and turned his legs weak: to stand before all
those people and bear their derision. It was not dignified! He would be humiliated! He would be nothing! People he knew would be there and see him trussed like a chicken ready for death. For a man
who had lived his life unknown in the alleys and darkened drinking dens of the east, there was horror in becoming the sole focus of an entire city. It would be akin to nakedness.

The fact of his actual hanging was, at this stage, too enormous for him to adequately conceive, mortality being too abstract a concept for the lumpen bully that he was. Illiterate, godless,
unmarried and childless, he had never contemplated the nature of his existence, nor its end. For men of his ilk, time never stretched further than the next fair. It would come to him soon enough
– sooner than he would like, and yet very much too late.

And we should also not overlook the fact that the murderer of Mary Chatterton held that very same edition of
the Times
in his sulphurous grasp, smiling as he read of Sergeant
Williamson’s earnest promises of early capture. The very thought of the city’s constables searching fervidly for a man whose face was entirely covered but for his eyes was enough to
make any criminal smile – even if he burned with anger at the new attention cast in his direction by the capture of Mr Bradford.

The bully would tell the police whatever they wanted. True, he did not know enough about his sponsor to bring the police to his door, but now the name of ‘General’ would be abroad,
and soon enough they would know his real name. That was a nakedness he feared more than any other – one that he could not hide.

He had indeed learned the identity of Eliza-Beth’s father. Mary Chatterton had told him in her final, gasping, bubbling moments of agony – as he knew she would. Not only that, but
while searching her writing desk for any correspondence with Eliza-Beth, he had discovered a most invaluable piece of information tucked away between tawdry love letters: a finished but unsealed
and undated letter from Mary to the father of their child, informing him of his paternity. The address was written on the envelope. So the old strumpet
had
thought about the man during her
long years of harlotry. It was, perhaps, the one pure love she had kept in her corrupted heart: a pressed flower that affected the blush of life whilst long dead.

So the General had posted Mary’s letter to its addressee, intending that he receive it as if from her. And he had also sent one of his own a day later, a deft and subtle note saying only
what was necessary and building upon the inevitable reaction to the letter from Mary. It was enough to instil fear in the recipient: