Will Thomas: The Black Hand

The telegram read:

SOMETHING HERE POOLE SAYS

YOU’LL WANT TO SEE STOP

COME QUICKLY STOP WON’T

KEEP IT HERE LONG STOP

DUNHAM

Mac snatched it away and returned to his duties. Barker was just coming over the bridge. There was no time to attempt another slice of toast. I poured the rest of the scalding coffee down my throat and stood.

“No time for breakfast this morning, Etienne,” I said, turning to leave.

“Imbecile,” Dummolard responded. It’s the same word in French and English. His free and caustic opinions would not have been tolerated in any other house in London, but, then, he did not receive any actual pay. He used our kitchen to experiment with new recipes for his Soho restaurant, Le Toison d’Or, claiming he came here out of a sense of gratitude for his former captain in the China Seas-meaning Barker, of course. I thought it more likely he preferred to get away from his wife, Mireille, a six-foot-tall French Valkyrie with whom he had a most volatile relationship.

Once in the hall, I ran to the front door, jammed my straw boater onto my head, and retrieved my malacca stick from the stand. When Barker came through the back door, I was waiting as if I’d been there for some time.

“Good morning, Thomas,” he said.

“Morning, sir,” I replied. He lifted his own stick from the hall stand and we stepped out the front door into Brook Street. It was a warm morning; summer was keeping its grip on London, refusing to surrender. The houses across the street were painted in sunlight, and the birds in Newington were in full throat. It seemed a shame to bring up the subject of work.

“What do you suppose Dunham wants now?” I asked. A few months earlier we had worked on a case with Inspector Albert Dunham of the Thames Police involving missing children.

“You read the same words I did, lad,” he said patiently, as a hansom eased up to the curb and we clambered aboard. We bowled off and were soon clattering down Newington Causeway on our way to London Bridge and Wapping, where the Thames Police station is situated.

Barker lit his pipe and ruminated. Any attempt on my part to instigate polite conversation would have been met with stern resistance-and, at any rate, what would we have discussed? He attended no theater, was tone-deaf, and read few novels. I had not had time to look at the morning’s newspapers; and it was too early to discuss ethics, religion, or politics. I had left without eating my toast merely to sit in a cab for forty-five minutes with nothing to do.

Eons later we arrived at the curious vertical building that housed the Thames Police and were directed around to the back to where the steam launches bobbed gently like tin boats in a bath. In the center of the dock, a large tarpaulin had been thrown over an object roughly the size of a chest of drawers. Whatever it was, the object was sodden, probably having been fished from the river. It had also been doused in carbolic, but the constables who manned the dock had managed to use both too much and not enough. It stung the nostrils but did not sufficiently cloak the reek that emanated from it.

“Hello, Barker,” Dunham said, coming out of the station with Inspector Poole of the Yard. Dunham was short, barrel-chested, and bandy-legged; while Poole was tall and thin. Dunham had white hair like a wad of cotton, with brows and a mustache as black as shoe polish; whereas Poole was going bald with his long, sandy side-whiskers that swagged to his mustache like curtains. One worked for the Thames Police, the other Scotland Yard; and though the two organizations claimed to cooperate, they were as jealous of each other as a pair of opera sopranos. “Poole here said you might be interested.”

“You’re working with Scotland Yard on this?” Barker asked.

“I ain’t decided yet,” Dunham admitted, glancing at his tall companion. “It’s river police business so far, but Inspector Poole has been gracious enough to contribute information. He recognized the body and suggested I telegraph you.”

“Hello, Cyrus,” Poole finally said. He had his hands in his pockets, as if to say he was present merely to give support and would let Dunham handle the actual investigation.

“Terry.” My employer nodded.

Poole was one of Barker’s friends and a seasoned member of the Criminal Investigation Department. He was also a former student, when the Guv taught a class in antagonistics in the C.I.D. building at Scotland Yard. Unlike my employer, who preferred his independence, Poole functioned well within the hierarchical confines of the Metropolitan Police. He’d need all his tact to deal with the prickly Thames Police inspector.

“Well, show us what you brought us here for,” Barker said in his Lowland Scots accent.

“Very well,” Dunham replied. “Mind the reek.” He took a deep breath, like a diver, and crossed over to the tarpaulin, than whipped the canvas away.

Perhaps it was a trick of my mind, but it seemed as if a brown miasma rose from the horrid spectacle that the sunlight revealed to us without mercy. It was a hogshead whose top had been opened and the hoop dislodged, splaying the staves out on one side like jagged teeth. A very large man filled the barrel the way a cork does the neck of a wine bottle. He wore a checked suit of bilious green, making me think of a giant bullfrog. His face was mottled in death, a waxy yellow like cheese rind above, and rusty purple below. I was suddenly glad I’d only had coffee that morning. We all reached for our handkerchiefs and stuffed them under our noses.

Cyrus Barker moved forward and crouched, resting easily on the balls of his feet, eye to eye with the corpse. Absently, he stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket and examined the face.

“I know this man,” he said. “This is Giorgio Serafini. He was an assassin, the best north of Naples. I would not have believed this without seeing it with my own eyes.”

I recalled Serafini, whom Barker had questioned during our first case together. He’d worn a checked suit then as yellow as Coleman’s mustard, and had a high-pitched voice with no trace of an Italian accent. He’d tried to intimidate Barker and ended up flat on his stomach in front of his employer. The meeting had taken place in a restaurant called the Neapolitan, owned by Victor Gigliotti, leader of an Italian criminal organization called the Camorra.

Barker stood again and circled the barrel. He completely removed the top hoop and jumped back as the rest of the staves fanned out. He is fastidious about his clothing. Serafini’s rigid body sat upright in the center, like a stamen surrounded by petals. The effluvia began to work its way around the edges of my handkerchief. Barker coughed once into the back of his hand.

“Get that bloody carboy out here again!” Dunham barked.

One of the constables ran into the station and trotted back a minute later with a large glass container of disinfectant to pour over the head of the late Giorgio Serafini. Of the two-the stench of decay or the burning carbolic-I could not say which was worse.

Barker had stepped out of the way and was now staring down the river. His hand came up and he scratched under his chin, as he often did when he was thinking.

“Are there many Italians working on the river?” he asked. “Dockworkers, stevedores, and so forth?”

“You’re asking me?” Dunham replied, breaking into a grin. “I thought you knew everything. Yes, as a matter of fact, there are. Hundreds of ’em. Mostly casual laborers.”

“Are many of them Sicilian?”

“Sicilian?” Dunham asked, as if it were a new word to his vocabulary. “Dunno ’bout that. One I-talian’s pretty much like another, I reckon.”

“Oh, no,” I put in. “They’re all different. Italy’s only been unified in recent times, and even now, the country is in discord. Most of the south is full of secret criminal societies. What are their names, sir?”