Will Thomas - The Limehouse Text

“Marionettes, sir.”

“Yes. The line stretches for some distance across the picture, then coils into a loop of rope. By the figure’s shoulder is a rough shape, which I believe is a coffin. Near the center of the page is a female form, nicely rendered but without a face. She wears a shawl and straw hat, and her hair is cut straight across her shoulders. I presume it is light colored, for he does not appear to have darkened it. Blond or red. The pose, holding the shawl around her, is demure and yet there is some voluptuousness to the figure. Two men are off to the right, in profile, as if watching the girl. One is taller than the other. They are shaded heavily, but I believe them to be Campbell-Ffinch and his interpreter, Woo.

“On the bottom row, there is a figure slumped on the floor and a group of lines going back and forth away from him, like the teeth of a saw or steps. I adduce it is the image of Jan Hurtz, whom Bainbridge would have seen firsthand. There is a small sketch of a ship, possibly the Blue Funnel ship Ajax. We shall see. Here, where the coil of rope ends are three balls and a ticket, the one we gave to Hurtz’s brother. There is an almost comically menacing face, with a heavy beard, leering and ready to devour the maiden in the center. And here, at the very lower right-hand corner, is the face of my late assistant, whom Bainbridge had the poor taste to show as we found him on that terrible day, eyes half shut, arms thrown wide, and the bullet hole dead center. That is all.”

“That’s one, two, five…nine figures altogether, and we know but half of them,” I pointed out.

“Can you draw, lad?”

“Not this well, sir.”

“See if you can copy all these images. Let me go get the constable again.”

He returned a few minutes later with the constable, who scratched his chin at our work. “That’s good thinking,” he admitted. “I would never have thought of it. This is the property of Scotland Yard, however. You won’t be able to take it with you.”

“We understand that. Do any of these people look familiar to you?”

“This ugly brute here,” he said, indicating the fierce face in the upper right-hand corner, is Charlie Han. He’s a young tough in Limehouse with a sizable corner of the betel nut market in his pocket. Inspector Bainbridge was always hauling him in on small charges. Now this coffin here and the fellow on the line, I think that’s Jonas Coffin’s place. A Chinaman died there last year. Funny name. Chow, I believe, Luke Chow. Coffin owns a penny hang in West India Dock Road. And there’s no missing who the girl is. We call her the Belle o’ Pennyfields. Works at a chandlery since her uncle was killed a year ago.”

“Killed, you say?” Barker asked.

“Yes, sir. He was robbed one evening. New Year’s Day, it was. Found dead behind the counter of his shop, with his neck broke, from what I hear.”

“What is the girl’s name?” Barker asked.

“Gypsy name, she has. Petulengro, same as her uncle’s. Hettie Petulengro.”

The Guv turned to me. “There is your H P, lad.”

“And what, may I ask, is going on here?” an official voice demanded from the doorway. It was Terence Poole, and he did not look pleased. He dismissed the constable with a glower and then turned on us.

“That is Metropolitan Police property,” Poole said, pointing at the blotter.

“We were merely deciphering it,” Barker said. “We have identified all but one of the figures here.”

“You needn’t try to sound all helpful with me,” Poole said, reaching into his pocket. “I spoke to the Dutchman who says you took possession of the book in his brother’s pawnshop.” He tossed a business card on the blotter. It was the very one he had given to Hurtz. “I want that book!”

“I no longer have it,” Barker stated, shrugging. “As I said at the inquest, I gave it to a Chinaman.”

Poole looked at him skeptically. “You handed it over to the Chinese, just like that? I know better. You can’t convince me you didn’t recognize it for what it was.”

“Believe as you like,” Barker said.

“I shall. We can detain you here until you talk. I am the investigating officer. I can put you in with Ho. Did you give the text to any passing Chinaman or to one of them in particular?”

Barker sat silent. This situation was a little different from speaking with Campbell-Ffinch or to Dr. Vandeleur. Terence Poole was a friend as well as a police inspector.

“Cyrus,” Poole said, leaning over my employer, “did you have the book in your possession in the tunnel when we were there together earlier?”

Again, the Guv was silent. I saw the skin behind Poole’s sandy side-whiskers grow red with anger. He was one step away from having us detained. If that happened, what would happen to me? Barker may be able to sit like a jade Buddha during an interrogation, but I wasn’t certain I could.

Cyrus Barker finally broke his silence. “There is more to this than a Scotland Yard matter, Terry. There are international considerations, and there are moral ones.”

Poole stood there, looking down at Barker, with arms akimbo. Both men were so still that I was afraid to move, for fear of breaking the tableau. “Get out!” the inspector finally snapped. “Just get out, blast you. I cannot cover this up for you. This is a serious trial of our friendship, Cyrus, and you can get into a great deal of trouble over this.”

Barker shot out the door, leaving me to dance around the inspector with my cast and notebook. I followed him out to the entrance, where we turned up our collars and opened our umbrellas before plunging out into the drizzle once more. The Guv looked over at me and I’m blessed if the fellow didn’t have a look of satisfaction upon his face.

“Let’s make our way to West India Dock Road, lad,” he said. “That went better than expected.”

The establishment of Mr. Jonas Coffin was in a warehouse that had seen better days seven decades before. There was no sign over the door, but when Barker accosted a passing stranger that was the door he pointed to. Barker opened the door into a room illumined by a single candle. Our advent brought a cry from the proprietor within, who must have eyes like a rat.

“We’s closed,” he bellowed. “Don’t open’ll eight-firty tonight.”

Barker asked me for a half sovereign and tossed it onto the table. The fellow snatched it up as quickly as it landed.

Coffin was a dried-up skeleton of a man with a hooked nose that looked as if it had been pasted on as a prank. He might have been a stage version of Dickens’s Scrooge. By the candlelight, he’d been playing a one-man hand of cards, but now that there was money to be made, he slid them into the pocket of the greasy old pea jacket he wore.

“I am a private enquiry agent. My name is Barker.”

“Yer, I hearda ya. What can I do for you, guv’nor?”

“Would I be correct that there was a death here a year ago?”

“’At’s roight. Feller slipped his cable right here on the lines. Nat’ral causes it was ruled. Not a bad way to go, I reckon. Give me Fiddler’s Green over Davy Jones’s locker any day.”

“Lines?” I asked.

“This is a penny hang, lad. Sailors pay a penny to spend the night hanging on lengths of rope stretched across the room.”

“All night?” I asked. “Don’t they sleep?”

“Of course they sleep,” Coffin explained, “which is more than they’d do in some doss-house at twice the price. A sailor’s feet might be on solid ground, but his guts is still a-rollin’ with the waves. It’s agony on him to lie in a real bed, but you just put him on one of my lines and he’ll be right as rain. Sleeps like he’s in his mother’s arms, he does. And the sailor doesn’t have to worry that he’d get his hard-earned wages nicked in his sleep, neither. I’ve got a belayin’ pin handy and I’ll nobble any suspicious character I come acrost. You see, gentlemen, Jonas Coffin is the sailor’s friend.”