Will Thomas - The Limehouse Text

I love research. Cyrus Barker’s idea of a fine time might be grappling a felon to the ground and clicking the darbies on his wrists, but I much prefer the collecting of cold, hard facts in libraries and public record offices until I’ve methodically built up a mountain of evidence that will prove someone’s guilt.

I took down the volume of deaths for December 1883 and January 1884, very conscious of the passage of time. December 1883 had been a few months after my sentence was completed and I had just come to London. It seemed a long time ago, now. Had Quong’s killer been waiting an entire year like a coiled spring ready for the text to show itself before striking again? Surely the book could not be that vital, could it? It looked to me to be little more than a few scribbles and stick figures.

I copied everything into my notebook and as I copied, I read. Quong had been found dead on the second of January, 1884. Quong, Chow, and Petulengro had all died within a few days of each other. They had died in various manners, however, and some might have been considered natural causes. Quong had been shot; Chow had passed away mysteriously on the line in Coffin’s penny hang; and Petulengro had died from a blow to the neck during a robbery. The common thread running through all the deaths was the location, Limehouse, and the inspector in charge of the investigations, Nevil Bainbridge.

I began investigating other murders that had occurred around the New Year. Lord Saltire had passed away in Park Lane but only after a protracted illness. Two children died stillborn that night, and one poor urchin had died of exposure, for it had been bitterly cold. There had been a woman stabbed to death in Whitechapel, but her killer, who turned out to be her common-law husband, had been apprehended. Lastly, a sailor in Millwall, the Isle of Dogs, had died in his bed. There was no need to record any of these cases in my notebook, as they had no bearing on the case, or so I thought until I was in the act of closing the book and my eye ran across something.

I pulled the book open again and almost frantically flipped through the pages. Yes, my eyes had not been deceiving me. The last fellow, Alfred Chambers, had passed away on the second of January of renal failure in the company of his wife. People die of kidney failure every day, I’m sure, but Mr. Chambers had been a first mate aboard the Ajax. I took down the entire report, though the death did not occur in Limehouse and was not investigated by Bainbridge.

Happy that I had uncovered something of possible interest, I made my way over to The Times and was soon in the back issues room, looking for reports of the killings. I only found two. One read “Chinese Found Shot in Limehouse Reach,” while the other read “Chandler Dies During Robbery.” Apparently Chinamen dying in penny hangs and men having kidney failure were not considered newsworthy.

I closed my notebook and devoted my attention to the idea of lunch. I found a pub in Fleet Street where all the journalists went, and had a nice steak and kidney pie and a cup of coffee. On the way back, I dawdled for a while in the bookshops of Charing Cross Road. Afterward, I went back to the office and found myself crowded on the doorstep by Inspector Poole. I opened the door for him, and he took one of the chairs in front of Barker’s desk, while I sat at my own. Barker seemed not to have moved since I left. Goodness knows what he had done or if he had eaten lunch. If he kept this up, Jenkins would have to dust him.

“Terry.”

“Cyrus,” Poole said. He looked as tight as a coiled spring. “I thought I would tell you that we’re letting Ho go free tomorrow.”

“I see,” Barker said. “There was no reason for having arrested him at all.”

“You know what sort of odd characters go into his place,” Poole said. “Anarchists, socialists, communists, exiles, Lascars, Orientals-”

“Enquiry agents,” I put in.

“Lad,” Barker warned. “Ho is not responsible for who walks in his door, Terence. He does not advertise in radical newspapers or cater to criminals. He runs an honest tearoom.”

“I have information that he has close ties with a criminal named Mr. K’ing. In fact, Commissioner Henderson believes it is possible that Ho is Mr. K’ing.”

Barker grunted. “That will be news to both of them. I never thought I would credit Henderson with too much imagination.”

“We’ve taken good care of him,” Poole insisted. “Better than most foreigners by a long chalk. Of course, anything you can do to help us in our enquiry would be helping him, as well.”

“I see,” the Guv said. “You want me to do your work for you, then you’ll release him.”

Poole frowned. “Look, Cyrus, I don’t think you understand how close you are to being arrested yourself. The old man’s considering it even now. There are many at the Yard who think that you killed Bainbridge yourself, you and the nipper here.”

“Nipper?” I interrupted. “There’s no need to be-”

“Look, Cyrus,” Poole went on, as if I weren’t in the room. “I’m up against it. You have no idea what sort of pressure I’m under to solve the case. I need help. I thought we might share information.”

“‘Share,’ is it?” Barker asked. I noticed his Scot’s accent always got a bit thicker when his blood was up. “You mean, you tell me what I already know, while I give you what has taken me days to uncover?”

For once, Poole smiled. “Something like that.” It broke the tension. We all chuckled over it. Even Barker gave up his stony reserve.

“What thought you of Bainbridge’s blotter?”

Poole tugged at his side-whiskers. “If what Bainbridge thought is correct, all the deaths that occurred just after New Year’s may have been the work of one killer, though he didn’t know who it was. We have your assistant, Quong; the Chinese sailor Chow; and the Gypsy who ran a chandler’s shop, whose name I won’t even try to pronounce. Beyond the fact that they were all foreigners, the only connection they seem to have had was a book. The book, the book, the bloody book! Didn’t you say in court it was a boxing manual? Who kills three people over a boxing manual?”

“It’s a rather special manual, Terence,” Barker explained. “It teaches, for one thing, a way to disrupt the body’s internal functions, killing someone without a sign.”

Poole grunted in disbelief. “You mean like the Chinaman, Chow, dead on the line without a scratch.”

“Precisely.”

“If such a thing existed, it could change my work considerably. How would we know a common heart attack from murder?”

“It gets worse,” Barker said, crossing his arms. “Death need not be instantaneous. With the training from the book, one could disrupt a system-let us say the circulative system-of someone in the morning merely by touch, and that person could die that night after a normal day’s activity. Or the next day or a week later.”

“Fantasy,” Poole scoffed. “It’s all Chinese bugaboo. I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Admittedly, I only read it in the book. I wouldn’t believe it myself without more proof.”

“I might have that proof,” I muttered.

They both looked at me, and it was a moment before the Guv spoke. “Explain.”

“Well, sir, I came across another murder, I think. It happened the second of January. A sailor named Chambers was found in his bed, dead from kidney failure. The inquest the next day ruled natural causes, but Chambers wasn’t just anyone. He was a first mate aboard the Ajax. I think he might have spent his first night ashore at Coffin’s with Chow. Chow might have given the book to Chambers for safekeeping, warning him that if anything happened to him to get rid of the book quickly.