Will Thomas: The Hellfire Conspiracy

“That is quite a crusade,” Barker said. “But, then, if my history serves me, all the crusades ultimately ended in defeat.”

“That is true,” the newspaperman admitted, “but they must have been glorious battles nonetheless. I hope we shall speak again, Mr. Barker. You are more of a surprise to me today than that poor wretched body pulled from the sewer. Come, Ronald.”

“Odd johnny,” I noted as they left. “Do you think he really tries to do it all for the public good, or is he merely selling newspapers?”

“An editor not concerned with the public good is a churl, lad, but one not concerned with selling newspapers is a fool.”

“You would do well to avoid him,” Swanson warned. “He’s got a bee in his bonnet over this slave trade business. Bloody socialist.”

We bid our adieus to the inspector, and as we walked away, Barker gave me a nudge on the elbow.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Follow the sewer.”

I looked down beneath my feet. I didn’t have a knowledge of the sewer plan of London, as I’m sure Barker had, but I could tell which way the pipes went: north and south. I saw what he was thinking. A good rainstorm would have washed the body into the Thames if it had not been discovered. Whoever found it would have assumed the child had fallen into the river. “And just where would such a body, collected from the river, have been taken?” he asked.

“Wapping,” I said.

“Aye,” Barker grunted. “The Thames Police.”

“You think there is a connection between the two girls?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence. One child is lost and another is found. As far as I’m concerned, it is worth an immediate inquiry.”

A twenty-minute walk brought us to the odd little police station perched upon the docks of Wapping Old Stairs. We were soon seated at a table with a cup of tea in front of each of us. Barker shook hands with the officer in charge, Inspector Dunham, one of those fellows in his fifties with white hair but a black mustache and eyebrows that made one wonder if he dyed them. He dipped his mustache into the tea, sipped noisily, and set the mug down again. Sitting down to tea with confreres seemed to be as much a ceremony here as it was in Japan.

“So, Barker, what brings you here today?”

“The body of a girl was found in a sewer in Grafton Street this morning, between ten and fifteen years of age by the size of her. She’d been dead at least two weeks, strangled. I thought it possible there might have been more than one. A strong rainstorm would have washed the body into the Thames.”

“She would have washed up at the Isle of Dogs. We get a lot of bodies here-suicides, accidents, stabbings-but when a girl is found strangled, we generally assume it is a crime of passion. Are you suggesting we have one man in London strangling young girls?”

“I don’t know yet, but it would be remiss of me not to look.”

Dunham screwed up his mouth in thought. “It’s true. We have had a few cases. Let me look through my files. Do you want more tea?”

“No, thank you.”

The inspector got up from his chair. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

After he left, I looked at my employer. “Would I be correct in assuming that this fellow here hadn’t heard a word about Gwendolyn DeVere or the girl found this morning because the Thames Police is in competition with the Metropolitan Police?”

“You’re catching on, lad. They’ll help us sometimes and up to a point, but never each other. We’re not direct competition, after all, and many in our profession are former police officers. But Scotland Yard helping the Railway Police, the City Police, or the lads here at Wapping? Never.”

“But if the organizations worked together, they’d solve more crimes,” I pointed out.

“True, but a great deal will have to change before that happens. Feuds run as deep here as in Palermo.”

Five minutes later, Dunham returned empty-handed.

“We’ve been scuppered,” he said flatly. “Apparently, while I was out on the river this morning, an inspector from Scotland Yard called and the sergeant in charge-who by the end of today will be scraping barnacles from the launch as a constable-allowed him to leave with five files.”

“Five files,” Barker repeated.

“Yes-and to answer your first question, we have found some bodies in the past month or two. It is an ongoing investigation. Scotland Yard has no right to commandeer those files. The Thames Police is the oldest existing police department in the world.”

“What was the name of the inspector who came calling today?”

“It was Swanson.”

“He is a canny fellow. We must all be on our toes if we hope to best him.” The Guv gave me a glance, and I knew what he was thinking. Inspector Swanson had not mentioned his visit here to us.

“I’m going to complain to A Division,” Dunham grumbled. “The minute one’s back is turned they crawl in like rats and plunder a man’s cases.”

“How was the case going?” my employer asked.

“Not well until you showed up. We knew all the victims were probably coming from one location, but it’s hard to track down where it is once they’ve been in the river an hour or two.”

“Were they all girls?”

“Yes, and as I recall, they were all between ten and fifteen years of age. Every one of them was in their underclothes and all had been outraged.”

“Outraged?” I asked.

“Whoever he is, he has a taste for virgin flesh, I reckon, not that he’s alone in London as far as that’s concerned, but that ain’t the worst of it. Feller collects grisly trophies, a finger here, a toe there. An ear, a nose. Nasty business.”

Barker’s brow had disappeared beneath the twin moons of his black spectacles. “But there is no profit to be made from killing young girls,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

“What is there to understand?” Dunham said harshly. “He pulled them off the streets, undressed them to their drawers and camisoles, had his way with them, and throttled them. Then he snipped off a bob as a trophy.”

“Can such depravity exist?” My employer brooded. “Never mind. I know that it can. So, what we are facing is not a white slave ring as we had at first anticipated. We are dealing with some kind of archfiend, a multiple murderer preying upon young girls.”

“And in Bethnal Green, too, that spits them out as regular as candles. He could go on forever if he ain’t stopped.”

“A new girl has gone missing,” Barker finally informed him. “We have been retained to find her. She comes from a middle-class family. Her mother may be a socialist, or at least, her friends appear to be.”

Dunham got up and put the teapot on the hob again. I wondered how many pots they went through in a day.

“This is a fine kettle of fish,” he commented. “It’s not the sort of subject that is put in the papers, but there’s nothing the socialists like better than a nice scandal to bring about reform. And here we are in the middle of one.”

“Aye,” Barker said.

“They think we can just snap our fingers and the criminals come running in to be arrested.”

“So, were none of the girls identified?”

“Oh, I found two of the five. I figure the other three might be street orphans. One was a local girl, Fanny Rice, come from a big family. Very quiet they was, seemed glad she’d been identified. The other was a foreigner, Zinnah Goldstein. Her parents really broke down when they identified the body. Her father tried to rend his coat, he was so grieved.”

“Were both of these girls snatched off the street?”

“In broad daylight. No clue as to who took them. One minute, they’re seen rounding the corner, and the next, they’re floaters, as waterlogged as a mackerel.”