Michael White - The Art of Murder

‘Well, that’s pretty conclusive, isn’t it?’

‘Oh definitely. There’s no doubt that the hair belongs to this person. That wasn’t the problem, but the “r” in the designation was. It stands for “restricted”.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes, ah. Naturally I got on to the database administration centre right away. But they knocked me back. Seems there are levels of “r” ratings in the database designation system. The highest level “r” is given to politicians, senior civil servants and top military brass. But until the rules were tightened up in the late nineties, it was also awarded to a few very wealthy private citizens.’

Dr Newman saw Pendragon’s disappointed expression. ‘However, I am nothing if not dogged,’ she said quickly and raised her eyebrows. ‘I contacted a senior colleague at Cambridge University who has a Level Three Civil Service clearance, and owes me one. He had the identity of our restricted individual within half an hour.’

Pendragon exhaled loudly through his nose. ‘Okay. Who is it?’

‘A former female patient at Riverwell Psychiatric Hospital in Essex.’

‘Former? When did she get out?’

‘Depends what you mean by “getting out”, Inspector. Number 3464858r died in 1996. Her name was …’ and she flicked through three pages of notes on her desk ‘… Juliette Kinnear.’

To Mrs Sonia Thomson

14 October 1888

I have to admit, dear lady, that your husband Archibald always did his best to be a most entertaining companion. He seemed to take an immediate shine to me. He told me all the things about himself that you would, of course, know already: his middle-class upbringing in Shropshire, his reading English at Cambridge, and his earliest forays into the world of journalism. He described how, by the age of forty, he had become the editor of the Daily Tribune , and had then made the momentous decision three years ago to set up a paper of his own, the Clarion , in partnership with a fantastically wealthy patron named Lord Melbourne.

‘My vision, Harry, is to drag newspapers into the modern era. I think journalism should be stronger, more graphic. And I would love to use photography, though it’s all so damn complicated, and expensive,’ he told me the evening we first met, over that promised drink which he bought me in a seedy pub called the Duke of Lancaster.

I had spun an interesting background yarn for him. I told him my name was Harry Tumbril — you’ll have to forgive me; this little touch of black humour came to me on the spur of the moment. As Harry, I was an artist from South London. I had, according to my tale, just recently returned from France and a spell living in Paris. I was currently living in Whitechapel to prepare the sketch for a commission I had received from an English family who now lived in Lyons. It came to me as I said it, almost as though the words and story had materialised in my mind from some external source. Archibald did not question it, and why should he have?

‘Can I see some of your sketches?’ he asked.

I handed him my pad, filled with images of scantily clad prostitutes and music-hall performers, and he flicked through it. Stopping only to order another round of drinks, he turned the pages and studied my work with care. ‘Very good,’ he said slowly, without lifting his eyes from the page. Then, looking up, he added, ‘You are very talented.’

I smiled and offered him a nod of thanks.

‘You could make some money from these, you know, Harry. I have contacts in some of the less salubrious areas of the publishing business.’

I plucked the sketchpad from his fingers. ‘Thanks, but no.’

‘Well, if you ever change your mind.’

I stared at him, and for the first time really studied the man. I have no need to describe him to you, of course, but as I write this I can’t shift from my mind a very clear image of him as he was that first night we met. Archibald was a big, beefy fellow, was he not? Not fat, just chunky, with a huge head, a mop of brown-grey curls, ruddy cheeks, and what I earlier called those dog-like eyes. He was dressed quite ordinarily as would befit a trip to the Stew, and was a little dishevelled from our eventful escape from the Pav. He had lost his hat and his jacket was covered with dust at the shoulders.

I immediately had the feeling with Archibald that he too was something of an actor. Not in the way I performed, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking that he led something of a double life. As I have already said, you, dear lady, probably saw just one side to him, I the other. He was, to a large extent, what I would call a man’s man, and was immediately open to expressing his own vision of the world. At home he was almost certainly a perfect gentleman, but I saw straight away that Archibald was a man who took his pleasures very seriously.

I declined his offer of a third drink, but he ordered three more for himself in quick succession. Meanwhile he talked, not a word of it slurred, his mind remaining focussed and sharp. He told me of his love of sex, and of his adventures in the opium dens of London and elsewhere. He was perfectly frank about these things and, oddly, I did not find myself repulsed as I had previously been by the carnal and hedonistic impulses of the sheep milling around me everywhere I went. Perhaps it was because no one had ever really talked to me with such honesty before, or perhaps it was simply that I saw Archibald as in many respects superior to the dullard masses with whom I shared the fetid air.

Archibald was intelligent … no, he was very intelligent … ambitious, probing, inquisitive, acquisitive and energetic. I can’t say I ever liked him, I don’t really understand the word ‘like’, but I found I had an odd, grudging respect for him. He was almost seductive, in a funny sort of way. He was a man in love with the world; a man completely at home within his own skin and in the city in which he lived. Archibald Thomson was what Mr Darwin would describe as a creature that had found its niche.

But, you know me. After we’d waved goodbye on the corner of the street, I forgot all about him. Returning to my lodgings, I spent a few quiet moments cleaning my knives and oiling the saw, then I flicked through the sketches I had made earlier that night.

It was with some surprise that when I arrived at the Pav the following evening, I found myself accosted by a young servant who ran up and handed me a cream envelope with the name ‘Harry Tumbril’ written across it in an elegant, but obviously masculine, hand. It was a brief note from Archibald, inviting me to lunch the next day at the offices of the Clarion , Pall Mall.

No more than six miles from my new home in Whitechapel, Pall Mall was a different world entirely, more reminiscent of the one I had visited with my father years earlier. It was as though all the wealth and sophistication, all the things that people consider clean and virtuous and wholesome, had been sucked out of the East End and deposited on the western side of the city, to form an atmosphere of cloying smugness.

Even the sun had come out after days of overcast weather. God truly is a capitalist, I thought, as I turned into the newspaper office’s doorway and pulled on the bell next to a pristine, freshly painted scarlet door. A servant ushered me in and led me up a broad staircase. I could hear sound spilling out from the rooms above: urgent, self-important voices, bells ringing, the stamping of feet. We emerged on to a sun-splashed landing and I followed the servant through a door, along a corridor and then through another door, whereupon I found myself in a large room packed with men sitting at desks.

The air was filled with the clatter of typewriters, the smell of cigarette smoke and sweat, and constant shouting as news flew around the room like some real, corporeal thing batted from man to man. Without breaking his stride, the servant marched towards another, smaller room. It was walled in glass, though the door was closed. I could see Archibald on the other side of the glass. He held a strange contraption against his ear. Turning towards us, he beckoned me in. The servant bowed and vanished.