Mick Finlay - Arrowood

Isabel put up with his drinking and the irregular work for three years before he came home one day to find her clothes gone and a note on the table. He hadn’t heard from her since. He’d written to her brothers, her cousins, her aunts, but they wouldn’t tell him where she was. I once suggested he use his investigative skills to find her, but he just shook his head. He told me then, his eyes shut so he shouldn’t see me looking at him, that losing Isabel was his punishment for letting the young man die in the Betsy case, and that he must endure it for as long as God or the Devil pleased. The guvnor wasn’t usually a religious man and I was surprised to hear him say it, but he was about as raw as a man could be after she left and who knows where a man’s mind will go to when he’s left heartbroken and turning it all over night after night? He had been waiting for her to return since the day she left.

Chapter Four

We were late. It was a dirty afternoon, with rain and wind and mud in the streets. St George’s Circus was busy at that time, and the guvnor, whose shoes were too tight, was hobbling along with many grunts and sighs. He’d bought the shoes used and cheap from the washerwoman and complained almost the very next day on account of them being too small for his bloated feet. She wouldn’t take them back so the guvnor, being careful with his coppers, had resigned himself to wearing them until such time as they split open or lost a heel. It was taking longer than he’d hoped.

When we finally got to the church we could see our Martha up ahead, wrapped in a black cloak and hood. She was holding onto the churchyard railing, just inside the gate, her eyes sweeping up and down the street. She was clearly anxious to find us, so the guvnor pinched my arm and hurried on. A crowd was gathered outside one of the cookhouses; as we fought our way through, a shortish man pushed past us from behind and darted away before us, the tails of his old winter coat flapping in the wind, his hat sitting back on his head.

The guvnor swore and grumbled as a coalman dumped a sack from his cart onto the pavement in front of us.

Just then there was a shriek up ahead.

A woman with a baby stood by the church gate looking around frantically as the short man who’d shoved us ran off towards the river.

‘It’s the Ripper!’ she screamed.

‘Get a doctor!’ someone else called.

We both began to run. By now there were many others also rushing to the church gate to see what had occurred. We pushed our way through the crowd and saw Martha lying curled on the wet ground, her hair spread across the flagstones like a spill of molten bronze.

The guvnor let out a groan and fell to his knees next to her.

‘Get after him, Barnett!’ he called back at me as he lifted her head from the path.

I took off, winding and ducking through the crowds. The short man ran across the street ahead of me. His coat, much too big for him, billowed behind, his bandy legs moving at full pelt. He sped to the next intersection. As he turned down Union Street, I caught the side of his face, his oily grey hair stuck to his forehead, a nose with a prominent hook. A minute later, I reached the same corner but was brought up short by a teeming wet mass of people and horses. I couldn’t see him anywhere. I hurried on, my eyes searching frantically for his dark coat in the crowd, my way checked all the time by carts and buses and street vendors, further and further down the road.

I ran blindly, on my instinct, until I saw a flash of black coat turn down a side street up ahead. I pushed my way between the carts to the junction. Ahead of me was an undertaker knocking on a door. There were no other men in the narrow lane. My chest heaving, I turned back to busy Union Street, not knowing which way to go. It was no use. I had lost him.

When I got back to the churchyard the crowd was still there. A gentleman paced up and down the path, shaking his head. The guvnor was kneeling on the floor, Martha’s head cradled in his lap. Her face was ashen, the tip of her tongue resting at the side of her mouth. Beneath the thick black cloak, her white serving blouse was a slick claret.

I knelt and checked her pulse, but could see from the way the guvnor shook his head, by the desolate look in his eyes, that she was dead.

At that moment a constable arrived.

‘What’s happened here?’ he asked, his voice booming over the noise of the crowd.

‘This young woman’s been killed,’ said the gentleman. ‘Just now. That fellow there chased the man.’

‘He ran off down Union Street,’ I said, getting up. ‘I lost him in the crowds.’

‘Is she a streetwalker?’ asked the copper.

‘What has that to do with it?’ replied the gentleman. ‘She’s dead, for pity’s sake. Murdered.’

‘Just thinking about the Ripper, sir. He only did streetwalkers.’

‘She was not a streetwalker!’ barked the guvnor, his face burning with fury. ‘She was a waiting girl.’

‘Did anybody see what happened?’ asked the constable.

‘I saw it all, I did,’ said the woman with the baby, important and breathless. ‘I was standing here, right here next to the gate, when he comes up and chives the lady through her cloak like that. One, two, three. Like that, poor girl. Then he runs off. He was a foreigner, I’d say, by the look of him. A Jew. I thought he was going to do me for afters, but he just run off like they said.’

The constable nodded and finally knelt to check Martha’s pulse.

‘He didn’t have human eyes,’ she continued. ‘They was shining like a wolf, like he wanted to rip me as well. Only thing stopping him was all the people coming over when she screamed. That’s what frightened him off. Too late for her, though, poor little thing.’

The constable stood up again.

‘Anybody else see the incident?’

‘I turned when I heard the girl cry,’ said the gentleman. ‘Saw the chap hurtle off. He looked Irish from where I was, but I couldn’t be sure.’

The constable peered down at the guvnor.

‘Were you with her, sir?’

‘He come along after,’ said the woman.

‘I recognize her from the Barrel of Beef.’ The guvnor’s voice was grey and flat. ‘I don’t know her.’

The policeman took a description from the woman and the gentleman, who agreed it must have been a foreigner but couldn’t agree whether it was a Jew or an Irishman, and then from me. Once he’d sent a boy to the station for the police surgeon, he dispersed us.

‘What do we do now?’ I asked as we trudged back.

The guvnor cursed, ignoring me.

‘Damn Cream to hell!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’ll kill whoever he wants.’

‘We don’t know he was behind it.’

He cracked his walking stick hard against the kerb, a look of utmost misery on his face.

‘We’ve led that dear girl to her death. That cur from the Beef saw us at the house. We might as well have killed her ourselves.’

‘We didn’t know they all worked in the Beef.’

‘Damn it, Barnett. It’s starting again. The whole cursed Cream business.’

‘Perhaps we should leave it to the police,’ I suggested.

‘That idiot Petleigh will never find the killer.’

The guvnor glanced back at the church. When we’d turned the corner he held out a small, twisted handkerchief.

‘This was gripped in her hand,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she held it for us.’

He opened the handkerchief. Inside was a single brass bullet.

Chapter Five

We arrived in Great Dover Street later that evening, where a row of milliners, dress shops and shoe shops all had their lights on for the evening trade. At the end was a coffee grinder, and the breeze carried the rich smells of the roasting beans. There was only one photographer’s studio, called ‘The Fontaine’. A man in a green velvet jacket with hair reaching his collar stood at the desk constructing a picture frame. He held a small hammer in his hand and a pin in his mouth.