The Ring Read online

  That wasn’t right and Bisgrove became indignant. He hadn’t killed anybody. It had all been a misunderstanding. And if only he could find Millie, she would speak for him. He looked across the street, to the warm lights twinkling in the windows of Number 15. That’s where she had been when he saw her last. But she hadn’t seen him and that old cow who was her landlady said she’d gone. And she’d chased him off too, with a broom the last time. She was lying, of course. That was why he’d come back. And now, this.

  He was about to tear the poster down when he saw the very same old cow coming out of the house; Millie’s house. He turned his back, pulling up his collar and ducked into the shadows. The old cow pulled her bonnet strings tighter and shuddered at the weather. She hated going out at night but she had places to be and needs must. As she passed the lamp post, a flutter caught her eye. Under the pale green glow of the gas, she read the words, ‘Metropolitan Police’ and the other word, ‘Murder’. Then she saw the face.

  The old cow gasped, clutching at her throat and looking wildly about her. She tore the poster down and hurried back to the safety of her house. It was him; the lunatic she had seen loitering about several times, looking for some woman called Millie. She’d been kind at first, but kindness had turned to irritation and then downright annoyance and she’d taken a broom to him. She knew now that she’d been right to do it. The man was a stone killer. She’d known that all along. And as she slammed the door behind her and slid the bolts, she knew what she had to do. Go to the River Police, to that nice Detective Sergeant Spinster and make the streets of London safe again for women and children.

  ‘Who?’ Daddy Bliss looked over his rimless spectacles.

  ‘That’s what I said, Inspector.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Gosling. I’ll take this from here. Haven’t you got any skins need oiling?’ He waited until the constable had clattered up the stairs. ‘Now, then, Mrs …?’

  ‘Christian,’ she said. She had no intention of sharing her given name with this oaf. ‘I wanted to see Sergeant Spinster.’

  ‘Well, as I suspect Constable Gosling will have told you,’ Bliss said, ‘we have no one of that name here.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ she snapped, tired already of the rudeness of the river’s finest. ‘Shortish gentleman, quite good-looking in a detective sort of way.’

  ‘Well, that’s just the problem, madam, we don’t have detectives in the River Police. We uniformed boys have to do it all.’

  ‘But not since the new directive, surely? Haven’t they told you?’

  ‘Who, madam?’ This conversation had a curiously circular motion about it.

  ‘The Home Office, of course. Do try and keep up … Inspector, is it?’

  ‘It is, madam, and I can assure you there are no new directives covering detectives, not from the Home Office or anywhere else. Now, if I can’t help you, I assure you no one can. What’s the problem?’

  ‘This.’ She rummaged in her handbag and fished out the tatty poster, thrusting it at Bliss. ‘This madman has been lingering about outside my house.’

  ‘Has he indeed?’ Bliss’s eyebrows rose. He had long ago stopped seeing the need to impress Bridie O’Hara, but it would be a feather in his cap to be able to say that he had caught the only lunatic ever to have escaped from Broadmoor. ‘Where was this?’ he asked.

  ‘South Street, Battersea.’

  Bliss sat bolt upright. ‘You’re Mrs Christian,’ he told her.

  She was unimpressed. ‘First you deny any knowledge of Home Office procedure and then you tell me something I already know; something I told you not two moments ago.’

  ‘No, I mean you are Mary Cailey’s landlady.’

  ‘I am,’ Mrs Christian said. ‘But that’s not why I’m here. I am being pursued by this raving madman Bisgrove.’

  ‘Pursued?’ Bliss checked.

  ‘Well, perhaps pursued is too strong a word, but bothered, certainly. He seems to think I know someone called Millie.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘No. Well, yes. There was an Millie Dysart who ran a dame school when I was a little girl, but she’s long dead so it’s clearly not the same woman.’

  Bliss looked at her, his eyebrow cocked.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said. ‘I like to be accurate.’

  Getting back to the subject, Bliss asked, ‘Why did Bisgrove want her?’

  Mrs Christian sighed. ‘Look,’ she said, as though to the ship’s cat. ‘I appreciate you feel you have to ask questions, but I can’t answer any of them.’

  ‘Very well,’ Bliss said. ‘Just let me ask you one more, however. Why does this Bisgrove think that Millie has anything to do with you?’

  ‘Again, Inspector,’ Mrs Christian was patience itself, ‘I have no idea. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘Do you have stout locks on all your doors?’ Bliss asked.

  ‘Indeed I do,’ she assured him. ‘And a maid with shoulders like tallboys. Mr Christian is away at the moment, but I expect him back soon. You suspect this maniac will return?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Bliss admitted. ‘That’s the thing with maniacs. You’re never sure what they’re going to do next. Perhaps I had better tell you about Millie.’

  ‘I wish you would,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily.’

  ‘Get to the point, Inspector.’

  ‘Very well.’ Bliss reached down a ledger from the groaning shelves that formed just part of the Royalist’s filing system. He flicked through the pages until he found what he was looking for. ‘Millie Paget is a milkmaid living in Wookey Hole, Somerset. Two years ago last August, she was …’ he glanced up to meet Mrs Christian’s basilisk stare, ‘… entertaining a gentleman in a field, just off Pelting Drove.’

  ‘Disgusting!’ Mrs Christian shuddered.

  ‘Quite. The entertainment was just about to reach its climax, so to speak, when William Bisgrove came along. The local police believe he had been watching the couple for some time and that, for reasons best known to himself, he emerged from his hiding place and brained the wholly unaware gentleman with a rock, shattering his skull.’

  Mrs Christian shuddered again, but this time words failed her.

  ‘He was apprehended and Millie Paget was, of course, the principal witness for the prosecution.’

  ‘He was found guilty, I assume?’

  ‘As Judas Iscariot,’ Bliss confirmed. ‘But some do-gooder intervened and claimed that the said Bisgrove was as mad as a tree. So they put him in Broadmoor.’

  ‘From where he escaped.’

  ‘Regrettably, yes. But with this new sighting of yours, I think we can say that our net is closing in on him. In other news, I assume you’ve heard nothing of Mrs Cailey?’

  ‘Not a word. She was neither of the women I saw in Dr Kempster’s mortuary, so we’re no further forward, are we?’

  ‘Yes and no, Mrs Christian,’ Bliss said. ‘Tell me; this detective you’re looking for, the shortish, good-looking one – his name couldn’t have been Batchelor, could it?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Inspector,’ the landlady said, gathering up her cape, umbrella, gloves and other impedimenta before clambering up the ladder to the deck. ‘Do you take me for a complete fool?’

  ‘Well, well; if it isn’t Sergeant Spinster.’ Daddy Bliss was not smiling. He wasn’t even tapping the peak of his cap as he might have done in greeting a member of the public or a junior colleague. His hard grey eyes were boring into James Batchelor’s.

  ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’ Matthew Grand wore his poker face, sensing his friend’s discomfort.

  ‘I doubt it’ll be a pleasure for long,’ Bliss said. ‘Impersonating a police officer is a serious offence.’

  ‘And yet you do it all the time.’ Grand gave him a smile as wide as the Hudson.

  ‘I’m sure Mr Batchelor can speak for himself,’ Bliss said, ‘in connection with his recent misrepresentational visit to Mrs Christian
.’

  Batchelor screwed up his face and sighed. ‘It’s a fair cop,’ he said.

  ‘James …’ Grand felt the ground shifting under him. An enquiry agent with a record was scarcely unusual, but it didn’t exactly bring the clients in either.

  Batchelor held up his hand. ‘No, Matthew,’ he said. ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, eh, Inspector?’

  Bliss’s piggy eyes narrowed still further. ‘If you’re suggesting some sort of collusion …’ he began.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,’ Batchelor said and offered the man a cigar from the box on the desk.

  ‘First you impersonate a policeman, then you bribe one. Not your day, is it?’

  ‘We are all on the same side,’ Grand reminded him. ‘Justice. Law and Order. No stone unturned etcetera, etcetera.’

  ‘But sometimes,’ Batchelor offered Bliss a chair, ‘just sometimes, in the interests of those things, we have to bend the rules a little. We don’t carry one of those little Metropolitan tipstaffs to give us powers of arrest, so we have to be a little creative.’

  ‘You could always enlist,’ Bliss suggested.

  ‘And earn what you do?’ Grand was aghast. ‘That wouldn’t cover the cost of the paper clips. And Mrs Rackstraw would resign for sure; she feels demeaned enough that we are enquiry agents; policemen would place us beyond the pale.’

  Bliss took his time, then sank into the more-than-comfortable armchair positioned just the right distance from a roaring log fire. He looked around him, at the sparkling glass, the gleaming mahogany, the bookcase full of files, standing to attention speaking of successful cases completed and a well-filled client list. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Looks like you two are doing all right.’ The offices of Grand and Batchelor made the bowels of the Royalist look like the Black Hole of Calcutta. The cigar was still on offer and Bliss took it, savouring the moment as Batchelor struck a lucifer for him. ‘And was Mrs Christian of any help?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Batchelor blew out the match. ‘Although there was a man acting suspiciously outside her house.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She told me he had been hanging around for days in search of someone called Emilia.’

  ‘So?’

  Grand was beginning to wonder just how much the inspector was bringing to the table as part of this new alliance.

  ‘Our client, Mr Byng,’ Batchelor went on, ‘the one we told you about; his missing wife is Emilia.’

  ‘So …?’

  ‘So, isn’t it rather a coincidence that two men are looking for someone called Emilia?’

  ‘You’re assuming the bloke hanging around outside Mrs Christian’s wasn’t your Mr Byng.’

  ‘It didn’t sound like him from that good lady’s description.’

  ‘Tell us, Inspector.’ Grand changed tack. ‘Have you been to see Mr Byng yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Bliss admitted. ‘Pressure of work; you must know how it is.’ He waved to the bookcase. ‘Of course, now, with this latest body …’

  ‘Latest body?’ Grand and Batchelor chorused.

  ‘Well, keeping that out of the papers is one of the minor miracles we achieve daily in the River Police. One butchered corpse in the river caused bedlam. The second was even worse. When the great British public hears there’s a third, we can all forget about leave until the bloody river freezes over.’

  ‘Have you identified her?’ Grand asked.

  ‘No,’ Bliss said. ‘On account of how I want to keep it quiet.’

  ‘Was she … intact?’ Batchelor enquired.

  ‘Had all her parts, yes. If you mean was she virgo intacta, as the medical men have it, Dr Kempster says no. At it like a weasel, to coin a phrase. But not an unfortunate; at least, not by her clothes.’

  ‘Where was she found?’ Grand asked.

  ‘On the south bank,’ Bliss told him. ‘Near Rotherhithe. Could it be the elusive Mrs Byng?’

  Grand and Batchelor looked at each other. ‘Anything’s possible,’ Batchelor nodded.

  ‘How did she die?’ Grand asked.

  ‘Strangulation by ligature,’ the inspector was blowing smoke rings to the ceiling.

  ‘Like the one I bumped into in the water that night.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Bliss said. ‘Byng’s wife’s maid. It could be that our Mr Byng is in for another shock. I’ll get him. Where’s he live, again?’

  ‘Milner Street,’ Grand said. ‘But could we do that, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes,’ Batchelor said. ‘We owe him that at least.’

  ‘And,’ Grand continued, ‘despite our new-found collaboration, he is technically our Mr Byng, not yours.’

  ‘If he can tell us who this third woman is,’ Bliss sighed, ‘I don’t care whose he is.’

  Grand and Batchelor stood on the kerb outside the office and watched Bliss as he walked down the Strand with a sailor’s rolling gait.

  ‘Do you think he does that on purpose?’ mused Batchelor. ‘That Jolly Jack Tar thing? Surely, he was never in the navy?’

  ‘I have heard that he gets seasick on windy days,’ Grand said, ‘but if it pleases him and keeps him somewhere this side of bearable, I say we leave him to it. Now then,’ he looked left and right along the street, ‘a cab.’ Without looking at Batchelor, he carried on, ‘I know it’s only a hop and a skip to Milner Street, but I suspect that we’ll find our Mr Byng at the warehouse. I don’t get the impression that Byng senior will be giving him time off to grieve for his wife’s maid.’ He clicked his fingers at a passing hackney and the driver pulled up in a skitter of hoofs and a jingle of bits. ‘Limehouse,’ Grand told him as he climbed aboard. ‘Soon as you like.’

  The two were tossed back in their seats as the cab took off at a brisk trot. The horse, for once, wasn’t a spavined old nag but a new one just off the farm and it hadn’t learned yet that there would be no sugar lump or sweet apple for work done above and beyond the call of duty. It bowled east along Thames Street and swung round the Tower as it headed for the quays, the titupping horse making good time. The cabbie leaned back and turned to his fares.

  ‘You’ll never guess who I had in the back just yesterday night,’ he told them.

  ‘Wouldn’t we?’ Grand said. Batchelor leaned on his elbow and watched the warehouses rock past; he had heard every cabbie story going but Grand still found them interesting. ‘Who?’

  The cabbie laughed. ‘Only that Alfred Lord Bleedin’ Tennyson, that’s all.’

  ‘Tennyson, goodness.’

  ‘Yes.’ The cabbie sucked his teeth reflectively. ‘Miserable old bugger.’

  The enquiry agents waited for more pearls but there seemed to have been nothing. The cabbie swivelled round on his perch and flicked the horse lightly with his whip. ‘Here we are, gents,’ he said, drawing up his cab. ‘Do you mind getting out here, only, the horses don’t like to go too near this warehouse. It’s the whine of the saws, I reckon. Or the smell of the glue they use for laminatin’. Never been too sure, but this un’s a skittish un and I wouldn’t want to take the chance.’

  ‘That’s all right, cabbie,’ Batchelor said, getting down and stepping back so that Grand could pay.

  The driver touched his cap and nodded his thanks for his tip.

  ‘Receipt?’ Batchelor asked Grand as the hack disappeared around the corner. ‘For the petty cash?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Grand said, shouldering open the big gates which led to the timber yard. ‘Forgot. What with the excitement about Tennyson and all. Poet or somesuch, isn’t he?’

  Batchelor glared at his back but with the usual lack of effect. And to be fair, it did seem churlish to be maundering on about petty cash reconciliation when they might be giving a man the worst news he could have; that his wife was dead, brutally murdered and thrown into the river like so much garbage. He trotted for a pace or two to catch up with Grand and all too soon they were outside the respective offices of Byng and Byng.

  ‘Mr Selwyn is in with his father,’ the factotum told them. ‘W
ould you like me to …?’

  ‘No, no,’ Grand said. He knew that if he were to be receiving bad news, he would rather have his father by his side than no one, but his father was not Byng senior. On the other hand, Selwyn did have a bit of a habit of keeling over when things got stressful, so another pair of hands might come in handy. ‘We can speak to Mr Byng in front of his father.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ the factotum said. ‘I’m afraid Mr Byng’s father is dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Grand’s eyes nearly started out of his head. ‘When?’

  The factotum rolled up his eyes and counted on his fingers. ‘Eighteen forty-two,’ he said. ‘A sad day, yes indeed.’

  Grand raised a finger to ask a question, but Batchelor had seen where the confusion had arisen.

  ‘We mean,’ he said, ‘that we can speak to Mr Selwyn in front of his father.’ He turned to Grand. ‘Mr Selwyn and Mr Byng are—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Grand was testy. What was the matter with this godforsaken country, where common sense always took second place to fancy speaking. ‘I know.’ He tapped on the door.

  ‘In!’ The imperious voice could only belong to Byng senior.

  The factotum rushed to open the door. The proprieties had to be followed as far as possible, even with colonials involved. ‘Messrs Grand and Batchelor, sirs,’ he said hurriedly and stepped aside.

  ‘Again?’ Byng hardly looked up. ‘Selwyn, are these men here to see you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Grand said and Selwyn Byng looked surprised to hear the answer coming out of someone else’s mouth. ‘We need Mr Byng to come with us to the mortuary in Lockington Street. There is no good way of telling you this, Mr Byng, but a body has been found and we need you to see if you can identify it.’

  Selwyn Byng looked up and anxiously licked his lips. The combination of potentially annoying his father and the threat of another dead body to look at was really almost more than he could take. He felt his head going a bit swimmy and he held on to the edge of the desk. ‘I know about that, don’t I?’ he asked, his voice a distant, dry croak. ‘It’s Molly, isn’t it? You already know that. Didn’t Miss Moriarty …?’