The Angel Read online

  ‘I don’t actually have a badge, Mr Chapman,’ the chief inspector pointed out. ‘No policemen do. I’ve got a tipstaff lying around here somewhere – you’re welcome to that, if you like.’

  Chapman was outraged. ‘You’re being flippant with me, sir. I assume all this has to do with Gabriel Verdon. Well, I’ve already told you all I know on that score.’

  Williamson smiled. ‘I wonder if that’s actually true,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Frederic Chapman was turning a richer shade of crimson.

  ‘What can you tell me about this?’ Williamson had produced a small book from his desk drawer.

  ‘What is it?’ Chapman asked.

  ‘Gabriel Verdon’s diary,’ Williamson told him. ‘My boys found it in his office. That would be one of your offices, Mr Chapman.’

  ‘So?’ Chapman became nonchalant. ‘I had no idea Verdon kept a diary.’

  Williamson smiled again. ‘No, I’m sure you didn’t; but it makes very interesting reading. It’s all in code, of course, but I’ve cracked that – easy when you know how. This entry, for instance – “I fear that FC is having me followed.”’

  ‘What?’ Chapman blinked.

  ‘And this one – “Told FC that I cannot do the impossible. He hounds me night and day. I fear he is mad or close to mad.”’

  ‘You can’t seriously think he’s talking about me?’ Chapman was aghast.

  ‘How did you get on with Mr Verdon, sir?’ Williamson’s question was innocuous enough, delivered with charm.

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ Chapman snapped. ‘He was a colleague, a friend, a senior editor, a shareholder. What more can I say?’

  ‘You can tell me why you killed him, sir.’ Williamson leaned back in his chair as though he were discussing the weather.

  ‘I …’ the publisher was lost for words.

  ‘What was the impossible thing he couldn’t do for you?’ Williamson asked. Then he leaned forward, his eyes flashing fire. ‘And just how mad are you?’

  Chapman was on his feet. ‘This is as preposterous as it is outrageous,’ he said, the words half strangled in his throat. ‘Am I under arrest?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Williamson leaned back again.

  ‘Then I am free to go.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Don’t think you’ve heard the last of this,’ Chapman stabbed the air with his finger. ‘My solicitor will be in touch. You can’t go round accusing people of murder, willy-nilly.’

  ‘I look forward to it,’ Williamson said. ‘And actually, I can.’

  Chapman would waste no more words on this moron. He spun on his heel and left.

  A plainclothesman sidled into Williamson’s office as the door was still rattling from Chapman’s exit. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Follow him, Sergeant. Round the clock. If he so much as farts, I want to know about it.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  It was already the early hours when Grand and Batchelor sat with their brandies in the room in the attic. The skylight was open and the stars shone down on Alsatia.

  ‘So, Williamson doesn’t know that Verdon wrote Dickens.’ Batchelor still had the bruised shin to prove it.

  ‘No,’ Grand said, ‘but I get the distinct impression that there isn’t all that much that Williamson doesn’t know.’

  ‘He’s a shrewd customer, all right,’ Batchelor conceded. ‘Wonder if he’s talked to Chapman yet.’

  ‘Now.’ Grand lit a cigar and ran his eyes over the fluttering notes again. ‘Friend Chapman, what do we know about him?’

  ‘He and Verdon go way back,’ Batchelor said. ‘As far back as Dickens and maybe even earlier.’

  ‘But they didn’t get on.’ Grand was piecing it together.

  ‘Latterly, apparently not.’

  ‘Was that because Chapman found out that Verdon was really Dickens? Did they have a row that got out of hand?’

  Batchelor chewed the end of his pencil stub. ‘Chapman didn’t strike me as the murderous type. We’re looking for two murderers.’

  ‘One for Dickens.’ Grand took up the theme. ‘One for Verdon.’

  ‘And one for Arthur Clinton,’ Batchelor threw in. ‘Let’s not forget dear Artie.’

  ‘Right.’ Grand blew his smoke up to the skylight where it skeined momentarily, making a milky way of the London stars until it thinned and disappeared. ‘Clinton belongs to the Dickens category; both men were poisoned.’

  ‘Yet Verdon must be connected. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.’

  ‘And we don’t believe in those.’

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Let’s go through it again,’ was Grand’s suggestion.

  ‘Even if you’re right,’ Batchelor said, ‘that Chapman found out that Verdon was Dickens – why kill him? He was an in-house golden goose and things could have gone on as before. There wasn’t even a need for a row.’

  ‘Unless,’ Grand countered, ‘Chapman felt betrayed. Let down by his old co-worker who had been lying to him for years.’

  ‘Inside job, I think we agreed.’ Batchelor was running with it. ‘To be able to get at Verdon in his office; likely to be somebody with access.’

  ‘Chapman,’ Grand nodded. ‘Half a dozen other editors, and we mustn’t forget Henry Trollope – he’d known Dickens well since he was a boy.’

  ‘Your dear old mum,’ Batchelor sniggered. ‘I wonder how the old besom’s doing at Charing Cross?’

  ‘Yes,’ Grand muttered. ‘I felt a bit bad about that, but subterfuge is a middle name in this business.’

  ‘You can …’ but James Batchelor never finished his sentence because Mrs Rackstraw had burst in.

  ‘I’m not on a bit of string, you know,’ she said, her hair a mass of curling papers, her slippers on the wrong feet. ‘People calling at all hours of the day and night. Does he know what time it is? Do you?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Mrs Rackstraw?’ Grand tried his smooth Northern style but she was having none of it.

  ‘This bloke just rang the bell and left this card.’ She thrust it at Grand.

  ‘Chief Inspector Field would like a word.’

  ‘At this hour?’ Batchelor and Mrs Rackstraw chorused.

  ‘He has a lead,’ Grand said. ‘Wants – and I quote – “to bury the hatchet”.’

  ‘Where?’ Batchelor asked.

  ‘St Mary Matfelon. Know it?’

  St Mary Matfelon’s clock was just striking four as Grand and Batchelor reached it. The cab had dropped them in the Whitechapel Road and they had continued on foot. Not far away lay Cable Street and Bluegate Fields and both men were on the lookout for Irishmen. This time, Grand was carrying his Colt .32 because they couldn’t always rely on Charlie Field to arrive in the nick of time.

  In any case, it was Field they had come to see, and there he was, under the pale dial of the clock, the tip of his cigar glowing in the half-light.

  ‘Hello, boys,’ he tipped his hat. ‘Good of you to come.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ Grand said. ‘Although, last time we met, I got the distinct impression it was for the last time.’

  Field chuckled. ‘I was a little hasty back then,’ he said. ‘Waiting in Maryannes’ Park always makes me a little testy. There’ll be a law against that sort of bloke one of these days, you mark my words.’

  ‘I think we know your views, Mr Field,’ Batchelor said. ‘And I’m not sure being dragged all the way to the East End at four in the morning to hear them again is my idea of a good time.’

  ‘No,’ Field said. ‘Something’s come up, and in the interests of catching a killer, I thought we could pool resources.’

  ‘What?’ Grand asked. ‘What’s come up?’

  ‘Breakfast?’ Field suggested. ‘Just to show there’s no hard feelings, let me buy you both breakfast.’

  Grand checked his hunter. ‘Breakfast?’ he repeated. ‘It’s a little early for me.’

&nb
sp; ‘Jellied eels, Mr Batchelor?’ Field nudged the man in the ribs. ‘Pie and mash, eh? What’s your tipple?’

  It had been a while since James Batchelor had sampled the fare of the rookeries where civilization ended in the Jews’ burial ground. And he did have a secret hankering for jellied eels. ‘Well …’ he began.

  ‘It’s on me,’ Field said, and led them north through a tangle of scummed streets where rotting buildings leaned towards each other, all but blotting out the dawn sky. The first of the costers were on the move already, scratching themselves and yawning as they straightened their flat caps and laced their boots. There was a rattle of wheels as the dray horses from the Eagle brewery took out their first load of the day. Consumptive coughs hacked in the morning and the largest city on earth was awake.

  ‘Does the name John Forster mean anything to you?’ Field asked them as they reached the eel and pie stall.

  ‘It might.’ Grand was cagey, especially after he saw the fare on offer in pails and bowls under a flaring lamp.

  ‘Friend of Dickens’s.’ Batchelor was more forthcoming. The smell from those pails was unleashing his inner pig. ‘How did he put it? Literary agent?’

  The three men sat down at a greasy table on the pavement a few paces down from the stall. Sol, the purveyor, or so he was assuring the world in stentorian tones, of the best eels north, south, east or even west of Wapping, wiped it down with a rag which tended to increase the grease quotient, if anything.

  ‘Gents?’ he said, leaning on the table on his knuckles, shaking the drop off the end of his nose with some panache. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘I’ll be over in a minute, Solly,’ Field said. ‘Just taking my friends’ orders.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ the stall-holder said and went back to his pails.

  Field watched until he was out of earshot, though it was hard to hear anything over Sol’s cry of ‘Eels. Get your lovely eels here. Whelks. Winkles. Bring your own pin.’

  ‘Friends, my arse,’ Field said, getting back to business. ‘I’ve done some digging and this is how I see it. John Forster’s a greedy bastard and he’s tired of just getting his ten per cent of Dickens.’

  ‘Standard, that, isn’t it? Ten per cent.’ Batchelor was eyeing the stall greedily. There wasn’t exactly a queue at this time of the morning but, even so, jellied eels didn’t grow on trees and he had his appetite honed now.

  ‘Not if you’re a greedy bastard, it’s not.’ Field followed Batchelor’s eyeline and chuckled. ‘Mr Batchelor,’ he said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘I can see you’re ready for your breakfast. Excuse me, both of you, while I go and get some dishes of Solly’s finest.’

  Grand leaned forward when he was gone, being careful not to touch the table. ‘What’s he bringing us, James?’ he asked. ‘Jelly? What kind of jelly?’

  Batchelor did a translation. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, ‘and no, it isn’t jam, as I keep reminding you we call it here. It’s eels, you know, eels?’ He mimed a swimming creature with one hand. ‘Well, they cook them, then they chop them up and let them get cold. The cooking liquor turns into jelly and that’s it. Jellied eels.’

  Grand’s expression became more and more horrified as Batchelor expounded, and then reached its zenith as Field returned, balancing three bowls and some spoons in his hands.

  ‘There we are, gents,’ he said, sitting down. ‘This one’s yours, Mr Batchelor. A nice big portion. This is yours, Mr Grand – a bit smaller; I wasn’t sure whether you could manage a big pile of eels if you haven’t had them before.’ He spooned up a pile of what looked to Grand like grey and black slime encased in slime. ‘Hmm,’ he enthused, through the mouthful. ‘Best in London, my opinion. What d’you think, Mr Batchelor?’

  Batchelor just nodded. He was in heaven.

  Grand looked down into his bowl. Although it was securely placed on a flat table-top on a London pavement, it nevertheless seemed to move slightly with an agenda of its own. The jelly shone with a glaucous gleam which didn’t quite hide the horrors within. He cautiously took some of the slop on the very tip of his spoon, and almost had it to his mouth when the smell got to his nose and his nerve failed him. He who had dined on nothing but goober peas, back in the day. He swallowed hard and smiled at the guzzling pair. He decided to concentrate on the proper subject at hand. ‘We’ve been told Dickens was generous,’ he said. ‘To a fault, almost. Threw it away.’

  ‘But not in John Forster’s direction, apparently. Yes, he was keeping that stuck-up tart in Nunhead and shelling out on foreign holidays, but Forster was out of pocket. Are you not eating your eels, Mr Grand?’

  Grand shook his head and slid the bowl further away. ‘Not really a breakfast man,’ he said. ‘Did Forster tell you he was out of pocket?’

  ‘Not in so many words,’ Field said, ‘but I’ve got a nose for these things.’ He glanced across at Batchelor, who was chasing the last piece of eel around the bowl. ‘Would you like some bread with that, Mr Batchelor?’

  ‘Umm, no,’ Batchelor said, with a smothered burp. ‘I think I’ve had enough. I feel a bit … queasy now.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Grand said. He vowed never to take Batchelor’s recommendation on a restaurant ever again.

  Batchelor frowned to himself for a moment, patting his chest. ‘This Forster,’ he said, slowly, concentrating on something other than his stomach. ‘Are we sure his first name is John?’

  ‘What are you thinking, James?’ Grand asked.

  ‘We had a visit from Chief Inspector Williamson the other day,’ Batchelor told Field.

  ‘Dolly? How is he?’

  ‘Difficult,’ said Grand, almost screwing up his courage to try some bread, then deciding against it. It may have been caraway seeds in there but, on the other hand, it may not.

  ‘He found Gabriel Verdon’s diary,’ Batchelor told Field.

  ‘That’s the bloke at Chapman and Hall, isn’t it?’ Field checked. ‘Had his head stove in, something like that.’

  ‘That’s the one. Verdon was being threatened by somebody with the initials FC.’

  Field thought for a moment, ‘Frederic Chapman.’ He clicked his fingers.

  ‘Yes,’ Batchelor said. ‘But the diary was in a code, based on transposition of letters. What if I made a mistake? What if the C was a J?’

  ‘I didn’t see it that closely,’ Grand admitted. Batchelor racked his memory. He’d give his eyeteeth about now to have that diary in his hands again.

  ‘Well, that would make sense,’ Field said. ‘I don’t have to remind you, gents, how easy it would be for Forster to come and go at Chapman and Hall. He could get any number of keys cut for himself. And, of course, it was open house at Gads Hill.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to the police with this, Mr Field?’ Grand asked.

  ‘Ah, well, that’s where you boys come in. I’m afraid I’ve rather blotted my copybook with the Yard over the years. I’m not sure Dolly would exactly greet me with open arms. You boys now – that would be different.’

  ‘You haven’t given us much to go on,’ Grand observed. ‘James? James, are you well?’

  James was not. He had gone, even in the eerie half-light of dawn, a funny colour. ‘I’m fine,’ Batchelor said, squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath. ‘It must be the eels.’ He flashed a reproachful look at Sol, who reacted with indignation.

  ‘Let’s get you home,’ Grand said. ‘Mr Field, thank you for your tip. We’ll talk to Forster again.’

  ‘Right.’ Field tipped his hat. ‘And then go and see Williamson. Time we got a noose around somebody’s neck. Er … fifty-fifty, by the way?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Grand was absent-mindedly patting Batchelor’s shoulder.

  ‘The reward money,’ Field beamed. ‘There must be some. And we aren’t in this business for laughs, are we?’ He raised an arm and clicked his fingers. ‘Sol,’ he called, ‘a pint of your excellent whelks, when you’re ready, if you please.’

  The cab had
not reached the Strand before James Batchelor had collapsed. He was sweating and shivering at the same time, as if the ague had got him, and his eyes were rolling in his head. Grand hit the cab’s roof with his fist. ‘The nearest hospital, cabbie,’ he shouted. ‘And use your whip.’

  SIXTEEN

  The cabbie drew to a clattering halt at the front door of Charing Cross Hospital and jumped from his perch. He hadn’t thought the gent had looked very well when he’d got in and he wanted him out before he threw up – it could take days to get rid of the smell and he had a living to earn. He knew of blokes who had had passengers die in their cabs and that never went down well. He helped Grand half carry the stricken Batchelor up the steps and into the echoing hall where a porter leaped to his feet.

  ‘You can’t bring that there here,’ he said, holding up a hand.

  ‘What? My friend needs a doctor,’ Grand said, now taking all of Batchelor’s weight as the cabbie let go to bite down on the sovereign Grand had accidentally handed over for the fare.

  ‘He’s dead,’ the porter remarked, with an expert air.

  ‘I am not dead,’ Batchelor murmured. He knew he was no expert, but was pretty sure he would be able to tell. ‘But I do feel very …’ and with that, his eyes rolled up and Grand could no longer hold him as he slid to the floor.

  The porter looked down, dispassionately. ‘Now he’s dead,’ he said.

  Grand knelt by Batchelor’s side. He crouched over him and listened for his breath, looked for a pulse in the neck and felt for his heart. There was a flutter there, but it seemed to be getting weaker by the moment. He almost cried with frustration. He had been so well not an hour before. He heard a clacking of heels and there was a sudden, almost overwhelming smell of carbolic.

  ‘What seems to be the trouble?’ A clipped female voice came from above.

  ‘It’s my friend,’ Grand said and, even as he said it, his heart lurched. Not colleague. Not acquaintance. Friend. He had lost enough of those already; this one just had to stay alive. He looked up into a large, well-meaning face he knew.

  ‘Don’t I know you?’ the nurse said. ‘Isn’t your mother in the hospital?’ She looked stern. ‘I don’t think I’ve noticed you visiting, have I?’ Her toe tapped, unseen under her long skirts, but Grand could tell it was tapping even so.