The Welfare of the Dead Read online

  Jasper Woodrow gestures towards the east and, without waiting for a reply, strides purposefully into the fog, forcing Langley to follow.

  Duncan Terrace.

  ‘Jacobs, are you there?’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Take these coats and do your best to clean them; the fog is terribly bad and we are both quite covered in smut. And I might take a bath before I retire.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Is the master not home?’

  ‘No, he is delayed; we had difficulties finding a cab for all three of us.’

  ‘You have some post, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you, I’ll look at it later.’

  In a corner of the Holborn Casino’s great hall, Jasper Woodrow leans back upon his chair, tilting the legs, surveying the couples dancing a lively schottische upon the dance-floor. Langley, on the other hand, seems to sit rather nervously on his seat.

  ‘Lively little saloon, ain’t it?’ says Woodrow.

  ‘The music is a little too loud for my taste,’ replies Langley.

  ‘They do bang it out,’ replies Woodrow. ‘Here, grab that chap there . . . never mind, I’ve got him . . . here, boy, over here!’

  Woodrow grabs the arm of a waiter, who bends solicitously over the table.

  ‘Two brandy and waters, and make them large ones, eh?’

  The waiter nods and heads in the direction of the nearest bar, one of several alcoves beneath the hall’s gallery that distribute liquid sustenance, beneath signs reading ‘Refreshments’. He soon returns, bearing two brandies, Jasper Woodrow raises his glass in the air.

  ‘To partnership, Langley!’

  Langley smiles. ‘To partnership.’

  ‘That’s better,’ says Woodrow, as Langley takes a gulp of the liquor. ‘Now, tell me, what do you make of that filly over there, eh?’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘The dark-haired one, with the silver round her neck.’

  ‘The girl with the necklace?’

  ‘Fascinating little thing, isn’t she? Why don’t you ask her to dance?’

  ‘She has a partner, I think.’

  ‘That boy? No match for a full-grown fellow like you, Langley. Go to it – ask her, if you’ve a mind to.’

  ‘I don’t really.’

  ‘Here, finish your drink – I’ll get us another. Boy!’

  Melissa Woodrow sits naked in the hot tin bath before her bedroom hearth, her hair tied back loosely. She washes her face clean with soap and water, wiping it with a flannel, which instantly acquires streaks of grey-black dirt. Then, once she is done, she takes a bar of transparent soap from the nearby wash-stand, and carefully applies it to her skin, to her arms and legs, stretching her hands out towards the flames. Before long, the clear water in the bath has itself turned into a stagnant murky pond around her body. Melissa Woodrow frowns, staring at the water, lost in thought.

  As the water grows colder, she climbs out of the bath, towelling herself dry in front of the fire-place, before she puts on her chemise and silk dressing-gown. She walks over to her bed, pulling the brass ring of the needlework bell-pull that hangs from the picture-rail.

  The servants’ bell rings in the distance. Mrs. Woodrow first unties then begins to brush her hair. The sound of rapid footfalls upon the stairs echo on the landing, until there is a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  Jacobs enters. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘No sign of the master?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  Jasper Woodrow walks from the dance-floor and falls on to his seat, exhausted, as the orchestra in the gallery strikes up a new dance. Richard Langley sits down beside him, his face rather pallid, his eyes slightly bloodshot. They are followed by two young women, in breathless, giddy conversation.

  ‘Ladies,’ says Woodrow, pulling out two chairs, ‘come join us. My dears, my friend and I’ve never had the pleasure of such exquisite partners. You must both be thirsty – let me buy you a bottle of pop, eh?’

  The older of the two, though no more than twenty-one years, smiles in agreement, and sits down. Her friend, though giving Woodrow a rather nervous look, follows suit as he orders a bottle of the house’s champagne.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asks Woodrow.

  ‘Susan,’ says the older girl. ‘And this is Jemima.’

  ‘Sweet names,’ says Woodrow, ‘although they are a little plain for two such fascinating ladies.’

  The younger girl giggles at the word ‘ladies’.

  ‘I’d call you Bella,’ he continues, addressing the older, reaching to touch her cheek with his finger.

  The girl smiles but lightly brushes his hand aside. ‘And what about my friend?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. What would you say, Langley?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Langley, looking blearily at his companion, speaking with a distinct slur, ‘I’m sorry – that dance – I feel a little off-colour.’

  The two young women look less than impressed by this announcement; the younger whispers something to the older, at which both laugh.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ says Woodrow, ‘I hope you haven’t over-indulged? And I thought you’d hardly touched a drop!’

  ‘If I have I . . .’

  Langley trails off in mid sentence as he attempts to stand, leaning unsteadily against his chair. Woodrow glances apologetically at the two young women.

  ‘I’d best find my friend a cab, eh?’

  Melissa Woodrow finishes brushing her hair, putting her comb down upon her lace-covered dressing-table. Beside the comb lies an envelope she brought up earlier from the hall, merely addressed to ‘Mrs. Woodrow’. She takes it gingerly in her hand; there is no postmark, nor any other sign of its origin. She looks at it for several minutes before finally she tears it open and reads the sheet of paper inside:

  YOUR HUSBAND KEEPS SECRETS

  A friend

  She bites her lip, then hurriedly opens the drawer in her dresser that contains her petticoats, shoving the letter to the back.

  ‘There you go, old man,’ says Woodrow, easing Richard Langley into the hansom and shutting its twin folding doors.

  ‘Thank you . . . I’m not normally . . .’

  ‘Of course not. Say no more, my boy,’ says Woodrow, looking up at the driver, perched at the rear of the cab. ‘St. John’s Wood, my man – drive slow. Poor fellow’s feeling a bit queer.’

  The driver nods and the hansom rattles off in the direction of Oxford Street. As the vehicle disappears from view, the fog still all-encompassing, Woodrow’s smile disappears. He turns and, with a nod to the doorman, walks briskly back into the Casino. Once inside, however, he finds the bottle of champagne at his table is all but finished, and the two young women in conversation with two young men.

  He is about to interrupt them, when another woman catches his eye as she walks past. He turns and catches up with her.

  ‘Miss, one moment. Haven’t we met once before . . . ?’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A LITTLE AFTER MIDNIGHT.

  Opposite the locked gates of Abney Park, two figures stand together in a shop doorway, watching the cemetery’s entrance. The night still possesses a vaporous hint of fog, such that the glow of the nearby tall gas-lights, which line the High Street, seem to glow a muted brown, as if filtered through the medium of a dirty beer bottle. Nonetheless, for all that, the two men can still make out the opposite side of the road from their hiding place, and observe the twin lodges that guard the cemetery gates and courtyard. For, despite its many defects, the suburb of Stoke Newington lies a good four miles north of the Thames, and is not, therefore, subject to the same soot-heavy atmosphere that suffocates the heart of the metropolis.

  Sergeant Bartleby shuffles uncomfortably, flapping his arms against the sides of his great-coat.

  ‘We could be over there, sir, enjoying a shot of something,’ says the sergeant, nodding in the direction of the Three Crowns public house. It is an old-fashioned coaching inn of middling size, i
ts illuminated sign visible in the darkness, not a hundred yards or so distant from where the two men stand.

  ‘They’ll be closed soon. And, besides, that would hardly serve our purpose, would it, Sergeant?’

  Bartleby gives Webb a rather plaintive look, which the latter does not notice.

  ‘But did we have to come tonight, sir?’

  ‘No-one waiting for you at home, is there, Sergeant?’

  ‘No, sir,’ replies Bartleby. ‘You?’

  Webb raises his eyebrows at the sergeant’s question.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ replies Bartleby, hurriedly. ‘None of my business.’

  Webb peers at the gates.

  ‘We are here tonight, Sergeant, because your news from Mr. Siddons rather intrigued me. And because it brought me back to thinking about this whole business with the body. I wanted to have a walk round the outside by night, to see what opportunities there were for a fellow minded to break in.’

  ‘And a pleasant walk it was, too, sir,’ says Bartleby, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.

  ‘I’m glad you thought so. And what have we learnt thus far, Sergeant?’

  ‘Sir?’

  Webb sighs. ‘We are agreed it must have been done by night, yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I suppose the chap could hardly have excavated a grave in daylight, not unnoticed. Mr. Pellegrin keeps a sharp eye on things.’

  ‘It seems so. Unless it was one of the grave-diggers,’ says Webb, albeit hesitantly, like a lecturer offering a wholly erroneous thesis, in preparation for demolishing it.

  ‘But then they’d know how to cover it up properly. Easily done with a bit of turf, I’d have thought. And Pellegrin would have spotted it.’

  Webb nods. ‘Quite. That is a fair assumption. Therefore, we suspect it was an intruder, at night. But we’ve been round the cemetery wall, and it seems unlikely.’

  ‘You’d need a ladder, at least,’ suggests the sergeant.

  ‘Or a degree of agility – of course, it is not that high. But it is behind the gardens of the local houses, or in plain sight of them. Smart little houses too, with decent tenants, I should imagine. I saw a couple of curtains twitch when I tried that gate. You recall?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replies Bartleby. If he is weary of being addressed in the manner of a schoolboy, he succeeds in concealing it.

  ‘So our thief would have to be something of a talented burglar.’

  ‘Unless he lives in one of the houses?’

  Webb smiles. ‘Sergeant, you are inspired. Although I’d think in most cases one would run the risk of being seen by one’s neighbours. Still it is a possibility. Nonetheless, I think we are rather obliged to make trial of the night-watchman. Ask any professional thief, Sergeant, and they’ll tell you the swiftest way to “break a drum” is through the servants. The same applies here.’

  ‘You aren’t proposing we stand here all night, sir?’

  Webb shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so. Now, be a good man and pop over to the pub and get a bottle of brandy, will you, Sergeant? Large.’

  Bartleby smiles with surprised delight at the thought of a warming glass of liquor. A sharp look from the inspector, however, returns his features to their previous composure.

  ‘It isn’t for us, is it?’ says Bartleby.

  Webb shakes his head.

  ‘Won’t be a moment, sir,’ says the sergeant ruefully. He begins to cross the street but, putting his hands in his pockets, he turns around and addresses Webb once more.

  ‘You might want to lend us a couple of bob, sir.’

  ‘You took your time, Sergeant,’ says Webb, as Bartleby returns to the doorway, some ten minutes later, a bottle in hand.

  ‘They’re calling last orders in there, sir. Damn busy.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t indulge yourself, Sergeant?’

  ‘Never on duty, sir.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Bartleby looks expectantly at the inspector.

  ‘What is it, man?’ asks Webb.

  ‘Aren’t we going across then, sir?’

  ‘We’ll wait until the pub’s closed.’

  Bartleby looks dejectedly back at the Three Crowns, and, to keep warm, stamps his feet.

  It is gone half-past midnight when the regulars of the Three Crowns exit on to the street. Most exhibit a degree of inebriation either in their gait or in the raucous shouts they address to departing companions, as they disappear into the mist. There is one man, however, who shouts something in the direction of the cemetery’s lodge, where the night-watchman’s lamp is visible through the square little building’s small windows.

  ‘All right, Jem?’

  There is no reply.

  ‘All right?’ repeats the man. It is not a pleasant greeting, and sounds more like a taunt. A figure appears at the door to the lodge; an old man wrapped in a coat that looks far too large for him.

  ‘Keeping warm?’ says the man outside the gates.

  From the policemen’s position upon the opposite side of the road, the watchman’s reply is inaudible.

  ‘Well, you’ll be the only one there what is, won’t you, eh?’ shouts the drunken man, waving at the watchman and bidding him goodbye. The watchman does not so much wave back as dismiss his interlocutor with a swiping movement, perhaps indicative of the manner in which he would prefer to say farewell – were he upon the other side of the gate, and thirty years younger. At length, however, peering through the gate to ensure his tormentor has departed, he returns to his post.

  Webb looks back at the pub.

  ‘I think that’s the last of them. Come on then, Sergeant, give me that bottle and follow my lead.’

  Bartleby nods, and the two men cross the street and walk along to the cemetery gates, where Webb motions for them to stop.

  ‘Where was it, again, Bill?’ says Webb, loudly, apropos of nothing, in an accent not entirely his own.

  Bartleby looks startled at this familiar form of address, but does his best to reply. ‘Err, where was what?’

  ‘The house. Where did you say it was? Ellis Road, was it? Or was it Eltham?’

  Sergeant Bartleby widens his eyes, as if struck by a sudden understanding. ‘Ah, err, Elton, wasn’t it, Charlie?’

  Webb, in turn, raises his eyebrows, mouthing the word ‘Charlie’ with a rather interrogative expression. Bartleby shrugs.

  ‘No,’ continues Webb, with feeling, ‘that weren’t it, not at all. Blow me, if we ain’t been walking round here an hour or more.’

  Before the sergeant can expand upon this theme, the sound of the lodge door opening, on the other side of the gates, causes the two men to turn about. The watchman, a man about sixty years old, steps into the courtyard with his lantern.

  ‘You there, what are you rowing about? Off with you!’

  ‘We’d go, mate, if we knew where we were going,’ says Webb, in a decent impression of inebriated bonhomie. ‘A pal of ours lives round here. Do you know, what’s it called now, Eltham Road?’

  ‘Ellis?’ suggests Bartleby.

  ‘No,’ says the old man.

  ‘Elton then?’

  ‘Never heard of it. New road, is it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ replies Webb, ‘he said it were a beauty of a place, nice new house, didn’t he, Bill? We were s’posed to be seeing Fred and the Missus for supper, see, but we had a couple in that house just down there, the Crowns or something, and then . . . well, it’s a queer thing, ain’t it, Bill?’

  Bartleby nods. ‘Can’t recall the name. You sure you don’t know it?’

  ‘How should I know it if you don’t?’ asks the old man.

  ‘Best we head home, Billy boy,’ says Webb. ‘Do you reckon we’ll find a cab to the Borough, mate?’

  The old man shrugs his shoulders. ‘You might have to walk it.’

  ‘Walk!’ Webb exclaims. ‘In this weather? I’ll be frozen solid. And I’ll cop it when I get home.’

  Bartleby notices the bottle of brand
y, which Webb dangles rather ostentatiously in his hand. ‘Bloody waste of that brandy, too.’

  ‘We best have a taste of it on the way, I suppose,’ says Webb. ‘Damned shame – I was looking forward to taking a drop, civil like.’

  The old man eyes the bottle. ‘Brandy, you say?’

  ‘Best bottle they had – waste of good money.’

  ‘Well,’ says the old man thoughtfully, ‘if you’re cold, I’ve got a fire going in here.’

  ‘Fire? Oh, but we couldn’t possibly take advantage, could we, Charlie?’ says Bartleby. Webb, however, gives him a brief, threatening glance.

  ‘You’ve a Christian spirit, sir,’ says Webb. ‘Here, now what say we share a drop of this liquor between us?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, when I’m on duty . . .’ says the old man.

  ‘No harm in it,’ suggests Bartleby.

  ‘Well, I suppose I’ve a couple of glasses knocking about somewhere,’ says the old man, as he walks to the gate, and undoes the padlock. ‘Here, come through.’

  ‘Very kind of you, mate, very kind,’ mutters Webb.

  Decimus Webb pours another glass of brandy, as the old man reclines in his chair, in front of the small hearth in the cemetery lodge.

  ‘Are you here every night?’ asks the inspector, allowing himself a sip of liquor.

  ‘Aye,’ says the watchman, following Webb’s example, and downing a gulp of brandy, ‘twenty years I’ve been here, never missed a night, except when the Missus died.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that,’ says Webb.

  ‘No need; seventeen year ago that were.’

  ‘Is she buried here?’

  The old man nods. ‘Aye. Bless her. 17606. F07.’

  ‘Beg your pardon?’ says Bartleby.

  ‘Her number. That’s her number in the register – I memorialised it in my head.’

  Webb nods. ‘I expects the work ain’t much trouble, in a place like this?’

  The old man snorts, gesturing towards the cemetery proper. ‘No, they don’t give me much trouble, they don’t.’

  Webb smiles. ‘No, I’d hope not. Still, I think it’d give me the creeps.’