The Incendiary's Trail Read online

  THE

  INCENDIARY’S

  TRAIL

  JAMES McCREET

  PAN BOOKS

  If every man who receives a cheque for a story which owes its springs to Poe were to pay tithe to a monument for the master, he would have a pyramid as big as that of Cheops.

  — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ONE

  ‘Murder! Murder! Mur-der!’

  A ragged-looking boy ran shouting from the darkness towards the larger gaslit streets of Lambeth.

  And silence again filled the nameless alley from which he had emerged. Its cobbles were greasy with night rain and its gutters stopped with soil. A weak halo of moisture hung about the bare flame of the gaslight at its entrance, though the open door of the house was in shadow. Close by, the river breathed mud.

  No sign of interest yet stirred. Any common fight or drunken disagreement might yield its cry of ‘Murder!’ It was an area where such things were common enough. Only a fool, or a drunk, attended cries of murder before dawn in this place.

  Or a policeman. The sound of boots clattered from the main street, echoing among dank brickwork and sagging timbers: Police Constable Cullen, a burly six-footer holding his bullseye lamp before him as he ran behind the boy back towards the house. They approached the low lodging house and paused, panting, at the door.

  Here, the boy drew back, unwilling to proceed further into the house. If he shivered, it was horror rather than cold that animated his frame, fear rather than hunger that swirled in his stomach. The policeman touched his slender shoulder.

  ‘All right, lad. You stay here and direct the other officers when they come. You can do that, can’t you? Good lad.’

  The boy wrapped his arms around himself and looked to the main street. PC Cullen held up his lamp and entered.

  The cramped hallway smelled of damp and the previous evening’s meat and potatoes. The kitchen to his left was empty, its grate just ashes at this hour and the plates still on the table, unwashed. Muffled sobs, low voices and the shuffle of feet came from an upstairs room.

  There were no gaslights in this squalid tenement – only candles and oil. The beam of the constable’s lamp cast a flickering light up the narrow, uncarpeted staircase. He coughed loudly to announce his presence.

  ‘Police! I am coming up the stairs.’

  A thin, reedy wail started in the room above: an inhuman sound made only by the desperate, the insane and beasts. It raised the very hairs on PC Cullen’s neck and crawled with icy fingers up his scalp into his stovepipe hat. He patted the truncheon at his hip to be sure of its presence. Then he drew it.

  Footfalls skittered hollowly like rats in the wall. From the top of the stairs, he saw a hallway and an open door. Within, he could see a single oil lamp standing on a table by a peeling wall. A dull painting of fields and farm workers hung askew on the wall. The place was clearly little more than a cheap lodging house – albeit a curiously uncrowded one.

  Whispers emanated from the room and sent fresh shivers across PC Cullen’s back. His knuckles whitened on the truncheon.

  ‘I am entering!’

  He stepped into the room with his lamp held high and flashed its beam rapidly about him. Immediately, he became aware of a group of people standing in the shadows against the far wall: perhaps half a dozen of them. Their static nature and collective breathing unnerved him. He turned his lamp full upon them and beheld . . . a vision that dealt a hammer blow to his heart.

  ‘O! O! What is this infernal place? L— protect me!’

  The beam from his lamp jerked crazily across their faces: a spectacle he had never before witnessed – a tableau of horror that defied reality but which could not be denied. He backed towards the door, fumbling for his rattle as his eyes again beheld what they would not believe. The faces – if one could call them such – were now directed as one at another spot to his side. He turned swiftly with the lamp, expecting an assault.

  ‘O! O! In the name of G—! O! G— protect me!’

  As the seated figure fell under the beam of the lamp, the walls seemed to crowd in upon him. There, in the stark and emotionless eye of the light, was not a human thing but a hideous waxwork. The blood, however – its unmistakable metallic tang and its dull glistening – was real enough. He turned and banged furiously down the stairs into the street, where he set the rattle going with all the energy he could muster, calling out:

  ‘Murder! Murder! Murder!’

  Still shaking, he began muttering to himself and rubbing his eyes, as those benighted residents of Bethlem Hospital are wont to do:

  ‘I have never seen . . . O! It is burned on my brain even when I close my eyes!’

  A clatter of boots was heard at the corner and two other police officers approached the grim alley with truncheons drawn. Breathing heavily, the taller one spoke:

  ‘What is it, Cully? A murder? You look as pale as—’

  Cullen removed his hat and wiped his face with a handkerchief. He rested a supporting hand against the doorframe. His colleagues looked from one to the other with foreboding: John Cullen was not known for his sensitive nature. When he spoke, it was with a constricted throat.

  ‘Corbett – go . . . go to the watch house and fetch the surgeon. Tell the inspector . . . tell him there’s been a murder in this dwelling. PC Hamilton – we must guard this place until reinforcements arrive. There is going to be a sensation about this one and no mistake. O! I feel quite—’

  And here the doughty PC Cullen vomited. If it were not for the extreme nature of what he had witnessed, he might have been reprimanded for such behaviour while on duty. He would not be the last to react thus.

  By now, lights were appearing at windows, curtains were twitching and the first weak streaks of dawn were struggling through an overcast sky, barred by the manufacturer’s chimneys. Smoke started to billow brown and yellow from houses as the city began to wake, though the miserable streets remained dark.

  Not a soul could be seen, but the news was already spreading. The young boy who had first heralded the crime was gone. Husbands spoke to wives, mothers to children, neighbours to neighbours. And as the early workers ventured out into the metropolis with crusts of bread in their pockets and hot tea in their bellies, they spoke to their workmates. People were coming – first from the surrounding streets, then from surrounding districts. They came hungry for news, that currency of conversation.

  By the time Sergeant George Williamson of the Detective Force and Police Surgeon McLeod had arrived, there was a handful of people being prevented from entering by PCs Cullen and Hamilton. Constable Cullen, who knew of Mr Williamson only by rumour and reputation, recognized him immediately.

  The detective’s pockmarked face bespoke a near fatal acquaintance with smallpox that lent a perpetual scowl to his features, while his legs were bowed slightly from his years of walking out in all weathers as a beat policeman. Even in his stovepipe, he was visibly at the lower height limitation for the force and, in his civilian clothes, he might have been an artisan of some kind – a watchmaker, perhaps, or a sk
illed tailor who could take the measure of a man with a glance. To him, an eighth of an inch was as critical as a yard. He was a hero to many constables.

  PC Cullen spoke with care: ‘Nobody has entered or left since I arrived, sir. I believe this is the only door. There is a dead, er . . . woman upstairs and a number of, er, people in the room. They are—’

  ‘Has the property been searched, PC Cullen? Have you made a search of the surrounding area for a weapon? Have you questioned the people upstairs or the local residents for what was heard or seen about the time of the crime?’

  ‘No, sir . . . I have been standing guard here.’

  ‘Well, see to it, PC Cullen! Enquire of these people what they may have witnessed and search the streets for any likely weapon or evidence of a crime. The murderer could very well be one of these people standing here, couldn’t he? Or she.’

  At this revelation, a murmur went up from the people standing about the alleyway. They moved apart and looked at each other with new suspicion.

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Now – let us see the scene of the crime.’

  Mr Williamson held up his lamp (noting immediately that the door lock was damaged) and entered, closely followed by Dr McLeod. They had seen murders enough to walk without fear up the narrow staircase to that room above. As he ascended, the detective directed his lamp at the treads for signs of blood or anything dropped by the fleeing murderer – if indeed he had fled. It was difficult to see anything but the coarsest detail in the gloom and a man could easily hide himself in the shadows.

  They turned into the open room at the top and Mr Williamson shone his lamp at the people still cowering against one wall. They were seemingly unmoved since PC Cullen’s entrance. Four years on the beat and two more as a detective had not prepared him for what he saw.

  The first face to appear in the lamplight was up in the roof timbers. The man must have been seven or eight feet tall and possessed of shoulders like an ox. A huge prow of a chin projected from his face as he stared dumbly at the lamp and his arms hung limply by his side. But for his immensity, he could have been a child, admonished and sent to stand in the corner.

  Next to the giant was a man of average height and build, but without a face – or rather it was a horribly disfigured face which appeared to have folded in on itself, sucking his features into a fleshy cleft and twisting his mouth into a gash of awkwardly protruding teeth. His tiny black eyes darted nervously about him and his hands reached up – too late – to cover his shame. A fervid tongue licked rapidly at the contorted lips.

  Beside this man was a woman of gigantic bulk sitting in a huge chair that must have been made for her. Rolls of pudding-like fat supported her head where a neck should have been and her arms sprouted from her vast body like two enormous air-filled bladders. They twitched obscenely like the fins of a large fish out of water. By her leg, some kind of dog cowered. But . . . no, this was no dog. It was a child of about seven whose entire countenance was covered in hair, right to the very eyeballs. Incisors glistened between her lips as she flinched away from the light and whimpered in a canine fashion.

  Still another appeared to be a child attired in the garb of an adult: a tiny suit and waistcoat complete with a minuscule top hat. He (if it was a he) looked frankly back at the detective, seemingly unashamed and unabashed.

  Detective Williamson stood rigid. His province was the law, but it seemed that here the very laws of Nature had been violated. Dr McLeod, who knew professionally of such things, was at once repelled and fascinated by the spectacle.

  ‘A freak show, Williamson! We have stumbled on the residents of a freak show. I believe I have read of it in the Times: “Dr Zwigoff’s Anatomical Wonders”, they call it. It’s been at Vauxhall Gardens the last fortnight. But where is the . . . O! Good L—!’

  The bullseye lamp settled on the figure of a seated young woman – a girl, really – the corpse.

  Girl . . . or girls? Two red-haired heads presented themselves; two slender necks descended to one body with two arms and two legs. But only the left throat bore a gaping wound that had emptied a body’s worth of blood over the front of her dress, soaking it to an almost uniform black in the light of the police lamp. McLeod approached the body with some trepidation.

  ‘Well, I have not seen the likes of this since the London visit of the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng,’ he said with the forced jocularity used by a surgeon instructing a tremulous student. ‘A real rarity, Williamson: two spinal columns, joining . . .’

  But the detective was barely listening. He looked ill at ease. Though confident amongst pickpockets and magsmen, bullies, procurers and drunks, nothing here was familiar to him. It was a world he had never ventured into – one of many worlds within the world of London. Still, there was a procedure to be followed.

  ‘Is she dead, doctor?’

  McLeod reached out to feel for a pulse, hesitating briefly before choosing the unharmed neck. He held his lamp to the wound.

  ‘Hmm. Dead. A single strike, probably with a razor. Made with extreme force. It has severed the artery, of course. The body is still warm. The killer cannot have gone far, Mr Williamson. Perhaps your men will catch him hereabouts if they are sharp. And if he is not already here among us.’

  The detective looked from the body to the other people in the room. Though fearful in aspect, they were unthreatening. Indeed, he reflected, they had more to fear from the world than it from them. Now they huddled together against the wall like rats before a dog. He addressed them:

  ‘You have nothing to fear, unless you are part of this grisly crime. I will conceal you from the crowds and protect you from their gaze. And I will question each of you in turn. Who is the master here? Where is Dr Zwigoff?’

  Fearful faces looked back at him. From among their number, the tiny figure emerged: a strangely proportioned homunculus no bigger than a child, but with all the facial attributes of a man. When he spoke, it was with a high, rasping voice:

  ‘Henry Coggins is our protector, sir. He styles himself Dr Zwigoff, but he is no doctor that I know of. He is out drinking, sir. He often returns at dawn.’

  ‘Does he? Well, I will be speaking to him also if he returns and proves able to converse. We will remove the body and begin questioning directly. But first, I believe we would all appreciate a cup of hot tea. Dr McLeod, we must move everyone out of this room to preserve it intact. We will adjourn to the kitchen.’

  Outside, the handful of people had grown. Others had heard the stories, which had now achieved levels of horror barely credible even to those who wanted to believe. They spoke not only of a murder, but of many-headed monsters and giants, demons and wolf-children – things all too easily believed by those superstitious folk from the country or those raised on the myths of the city. They muttered the latest ‘knowledge’:

  ‘It is the secret progeny of a priest and a nun, hidden from human sight!’

  ‘It is a warning from Heaven against our Sin – the Apocalypse is near.’

  ‘It is Spring-Heeled Jack, returned with others of his kind!’

  The clamour for news was a hunger among them. Here, on their very doorstep, the most outrageous crime of the decade (of the century, even) had been committed: the brutal, bloody murder of a human abomination – one of many such creatures lurking in a den of hideous natural accidents.

  They could not know then, of course, as they puffed on their clay pipes and shuffled their feet for warmth, that it was merely the first in a chain of events that would shock and fascinate the city as never before, setting it alight like one of those periodical conflagrations that reduce all to ashes. It was the spark to an inferno that would be fanned uncontrollably by the winds of rumour, speculation and print – a story as famous as the city that bore it.

  TWO

  London: the greatest city on earth, the beginning and end to numberless journeys, and the setting for infinite stories – the modern Babylon.

  Should the provincial or rural reader cast an eye
over the metropolis from the heights of St Paul’s, he would see more factory chimneys than spires, more ships’ masts than chimneys. Moored there at St Katharine’s, there at the East and West Indias, there at the old London docks and the Thames Pool are the ships of the world, those copper-sheathed brigs and cutters, those packets, colliers, schooners and barks listed daily in that great organ, the Times. Here is the Spartan of St Domingo, the Eagle of St John’s, the United Kingdom of Honduras, and the Jane May bound directly for the Barbadoes.

  In those thick-walled warehouses and cellars is stored the produce of the globe: spices of India, tobacco of Virginia, rum and sugar from the Indies. In musty vaults lay rows of bottles, bales of tea, boxes of pungent horn and hides, bolts of silk and bags of cotton. The songs of sailors ring out as barrels roll and tackle takes the strain of multitudinous cargoes. Negroes, Chinese, and coffee-skinned Arabs haul on ropes or wait for the tide to carry them away to sea.

  From his vantage of St Paul’s, the visiting reader would hear the city speak: the infernal, interminable rattle of wheels and hooves on roads, the street seller’s yells, the hammering and digging of ceaseless construction on new streets, new sewers, new railway lines and warehouses. And above this entire clamour, the noise of the people themselves: a million and more souls inhabiting the streets and clogging the bridges. The solicitors, tidewaiters, fellmongers, patterers, coal-whippers, watermen, milliners, lightermen, costermongers, beggars and police. Not only English, but Italians with their greased hair and earrings; robed Hindoos of India; magdalenes of Spain, Belgium and France – a veritable glossolalia rising from those busy thoroughfares.

  Let us descend there from our observation point, pinch our noses and enter the same air: thick with smoke, pungent with equine effluvia and scented with the city’s industries. The vagaries of the wind evoke the unspeakable tannery, the yeasty brewery, the foundry, the distillery and, of course, the river, whose muddy swell has fattened London since Hadrian’s time and before.