Under a Veiled Moon by Karen Odden, available October 11, 2022 from your favorite bookseller!
CHAPTER ONE
We all carry pieces of our past with us. Sometimes they’re shiny and worthy as new half crowns in our pockets. Sometimes they’re bits of lint or scraps of paper shredded beyond use. Plenty of my memories carry a stab of regret or a burn of shame with them, and honestly, there are times when I wonder how we all bloody well live with the fool things we’ve done.
I’ve made a fair number of mistakes since I first donned a Metropolitan Police uniform in Lambeth, over twelve years ago now. Investigating murders and missing people isn’t a task for those who aren’t willing to go down the wrong alley three or four times before finding the proper one. But those errors are a result of making a poor guess based on limited knowledge, and while they may cause a few sleepless nights, they can be set aside.
The mistakes that feel less forgivable are those that hurt someone you love. Worse still is when you discover your error only years later. Often, there’s nothing to be done. Too much time has passed to make amends. And those mistakes—ach, it’s bloody difficult to forgive yourself when you should’ve known better, should’ve known to pick your head up and cast about to see what might happen as a result of your actions. Perhaps there’s no easy way to learn that lesson, other than failing to do it once and discovering later just what it cost.
Sometimes, during the evenings we’re together, my Belinda reads aloud from whatever book is occupying her at the moment. One night she related a Greek myth about a man whose wife was killed by a snakebite. By virtue of his music, he weaseled his way into the underworld and convinced the king of Hades to release her. The king had one condition, however, of the rescue: neither the man nor his wife could look backward as they were leaving. And what did the fool do? He turned back to be sure his wife was still with him. He couldn’t help himself, poor bloke. So the mouth of hell opened up, and she vanished forever.
But perhaps we can’t always help what we do in a moment of crushing fear.
When I was nineteen, scared out of my wits and fleeing Whitechapel with only a bag of clothes and a small pouch of coins Ma Doyle thrust into my hand, I didn’t look back. Unlike the man in the myth, I should have, though.
Perhaps then hell would not have opened up around me thirteen years later.
***
On the first day of September, I woke to pale autumn sunlight and a feeling of well-being. It didn’t happen often, and it took a few moments to recall the cause. I lay still, listening to the Sunday quiet of my house, to a lone costermonger’s wheels creaking and rumbling over the cobbles outside, and the bells from St. Barnabas’s tolling from the next street over. I no longer attended church, but I did believe in God—a reasonable and just God, although sometimes the world twisted justice around, like a boat line hitched badly around a metal cleat so it emerged from the knot in a direction you didn’t expect.
As I stared at the ceiling, I collected my thoughts with some satisfaction. I’d been acting superintendent at Wapping River Police for three months now, and we’d just resolved a case involving smugglers who’d been bribing Custom House men to underweight the scales, to avoid paying proper taxes. It had occupied my every breath for the past four weeks, and now I felt a sense of relief, like a weighted yoke off the back of my neck, as I always did when an important case ended. The newspapers had even printed something good about the police yesterday as a result. God knows we needed it. Sometimes I still cringed at the memories of the corruption trial last autumn, with mobs cursing us plainclothes men for being frauds and cheats, and newspaper headlines proclaiming how London would be better off if we were all at the bottom of the Thames. But with the river murders of last April resolved and this smuggling case concluded, it seemed the police were slowly earning back public trust. Of course, the stories published about our successes were full of inaccuracies, and by omitting any reference to the tiresome inquiries, the endless walking, and the misleading clues, they were nowhere near the whole truth, but at least they painted the police in a satisfactory light.
The door to Harry’s bedroom, next to mine, opened and closed, and as I heard the boy start down the stairs, I slid out of bed. The coals in my bedroom stove had burnt to ash, and the room was cool, with a dampness that lingered after a rainy August.
Standing at the window in my nightshirt, I looked across the way at the two-story red-brick terraced houses, built cheek by jowl, mirror images of those on my side of the street. The sunlight, golden as a well-baked loaf of bread, inched down from the roofline and struck the upper windows, flashing a shine that made me squint. It was a pleasure to think I had no plan for the day but to visit the Doyles for Sunday tea. What with the smugglers and my new responsibilities at Wapping, it had been over a month since I’d seen Ma, Elsie, and Colin—longer than I liked.
From downstairs came the sound of our kettle shrieking.
Harry would be preparing tea for himself and coffee for me. My brew was a holdover from the tastes of the previous century, I knew, but I couldn’t abide weak liquids in the morning. I’d taught Harry how to make my coffee properly after he said he’d do whatever necessary to keep me from growling at him.
Harry Lish had come to live with me here in Soho six months ago, after his father died, his mother having passed away years before. Harry was Ma Doyle’s nephew, but as she’d told me when he arrived at her house in Whitechapel, he didn’t belong there. His speech was too well schooled and his manners more Mayfair than Merseyside. Although barely sixteen, Harry was determined to study medicine, and I’d found a place for him at St. Anne’s Hospital with my friend James Everett, a physician and surgeon who supervised the ward for brain injuries and mental disorders. Harry was leaving the next day to spend a fortnight or so observing in an Edinburgh hospital, a special opportunity arranged by James, who found in Harry an eager and intuitive student.
I pulled on my shirt and a pair of trousers with the special side pocket for my truncheon, a vestige of my days in uniform. It being Sunday, I was off duty, but the Doyles lived in the heart of Whitechapel, and there was no point in being foolhardy. I splashed water on my face and ran a comb through my hair before stowing my truncheon and heading down the stairs.
“Good morning, Mickey,” Harry said as I entered the kitchen.
“Morning.” I accepted the cup he pushed across the table. The pocketbook he always took to the hospital lay beside his saucer. “Are you not coming with me to the Doyles’s?”
He winced an apology. “I would, but there’s a special procedure.”
“On a Sunday?”
He nodded, his brown eyes keen. “Dr. Everett is performing a craniotomy on a woman with blood on the brain.”
The coffee suddenly tasted sour. But far be it from me to dampen his scientific ardor.
“You’ll only be watching, I assume?” I asked.
Regret flickered over his features. “Observing from the balcony.” Then he brightened. “Richard will be assisting, though.”
Richard was a second-year medical student at University College here in London, who worked at the hospital and had taken Harry under his wing.
“How did it happen?” I asked. “Blood on the brain?”
“She fell off a ladder,” he replied. “If Dr. Everett doesn’t operate, the blood will continue to press on the internal parts of her brain.” He touched his fingertips to the side of his head. “She’s already having secondary symptoms—seizures, confusion, and the like.”
“Ah. What time is it? The operation?”
He upended his cup to drink the last of the tea. “Ten o’clock, but I want to be there for the anesthesia.”
“Of course.” What could be more entertaining? I thought as I raised my own cup to hide my smile.
He reached for his coat. “Besides, I doubt Aunt Mary will expect me. I saw them on Tuesday. My aunt and Elsie, I should say,” he amended as he thrust his arm into a sleeve. “Colin was out somewhere . . . as usual.”
In his voice was an undertone—hurt, strained, subdued—that could have served as a signal of something amiss. But it was one of those moments when you must be paying proper attention to take it in, when you must be standing quite still. And we weren’t. Harry was dashing up the stairs, calling over his shoulder, “Wait for me—I’ll be right down,” and I was rummaging on the table amid some newspapers for my pocketbook—where was the bloody thing?—and the warning went unheeded.
I swallowed down the last of my coffee. Harry did well by me, leaving no grounds in the bottom, meticulous in a way that boded well for his success in a profession that demanded precision. With my pocketbook found, I shrugged into my coat, and when Harry reappeared on the stairs, his boots sounding quick on the treads, I waved him outside and locked the front door. We walked to the corner, where we bid farewell and separated. I watched him, hatless, his lanky boyish frame hurrying along, not wanting to miss the thrills to be found in the medical amphitheater.
I found myself grinning as I turned away, for I liked the lad, and we’d come to understand each other. Belinda says that in our both being orphans and clever, as well as in some of our less desirable traits such as our prickly aversion to owing anyone anything, we’re more alike than I’m willing to admit. There’s part of me that agrees with her, though Harry and I have our differences. Sometimes I wonder where I’d be if I’d had Harry’s book learning or someone overseeing my education and guiding my professional progress the way James does for Harry. Oh, my real mother had taught me to read before I lost her, and working at Ma Doyle’s store had made me quick at my sums. But every so often Harry would let slip a phrase in French or Latin, or he’d mention some curious bit of history, much the way James or my former partner Stiles does, not to show off his learning but just because it floats around in his brain. And I’d think about how we can’t be more than our past permits us.
Then again, my advancement within the Metropolitan Police has been my own doing. There’s some satisfaction in that too.
CHAPTER TWO
It was a fine day for a walk, and I headed to my favorite pub—the only one within a mile of my house that served a satisfying wedge of shepherd’s pie in a proper crust. It was where I usually spent part of my Sunday, with the papers, and I knew the Doyles wouldn’t expect me before two or three at the earliest.
My favorite table was occupied by two men, but I chose another near the window where a newspaper was lying, its ruffled pages evidence of it having already been read at least once. I flipped it over to find the Times masthead and the bold headline “Sittingbourne Disaster,” with a drawing below it of a railway train with the engine, tender, and two cars tipped over on their sides and the usual chaos of people and their belongings flung from carriages.
I let out a groan.
Sittingbourne was fifty miles east of London, on the south side of the Thames, not far from where the river let out to the North Sea. I scanned the article, but there weren’t many facts provided other than it had happened the previous night, August 31, on the London, Chatham and Dover line, when an express train bringing trippers back from Sheerness and elsewhere had run off the rails. It seemed to be the result of either eroded ground or a rotted railway tie that destabilized the iron rail above it—the same problem that had caused the disaster at Morpeth last March, as well as half a dozen other accidents that had occurred around England in the past few years. Early reports indicated three dead and sixty-two injured, with numbers expected to increase. The article closed with the usual gloomy declarations about how, until railways are held to a standard of safety by Parliament, accidents such as this would continue to plague travelers.
I stood and went to another table, where I found another paper whose account included the additional facts that, for some unknown reason, the railway train had been on the ancillary line instead of the primary line, approximately one hundred yards from the station; and five passengers, not three, had been killed. This version also included, on an inside page, lurid descriptions and illustrations of mangled bodies and children’s toys strewn among the broken carriages.
Those poor families, I thought. What a wretched ending to a pleasant excursion.
As I refolded the paper, worry nicked at my nerves. Belinda would be traveling home from Edinburgh by train in a few days. She’d been visiting her cousin for a month, which was the longest I’d gone without seeing her these three years since a burglary had first brought me to her home. The thought of her in a railway disaster carved a cold, hollow space in my chest.
But even as I imagined it, I dismissed my worry as nonsensical. Belinda had made this trip dozens of times, and the line from Edinburgh was one of the newest and safest. Besides, the newspaper’s pessimism notwithstanding, parliament had mandated new safety devices and procedures. No doubt this Sittingbourne disaster would require yet another Parliamentary Commission, and the Railways Inspection Department would be saddled with the task of providing weeks of testimony and filing endless reports. I didn’t envy them.
After finishing my pie, I took my time reading the remainder of the papers, then rose, shrugged into my coat, and left the pub, strolling east until I crossed Leman Street into Whitechapel. Many of the narrow, pocked streets were without signs, but I’d grown up among these crooked alleys, with buildings whose upper floors overhung the unpaved passages and oddly shaped courtyards, and I tacked left and right, left and right, until I reached the street with Ma Doyle’s shop. It always opened at one o’clock on Sundays, after Roman mass, and as I anticipated, there was the usual bustle around the door.
What I didn’t expect were the wooden planks that covered one of the windows. Alarm pinched at the top of my spine and spread across my shoulders.
Burglary wasn’t uncommon in Whitechapel, but we’d never been the target. Usually it happened to businesses that foolishly kept wares in the front window overnight, or those whose owners were unpopular or had some sort of falling-out with the Cobbwallers, the Irish gang from Seven Dials that had extended its reach east and now ran gambling, extortion, and the like here. I couldn’t imagine any of these were true in Ma’s case. She was known to be a good neighbor, free with a cup o’ tea and sympathy. As for James McCabe’s Cobbwaller gang, Ma was too astute to fall on the wrong side of them.
Stepping close to one of the two remaining windows, I observed the shop’s interior. Everything seemed as usual: a dozen people, still in their church clothes, chattering and laughing while choosing their candles and tea and sundries, and Ma’s friend’s son, Eaman Casey, behind the counter, wrapping up a parcel in brown paper. I’d only met him twice, but he seemed a decent bloke of about twenty-three, smart and sensible. From a peculiar quality in the air when Elsie was present, I gathered Eaman was sweet on her, though I’d yet to discern her feelings. I watched as he counted out coins, liking that he took the time to talk with one of Ma’s oldest friends, bending his head attentively as she replied.
A set of indoor stairs led directly from the shop’s storeroom to the living quarters above, but rather than make my way through the crowd, I went around back to the outdoor stairs. The bottom swaybacked step was newly loose, shifting under my boot, but the rest of the treads were firmly in place, though they creaked all the way up, just as when I lived here. I knocked twice and inserted my key in the lock.
Even as I did so, I heard the twins, Colin and Elsie, their voices raised as they talked over each other—Elsie with a sharp edge of frustration, Colin growling in reply. Odd, I thought as I pushed open the door. Since they were children, they’d baited each other and teased, but I’d never known them to quarrel.
Colin sat in a kitchen chair tilted backward, the heel of one heavy boot hooked over the rung. He glared up at Elsie, who stood across the table, her hand clutching a faded towel at her hip, her chin set in a way I recognized.
“Hullo,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
Both heads swiveled to me, and in unison, they muttered, “Nothing.”
They could have still been five, caught spooning the jam out of the jar Ma hid behind the flour tin. Except that under the stubble of his whiskers, there was a puffiness along Colin’s cheek that appeared to be the remnants of a bruise.
Colin thunked the front legs of the chair onto the floor and pushed away from the table. “I got somethin’ to do.” He took his coat off the rack—not his old faded one, I noticed, but a new one—and stalked out the door, pulling it closed behind him.
I raised my eyebrows and turned to Elsie. She grimaced. “He’s just bein’ an eejit, like most men.” Her voice lacked its usual good humor; she was genuinely angry.
Jaysus, I thought. What’s happened?
But I’d give Elsie a moment. “Where’s Ma?”
“Went down to the shop for some tea.” She stepped to the sideboard and moved the kettle to the top of the stove. The handle caught her sleeve, pulling it back far enough that I caught sight of a white bandage.
“Did you hurt your wrist?”
She tugged the sleeve down. “Ach, I just fell on the stairs. Clumsy of me.”
The broken window and Colin’s abrupt departure had been enough to alert me to something amiss. Even without those signs, though, I wouldn’t have believed her. I knew the shape a lie took in her voice.
“No, you didn’t,” I said.
Her back was to me, and she spoke over her shoulder. “It’s nothing, Mickey.”
I approached and took her left elbow gently in mine to turn her. “Let me see.”
Reluctantly, she let me unwrap the flannel. Diagonal across her wrist was a bruise such as a truncheon or a pipe might leave, purple and yellowing at the edges.
I looked up. “Who did this?” My voice was hoarse.
Her blue eyes met mine. “Mickey, don’t look like that. It was dark, and I don’t even think he did it on purpose.”
“Jaysus, Elsie.” I let go of her, so she could rewrap it. “Who?”
“I don’t know! I was walking home from Mary’s house on Wednesday night, and before I knew it, twenty lads were around me, fightin’ and brawlin’, and I jumped out of the way, but one of them hit my wrist, and I fell.”
“What were you doing walking alone after dark? Where was Colin?”
She gave a disparaging “pfft.” “As if I’d know. Some nights he doesn’t come home until late. Or not at all.”
Harry’s words came back to me: “Out . . . as usual.”
I cast my mind back to my own recent visits. Colin had often been absent, partly because he’d been working on the construction of the new embankment, but that had ended in July. So where was he spending his time now? And where had he earned the money for his new coat?
We both heard Ma’s footsteps on the inside stairs.
“Don’t tell Ma,” Elsie said hurriedly, her voice low. The bandage was completely hidden by her sleeve. “She has enough to worry about. Swear, Mickey.”
Even as I promised, I wondered what else was worrying Ma. But as the door at the top of the inner stairs opened, I had my smile ready.
Ma emerged, carrying a packet of tea from the shop. “Ah, Mickey! I’m glad ye came.” Her face shone with genuine warmth, and she smoothed her coppery hair back from her temple. Her eyes flicked around the room, landing on Elsie. “Colin left?” The brightness in her expression dimmed.
“Just now,” Elsie replied. Their gazes held, and with the unfailing instinct that develops in anyone who grew up trying to perceive trouble before it struck, I sensed meaning in that silent exchange. But before I could decipher it, Elsie shrugged, and Ma turned to me, her hazel eyes appraising.
“You look less wraithy than usual.” She reached up to pat my cheek approvingly. “Elsie, fetch the preserves. I’ll put the water on.”
“I’ll do it, Ma.” I went to the stove, tonged in a few lumps of coal from the scuttle and shut the metal door with a clang. As Elsie sliced the bread, I filled the kettle and Ma took down three cups and saucers from the shelf.
The tension I sensed amid my family derived from something drifting in the deep current, not bobbing along the surface, driven by a single day’s wind and sun. Something had changed. I wanted to know what it was, and I began with the obvious.
“What happened to the shop window?” I asked.
“Ach,” Ma replied as she ferried plates, knives, cups, and the board with the sliced bread to the table. “It was broken last week. The glazier’s comin’ tomorrow to fix it.”
I drew a chair out from the table, and as I sat, one leg jiggled under my weight. I shifted my position gingerly, wary of it collapsing altogether, and felt a momentary annoyance with Colin. He knew how to fix a bloody chair. I’d taught him myself. Ma shouldn’t even have to ask.
Elsie brought the teapot and poured for each of us. “Sorry, do you have the wobbler?”
“It’s no matter,” I said. “I can fix it later.”
“Oh nae. Colin’ll do it,” Ma said as she settled herself in the chair opposite. “He’s been meanin’ to, only he’s been busy.”
Elsie’s mouth tightened with doubt as she set the teapot on the trivet and took her seat, but I knew better than to ask about Colin. Ma never discussed one twin in front of the other.
“When was the window broken? What time of day?” I asked.
“Tuesday night, late,” Elsie replied. “We heard the smashes and shouts from our beds. We both stayed awake the rest of the night, watching in case they torched it, but they just left.”
This had me sitting bolt upright in my chair. “Why didn’t you send for me?”
“Ach,” Ma said. “No one was hurt, and you’ve plenty on your shoulders already.”
Elsie opened her mouth and shut it again. If it were up to her, I’d have been told. But Ma didn’t like to make a fuss.
“But why our shop?” I asked.
“It wasn’t only ours,” Elsie corrected me. “Next morning, we found there were four others, not to mention the man who was killed.”
Word travels fast within Whitechapel, but it hadn’t made it to Wapping. Then again, I’d spent all my time of late at the Custom House and Records Office upriver, and crime here was the province of H Division.
“Was it anyone we know?”
Elsie shook her head. “I didn’t. Name of Sean Doone.”
I’d heard the name Doone all my life, but I didn’t know this man. “Where were the other shops?”
“Along Wickly Street,” Elsie said. “On the way to Boyd.”
No wonder I hadn’t seen them on my way here. Wickly began at the next corner, running south and east of here, and I’d come from the other direction. But the shops on Wickly were all owned by Irish. The thought brought a fresh wave of unease. “Have the police been?”
Elsie replied, “Well, o’ course, but no one’ll talk to them.”
Ma brushed some stray breadcrumbs from the table onto her palm and dropped them onto her saucer. “They stole some candles and sugar. Nothin’ even worth mentionin’. It’s over and done.” Her lips pursed, and Elsie and I both took the hint. Ma didn’t want to discuss it further; she wanted us to enjoy our tea.
“Aye,” Elsie agreed as she spread jam on her bread. “The costliest thing was the window, smashed to pieces, a bloody bother to sweep up.” Her mouth twitched slyly. “Should’ve had a starglazer, wouldn’t ’a been so messy.”
I recognized the gibe about my former thieving days for what it was, and I played along, grinning and flapping my napkin half-heartedly in Elsie’s direction. “I saw Eaman at the counter just now. Is he doing well?” I asked, sly in my turn.
Elsie’s cheeks pinked, and she shot me a glare.
“Eaman is doin’ very well,” Ma said with the good-humored air of halting a squabble before it began. “He manages the shop and our stock very capably without me havin’ to say a word, and folks like him.”
Elsie peered at us over the rim of her cup. “’Cause he lets them natter on! He listened to Mrs. Connelly for twenty minutes the other day, talking about her bird.”
Ma gave a rap of rebuke on the table. “Mind you, that canary is all she has to talk to, now that her daughter’s married and gone.” She stirred in a lump of sugar. “Eaman’s just bein’ kind.”
“I know,” Elsie replied. “And all the old biddies like it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And you?”
“Ah, hush,” she said as she rose to refill the teapot from the kettle on the stove.
I happened to glance at Ma, and to my surprise she wasn’t smiling at our bit of chaffing. She was watching Elsie, and whatever Ma was thinking deepened the vertical lines between her brows. A quick glance at Elsie’s hands, usually so deft, fumbling with the handle of the kettle, and I knew I’d stumbled into what rivermen call a “muddy eddy.” I sensed Ma didn’t mind the thought of Eaman and Elsie together. But could this have something to do with why Colin and Elsie had been fighting? Did Colin not approve of Eaman? Or of Elsie marrying and leaving home? But Ma was no Mrs. Connelly. She wouldn’t be left talking to a bird.
Ma broke the silence cheerfully: “We saw Harry for tea on Tuesday. Did he tell you? He was all in a dither about a man who fell from a railway carriage and broke his skull open. That boy does love his work at the hospital.”
“Rather too much.” Elsie returned to the table and set the teapot on a doubled towel. “He likes to tell us how scrambled the brains looked, while we’re eating.”
I chuckled. “James is sending him to Edinburgh to observe surgery for a fortnight and to a sanatorium in Surrey afterward. He says Harry’s a natural talent, wants to send him up to the Royal College in Edinburgh in a year. Says he’ll pay the tuition.”
Ma’s eyebrows rose. “He’s taken quite an interest. I’m ever so grateful.”
“He hasn’t any sons of his own, has he?” Elsie asked before she popped the last bit of bread with jam into her mouth.
“No,” I said. I watched Elsie out of the corner of my eye as I sipped. Blue eyes, delicate features, thick braids of auburn hair coiled around her head, to keep them out of her face. She was nineteen and pretty, verging on beautiful. Plenty of young women her age were married by now. Did she truly fancy Eaman, or was there someone else? The detective in me couldn’t help but wonder, even if these people were my family. Then again, as Belinda says, family members can be the most inscrutable of all.
“Elsie, love,” Ma said, her voice easy, “seein’ as you’ve finished your tea, would you run down and spell Eaman for a bit?”
Elsie glanced at the clock, which showed half past three, and rose agreeably. “Of course, Ma.” As she headed for the door in the hallway, Ma watched her, smiling with a wistful fondness.
The door closed behind Elsie, and I asked, “Is it serious then, between Eaman and Elsie?”
“Ach, it’s hard to say. For what it’s worth, I like him for her. He’s a good bloke.” She grimaced, her eyebrows aloft. “Not like the rest of the lot.” Her tone suggested there were dozens.
“How many are there?” I asked, half in jest.
She waved a hand. “Paddy Coughlin, Finn Riley, Angus McKay, Marcus McBride—you might remember the oldest McBride? John was your age. Married now himself, to Mary Wallace.”
I nodded.
“Half of the lads hereabouts are Cobbwallers,” she continued disparagingly, “and the rest are young fools with nary a thought in their heads but for cards and drinking their wages.” She adjusted her cup on the saucer. “If I had to guess, I’d say Eaman’d be her choice. Only he’s a considerin’ sort. Not that he doesn’t love her—I think he does—but he’s not one to give pain to either of them by jumping in without proper thought.”
“What’s worrying you, then?” I asked. “Is it Colin?” As she hesitated, a sudden clatter followed by angry shouts rose from the street, and her gaze shifted to the window above the sink. The voices faded, and when it seemed no further noise was forthcoming, I asked, “Or is it the shops and the dead man?”
She sighed. “The Chapel has changed, Mickey.”
“How?”
“There’s alwus been some ill feeling toward us in London, of course, but not here. Even with the few folks who weren’t Irish, we all got by together. Now, we’ve folks coming in from Russia and Poland and—” She waved her hand toward the window. “Goodness knows, I don’t blame ’em for coming. They wouldn’t be flocking to us if they could make a living where they come from, but I can’t imagine they’re finding it easy here either.”
“There’s not enough work?” I asked.
“Nae.” She winced. “Not to mention those bloody handbills and advertisements. Seems they’re everywhere these past few months, even more than before.”
I knew which ones she meant. The ones that offered positions, but with “NINA” at the top: No Irish need apply. “Is that why Colin’s angry?”
“Plenty of ’em feel the same, Mickey. There’s day work at the docks, same as always, but he’s not getting more’n a day or two a week now.” I felt a prick of relief. This at least was something I could fix.
“I could find him something elsewhere.
“I was plannin’ to ask ye,” she admitted. “And perhaps you could remind him how you were able to make a fresh start in a different part o’ London.”
“Do you think he’d move?”
“I don’t know, Mickey. But every year he seems . . .” She looked down at her rough, reddened hands, one on either side of the saucer with the empty cup. “Less happy. Ever since Pat died.”
At Pat’s name, the breath stuck in my lungs, and I had to ease it out. “I know Colin took it hard.”
Her eyes still lowered, Ma nodded. She rarely mentioned either of her dead sons, Francis or Pat. I never knew Francis, the eldest, for I’d been taken in by the Doyles after he died, but Pat was my age, close as a brother, and we’d lived together, worked as a pair on the docks, and watched each other’s backs. He’d been killed in a stupid, senseless knife fight two years after I left Whitechapel.
With a sigh, she met my gaze and I saw her grief, an old, sorry ache that mirrored mine.
I swallowed. “If Colin’s not being hired for dock work, what is he doing, now that the embankment is built?”
“He doesn’t talk to me much.”
“Does he talk to Elsie?”
“No more’n he can help.” She gave a wry look. “But she’s harder to shake off.”
I could believe that. “I’ll speak to him,” I said. “When I arrived, he and Elsie were arguing, and he stalked out. Didn’t seem like he had much interest in seeing me.”
Her face fell at that, and I could have kicked myself for saying so. Silently, she pushed back from the table and carried the tea things to the sideboard, where she capped the jam and rewrapped the remaining bread in brown paper. Then she opened the cupboard to retrieve her wooden sewing box and a blue skirt that was probably Elsie’s, along with some socks and a pair of Colin’s trousers. She resumed her seat at the table, spread the skirt across her lap with the hem uppermost, threaded her needle, tied a knot, and pieced together two edges of a rip. “Now, let’s have a proper visit,” she said with a smile.
Longing to undo my blunder, I steered the conversation toward Harry and his successful apprenticeship at the hospital, and for the next hour or two, our conversation rambled from news about Ma’s friends to the parishioners and priests at St. Patrick’s and my own work, which always furnished plenty of amusing and peculiar stories. Ma laughed to the point of tears at my description of a raid on a brothel by the Yard the previous week, when three men tore out of the back door in the only clothes they managed to snatch up—the prostitutes’ skirts, hoisted up around their middles.
“Bless you, Mickey,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with the edge of her apron. Then she settled the last mended sock on the pile and rose to put the sewing box away. “You always could tell a story.”
“You taught me,” I replied.
She waved off the praise with a deprecating smile, but we both knew it was the truth.
My own mum read to me from books, but not the Irish tales Ma told as we’d all gather on her bed at night—Elsie, Colin, Pat, and I. Ma had a knack for sending words spinning in the air like coins, shining enough to make us forget that we might not have eaten quite as much as we wished for supper. Her voice sank low for the giant warriors Cuchulain and Fionn mac Cumhaill and lilted for the fairies who tormented Johnny Friel. It was only later that I realized those stories sprung inside me a small, secret pride in being Irish. In one of my favorite tales, the giant Fionn mac Cumhaill strode across mountains, dragging his enormous club, to kill a lesser giant, Cuchulain, at his house. Cuchulain’s clever wife, Una, told her husband to climb into the baby’s bed, so when Fionn mac Cumhaill arrived and Una asked him to do her the favor of checking on the baby, Fionn backed out of the house straight-away, assuming a fully grown Cuchulain would naturally be ten times the baby’s size.
The Irish characters were powerful and clever—and foolish sometimes too, but Ma’s stories were always brilliant, hewing to a taut line, suspenseful and surprising by turns. Belinda said once that my listening to Ma’s stories was a fine apprenticeship for writing the final reports for my cases, and perhaps she was right. Except that for me, events weren’t presented from the beginning the way Ma told them—or the way Belinda wrote her novels, for that matter. My investigations usually began somewhere in the middle, with pieces plopping in helter-skelter, like heavy raindrops around a boat in the river.
A fog-heavy dusk had fallen, and by the darkened window, I dried the cups as Ma washed them.
“How is your Mrs. Gale?” she asked.
The Doyles knew about Belinda, though they hadn’t met her yet. Indeed, as a result of Belinda’s promise to her mistrustful and protective father on his deathbed, we’d been very discreet for nearly three years. It had only been last spring during the river murders, which had necessitated Belinda being protected by the Yard, that we’d revealed our attachment to our closest friends.
“She’s in Edinburgh,” I said. “Due home in a few days. Her cousin fell and broke her ankle, so Belinda went to help.”
“That’s kind.” Then she frowned, as if a sudden thought troubled her. “Is she comin’ home by train, then?”
I nodded. “I don’t like the thought either, after yesterday.”
“Ach, I’m sure she’ll be fine. Accidents aren’t near so common as they once were.” She peered up at me. “I do hope we’ll meet her soon.”
“You will,” I promised as I replaced the last dish on the shelf. She took the towel from me and smiled.
“It’s getting late.”
“I’m going.” I took up my coat, kissed Ma on the cheek, promised to talk to Colin soon, and left.
As I reached the bottom step, a shadow emerged from the alley, and I felt someone approach from behind. My right hand was on my truncheon even before I turned.
Two hands came up in a gesture of surrender. “It’s just me.” Colin’s voice picked over the syllables in a way that told me he was two or three drinks along, but not so far gone that he didn’t care that it showed. His boots scuffed the dirt as he came near, and he lowered his hands and thrust them into his coat pockets. The night breeze, ripe with the scent of smoke and meat from the nearby butchery, blew Colin’s brown curls off his forehead.
He must’ve been lurking in that alley, waiting for me. All that Ma said, all her worry, made me temper my voice. “Why’d you run off, Col?” I asked. “I’d have liked a proper visit with you.”
“Ach.” His shoulders twitched as if avoiding a weight. “Elsie’s always harping at me like a bloody shrew.” His voice slurred over the last word. “But I stayed ’cause of a message I have for ye.”
My guess was Elsie wasn’t shrewish so much as she was worried, same as Ma, but she had a different way of showing it. Smelling the whiskey on Colin’s breath and observing the surly set to his jaw, I was beginning to understand their concern.
I shifted my feet to maneuver him into a position where the light from the window of the nearby pub would fall on his face. I hadn’t been looking at him closely enough of late. My strongest memories were of him as a young boy of six or so, slender and light-haired, his eyes sparkling with interest as I taught him how to whittle a whistle or tie a stopper knot that wouldn’t slip.
Colin’s eyes were as brilliantly blue now as they’d been then, just like his older brother Pat’s, although Pat had never looked at me so warily. “Don’t bark at me, all right?” Colin asked.
I replied evenly, “Am I likely to?”
He pulled a face.
“All right, I won’t,” I promised. “What sort of message?”
“It’s from O’Hagan.”
I stared. O’Hagan.
Those three syllables were all it took to bring me back to thirteen years ago, when I’d been one of O’Hagan’s regular boxers, in a bare-knuckles hall underground, no more than a sweaty pen at the bottom of a ladder, where the dirt wasn’t thick enough to absorb all the blood and cheap rotgut whiskey that fell. I’d boxed for O’Hagan until the night he’d asked me to throw a match, and I’d done something bloody stupid that ended with me fleeing Whitechapel, sleeping rough until I found my feet.
“Why’d he send you, instead of coming to me himself?” I let him see my disgust at O’Hagan’s cowardice.
Colin glanced back toward the house. “He knows you used to live with us. Mebbe he thought you’d listen if I was the one asking.” He sniffed. “Instead of payin’ him no mind like you well might.”
I frowned. O’Hagan and I had declared a truce of sorts years ago. I had never come after him for keeping illegal boxing halls and a fleet of bookies, and in exchange, I’d been able to move about Whitechapel unmolested. I certainly harbored no affection for O’Hagan, but I wondered why Colin assumed I’d ignore him. However, it wasn’t worth asking, with Colin in this state.
“He just wants to meet you,” Colin said. “To talk.”
Guesses about why ran through my head with the speed of a fast current, but I asked merely, “About what?”
Colin’s eyes veered away, and he shrugged. “Might have something to do with the Cobbwallers.”
The muscles across my upper back tightened.
O’Hagan belonged to the Cobbwallers now? I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that James McCabe’s gang was running boxing halls as well as everything else. But like all London gang leaders, McCabe demanded absolute loyalty and discretion from his members. I couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would cause O’Hagan to discuss anything about the Cobbwallers with me, a policeman.
“Go on,” I said.
“Two Cobbwaller men are dead.” Colin peered at me aslant. “Murdered.”
My stomach lurched. In the wake of the Clerkenwell bombing, police had sought out and killed Cobbwallers. That was a decade ago, but it was a black mark in our history, and no doubt O’Hagan and McCabe remembered it. “Are they blaming police?”
“Dunno.”
His evasive look sparked hot fear along my nerves. “Colin, you’re not mixed up with the Cobbwallers, are you?”
There was the briefest pause before he drew his head back as if in surprise and shook it dismissively. “Nae.”
That hesitation made me long to press him further, but it was almost as if I felt Belinda’s hand, gentle on my sleeve, counseling patience. There would be time to ask again when Colin was sober.
Besides, if I did as Colin asked, he might confide in me more readily.
“All right.” I stepped forward and put my arm around his shoulder, tugged him close for a second. “Tell O’Hagan I’ll meet him.”
As I released him, his eyes betrayed a flash of relief. “Wants you to come tomorrow night.”
Come where? I wondered. Not to the Doyles’s, certainly. And not his old boxing hall either. The police had closed it down not long after I stopped working there.
I cocked my head. “Where do I find him?”
“Goose and Gander,” Colin said.
A pub near the docks where O’Hagan first found me, I thought with a flare of annoyance. With anyone else, I’d have given them the benefit of the doubt, but I knew O’Hagan. He wanted to remind me who’d held the cards when I was eighteen.
“I’ll see him tomorrow,” I said. “But in case I miss him, tell him to send a message to me at Wapping. He can just name a place and time. Doesn’t need to sign it. I’ll know.”
“A’right.” He nodded a goodbye and took a step backward.
I resisted the impulse to lay a hand on his arm to keep him from leaving, but I couldn’t help asking, “Are you all right, Colin?”
“Aye, fine,” he said, and flashed a grin that reflected some of his old openness with me. Then he turned away.
“Good night,” I called, fighting down the impulse to detain him again, wishing to hell he was sober, so I could talk to him, ask if he might let me find him work.
“Night,” he threw over his shoulder.
I watched him stride away. He’d been a lively child, impulsive and mouthy and at times reckless of his own safety. Sometimes I’d catch him imitating Pat and me, in the way we’d carry ourselves, or wear our caps or hold a knife. It annoyed Pat to no end, and he’d shoo Colin off, but I didn’t mind. When I was one of the youngest members of Simms’s thieving gang, I’d watch the older boys swaggering and try it for myself later as I walked down a quiet street alone. So I’d give Colin a wink, and he’d give me a roguish smile back.
There wasn’t much sign of that boy anymore. Then again, he was nearly twenty, same as I was when I left the Chapel.
Darkness swallowed up his figure, and I turned away, wondering if part of the reason Colin had been on edge earlier with Elsie was because he had a message to deliver, and he wasn’t wrong in assuming I wouldn’t be happy to hear it. But why was Elsie angry? Surely he hadn’t told her about O’Hagan’s message. Was she nagging him about his drinking? But I hadn’t smelled it on him until just now.
What worried me still more was how Colin had glanced away when I asked why O’Hagan asked him to deliver the message, and he seemed a shade too surprised when I asked if he was mixed up with the Cobbwallers. If he was lying—and two Cobbwallers were already dead—
Just how close were O’Hagan and his ilk brushing up against these people I loved?
The thought put a thick knot in the soft place underneath my ribs.
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