The Detective Wore Silk Drawers Read online

  “Equal development of both arms cuts out smith’s work or sawing,” continued Cribb. “But when a man spends his day scraping hides or moving them around in the pits, he might grow like this. Could be a brickmaker, though. Let’s look at the wrists. Moulding clay develops a brickie’s forearm beautifully. Ah. Now this looks conclusive. Scars on the palms—probably from brick edges, you see.” He turned the limb that he was examining and whistled in surprise. “Lord! Now this really is a symptom!”

  Turning, he discovered his audience had abandoned him.

  ¦ Edward Thackeray, Detective Constable, was not squeamish. He knew the London mortuaries as intimately as the pubs. If any reluctance was betrayed in his stride along Stamford Street towards Blackfriars mortuary on Tuesday, it was not at the prospect of encountering the dead, but the quick, in the person of Sergeant Cribb. The order from the Yard to report to M Division headquarters had caught him unprepared the evening before. The news when he got there in the morning that he was to rendezvous with Cribb at Blackfriars confirmed his worst intimations. Barely eight months had elapsed since his transfer. Eight months of civilized service advising Hampstead stockbrokers how to secure their windows against burglars. The most taxing investigation of the period an inquiry into an abducted heiress. Regular eight to six and no night duties. An inspector who was often out of the station for a week.

  Now he was returning to Cribb. And a dismembered corpse in Blackfriars. Cribb, who ignored a man’s age and susceptibility to irregular hours; who liked to account for every second of a constable’s working day and then claim his sleeping time as well.

  Cribb had good points, of course. He might give you the treadmill treatment for days or weeks on end, but he let you know what part your work played in a case. If he was dour at times, he also had spells—strange bouts of zest—when he gleefully shared his pleasure at some small development. But at present it was not Cribb’s better side that Thackeray was thinking about.

  He mounted the freshly scrubbed steps of the Hatfields workhouse and passed through the building to the mortuary, a converted coach house at the rear. His knock was answered by footsteps inside and the sounds of an elaborate unlocking procedure. A mild-looking attendant—why one always expected something more sinister, Thackeray was not sure—finally admitted the constable with a toss of the head. Sergeant Cribb was standing by his prize at a postmortem table. From his expression he might have just gained a first prize at the local flower show.

  “On time, Thackeray. Well done.”

  “Morning, Sarge.”

  “Good to have you with me again. There’s a glum look about you, though. Depressing work in S Division, I suppose. Well, that’s over for a spell, I’m glad to tell you.”

  The Constable nodded philosophically, and Cribb continued his breezy small talk. “You’ve put on an inch or two about the waist, I see. Sure indication of reduced activity. Office work, eh?”

  Typical of Cribb. Always ready with the personal slur.

  “Not really, Sergeant. I’ve been busy enough with the work I’ve had. Old age, I suppose.” He studied Cribb’s gaunt frame, wishing he could honestly detect some flaw that was developing, if it were only a receding hairline or a stoop of the shoulders. The Sergeant was in his forties and exasperatingly well-turned-out—neatly pressed suit, white wing collar, red spotted necktie. Cleanly trimmed Piccadilly weepers, but no beard or moustache.

  “The drape, if you please,” Cribb instructed the attendant, and the body on the table was uncovered. “What do you make of that, Thackeray?”

  The Constable moved to the table with interest, unaffected by the mutilation. Deep in concentration, he spent three silent minutes over his examination.

  “I would put death about four or five days ago, Sarge. Putrefaction ain’t far advanced. He’s obviously been hooked out of the river. Did Thames Division ask you to investigate?”

  “Never mind that. What about the build?”

  “Well, they’re powerful arms and shoulders, all right. He’s a labouring man, around forty years of age, I’d say. From the state of his palms, he was probably a brickie.”

  “Good. Injuries, apart from the obvious?”

  “That was done with a cross-cut saw, I’m certain. But this bruising around the ribs is baffling, Sarge. And on the forearms. Must have been inflicted before death. I’d like to look at his back. Can we have him turned?” The attendant came forward. “Thank you. Not much marking on this side. The grazing here looks as though it was done after death. Body likely struck something in the water.”

  “What’s your theory, then?” inquired Cribb.

  Thackeray bent to the table again and examined the right hand minutely, even sniffing at it for its secrets. He straightened and shook his head.

  “It makes no sense, Sarge.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “These hands. Not the palms. The knuckle side. There’s a pattern of old scars, and it ain’t from brickmaking, I’m sure. No brickie’s that careless with the backs of his hands.

  He’s a well-built man, and his work’s thickened his wrists, but that don’t account for the size of his fist nor its coarseness. If it made any sense, Sarge, I’d say that hand’s been pickled—soaked in vinegar, though you can’t smell it any more. And scarred from knuckle fighting.”

  It was ridiculous, of course. Prize fighting had been penalized out of existence twelve years before. But Cribb seemed satisfied with the diagnosis.

  “Tidy thinking, Constable. Let’s get outside, now. We’ll walk back to the station.”

  As they strolled, bowler-hatted, in the sunshine down Hatfields towards The Cut, Cribb talked with enthusiasm.

  “He must be a pug. Everything’s consistent. Body-bruising, scars, swollen hands. Even spike marks around the shins. And his trade. Brickmaking and scrapping have always gone together. Our man had a fight with the raw ’uns before he died, Thackeray. I’m sure of it.”

  Thackeray was less convinced. “It don’t seem credible, Sarge. Prize fighting’s dead in England. The magistrates finished it in the sixties. Monstrous fines some of them promoters paid. When the railway excursions were banned, that stopped it. They couldn’t make it pay if no one went.It’s all done with the gloves now. Endurance contests or Queensberry’s Rules.”

  “Possibly it is, out Finchley way,” Cribb retorted, “but you don’t just stop a sport that’s been established a century and a half. It’s always been illegal under Common Law— Unlawful Assembly. But the fights went on, didn’t they? Anyone that wanted could find out the venue—and get taken there in a special train.”

  “I know that,” said Thackeray with a trace of petulance. “And the magistrates would sometimes wait till the fight was over before they broke it up. I’ve stopped a few prize fights myself in Essex when I was quite new to the force. ‘The blues!’ they’d shout and before you got close, the whole bloody scene would change in front of your eyes. All the paraphernalia—stakes, ropes, buckets, four-wheelers—just got moved a few fields away to another area, outside the authority of the local magistrates. Most fights came to a finish at some point even if they got interrupted. But I’m sure it don’t go on now, Sergeant. Bell’s hasn’t reported a prize fight for years, except in France or America, that is.”

  “There’s a rare amount going on that never reaches the press,” commented Cribb. “Prize fighting might not offer the rewards it once did, when a promoter could wing at a magistrate, and pugs like Sayers and Heenan and Mace were known to every cove that opened a newspaper. But there’s still plenty who’ll pay well to see a set-to with bare knuckles. Mittens haven’t the same appeal.”

  It occurred to Thackeray that his sergeant was displaying an unexpected working knowledge of pugilism. Almost, in fact, an affection for it. He decided not to comment.

  “If our corpse does turn out to be a pug, Sarge, how do we find his identity? Who got him out of the river?”

  “No help there. An old fishmonger. Showed me the body near Bla
ckfriars Bridge. I questioned him and believe he really did find it there.”

  Thackeray accepted Cribb’s judgment. Both knew that salvaging suicide victims from the Thames had become a minor industry. Once at safe anchorage, a body could wait until a sufficiently generous reward was advertised by relatives. A patient professional would watch the papers day by day and make his discovery only when the premium was right.

  “How do we begin, then, Sergeant?”

  Cribb was rarely at a loss. “You begin at once, Constable. Take a walk across the bridge to Fleet Street. See the boxing reporters. Bell’s will be the first. Then the Referee and The Sporting Life. Extract anything you can about pugilism in London, on any scale at all. Make it quite plain you’re not implicating them. That clear?”

  “Yes, Sergeant. Entirely clear.” Cribb, as usual, keeping his subordinate occupied.

  “And Thackeray.”

  “Sergeant?”

  “You might try the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic office as well.”

  ¦ For the second time in two days Cribb appeared that afternoon at Scotland Yard in the office of his inspector. As initiator of this interview, the sergeant was in a buoyant mood. Jowett was plainly ill at ease. He had consented to seeing Cribb when an urgent appointment was requested.

  His subordinates rarely visited him voluntarily.

  “Well, Sergeant. What’s your business? Have you had second thoughts?”

  Cribb enjoyed a moment’s hesitation while the Inspector fumbled, lighting his pipe.

  “Not really, sir. It does relate to our conversation yesterday.”

  “It does? You challenge my figures, perhaps?”

  “Oh, no,” Cribb reassured him. “All quite accurate.”

  “What is the problem, then?”

  In the cab between Waterloo Road and Great Scotland Yard, Cribb had rehearsed this conversation.

  “No problem, sir. Merely seeking confirmation.”

  “Are you, then? Confirmation of what?” The pipe was defying ignition.

  “Something you told me yesterday. I want to put it into practical effect, sir.”

  “Very good, Sergeant. I’m glad to hear that. But you need not refer everything to me, you know. My intention was to encourage initiative, not extinguish it.” Pleased at this pithy rejoinder, the Inspector relaxed a little and propped the pipe on its stand in front of him. “Since you’re here, though, you may as well explain what is bothering you.”

  “Bothering isn’t quite the word, sir. You asked me to reexamine my methods of investigation.”

  “Quite so. And you have?”

  “In a manner of speaking, sir. Intuition, you said.”

  “I most certainly did. And inspiration.”

  “And flair, sir.”

  “Good! And now you have a case, and you require guidance on the appropriate method of investigation.” Jowett intoned his words like a schoolmaster who has recognized a glimmer of intelligence in the class dunce.

  “No, sir.”

  The Inspector reached for his pipe.

  “All I require from you, sir,” continued Cribb, “is your agreement to a novel method of investigating a murder.”

  “Novel . . . ? What exactly have you in mind, Sergeant?”

  “I’ve reason for thinking a corpse found in my division is that of a pugilist.”

  “A boxer, you mean? That is the modern term, I believe.”

  “No, sir. I mean a knuckle fighter.”

  Jowett frowned. “But I don’t understand you—”

  “London Prize-Ring rules,” explained Cribb. “No gloves. Supposed to have been stopped ten or more years ago. It goes on, though. Not in my division. Other parts of the city.”

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “Can’t ignore the evidence of a headless pug, sir. Clear signs of having scrapped in the last week or so. Without the mittens.” Cribb put his hands on the edge of the Inspector’s desk and leaned forward confidentially. “I’m taking this corpse very seriously, sir; very seriously indeed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cribb straightened and walked nonchalantly to the window. “Passed an hour with the ‘Dead Persons Foul Play Suspected’ lists this morning, sir. My dinner hour. Thought I’d remembered another headless one last January. I found it, and one more last year for the set, if you’ll excuse a card-player’s term. Each of ’em hooked out of the Thames, and both said to be very well-muscled. Could be pure chance, of course. Might be a pretty little pattern of murder among the fist-fighting mob, though.”

  Jowett was shaking his head. “I don’t see how this can be true, Sergeant. Prize fighting was carried on illegally a dozen years ago, as it had been for a century or more. But it was stopped by rigid enforcement and has not been heard of since. It no longer commanded respect as a sport. You remember the ugly incidents, I expect. The fight between Sayers and that American—”

  “Heenan, sir. The Benicia Boy.”

  “Yes. It put pugilism in very bad odour. There was a damned regrettable episode at Fenchurch Street Station, too, when there was a brawl in the early hours of the morning.”

  “The second Mace–King fight,” Cribb confirmed. “End of 1862. The fault lay with the South Western Railway Company that night. If they’d laid on sufficient trains in the first place, the roughs would never have set about the ticket holders.”

  “I recall that it led to a good deal of criticism of the police,” said Jowett. “Our point was, if I remember, that everyone present was engaged in an illegal activity so we bore no responsibility for those who were robbed and beaten, poor beggars.”

  “That was it, sir. Even Jem Mace was struck. Bob Travers held the roughs off by using knuckle dusters. Bill Richardson laid about them with the butt end of a billiard cue.”

  “You seem to have a vivid memory of the occasion, Sergeant.”

  Cribb cleared his throat. “Newspapers were full of it, sir.”

  “Quite so. But really, Sergeant, I cannot say that I have heard much of prize fighting since. A law was passed banning the special trains, I believe.”

  “Regulation of Railways Act, 1868, sir,” barked Cribb.“Section twenty-one. Imposed penalties of up to five hundred pounds.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Ah, but what goes on now doesn’t involve trains. And it’s all kept very close.”

  “So you really think your corpse died in the prize ring?”

  “Can’t say for certain, sir. He was a pug, though. And he had a fight shortly before his death.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Pattern of bruising, sir. State of his knuckles.”

  “Really? You seem to be quite an authority. Isn’t yours a famous pugilistic name, now that I think of it?”

  Cribb grinned tolerantly. “Tom the Great? No connection, I’m sorry to admit. Ever seen his monument in Woolwich Old Church graveyard, sir? Sculptured from a twenty-ton block of Portland stone. You can see it from the Thames. Been some first-class men with the name of Cribb, sir, but only one has been commemorated on that scale.”

  “Stop looking so damned wistful, Sergeant. Now, what’s your business? I haven’t time to discuss prize fighting or your family.”

  None the less his mood was more relaxed. If Jowett might be persuaded to concede anything, now was the moment.

  Cribb spoke in earnest.

  “I need to learn what’s happening among the prizefighting fraternity. I must get among them. Gain their confidence.”

  “You need to be released from other duties for a time, you mean?”

  “Certainly sir, but it’s more than that. Fist fighting’s illegal. Always was. I may need to stand by while it goes on. Even appear to enjoy it.” As alarm coursed across the Inspector’s face, Cribb added, “French methods, you might say, sir.”

  There was a significant pause.

  “Can you really assure me that this is a necessary subterfuge, Sergeant?”

  “Fundamental to my investigation, sir.
Of course, if it’s too unorthodox . . .”

  “Not at all—”

  “Very good, sir. I presume, then, that Constable Thackeray can accompany me.”

  Jowett blinked, scarcely aware that the decision was made. “I—that is—yes.”

  “Thank you, sir. We shan’t actively encourage the pugs, I promise you.”

  Jowett’s jaw jolted. “Indeed no! So far as this investigation is concerned, Sergeant, you must be meticulously cautious. Do nothing that smacks of conspiracy. That may be difficult in the circumstances, but you must abide by it. And I think it advisable, Sergeant, that you act without further reference to me in this case. You understand that if any of the divisional inspectors heard that one of my detectives had concealed information about illegal prize fighting, for whatever reason, it might lead to a calamitous situation between this office and the divisions.”

  “Ruinous, sir,” agreed Cribb breezily.

  Three minutes later he was striding in the sunshine along Whitehall. Jowett, alone at his desk, was obsessively drawing at his pipe.

  CHAPTER

  3

  “IT’S BEEN THE SAME EVERYWHERE, SARGE. YOU MENTION fist fighting, and they start. I’ve heard it all six times over this afternoon, from Gentleman Jackson to Jem Mace. Ropes and stakes, first bloods and knockdowns, fibbings and cross-buttocks until it fair turned my stomach. They all talk about the golden days with tears in their eyes until the ale runs out. But ask ’em where you might see a fist fight nowadays and they look at you as if you was asking to meet Prince Albert, rest his soul.”

  “You tried them all, then?”

  “Except the Referee man. He was sacked six months ago because there wasn’t enough scrapping of the gloved variety to keep him busy. They’re all worried about their jobs, if you ask me.”

  “Common complaint,” Cribb observed, thinking of Scotland Yard. “Did you ask what happened to the promoters and backers? They can’t all have vanished.”

  “Seems they turned to other sports, Sarge. The turf, or pedestrianism. There ain’t the money in glove fighting.”