‘That was weeks ago, sir.’
‘Do you suppose we have not been following his movements ever since? Constable Bottle of the Special Branch was assigned to that duty before you left for Woolwich-a first-rate man, I might add. We set him up in rooms in Paradise Street, so that he was able to maintain a continuous vigil. He gave us a comprehensive written report on your encounter with Thackeray at London Bridge-and afterwards in The Feathers.’
‘Waste of paper,’ said Cribb. ‘If you’d asked me, I’d have told you all you wanted to know, sir.’
‘Possibly,’ said Jowett, without much conviction. ‘That is of small account now, however. I think you should know, Cribb, that when I arrived here in the early hours of this morning and took in this unbelievable scene, my first action was to send a telegraph to Bottle, demanding an immediate account of Thackeray’s movements in the last forty-eight hours. The message was not delivered because Bottle was out of his rooms.’
‘At that time, sir?’
‘My own reaction exactly. I therefore sent a second message to Paradise Street police station to establish the whereabouts of Constable Thackeray. I was informed by return message that he was absent without permission, having failed to report for the midnight roll-call in the section-house. The news did not surprise me. It matched the information about Bottle. It was reasonable to assume that Thackeray’s disappearance was not unconnected with the outrages here and in St James’s Square, and that Bottle was on his trail.’
Jowett paused. Cribb waited expressionlessly.
‘In that, I was mistaken. A message arrived from Thames Division shortly after four o’clock. A body was taken from the river in the early hours of this morning in Limehouse Reach. Special Branch have already identified it as Bottle. A bullet had penetrated his brain.’
CHAPTER 4
That same afternoon found Cribb marching purposefully out of West Brompton Station and along Seagrave Road in the direction of Lillie Bridge, the metropolitan venue of athletic sports and bicycle-racing. Some fifty yards along, he took out his watch, checked the time, and turned left into a public house. As he had anticipated, the bar was thick with customers, many dressed as he was, in morning suit and black silk hat. He took his tankard and settled inconspicuously at a table near the skittle-alley. Four men in shirtsleeves and striped trousers were engrossed in a game, one, he noted with satisfaction, similar in build to himself.
He sipped his beer. The sequence of deductions that had brought him here had required an agonising effort of concentration. Secretly, he envied the easy, irresistible logic of sixpenny-novel detectives, and would have liked to employ it in his own investigations. But now that Thackeray had disappeared, he was hard put to it to summon two consecutive thoughts. Irregular as their association over the past five years had been, slight as the confidences were that they had exchanged, the two of them had achieved an understanding that ran deep. When Jowett had blandly assumed Thackeray had some part in the bombing of Scotland Yard-his second home-Cribb’s anger had risen like the head on the beer. It had sunk at the news of the disappearance; dispersed altogether when he learned of Constable Bottle’s death.
At length, he had decided to introduce some discipline into his thinking by making a list of the particulars Thackeray had given him about the Irish-American customers at The Feathers. Most notably, the man Malone. It was a curious vignette: a ‘barge-horse of a man’ over six feet in height, with manicured finger-nails and calloused palms smelling of methylated spirit. Generous with his money, too; you had to be, to buy rounds of whisky at ninepence a tot. What was a rich American doing getting his hands blistered like that? A manual occupation could safely be discounted. Regular work with the hands would have hardened the skin beyond the stage of blistering. This was surely the purpose of the methylated spirit: to toughen soft skin in readiness for unaccustomed use, a precaution widely employed by amateur oarsmen. Could the muscular Mr Malone be a sportsman then, the stroke, perhaps, of some all-conquering American university crew bound for Henley? In plain truth it seemed unlikely. The training of American crews was reputed to be so rigorous that any Yankee oarsman must have developed palms like boot-soles before coming to England. No, if Malone practised manly exercises at all-and, confound it, there was something familiar about his name-it had to be a less demanding pastime. Punting? Pulling on a punt-pole certainly produced blisters, but it hardly seemed an adequate occupation for a human barge-horse. He had to think of a sport that employed a generous physique in a manly fashion, yet could be indulged in so occasionally that blistered hands resulted.
It was, of course, throwing the hammer. Cribb reached this confident conclusion by way of basketball, cricket, hockey and hurling. The last was an engaging possibility, except that to his knowledge not a single hurley had been put to use on the English side of the Irish Channel. It did, however, direct his thoughts to sports with strong Gaelic associations, of which hammer-throwing most emphatically suggested itself. All observant readers of the sporting press knew that Irish-Americans were as dextrous with sixteen-pound hammers as Englishmen with umbrellas.
A visit to the Referee offices in Fleet Street to study the files had provided the confirmation Cribb wanted, a series of references in the column Athletic Intelligence, beginning in February. ‘The four members of the Gaelic American Athletic Club presently visiting this country,’ said the most recent, ‘are expected to attract a large concourse to Lillie Bridge on Saturday next, when they appear in the London Athletic Club sports. If their appearances to date have not been marked by the universal success which has attended American visitors in previous seasons, the public will have noted that they have been rounding into form of late and may be expected to give a good account of themselves on Saturday. Creed, the hundred yards man, we are reliably informed has clocked 10 seconds several times in training recently, and on this form is unlikely to be troubled by Wood and Cowie, the pick of the home runners. In the high jump, P. Shanahan may have to repeat his leap of 5 feet 11 inches at Craydon last week to defeat Colbourne, the Inter Varsity Champion. Of the two American hammer-throwers, Devlin looks the likelier to win again, although T. P. Malone, a veritable Goliath in stature, threatens to project the implement out of the ground and into Lillie Road if he can but master the trick of turning in the circle.’
A shout from the end of the skittle-alley heralded an interesting throw. Seven of the nine pins had fallen. Cribb watched as the player retrieved the ‘cheese’ and returned to the mark to aim at the remaining skittles. It wanted considerable strength to dislodge so many, for they weighed seven pounds each. He was broadly-built and carried himself well for a man past fifty. An ex-athlete, Cribb decided. The second throw knocked aside the nearer of the standing pins, but altogether missed the other, on the extreme right of the diamond-shaped platform. By chance, however, the upended skittle made contact with another after it had left the platform and bounced back with just sufficient force to topple its mate.
‘A single!’ declared the thrower in triumph. ‘Set ’em up for another throw, partner. I’ll floor ’em this time.’
‘Wait a moment, Holloway.’ The man whose build resembled Cribb’s put up a restraining hand.
‘What’s the matter? It’s a bloody single. Nine pins down. I’ve got a chance for the double.’
‘Eight down, old fellow. The last one doesn’t count.’
‘What do you mean, doesn’t count? It was a fair lob.’