“It’s dinner. Nothing more.”
“How very casual of you. May I assume you won’t be returning to the flat until late? I won’t wait up for you, but wake me when you arrive in the morning, would you?”
Pringle pursed his lips in a mock frown.
“The morning? You scandalize me, sir. And you besmirch Maggie’s good name.”
“Get on out of here, Pringle,” Jones said. “Hammersmith’s got work to do.”
Pringle wagged a finger at Jones, but hastened away before anyone could ask him to help with the trunk. He didn’t want to get dirt on his new jacket. He would pick Hammersmith up at the college before stopping at the tailor’s.
The thought of Inspector Little, broken and mutilated in the bottom of the trunk, passed through his mind and he swept it away. He’d just got a glimpse of the dead detective before Day had closed the trunk, but it was enough. He hadn’t known Little well. The detective had never even looked at Pringle, just muttered orders at him. Little had undoubtedly run across trouble on an investigation and been killed for it. But that would never happen to Pringle. He had joined the force strictly for the dapper uniform and the pretty girls who noticed it. He kept his nose out of the detectives’ business.
He smiled and stepped into the street, promptly planting his foot in a pile of horse manure.
2
The dancing man was already outside the back hall at 4 Whitehall Place when Detective Inspector Walter Day arrived. Day wondered at the fact that the dancing man had thus far avoided the workhouse, but he had visited that place and had no desire to send anyone there, if it could be helped. At least a head taller than Day, with massive hands and feet, the dancing man looked intimidating, but he kept his distance from people and bowed his head when he spoke. He worked, in a way, for his daily bread and Day, who thought himself a good judge of character, found him somehow touching. Today he had found the top half of a broken broom and was displaying it proudly as he gyrated atop an overturned milk crate, blowing kisses to passersby. Day gave him a ha’penny and went inside.
The Metropolitan Police Force was headquartered in the rear of a massive building located off Great Scotland Yard, and the entrance was commonly called the back hall, though there was no corresponding front hall. Day nodded to the sergeant on duty at the desk in the small receiving area and then passed through a short hallway.
The main room on the ground floor was segmented. To Day’s right as he left the hallway was the largest and most accessible section. It housed most of the detectives of the Metropolitan Police Force, along with innumerable constables, all of whom hurried in and out day and night, struggling to deal with wearying numbers of cases involving burglary, assault, prostitution, missing persons, and muggings.
Day did not even glance in their direction. Instead, he turned to his left and walked past a row of communal desks, used by police and solicitors to talk to suspects before taking them back through yet another hallway to a walled-off holding area. He passed through a swinging gate in a low wooden railing and into the common office set up to accommodate the select group of detective inspectors who were referred to by the rest of the force as the Murder Squad.
Previously detectives working murder cases had used the same shared desks that were used by constables on the beat. But the Ripper case had changed all that. The railing had been installed and a dozen new desks had been brought in. A matching dozen of the Yard’s best detectives were moved over and given all of the murder cases in all of London.
They were not relieved of the many other cases they were already working.
Day hung his jacket and his hat on hooks against the far wall, then went to his desk in the large central area. The room was quiet, and he didn’t yet feel comfortable there. He hadn’t done anything to personalize his desk, sure that he’d be sent back down to Devon when it was discovered that he had no talent as a detective. He’d been a good constable, energetic, strong, and ready to serve, but detective work was daunting. He had seen something in Dr Kingsley’s eyes back at the train station. Day was sure Kingsley knew he wasn’t up to the job, positive that everybody knew it except Claire.
Michael Blacker waved at him from an identical desk halfway across the big room. Inspector Blacker’s desk was messier, papers piled everywhere, a teakettle half buried under a scrapbook, and a solitary left boot. Evidence gathered from some bizarre case that had consumed his time for the past three days.
“Another day, eh, Day?”
Blacker enjoyed the sort of puns and wordplay that Day found most tedious.
“Blacker, when was the last time you saw Mr Little?”
“Little? Some time yesterday. But not for long, for just a little. A little, right?”
“Right. I don’t suppose you’re familiar with any of his cases?”
“Sure, and I’ve got time galore, don’t I?”
Day nodded. He’d known the answer to that question before he’d asked it. Last month, ninety-six corpses had been pulled from the Thames, more than half of them with their throats slit. It hadn’t been an unusual body count for a city where the annual number of arrests topped sixty thousand. The twelve working inspectors of Scotland Yard had no time to deal with their own caseloads, much less one another’s. And now, without Little, they were eleven. This half of the common room was quiet because everyone except Day and Blacker was out dealing with London’s crime.
“I’ll need to see his files.”
“Don’t know if he’d like that. Wait for him. He should be here soon.”
“He’s not coming in today.”
Colonel Sir Edward Bradford emerged from his office in the corner and motioned with his good arm.
“Day. See you in here?”
“Yes, sir.”
Day crossed the room through the labyrinth of desks, ignoring Blacker’s puzzled stare. Inside, Sir Edward’s office was small and dim, crowded with heavy furniture. A stuffed tiger’s head, the only souvenir on display of Sir Edward’s time in India, was mounted on the wall behind the desk. The commissioner closed the door and gestured to an empty chair.
When both men were seated, Sir Edward stroked his white beard and closed his eyes.
“How long have you been with us now, Day?”
This was it, Day was sure of it. Sir Edward had decided that the younger man wasn’t cut out for detective work and was planning to move him back to Devon. It would be a relief, but Day had no idea how he would explain it to his wife. Claire would be so disappointed in him.
“Almost a week, sir.”
“When I took this post, Mr Day, it was with the expectation that I would be working with the legendary Inspector March, the greatest detective on the greatest police force in the world. You can imagine my dismay upon arriving in London to find that Mr March had already tendered his resignation from the Murder Squad.”
With a long and illustrious career behind him, Inspector Adrian March had been among the men put in charge of the Ripper investigation. He had failed to catch the wily killer of at least five women, and the public knew it. March had retired early from the force. Day had been brought up to replace him, and he still didn’t understand why.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“I suspect you share my dismay.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And so I have missed my opportunity to work with those great Scotland Yard detectives Adrian March and Dick Tanner and Frederick Abberline, but now I have you.”
“I apologize, sir.”
Day avoided the commissioner’s eyes. Sir Edward was an intimidating man. He had stepped into the job of police commissioner in the month before Day’s arrival, and already he had the complete respect of the men under his command. He was a veteran of the Indian Mutiny, about which Day knew very little, and had lost his arm in an encounter with a tiger. Perhaps the same tiger whose head now surveyed the office from a wooden plank nailed to the wall. It was rumored that Sir Edward had accepted no anesthetic during the amputation of his mutilated arm.