An Act of Mercy: A gripping historical mystery set in Victorian London

An Act of Mercy

J. J. Durham

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it,

while at times based on historical fact, are

the work of the author’s imagination.

Killer Reads

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GH

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain as A Killing Kindness, by J. J. Durham 2014

This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © J. J. Durham 2015

J. J. Durham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2015 ISBN: 9780008132767

Version 2015-03-02

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

AUTHOR’S NOTE

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About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

‘There ain’t many things in life I’m afraid of, sir … ’

‘But … ?’ Sergeant Harry Pilgrim glared up at the constable from halfway down the sewer ladder.

He hopped from one foot to the other, peering down at his superior. ‘Rats is one of them.’

‘Rats?’

‘Just so, sir. Fearful scratchy, louse-ridden creatures, sir, and I could no more go down that hole with you than walk on water, sir, even if you paid me a hundred guineas.’

Pilgrim looked at the constable. They both knew he earned just twenty shillings a week.

‘I don’t have time for this, Wainwright. Pass me the tinder box.’

‘Here it is, sir.’ The constable’s face slackened with relief.

Pilgrim took the box and tested the wheel. It fired readily; spinning sparks into the darkness as he descended the ladder. The rungs were surprisingly dry – it hadn’t rained for more than a fortnight – but even so, Pilgrim landed at the bottom with a splash. He didn’t look down to see what he had landed in, but up instead, to Wainwright’s face, haloed by the night sky like a lugubrious saint.

‘If I’m not back in five minutes go to the barracks.’ Pilgrim’s voice echoed off the arched brickwork. ‘Tell Constable Williamson where I am, and get him to wake some of the men to follow me.’

‘Will do, sir … and sorry, sir … about the rats.’

Pilgrim sparked the tinderbox again, and lit the wick of the lamp. He raised it up. He was in one of the new parts of the sewer system. The roof was easily high enough for him to stand, but the bricks were already crumbling, and daubed with rust-coloured streaks. It wasn’t rust, of course.

Pilgrim grimaced. He was glad that smallpox had robbed him of his sense of smell. He knew he had to hurry. The man he was pursuing was at least five minutes ahead of him now. He pressed on into the sewer; a straight tunnel with no turns or visible exits.

‘… seventy-four … seventy-five …’ He counted the paces, until he reached a point where the tunnel split into two. He hesitated. His quarry could have gone down either of them. But which one? He lifted the lamp higher, and listened. Nothing. Except the scratch of claws on brickwork. He could make out the huddle of rats on the copings beyond the range of his lamp. It was just as well Wainwright hadn’t wanted to join him. On the other hand, if he had, they would at least have been able to explore both routes. Frustration welled. Pilgrim had come so far, but now found himself torn between choosing one of the tunnels at random and turning back.

Then he heard it: the rasp of metal on metal, coming from the left hand branch. He took off his scarf, hung it on a nail that was protruding from the wall of the left hand tunnel, then galvanized into action, wading through the water as quickly as he could. It was impossible not to splash, but he hoped that the man he was chasing would be too absorbed in his own progress to hear the pursuit. Pilgrim ran on through the greasy water. Something caught at his foot. He lurched and stumbled, pitching forwards, then floundered a moment, grabbing for something, anything, that might help to keep his face out of the filth. His fingers closed on something substantial, and he used it to push up onto his feet. Releasing it, he recoiled at the sight of an eye staring up at him. A dead dog.

He made an effort to steady the pounding of his heart. At least he hadn’t dropped the lamp. He listened. Nothing. All his senses told him he was alone in the tunnel.

‘Bollocks.’

He lifted the lamp. More brick, more slime, more black water, stretching away into the darkness. But there, on the boundary of the glow cast by the lamp, he saw something else: rungs set into the wall. He waded towards them and peered up at a manhole cover. If his suspect was no longer in the tunnel, he had to have got out somewhere. Realising he couldn’t climb with one hand, Pilgrim took a deep breath and pinched out the wick of the lamp. Blackness swallowed him: a solid thing. He beat down his anxiety by concentrating on the feel of the metal rungs under his hands. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Hand over hand; he pulled himself upwards, until his head bumped against the manhole cover. He lifted it, and slid it to one side. He blinked.

Moonlight painted the lane as bright as midday in Margate. He made a hasty calculation of direction and distance, and decided he was probably somewhere to the west of St James’ Square. Behind Curzon Street, perhaps. Or Half Moon Street. A wealthy area, that wouldn’t take kindly to detectives popping up out of the sewer, even at that hour. He levered himself up out of the hole, glad that most of the worthy citizens of Mayfair would be tucked up in their beds.

After a moment’s hesitation, he left the cover partly off the hole, considering it worth risking an accident in the hope that the moonlight would guide Wainwright, Williamson, and the other constables to him.

He straightened up and listened. His suspect had to be long gone: the manhole was at the junction of three lanes, and he could have fled in any direction. But he willed himself, with a discipline forged from experience, to stand still. To listen and to look. A shadow detached itself from the larger shadow of a nearby wall, and wound itself around his legs. He resisted the urge to kick it, and peered instead at the surrounding buildings. Several stable blocks lined the converging lanes, overshadowed by the houses behind them. The houses were all in darkness.

Except one. One with lights shining in several windows on the upper floors. Pilgrim headed for it. The gate that gave onto the lane was closed, but not locked. The hinges were well oiled, and it swung open without a sound.

As he picked his way towards the house, he paused, his eye caught by something gleaming on the path. Water. He suppressed a thrill of triumph. His man had come this way: given the recent dearth of rain, there was no other way for the path to be wet. There didn’t seem to be a back door, but there was a side entrance, in the shadows of the neighbouring building. It was too gloomy to see the doorway properly, so he bent to touch the step, a parody of genuflection. It was also wet.

He hesitated. He couldn’t go crashing into a wealthy household on his own, although he wouldn’t have had the same scruples in one of the poorer parts of the city. If Wainwright had gone back to the barracks as instructed, if he had then roused Dolly and the other constables and taken them to the manhole in Cockspur Court, then Pilgrim was looking at a wait of at least forty minutes. Providing, of course, that Dolly had spotted the scarf he had left to mark the left-hand tunnel in the sewer. If not …

With a feeling that the situation was slipping out of his grasp, he worked his way around to the front of the house. And there his anxiety deepened: a Hackney carriage was waiting at the kerb. The nag between the traces had a dejected air, looking no happier to be out in the middle of the night than Pilgrim was himself. Pilgrim guessed it had been there for some time.

He crept into a gap in the shrubbery, just yards from the cab. He had no sooner settled into his chosen spot, however, when a gust of night air found a crack in the glass of one of the carriage lamps, and extinguished the flame. The driver’s shoulders slumped, and he slid off the box. Pilgrim heard a flint strike.

‘Come on, you tokey bugger.’ The driver jabbed at the wick, and the lamp flared.

Pilgrim drew back into the shadows so that the driver wouldn’t see him, pulling his collar over the lower half of his scarred face. The carriage lamp died again, plunging Pilgrim back into gloom.

‘Stay like that, then, you bugger.’ The driver continued berating the lamp until he resumed his seat on the box, where he lapsed once more into silence.

Pilgrim’s eyelids drooped, and he wondered, not for the first time, what he was doing there. It was one of his golden rules never, ever, to act on tip-offs from the public. In his experience, anonymous leads were unreliable at best, if not downright mischievous. But there had been something about the note he had received that evening, the use of red ink, perhaps? It had been addressed to him, care of ‘Mr Charles Dickens, at the offices of Household Words’. Pilgrim was not a man given to fancies – far from it – but he had had the strangest sensation when Dickens put the envelope into his hand.

He settled further into his hiding place, pondering the nature of anonymous informants, the use of red ink, and the usefulness of having golden rules if you were in the habit of breaking them. His eyes drifted shut …

He jerked awake again as the carriage door slammed. Had someone climbed inside? The driver shook his reins and urged the horse into motion. Pilgrim resisted the impulse to shout at him to stop; he didn’t want to lose the element of surprise. He had no choice but to spur his reluctant limbs into action. Luckily, the horse was no more enthusiastic for the exercise than he was, and barely accelerated above an amble to the end of the street. It slowed down still further to turn the corner, and Pilgrim seized his chance. He put on a burst of speed, and grabbed for the door handle, using his own forward momentum to open the door and swing himself up into the cab.

‘What the … ?’ The startled passenger, a young man with mutton chop whiskers, leapt off the seat. Pilgrim swung his fist lazily, almost casually, and felt it connect with the man’s chin. He slid to the floor, like a puppet with its strings cut.

The driver sawed the cab to a halt. ‘What in hellfire … ?’

Pilgrim ignored him, and turned his attention to the packages on the floor. There were six in total, all swathed in brown canvas. The largest was about the same size as a hatbox. Pilgrim knelt beside it, and started to tear at the wrappings. It was indeed a hatbox. He fumbled with the strap. As he did, the box slipped from his grasp and it sprung open, dumping the contents. A roughly spherical object bounced away across the floor of the cab, trailing wet strips of rag behind it. It came to rest under the seat.

He stared at it. It stared back. It took him a long, shocked moment to realize what it was.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Can’t beat a splendid piece of beef. And the bloodier the better, eh? Builds up the constitution.’

The chunk of flesh quivered so rare on the silver platter that it looked as if it had trotted to the table straight from Smithfield, without detouring to a kitchen.

‘So I understand, Mr Phillips.’ The Guest of Honour, who much preferred his beef brown, masked his dismay with a smile. Charles Dickens was nothing if not a social creature, and prided himself on his manners.

‘Don’t mind if I carve it meself, do you?’ asked Phillips. ‘The servants always make a bloody hash of it.’

‘Language, John.’ The rebuke from Mrs Phillips was mild, for the guests of her late supper party were used to her husband’s eccentricities. She nodded as the footman replenished her wine glass.

The dining room was panelled from floor to ceiling: a surfeit of mahogany and scagliola columns. The gentlemen, wearing white waistcoats, uniformly red-faced and bewhiskered, were indistinguishable from each other. The women, on the other hand, had gone out of their way to be as individual as possible, resulting in a visual cacophony of multicoloured silks, feathers, and paisley shawls. Lady Harcourt-Brown rustled as she leaned towards Dickens, offering a generous view of crepey bosom.

‘We have been reading in Household Words, Mr Dickens, about the new detective police who have been appointed.’

He kept his eyes fixed on the beef that was yielding to the enthusiasm of his host’s carving knife. But the Lady was not to be similarly distracted.

‘Do you think they will put an end to the lawlessness on our streets?’ she prompted.

‘Ha!’ It was not Dickens, but her husband, Sir Harold, who responded.

‘You do not think so, sir?’ They’d caught his attention at last.

‘Indeed I do not. In my experience, these so-called detectives are very ordinary people, with delusions of cleverness, who are worth nothing when taken beyond their usual routine.’

‘I’m afraid I must disagree with you,’ Dickens began. ‘The rate of …’

‘It will all come to nothing.’ Sir Harold dismissed Dickens, the detectives, and the improved conviction rates of the capital with a wave. As Justice of the Peace for Clerkenwell East, he was well known for being ‘down on’ anyone unlucky enough to appear before him, and prided himself on that reputation. ‘It is never a wise or safe proceeding to put authority in the hands of the lower classes.’

Dickens’s gaze flicked to the footmen lining the room. They remained granite-faced, as good servants should.

‘If you ask me,’ continued Sir Harold, ‘there’s something underhand about these detectives of yours. All that sneaking about and lurking in corners. It isn’t …,’ he cast around for a suitable word, ‘English.’

‘Nonsense, Harold,’ snorted Lady Harcourt-Brown. ‘I, for one, feel safer with these gentlemen on our streets.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Mrs Phillips.

‘I imagine they must possess very specific qualities?’ Mr Phillips surrendered the beef to a footman to distribute among the guests.

‘Indeed.’ Dickens understood his host’s question for what it was: his cue to earn his supper. He took a breath. ‘You might think that a detective, having been recruited from the ranks, would inevitably betray some evidence of his lowly beginnings, but you would be wrong!’ He wagged a finger at his audience. ‘A good detective must blend in as easily in the upper echelons of society as among the criminal classes. He must be well mannered and respectable looking, with good deportment – nothing lounging or slinking in his manner. And, of course, he must possess keen observational skills and a quick perception.’

Sir Harold harrumphed.

Dickens continued. ‘In my opinion, this city needs an effective police force, in the same way a child needs the guidance of a wise and impartial parent. It offers protection to the vulnerable elements of the population. Which is why I am determined to do all I can for it.’

As he finished, he wondered whether Harry Pilgrim had acted on the anonymous note he had given him earlier in the evening. The detective had received the tip-off with his usual sangfroid, giving him no indication whether he intended to do anything about it. Pilgrim would certainly be able to give some of his acquaintances a run for their money at the cribbage table.

‘I understand there is one detective who is particularly successful,’ said Mrs Phillips, apparently picking up on his thoughts. ‘Sergeant Pilchem, I believe he is called?’

‘His real name is Pilgrim. Henry Pilgrim. A veritable prince of detectives.’

Lady Harcourt-Brown’s gaze slid mischievously to her husband. ‘In that case, perhaps we should invite Sergeant Pilgrim to our next supper party, Harold?’

Sir Harold’s face suffused with blood, and his eyes bulged. For a moment – one brief, glorious moment – Dickens thought he might be choking on the beef. But no. It was indignation.

‘Over my dead body!’

CHAPTER THREE

Pilgrim tucked into his breakfast: bloody pork chops and coddled eggs. Freshly shaved and wearing a suit, he was almost unrecognisable as the man who, less than five hours earlier, had apprehended the murderer who would be dubbed ‘The Hackney Cab Killer’ by the second editions of the newspapers. Pilgrim’s scarred face was shocking in the morning light; the skin of the lower half of his chin and neck as pitted as orange peel.

He sat apart from the younger, uniformed officers that also boarded at the barracks, letting their banter wash over and around him, like waves around a rock. The dining room was functionally furnished, with no comforts beyond the long scrubbed table and benches, and a motto painted on the wall: ‘Be sure your sin will find you out’. Pilgrim eyed it as he chewed. If only it were true, it would save him a world of trouble.

‘There you are, sir.’ Adolphus Williamson bounced over to sit beside him, carrying his own tray. Pilgrim smothered a smile. Dolly Williamson, with his smooth, scrubbed features and pink cheeks, looked exactly like the toy he was nicknamed after. Pilgrim knew that appearances were deceptive, however: beneath Dolly’s cherubic appearance lay a will of iron.

‘Sorry we were too late this morning to be of any assistance, sir.’ Dolly continued, taking up his knife and fork. ‘I said we should have come as we were, in our nightshirts, but Sergeant Tanner wouldn’t hear of it. Wish I’d been with you when you stopped that cab, sir.’

‘He didn’t put up much of a fight, if that’s any consolation.’

‘Not really.’ Dolly pulled a face, and bent to feed a ginger tomcat a piece of his own chop. ‘Any scrap’s better than none at all. What do we have on this morning?’

‘Whitehall, but I need to call in at the Chronicle first, to see if there are any rooms to rent.’

‘You’re moving out of the barracks?’ Dolly raised his eyebrows. ‘You can’t do that, sir, you’re a fixture here, just like old Thomas.’

Pilgrim studied the cat that glared back at him with its single remaining eye. He avoided it whenever he could, for it had the temperament of a Glaswegian stevedore.

‘Did you know the neighbours have been complaining about him?’ He said to Dolly. ‘Apparently he’s turned cannibal. He’s been eating their pet kitty cats. If I don’t get out of these barracks soon I might start to do the same.’

‘Nonsense.’ Dolly bent to stroke the cat, but his gaze remained on Pilgrim. ‘You’re an old softy, aren’t you?’

There were only five detectives in the new detective division of Scotland Yard – two sergeants and two constables – headed by Chief Inspector Charley Field. They all shared an office, apart from Field, but it was empty when Pilgrim and Dolly finally arrived, after a fruitless visit to the offices of the Chronicle.

The furnishings reflected the fact the division was newly created: all four desks and chairs were mismatched, gleaned from elsewhere in the force, and a sofa – strictly for visitors – borrowed from Customs and Excise. A map, divided into sections with thick blue ink, hung on the wall: Cross’s New Plan of London, published earlier that year. There was nothing else in the room to betray its function: no housebreakers’ tools, silverware, luggage, or other unclaimed stolen goods, no disturbing drawings of criminal physiognomy. To all intents and purposes it was indistinguishable from an office of shipping clerks. Pilgrim knew it was a source of disappointment to Charley Field, who would have liked something more dramatic to show visitors.