The Cutthroat by Clive Cussler (popular books to read txt) 📗

had served his entire career in Scotland Yard’s Whitechapel H Division, retiring as a sergeant. He had asked for a pint of “mild” but had accepted happily Bell’s offer to splurge on “brown and mild.”

“Did I meet him? Face-to-face, I did. He looked like a scrap of wet canvas. Been in the water a month. If his family hadn’t raised the alarm, we’d never have identified the poor sod. His brother recognized bits of his clothing.”

“Poor sod? You mean Jack the Ripper?”

“If you say so, guv.”

Bell looked at him sharply. He was a shrewd old man, the sort who chose his words carefully, and Bell heard a private message in his “If you say so” answer. The tall detective was couching his next question when he was interrupted by a sudden clanging of electric bells. A fire alarm, he thought, but no one in the pub took notice except two men at the bar who downed their drinks and belted out the door. The ringing continued, shrill and urgent.

“What’s that about?”

“Division bell. Ringing a vote in the Commons. Members have eight minutes to get inside the chamber before the doorkeepers lock it up. The bells are all over the district, in pubs and restaurants and hotels. Those two will make it. No need to find their trousers.”

“Would you join me in another?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

The barmaid drew more mild ale, filling their pints halfway and mixing in bottled brown ale.

“Cheers, guv.”

“If not the Ripper, who?” asked Bell.

“How do you mean?”

“I get the impression that you don’t fully accept Yard’s solution that Barrister Druitt was Jack the Ripper.”

“Before you read too much into your impression, mind you, the list of ‘official’ suspects reported by the assistant chief constable of the Criminal Investigation Division included the suicide.”

“Who else was on the list?”

“A Polish Jew named Kosminski.”

“What made Kosminski a suspect?”

“He lived in Whitechapel.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“He was a foreigner. And a Jew. And in and out of the lunatic house. It added up. In the mind of the assistant chief constable.”

“Any more?”

“A Russian confidence trickster called Ostrog.”

“Another foreigner,” said Bell. Joel Wallace’s assessment of Scotland Yard was beginning to sound generous.

“Another regular guest of the lunatic house and Her Majesty’s prisons,” said the old man, and fell silent as he sipped his beer. The division bell finally stopped ringing.

“Did the C.I.D. assistant chief constable favor one suspect over the others?”

“He was not in the habit of confiding in constables, which was still my rank in 1888,” the old man answered drily. “But I do know, guv, that he struck from the list the insane medical student, and the doctor avenging his son who died of the clap, as well as a duke, a peer of the realm gone to ground in Brazil, and a horny painter.”

“Who was the woman buried in New Scotland Yard’s cellar?”

“No one knows.”

“Isn’t it odd she was never reported missing?”

“London’s gigantic. Still, she couldn’t have been from Whitechapel. Someone would have said, ‘Oh, that must be Maud or Betty, she’s gone missing.’ No one did.”

“Unlike when Barrister Druitt was pulled out of the river.”

“Right you are, guv. His family had reported him missing. It was in the record. They had people to identify his clothing . . . I thank you for the brown and milds, governor. I’m going to toddle along home now. Past me bedtime.”

“Do you know anyone who could tell me more about the girl in the cellar?”

The old man scratched his chin and eyed Bell speculatively. “Well, if you really care about her . . .”

“I do.”

“I’d talk to Nigel Roberts.”

“Who’s Roberts?”

“Retired early from the Yard. Used to be C.I.D.”

“H Division?”

“Detective sergeant.”

“Where would I find him?”

“Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He got himself made keeper of the Lock Museum. What would you call that in America? Manager?”

“Or curator. It’s after hours. Where would I find him? Right now?”

“He lives at the museum. They gave him a wee room up in the garret. But I would stay right where you are, if I were you.”

“Why?”

The old copper downed the last of his beer, licked his mustache, and flashed a yellow-toothed grin. “Word’s out, a Yank is asking about the Ripper. Nigel Roberts could never put old Jack out of his mind.”

“Mr. Bell, I presume?”

It was late, and the Parliament members who had run off to vote had returned, looking triumphant, when a striking figure with long white hair and glittering spectacles sidled up to Isaac Bell at the bar. He looked haggard but good-humored, and Bell had the impression of a man vaguely surprised to have awakened one morning to find himself old. There was a restlessness to him, a sign of the sort of impatience that Bell looked for in a top-notch detective.

“Mr. Roberts?”

Roberts returned a cheerful nod. “Servants are addressed by their surname in England. Better call me Roberts.”

“Why does a retired Criminal Investigation Division detective call himself a servant?”

“Coppers are ‘housekeepers.’ Which is to say, Scotland Yard keeps the wrong element out of the right element’s houses.”

“Is that why you retired early?”

“No. Sir-ing my governor because he sucked up to Commissioners born in Mayfair finally reminded me of a lesson I learned as a boy—but ignored when I joined the Yard.”

“What lesson?”

“Power pollutes. Obedience enslaves.”

“Sounds like you were born in Whitechapel,” said Bell.

“Close enough.”

“How did you escape?”

“A rich silk mercer died back in Shakespeare’s day. He left his fortune to found a school for penniless boys.”

Bell said, “I saw you in the pub when I came in. Were you waiting for me?”

“Word got around you were asking about the girl in the cellar.”

“Sounds like the Jack the Ripper case is still alive.”

“To me it is.”

“Did Jack the Ripper put her body there?”

“The newspapers said he did.”

“I’ve read them.”

“Everyone in London thought so, too. Do you know about the dog?”

“The Commissioner’s bloodhound,” answered Bell. The newspapers had had a field day when the Police Commission tried to track whoever had left the body in New Scotland Yard with a bloodhound.

“Not that dog. While the Commissioner was