Friday
Late April 1887
David Powell fished a few coins out of his pocket, selected a tuppence piece, and traded it with the newsboy for a paper.
It was late morning, the early spring air just warm enough to be comfortable without yet feeling hot. David had finished teaching his morning class only an hour or so ago, and he only taught the one on Fridays. Normally he would be heading for home now, but a few errands begged his attention first.
For one, he needed to drop by his solicitor’s to see if the situation had changed about the property he wanted to buy.
‘Buy’ was perhaps too strong a word…‘acquire’ was more appropriate. He needed to acquire a building to serve as a school for the English language classes he taught, as he was currently working out of borrowed digs. And since the funds he was cobbling together to finance the undertaking were hardly his own (poor clergymen had to rely on others’ benefaction), he would be acquiring premises in the end.
Hopefully.
Having the keys to a building – any building – for the sake of his school would be fantastic. So he needed to meet with his solicitor.
But first he had another errand to run.
…Or was it two? David had a sudden suspicion he was forgetting something as he strode through the noisy bustle that was Commercial Road. No matter. He’d recollect it eventually.
He’d only gone a block or so down the wide thoroughfare when the sight of a mass of people blocking most of the street made him pause.
The mob seemed a peaceable sort, he determined after a moment, and Lord knew they were common enough nowadays. A few beehive-helmeted policemen were keeping the crowd in check to allow street traffic to continue flowing, but they weren’t otherwise interfering.
The protesters seemed to be mostly women. A spark of curiosity almost drove David closer to find out what they were on about. Was it a workers’ movement? A suffrage gathering? The temperance society?
But he desisted, figuring they wouldn’t be vacating that part of the street or pavement any time soon. He could find out after he paid a visit to his friend.
Well, David didn’t suppose he’d actually find his best mate, Lewis Todd, at his flat right then. The chap was a police sergeant, a bobby just like the blokes now patrolling the mob, and he tended to work longer hours than most folk.
In fact, David knew his friend had recently been involved in some arrests that had brought a rather notorious East End crime family to court: the trials were still in full swing. He was sure the paper under his arm shrieked the details of the proceedings in the headlines.
In any case, Lew was probably testifying or waiting to do so even as he thought about it.
A voice hailed David just then, and he paused to speak with the young woman, the wife of one of his students. Elise Marquette had one of her children clutching at her skirts, and the little girl stared up in silent interest at her mother and David as the two conversed.
The Marquettes had only been in London for about six months, but Henri had found steady work at an industrial millinery almost immediately. On account of his lessons with David, though, the Frenchman’s broken English had improved to the point that he’d recently been promoted to shift leader, news which Elise shared with shy delight.
Just after he and Mrs. Marquette parted, someone else caught David’s arm with a greeting and a grin. Another few minutes passed, and when that conversation ended, another followed, then another. David belatedly realized that if he wished to accomplish anything further that morning he would have to be rude or make his way off Commercial.
He chose the latter, and David slipped down a much less crowded and far narrower alley as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He could cut through here, zigzag down a few streets, and leave a note with his friend’s landlady within a few minutes. Then he could come back and let the passersby and protesters demand as much of his attention as they wanted.
…No. Hang it all – he’d forgotten about the solicitor…and whatever that something else was.
Shaking his head at himself, David strolled briskly down the close-walled street. From Commercial, the roadway looked as though it dead-ended in a row of tenements, but David knew the street actually doglegged around the buildings and continued on. Still, the appearance thinned the foot traffic considerably, even to the point that he was practically alone when he turned the first corner at the end of the tenement. The clotheslines overhead dimmed the sunlight and dampened the street noise, granting a respite from Whitechapel’s often-raucous vivacity.
Around the next corner, that solitude ended rudely.
Not fifteen feet away, four blue-jacketed bobbies were struggling mightily to hold a fifth to the ground.
For a moment, David wondered if the man on the ground, a dark-haired chap whose helmet had fallen off, was a having a fit and the other four were trying to aid him.
In the next, however, he realized he was very wrong. The four bobbies holding the other down were being quite rough about it, and then the man on the cobbles twisted around. David felt his pulse quicken when he saw the fellow’s face.
The fifth man was Lewis Todd, and his expression was furious. When he caught sight of David, his eyes widened and he tried to shout something, but one of others had a hand over his mouth. The sound came out muffled, but Lewis’s meaning was clear.
These men were hardly there to help him.
David found himself running forward before he even consciously thought to do so. Lewis would’ve done the same for him, after all.
But then, Lew was quite formidable in a fight. What was more, the man was a good head taller, a few stone heavier, and much more agile and muscled than just about anyone David knew. The chap had even been a champion prizefighter at one time.
David was quite the opposite. Sure, he knew how to throw a punch if necessary, despite the fact that his profession was supposed to be a peaceful one. But he was short where his friend was tall, no more dexterous or athletic than the average man, and boyishly unassuming where Lew could be downright ferocious.
That didn’t stop David from hurling himself at the nearest of his friend’s attackers with a wordless shout. The tackle took them both to the ground, and the priest was pleased to see out of the corner of his eye that his intervention allowed Lewis a chance to change the fight’s momentum. In a heartbeat, his best mate surged to his feet and managed to lay one attacker low with a belt to the chin.
Then an elbow caught David in the mouth and he lost his grip on the man he’d tackled.
“Run, David!” Lewis bellowed, still fending off his assailants.
The words made sense, and David thought he might’ve been able to comply, but fists had followed the elbow to his face, and he was now quite dazed. Too dizzy to do much more than lurch unsteadily to his feet when the man he’d jumped turned his attention back to Lewis Todd. Far too dizzy to run away.
Perhaps he might still be able to distract the other bobbies – though they weren’t that, were they? – from their attentions to his friend…
—Wait. Was he seeing double? David wondered, for the number assaulting the policeman seemed to have swelled. Too many to count at a dazed glance, in any case, and Lewis was soon lost to sight under a violent surge.
Though the priest tried to yank one of the assailants away from his friend, a pair of burly arms grabbed David from behind and hauled him backward. Off balance, the priest was unable to resist to any effect and found himself crammed against the alley wall, trapped and immobilized by the owner of the burly arms.
David craned his neck around (as much as he was able with a meaty palm across his mouth) and managed to spy his friend lying crumpled and unmoving on the cobbles once the surge of men drew back.
Horror shocked its way through him like a bolt of lightning.
“Go about your way, if you please,” one of the men said abruptly, his tone startlingly polite, city accent mostly gone. “Just police business ‘ere.”
He was speaking to someone just out of the priest’s line of sight. Had help come? Had another passerby seen or heard the scuffle and thought to intervene? Surely the tumult had attracted attention, though the assault had lasted almost no time at all.
Hope faded in David’s breast when no further conversation was had with the newcomer, and their assailants – yes, a few more had joined the original four, for a total of seven – paused to confer with one another as they stood over the policeman.
“Wha’ we do now?” one asked as he caught his breath. “Leave ‘em ‘ere?”
“Two blokes knowed each other an’ seen our faces. They’d tell the blighted p’lice,” another fretted as he righted his fake bobby’s uniform, which had been pulled askew in the tussle.
“This one ‘ere is th’ p’lice, y’dullard.”
“Hi don’t fancy ha killin’ in broad daylight,” the first chap grumbled.
“Two killins,” another grumped.
David’s heart lurched unsteadily once – twice – at their casually spoken words, and then his pulse returned to a steady, if galloping, pace.
Oh God.
A thin, fair-haired bloke was going through Lewis’s pockets as the others muttered to each other; what looked like a letter or two, a little book, and a few other odds and ends disappeared into the attacker’s possession. When the blond fellow finished, he stood and silenced his comrades with a curt gesture.
“Shut yer soddin’ gobs. Botched hit, didn’t we? They know each other, ‘ave seen us, an’ killin’ ‘em now’d be daft. Too public. So we takes ‘em wif us. Load ‘em up in the wagon ‘afore someone wif more stones ‘appens upon us.”
Apparently this man was the leader, for the others did exactly as he said.
David found himself yanked around, frog-marched to a side alley, and bodily thrust into what looked very much like a police wagon, the sort used for inmate transport. Once he’d been thrown inside, the door was slammed shut, leaving the priest alone with two of his assailants. One of them trussed David up with eerie proficiency, binding his wrists behind him as though he were wearing a set of police cuffs, and then fitted him with a blindfold and gag made from a pair of musty handkerchiefs. The other helped himself to the contents of David’s pockets.
A few moments later, the sound of men dragging something – someone – heavy reached David’s ears, and he almost sighed in relief. Briefly, he’d thought they might decide Lewis was too much of a bother to haul away alive, and finish him on the spot.
“Oof!” One of the men said scowlingly from just outside the wagon. “Why’d you ‘ave to brain the bugger? ‘E’s bloody ‘eavy!”
“Shut hit!” the leader snapped as the door opened.
Amid a round of grunts and groans, David felt as much as heard them hoist his friend’s limp form into the vehicle, leaving the unconscious policeman to sprawl on the floorboards. Several more of their attackers jostled their way into the back, then the door slammed shut.
Within a half-dozen hammering heartbeats, they were underway. David tried briefly to figure where they were going by the twists and turns of the road and what little he could hear over the vehicle’s clatter, but his thoughts (though clearing) were still too jumbled for that.
In maybe twenty minutes or half an hour, they arrived at their destination.
God only knew where that was.
* * * * *