Murder as a Fine Art

2

The Man Who Concealed His Red Hair



LONDON’S POLICE DEPARTMENT was established in 1829, the first organized law enforcement in England. Earlier, the city’s security had depended on elderly night watchmen who were given a clacker along with a dusky lantern and told to call out each half hour as they made their rounds. Frequently, however, the old men passed the night sleeping in tiny watch-boxes. As London’s population swelled to one and a half million, the city authorized Sir Robert Peel to create the Metropolitan Police, whose initial thirty-five hundred members were known as “bobbies” or “peelers,” in allusions to his name.

By 1854, London had a population of almost three million, making it the largest city on the planet. Meanwhile, the police force had merely doubled, to seven thousand, with hardly enough personnel to control the city’s seven hundred square miles. To supplement the regular force, a detective bureau had been created—eight plainclothes officers who roamed the city in disguise. Their anonymous existence unnerved many Victorians whose obsession with privacy gave them a morbid suspicion of being spied upon.

These detectives were chosen from the ranks of regular police officers. They already knew the streets, but what distinguished them was an extraordinary attention to detail, the ability to scan a busy hotel lobby or a crowded railway station and identify behavior that didn’t fit: a possible robbery lookout who stood still while everyone else was moving, a possible pickpocket who surveyed the crowd before focusing on an individual within it, a possible pimp whose features were calculating while everyone else was merry.

The Metropolitan Police and its detective bureau were headquartered in London’s Whitehall district, the site of numerous government buildings. Because the entrance was on a street called Great Scotland Yard, newspaper reporters referred to the police department by an abbreviated version of that street’s name. Unmarried detectives and constables could live in a dormitory near headquarters, and it was there, at twenty-five minutes past midnight on Sunday, 10 December 1854, that Detective Inspector Sean Ryan, forty years old, was wakened by a patrolman who informed him that a multiple murder had occurred in the East End’s Wapping district. While violence in the East End was common, murders themselves were rare. That year, only five murderers had been hanged in London, and those crimes had each involved a single victim. Even in the largest city in the world, a multiple murder was shocking.

Ryan, who had eaten a dinner of boiled beef and dumplings and slept poorly as a consequence, took only five minutes to dress, making sure that his gloves were in his shapeless jacket. Along with ten constables with whom he roomed, he stepped outside, noted that the cold air frosted his breath, and climbed onto a police wagon that he had ordered to be waiting for them. The chill, fog-laden streets had almost no traffic, allowing the group to reach the murder scene within forty minutes.

A crowd had gathered, as if at a public hanging, forcing the driver to stop the horses a distance away. Ryan and the constables stepped onto grimy cobblestones and followed the din of voices until a wall of bystanders prevented them from proceeding farther.

“It’s Spring-Heeled Jack what did it, I tell you!” someone shouted, referring to a fire-breathing man with claws and springs attached to his boots, who had allegedly attacked a handful of Londoners seventeen years earlier and became a figure of local folklore.

“Naw, it’s the Irish! Everywhere I turn there’s a damned mick beggin’ money! That famine was a crock! There weren’t no famine!”

“Damned straight! The micks just lied to come here and steal our jobs! Ship ’em back home!”

“Hell, no. They’re all thieves. Hang ’em!”

Ryan, whose parents had emigrated from Ireland when he was a child, had tried hard to replace his Irish accent with a London one. His clothes were equally anonymous. Accustomed to working undercover, he wore a newspaperboy’s cap that was pulled down so that his red hair wouldn’t be noticed.

“Constable,” he told a man who accompanied him, “make a path.”

“Right, Inspector.”

The so-called bull’s-eye lantern that each policeman carried had an interior reflector and a magnifying lens over the single aperture. The numerous harsh beams emphasized their gruff voices as the ten policemen pushed through, bellowing, “Step aside! Police! Clear the street!”

Ryan followed, hoping that the sight of so many police officers would distract the crowd’s attention from him and preserve his anonymity. They came to one of many small shops in the area that catered to merchant sailors from the nearby London docks. This close to the Thames, the smell of excrement was strong. Without a sewage system, all the city’s body wastes seeped into the river or were dumped there.

A constable stood guard outside the shop, the windows of which were shuttered, concealing the interior.

Like all uniformed officers, the constable was tall, with a hefty physical presence intended to discourage criminals from forcing him to pull out his truncheon. His helmet and wide belt displayed his police badge and the gold initials VR, which stood for Victoria Regina.

Ryan recognized the constable, particularly a scar on his broad chin that he’d acquired while subduing a lookout during a burglary case that he and Ryan had worked on a month earlier. “Is it you, Becker?”

“Yes, Inspector. Good to see you again, although I wish it was under better circumstances.”

“What did you find?”

“Five bodies.”

“Five? The constable who woke me said there were four.”

“That’s what I thought at first. Three adults and a young daughter. The neighbors say she was seven years old.”

Seven years old? With effort, Ryan didn’t show a reaction.

“But then I looked closer,” Becker said. “In the bedroom, there was a lot of clutter from something that had been smashed. I didn’t recognize at first that the pieces belonged to a cradle. A baby was under a chunk of the wicker hood.”

“A baby,” Ryan murmured. Concealing his emotions, he turned toward the constables who’d come with him. “Ask the neighbors about anything that seemed unusual. Strangers. Anybody who didn’t look right.”

Although it seems an obvious thing to do, the procedure that Ryan set in motion had existed for only a few decades. The science of what became known as criminology originated in France, where a professional criminal, Eugène François Vidocq, went to work for the Paris police and in 1811 organized a plainclothes detective unit. His operatives pretended to be beggars and drunkards, infiltrating taverns that criminals favored. Vidocq eventually resigned from the Paris police and formed the world’s first private detective agency. In 1843, one year after London’s own detective bureau was created, a team of those detectives—Ryan among them—journeyed to Paris, where Vidocq taught them his methods. For the first time, an organized investigation of a crime scene became standard policy.

“Make sure the neighbors understand that even the slightest detail that seemed out of place can be important. One of you needs to guard the door while Constable Becker and I go inside. I don’t want anyone else to enter. Ready?” he asked Becker.

“It’s strong,” Becker warned, opening the door.

“I’m sure it is.”


RYAN ENTERED FIRST.

Behind him, he heard someone in the crowd yelling, “Let us in! Give us a look!”

“Yeah,” someone else shouted, “it’s cold out here!”

Ryan shut the door after Becker joined him. The coppery odor of blood hung in the air.

Gathering his thoughts, Ryan studied the shop. An overhead lantern, grimed with soot. A drab counter. Shelves upon which lay garments and socks of laborer quality. A closed door to the left of the counter.

“Was that door shut when you came in?” he asked Becker.

“I entered through the back, but yes, the door was shut. After I searched, I left everything how I’d found it, the way you wanted things done three months ago.”

“Good. You came in through the back? That door wasn’t locked?”

“I opened it easily.”

“So the killer escaped through the back before you entered.”

“That was my suspicion.”

Ryan didn’t say what he was thinking. Becker was perhaps fortunate that the killer had no longer been inside when the constable entered. He might have been taken by surprise and become another victim.

Noticing a splotch of blood on the counter, Ryan steadied himself, proceeded to the entrance behind the counter, and found the first body. Its throat gaped, almost a second mouth. Its battered skull was misshapen. It sprawled in an enormous amount of blood, some of which had spurted onto clothing on the shelves.

Ryan had seen only a few bodies in a more mutilated condition, the result of countless rat bites or a long time in the river. His training helped to control his emotions.

Five pairs of socks lay in the blood.

“The shopkeeper must have been reaching for them. Where’s the cash box?”

“Under the counter.”

Ryan reached for the box and opened it, studying a mixture of gold, silver, and copper coins. “One pound, eight shillings, and two pennies.”

“Business must have been slow.” Becker’s voice had a trace of pity.

“But to some people, this is a fortune. Why didn’t the killer take the coins?”

Ryan proceeded toward the door to the left of the counter and opened it, confronted by the sight of the woman and the child on the floor. Their faces were bashed in and their throats slit.

For a moment, Ryan couldn’t speak.

Again, his training took charge. “Someone stepped in the blood and slid, moving toward the back door. Was that you, Becker?”

“Absolutely not, Inspector.”

“The slide mark makes the print indistinct, but it doesn’t look like the boot had hobnails in the sole.”

“Suggesting that the killer isn’t a laborer?”

“Very observant, Becker.”

Ryan opened a door to the right and smelled boiled mutton in addition to the blood. Breathing shallowly in the sickening atmosphere, he stared down at the corpse of a servant girl on the kitchen floor. Despite the anguish on her battered face, he noticed freckles, making him think that she might have been Irish like himself.

His revulsion made him turn away. He noticed a large mallet next to a plate on the kitchen table. His pulse intensified when he saw that the mallet’s striking surface was covered with gore.

He’d never seen so much death together in one place. His voice became thick. “Did the shopkeeper’s wife interrupt the killer before he could open the cash box under the counter? Is that why he came back here and killed them all? So there wouldn’t be any witnesses? Then somebody knocked on the front door, and he fled before he had time to take the money?”

Ryan considered what he had just said. “No, that doesn’t work. If he didn’t have time to steal the money, why would he waste precious seconds closing the door behind him before he ran down the hallway?”

“Perhaps he didn’t know about the cash box,” Becker suggested.

“Then why did he kill the owner?”

Stepping into the hallway again, Ryan noted that a door farther along was closed as well. Inside, he found a small bedroom, the clutter of which suggested that many people slept in it. Jagged remnants of a cradle lay in several places. Becker had warned him that there was a dead baby. Even so, Ryan wasn’t prepared when he discovered the tiny corpse wrapped in a blanket and shoved under a portion of the wicker cradle’s shattered hood.

“Dear God.” Ryan had been a detective for twelve years. Before that, he’d been a patrolman for eight years. Walking the streets of the largest city in the world, he’d seen what until now he’d believed was the worst that one human being could do to another. Now he realized how innocent he’d been, a word that he had never expected to apply to himself.

“A baby. The mallet blows would have…” Ryan paused in an effort to control his emotions. “A girl, you said?”

“Yes,” Becker answered faintly.

“The blows would have killed her, but he slit her throat anyhow.” A flash of anger escaped him. “Damn it, why? She couldn’t possibly have identified him. There wasn’t any reason to kill her. He didn’t take the money. He closed all the doors. He left the mallet. Why? I don’t understand.”

Leaving the bedroom, Ryan walked angrily along the remainder of the hallway and opened the back door.

A constable stood straighter. “You’re not allowed back here.”

“It’s all right, Harry,” Becker assured him, coming out. “This is Detective Inspector Ryan.”

“Sorry, Inspector. Just being careful.”

“Careful is good.” Ryan stepped into the night. He’d hoped that the cold air would calm him, but the odor of the fog added to the nauseating smells that remained in his nostrils. “What’s back here?”

The constable directed his lantern at a privy. He lowered the light toward compacted ground. “I looked, but the ground’s too hard for footprints.”

“Did you come through the house to get here?”

“No. Constable Becker said the fewer people inside, the better. He asked me to crawl over the wall where he did. Over there to the right.”

“Use your lantern and show me.”

London’s notoriously thick fogs, known as particulars because they were unique or particular to London, were composed of coal smoke from a half million chimneys to which mist from the Thames attached itself. The city’s walls had a permanent layer of soot. Now the lantern’s beam revealed streaks in the grime where the two constables had rubbed against the wall’s bricks as they squirmed over.

“Show me the rest of the wall.”

Behind the privy, at the rear of the small back area, that portion of the wall also had streaks in the soot at the top.

“That’s where the killer went over,” Ryan decided.

The mob in front of the house sounded more unruly.

“Let us in, so we can see what the bastard did!” someone shouted. “Strangers is what done it! Anybody who knew Jonathan wouldn’t’ve hurt him!”

Ryan told the policeman who’d been watching the back door, “Sounds like the other constables can use you out front. Take a position in the alley. Block anyone from coming toward the back. Don’t be afraid to cause lumps if you need to.”

“Right, Inspector. Anybody who tries to pass me will have a headache.”

The constable stepped into the fog, heading toward the adjacent wall. The light from his lantern dimmed, then disappeared.

Ryan listened to the scrape of the patrolman’s boots as he climbed over. Then he directed his attention toward Becker. “I need you to come with me.”

“Right, Inspector.”

Ryan pulled himself to the top of the wall and considered the fogbound darkness on the other side. “Hand me your lantern while you climb up. Be careful not to go over at the same place the killer did. We want to come down next to where he landed.”

When he dropped to the bottom of the wall, Ryan’s feet sank alarmingly into mud. He let out a sharp breath and almost slid down an incline, stopping himself by grabbing Becker.

“It hasn’t rained. Why is mud here?” Ryan asked in confusion.

“Yes, the ground behind the shop is as dry as stone.” Sounding equally confused, Becker took cautious steps down the slope and aimed his lantern. Its beam pierced the fog enough to reveal the source of the stronger-than-usual odor: a drainage ditch filled with murky, greasy liquid. “God help us, this is where the neighborhood’s privies drain.”

A carcass floated in the filth, possibly a dead dog.

Ryan almost gagged on the stench. “Do you believe cholera is caused by breathing miasma?”

“That’s what my mother always warned me.” Becker’s words were forced, as if he held his breath.

“Have you heard of Dr. John Snow?”

“No.” Becker spoke through tight lips.

“I worked with him during the cholera epidemic three months ago. Snow is confident that the disease comes from drinking bad water, not inhaling foul air from it.”

“I hope he’s right.”

“Believe me, so do I. Let’s make this quick. Lower the lantern toward the mud. There’ll be footprints.”

“There.” Becker pointed. “Deep ones.”

“Beauties. Lower the lantern a little more. See, these don’t have hobnails in the soles, either. The prints are clear enough. I can make plaster casts.”

“Heard about that. Never seen it done.”

“You mix water with plaster of Paris until—”

An animal grunted.

Ryan tensed.

The next time the animal grunted, the sound was louder and closer.

To the left.

“A pig,” Becker said.

“Yes,” Ryan agreed, uneasy.

“Sounds like a large one,” Becker decided.

London had all kinds of livestock scattered through it. Farmers moving to the city or else laborers doing their best to survive often found a small space in a courtyard in which to keep an animal for food. Cows, pigs, goats, lambs, chickens—their sounds were as much a part of the city as the rattle of coaches and the clop of hooves.

But pigs served a double purpose. Not only did they provide meat; they also were garbage eaters. Like the ever-present ravens, they were important in London’s fight against being buried in its slops.

The pig grunted again, the sound on a level that was even with Ryan’s groin.

“If they’re hungry enough, they’ll attack people.” Becker held his lantern with one hand and pulled out his truncheon with the other. “I saw it happen once.”

The lantern revealed a metal bracket in the brick wall. Becker hammered his truncheon against the bracket. The truncheon had a steel tip that made a ringing sound. “If that pig comes any nearer, it’ll foul these footprints. You won’t be able to make casts of them. But while we’re standing here, the killer’s getting farther away.”

“What are you thinking?” Ryan asked.

“Someone needs to follow his tracks,” Becker told him. “Someone else needs to protect these footprints. Go. You know what to look for. I’ll stay and keep the pig away from the footprints.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Ryan looked doubtfully toward the smothering darkness.

“Anything to catch the bugger who did this, Inspector. Go. Take the lantern.”

“And leave you in the dark?”

“The alternative is you’d be in the dark. Without the lantern, how could you follow the tracks? Catch him.”

“And if I don’t catch him, maybe the prints you’re guarding will help identify him? Very well.” Ryan reluctantly took the lantern. “Thank you.”

“Can I ask a question, Inspector?”

“Of course.”

“What would I need to do to become a detective?”

“You’re making a good start.” Ryan assessed where the footprints led to the right, opposite where the pig was. “I’ll bring back the lantern as quickly as I can.”

He twisted its metal top, allowing more air to reach the burning wick. The light increased. Aiming it, he proceeded along the muddy slope. He heard the pig grunt yet again and the steel tip of Becker’s truncheon hitting the bracket, ringing in the darkness.

Ryan stayed close to the wall and followed the footprints. He moved warily, mindful that the killer could have remained in the area. As tendrils of fog wrapped around him, he heard rats, their claws scraping across stones. After five minutes, he reached the rough pavement of a garbage-strewn alley on his right and saw where the footprints left a track of mud. A cat raced in front of him, howling at something.

The remnants of mud lessened, but before they stopped, Ryan came to a hazy gas lamp at the end of the alley. Puzzled, he noticed that the last traces of muddy footprints went toward the wall on his left and then proceeded into the street. The voices of the mob came from the right, from the direction of the shop.

Everyone would have been so distracted by the commotion that they wouldn’t have noticed the killer step out of this alley, Ryan thought.

But why did he go toward the wall here?

Directing the lantern, Ryan kicked at the garbage. Filthy rags flew, along with broken glass and urine-reeking remnants of wooden crates.

Something pale caught his attention. He kicked more garbage away and stooped to inspect what he’d found, his chest tightening when he identified the ivory on the handle of a folded razor.


WHILE INSPECTOR RYAN STUDIED THE RAZOR, Constable Becker stood in total darkness, feeling the fog drift across his face. The wall muffled the noise of the crowd on the street outside the shop, so the only sounds seemed to be the hammering of his truncheon and the grunting of the pig. The noise the animal made was deep and guttural, like someone with consumption trying to cough up blood.

“Get the blazes away from me!” Becker shouted, hoping to scare the animal into leaving.

But the pig didn’t retreat.

In fact, the sounds it made seemed closer. Becker imagined that he saw its indistinct shape in the fog. He’d been raised on a farm and knew that pigs could be as heavy as two hundredweight, but that was if they had plenty of food. Would the garbage this one scavenged, and the animal corpses it came across, be enough for it to grow that large? Even if the pig weighed two-thirds of what he feared, that would be enough to knock him over if it charged in the darkness, especially when he had trouble holding his balance on the muddy slope. His father had once lost his balance and fallen while feeding pigs. Big, ugly, and nasty, they had attacked. Their sharp teeth had torn chunks from his father’s legs and arms. Alerted by his father’s screams, Becker had thrown rocks at the pigs, distracting them while his father struggled over the fence, blood streaming from him.

Becker strained to shut out the memory just as he strained to assure himself that it was only his imagination that made him think he could see the pig’s shadow growing in the fog. His effort not to inhale the foul odor from the excrement-filled ditch made him dizzy. Had Ryan been telling the truth that cholera was caused by drinking foul water rather than breathing its miasma? The odor was so terrible that Becker felt nauseous.

The pig snuffled closer.

Becker wanted frantically to leap toward the top of the wall, climb over, and drop to the safety of the courtyard. But he kept thinking about the five corpses in the shop and his promise to protect the killer’s footprints. He was determined not to be a constable all his life. He was twenty-five years old. He’d tried a variety of spirit-crushing jobs, working sixty hours a week in a brick factory before he realized that his height as well as his muscles would help to qualify him as a policeman. He’d been patrolling the London streets for five years, mostly in the worst areas of the city, putting in more hours than at the brick factory, walking twenty miles each night, with only one night of rest every two weeks.

Nonetheless, as much as he was repelled by what he encountered, he was proud that being a policeman allowed him to apply his mind as much as his strength. He had a chance to stop people from being brutalized. But someone like Inspector Ryan had a much greater chance to do so, not to mention that a detective’s salary was £80 per year compared to the £55 that a constable earned. If stopping a vicious pig from trampling these footprints was what it took to make a better life for himself, then by God he would stand firm.

His resolve was tested as he heard a second pig grunt in the swirling fog.

The second pig was in the opposite direction. Flanked by the two animals, Becker kept hammering his truncheon against the wall.

“Get away from me, you sons of whores!”

He suddenly heard the first pig charge through the mud. Judging the distance of the sound, he swung his truncheon with all his might and felt a solid impact. In the darkness, the pig squealed so fiercely that it reminded Becker of the sound they’d made every market season when his father had slit their throats.

Straddling the footprints that he’d sworn to defend, he swung his truncheon again—and again!—repeatedly feeling a jolt. The pig wailed and knocked against him, as tall as his thigh. Its weight shoved him so forcefully that he almost toppled into the drainage ditch.

Protect the footprints!

Crouching for balance, Becker swung as the pig swept past him. Striking a haunch, he felt his weapon sink into flesh. The pig squealed. Becker reversed his position, careful that the footprints between his legs weren’t damaged.

Both pigs were now on one side of him. He was no longer forced to divide his attention. But if they charged together, he had no hope of stopping them before they knocked him to the muck and tore at him.

“You want to fight? Here!”

Becker stepped forward, putting the footprints behind him, better protecting them. He swung the truncheon with all his strength and was shocked by the unexpected impact. The resultant wail was a combination of pain and fury. But the animal’s fury was greater. Again, the first pig attacked. Or maybe it was the second. Becker had no way of telling as he swung, missed, and was startled by teeth gripping his sleeve. The teeth yanked. He pulled in the opposite direction.

His sleeve ripped. He fell. The footprints! Don’t land on the footprints! Twisting, he veered from them. With a groan, he collided against the wall. The muck gave way, causing him to slip down onto his side. His metal-lined helmet clattered away. The pigs charged. He kicked with both feet, striking snouts and teeth, his fear creating the hallucination that he was on a new contraption he’d recently seen, something called a bicycle, his feet pumping wildly, except that he was sideways and the thick soles of his boots weren’t pressing against pedals but striking eyes and ears and mouths. He screamed and struck harder, squirming with his back along the wall. No! Too close to the footprints!


AS DETECTIVE INSPECTOR RYAN studied the folded razor he’d found, the lantern began to dim. He twisted its top to allow more air to reach the wick, but the adjustment had no effect. If anything, the lantern became weaker. He shook it, didn’t hear any coal oil splashing in it, and knew that he would soon be in darkness.

He had just enough remaining light to see that, when he opened the razor, there was blood on the hinge and the blade. After closing it, he placed the razor in a coat pocket.

The lantern went dark. If not for the gas lamp beyond the alley, he wouldn’t have been able to see anything. To his right, he heard the noise of the crowd in front of the shop. He stepped from the alley and made his way over slippery cobblestones, going from one murky lamp to the next, following the voices. Near the crowd, dim lights from windows added to that of the streetlamps. Owners who lived in rooms behind their shops had been wakened by the commotion and struck a match to their lanterns, making it easier to see.

When he came to the backs of the mob, he shifted toward the shops on the right, trying to squeeze along them.

“Hey, watch who you’re pushing!” a man complained.

“Police. I need to get through.”

“You don’t look like any peeler to me.”

“Plainclothes detective.”

“Right, and I’m Lord Palmerston. Ain’t that right, Pete? I’m bloody Lord Palmerston.”

“Yeah. Lord Cupid. That’s you.”

“And this bloke thinks he’s Queen Victoria, the way he’s pushing.”

“Really, I need to get through. Please make room so I—”

“Piss off, mate.”

Smelling gin on the man’s breath, Ryan went toward the middle of the crowd and again tried to move forward. He showed the policeman’s lantern in the hopes that it would give him some authority. “Make way. I need to reach the shop.”

“Where’d you steal a bobby’s lantern?”

“I’m with the police. I need to get through.”

“Yeah, right. Where’s your badge? Sod off.”

Ryan suddenly felt a hand in his coat pocket. A dipper was trying to steal from him. He slammed the lantern against the pickpocket’s arm.

The would-be thief shouted, “He’s got a razor in his pocket!”

“Who? Where?”

“Him! He’s got a razor!”

When Ryan tried to pull away, hands grabbed him, shoving him against a lamppost, jolting him.

His cap fell off.

“Red hair!”

“He’s Irish! We found the killer!”

“Listen to me! I’m with the police!”

“Then what are you doing with a razor in your pocket? Anybody seen him around here before?”

“No way! I’d remember that red hair!”

Feeling naked without his cap, Ryan tried to pull away.

“You’re not going anywhere!”

A fist slammed into his stomach.

Ryan doubled over. Gasping for air, he swung upward with the lantern. As a man groaned, Ryan shoved him toward several other men, one of whom fell to the street. A gap opened. Hurrying through it, Ryan kept swinging the lantern.

“Don’t let the killer get away!” a man shouted.

With the crowd in pursuit, Ryan saw the alley he’d just left and raced into it. But away from the streetlight, the darkness would be so thick that he couldn’t continue running for fear he’d crash into something and injure himself so severely that he couldn’t escape. The dim streetlamp revealed a board from a crate near where he’d found the razor. He grabbed the board and stepped fully into the gloom. When the mob reached the alley, the first man charged into it, and Ryan whacked the side of his head.

Wailing, the man scurried back into the street.

“What are you stalling for?” someone yelled. “Get in there after him!”

“You get in there!” the first man shouted back, rubbing his bleeding head.

“What’s the trouble?” a voice demanded.

“Constable, we found the killer! He’s in this alley! He’s got a razor!”

“Step back!”

A harsh light glared through the fog.

The glare came closer.

“Police!” the voice announced. “Identify yourself!”

Ryan recognized the voice. The constable behind the lantern was one of the men with whom he shared a dormitory room near Scotland Yard.

“Hello, Constable Raleigh.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Is the blister on your left foot any better?”

“The blister on…? Good heavens, that red hair. You’re Detective Inspector Ryan!”

“Pound him!” a man yelled from the street.

“Give me your truncheon,” Ryan said.

The constable obeyed.

“Take out your clacker,” Ryan told him.

The constable pulled his clacker from his belt and flipped open its handle. In the light from the lantern, the metal on the clacker’s blade looked formidable.

Ryan’s shapeless coat held all kinds of objects that came in handy. He removed four strands of wool.

“What are they for?” the constable asked.

“To save our hearing.”

Ryan balled two of the strands and put one into each of the policeman’s ears. He did the same for his own ears. The plugs of wool muffled noise without shutting it out.

“I learned something,” the constable said.

“Aim your lantern and sound the clacker as loud as possible. We’re going to clear a path back to the shop. Ready?”

“With pleasure.”

“Then let’s establish some order.”

“Get that Irishman out of here!” a man bellowed from the crowd.

The policeman aimed the lantern. “Make way!” Gripping the clacker’s handle, he swung the blade fiercely.

“Move!” Ryan bellowed, stepping forward. He held the truncheon in one hand and the board in the other. “Clear the street!”

The mob stumbled away.

“Go!” the constable boomed, swinging his clacker as hard as he could.

The tallest man hesitated. Ryan struck his arm, causing a howl and a quick retreat into the fog.

Another man lunged. Ryan pounded his knee, dropping him.

Suddenly other clackers added to the pandemonium, constables hurrying toward Ryan and forming a line. They pushed at the crowd, thrusting lanterns toward faces, sometimes striking with the lead weights on their clackers.

The mob ran.

“Keep searching! Keep asking questions!” Ryan urged the constables. “Somebody lend me a lantern!”

Becker, he thought. He hurried into the shop and along the hallway into the back courtyard.

“Becker!”

He ran past the privy and squirmed to the top of the wall.

“Can you hear me, Becker?”

When he peered over the top and directed the lantern, he gaped.

The constable lay near the excrement-filled ditch. His uniform was covered with filth and blood. Next to him were two huge pigs, covered with blood also, apparently dead.

“Becker! Say something! Are you all right?”

The constable squinted toward the light. “The pigs didn’t ruin the footprints. I promised they wouldn’t. Now you can make the plaster casts.”