Moriarty

I will never forget that moment. There were Jones and Mortlake, standing face to face, surrounded by perhaps half a dozen police officers but with the hooligan boys in opposition. It was as if a war were about to break out. And in the middle of it all, Scotchy Lavelle sat silently, the unwitting cause of all this and yet, for the moment, almost forgotten.

It was Mortlake who backed down. ‘There’s no need for this,’ he said, forcing the faintest shadow of a smile to his death’s-head face. ‘Why should I wish to interfere with the British police?’ He lifted his cane, gesturing at the corpse. ‘Scotchy and I were in business together.’

‘He said he was a company promoter.’

‘Is that what he said? Well, he was many things. He invested in a little club I have in Mayfair. You could say we were co-founders.’

‘Would that be the Bostonian?’ I asked. I recalled the name. It had been where Jonathan Pilgrim had stayed when he came to the country.

I had taken Mortlake by surprise, although he tried not to show it. ‘That’s the one,’ he exclaimed. ‘I see you’ve been busy, Pinkerton. Or are you a member? We have a lot of American visitors. But then, I doubt you could afford us.’

I ignored him. ‘Is Clarence Devereux another partner in this little enterprise?’

‘I don’t know any Clarence Devereux.’

‘I believe you do.’

‘You’re mistaken.’

I’d had enough. ‘I know who you are, Edgar Mortlake,’ I said. ‘I have seen your record sheet. Bank burglary. Safe-cracking. A year in the Tombs for armed assault. And that was only the most recent of your convictions.’

‘You should be careful how you speak to me!’ Mortlake took a couple of paces towards me and his entourage circled him nervously, wondering what he was going to do. ‘That was all in the past,’ he snarled. ‘I’m in England now … an American citizen with a respectable enterprise, and it would seem that your job is to protect me, not to harass me.’ He nodded at the dead man. ‘A duty you have signally failed to carry out where my late partner was concerned. Where’s the woman?’

‘If you are referring to Henrietta, she is upstairs,’ Jones said. ‘She was also killed.’

‘And the rest of them?’

‘The entire household has been murdered.’

Mortlake seemed to be thrown for the first time. He took one last look at the blood and his lip curled in disgust. ‘There is nothing for me here,’ he said. ‘I will leave the two of you gentlemen to sniff around.’

Before anyone could stop him, he had swept out again, as brazenly as he had come in. The three hooligan boys closed in on him and I saw that their primary concern was to protect him, to provide a living wall between him and his enemies in the outside world.

‘Edgar Mortlake,’ I said. ‘The gang is making itself known.’

‘And that may be helpful to us.’ Jones glanced at the open door.

Mortlake had reached the bottom of the garden and passed through the gate. Even as we watched, he climbed into the carriage that was waiting for him, followed by his three protectors, and with the cracking of a whip he was off, back towards Highgate Hill. It occurred to me that if the murder of Scotchy Lavelle and his household had been designed to send a message then it was one that had most definitely been received.

EIGHT Scotland Yard

If Hexam’s had anything to recommend it — and the list was not a long one — it was its close proximity to the centre of London. The breakfast room was once again empty and, after finishing my meal, I left the maid and the Boots behind me and set off, intending to follow the Embankment, something that Jones had recommended the day before.

The Thames was glistening on the other side of a long row of trees that graced the boulevard. There was a fresh spring breeze blowing and as I stepped out of the hotel, a black-hulled river steam ship chuffed past on its way to the Port of London. I stopped and watched it pass and it was at that moment that I had the strange feeling that I was being watched. It was still early and there were few people around: a woman, pushing a pram, a man in a bowler hat walking with a dog. I turned and looked back at the hotel. And it was then that I saw him, standing behind a window on the second floor, gazing out into the street. It took me only a second to work out that he occupied the room next to mine. This was the man whom I had heard coughing throughout the night. He was too far away — and the windows were too grimy — for me to see him clearly. He had dark hair and wore dark clothes. He was almost unnaturally still. It might have been my imagination but I would have said his eyes were fixed on me. Then he reached out with one hand and drew the curtain across. I tried to put him out of my mind and continued on my way. But I could no longer enjoy the walk as much as I had hoped. I was uneasy without knowing why.