The Butcher of Berner Street Read online

  When I was newly born – reborn – and living in Camden, my employer, Mrs Castle, had sent me along to her other shop on the Kentish Town Road. We’d run out of veda bread, so she suggested we split the stock two ways, which meant thirty-four loaves in the crate and a mile walk back through the snow. My arms ached and the sharp edges of the wood bit into my fingers. At the corner of James Street, a man stopped me, someone I knew a little bit. He was a regular customer. Sometimes he came into the shop with his wife and sometimes on his own, usually to buy a bottle of cordial gin. But he seemed sober now and grabbed the other end of the crate, so I couldn’t move.

  I was sixteen years old.

  ‘Where are you going with all that bread, little Tommy Cobb?’

  ‘Back to the shop. Mrs Castle’s waiting for it.’

  He pushed the crate hard into my stomach and, icy underfoot, I fell. He stood over me, spitting out his words.

  ‘You act like a girl, Tommy. You’re a bloody molly, aren’t you?’

  He dragged me upright and pushed me against a wall, spitting things, hateful things, about what I was and what should be done to me. I tore his hand from my neck and poked him hard in the eye. He staggered sideways and I kicked him, aiming for his groin, but he twisted away, and my boot caught only his backside.

  He surged back at me, grabbing my hair and punching me three times, once in the stomach and twice in the face. The pavement was full of people, but no one stopped him. Through the blood in my eyes I could see their feet scurrying away.

  His face was just inches from mine, his stale breath filling my nostrils. ‘Answer me, molly. You like blokes, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘People like you are disgusting. Unnatural. You should’ve been drowned at birth.’

  His hand went to his jacket, searching for something, and I was sure it was a folding knife. If it was, he would likely slice me where I stood. But Mrs Castle was a wise old owl and didn’t let her staff – her boys, she called us – carry her goods around the city unless she knew we could protect ourselves. In my pocket I kept a two-inch bradawl, as sharp as a pin. I pulled it out and, in one motion, stuck him in the guts.

  He took a step backwards, his hand to his stomach, blood already leaking through his fingers and on to the snow. He stared at me wild-eyed.

  ‘What have you done to me?’

  I left the crate and ran. I didn’t stop. I ran past the shop and through the town and all the way to my little room, where I gathered all of my belongings into a bag. I took the road south towards the city with eight shillings and sixpence in my pocket, vowing that I would never again allow myself to become attached to a place.

  All that was a long time ago. I closed my eyes, my breath steadying.

  That Tom Cobb, he was a violent boy. But I wasn’t him any more.

  I needed to think rationally. Most likely, Miss Vostek had not guessed my physical gender, and even if she had, such an accusation wouldn’t deflect attention from herself. My female body made me a less likely suspect, as no one would believe I could overcome Mr Drake and force him into a noose.

  And anyway, I told myself, she was intending to go home to Hungary. What was the name of that town she was from? Drake had been right; it was impossible to remember.

  I heard a sneeze and realised Huffam was under the table. He usually slept in the box room with Constance, so I was surprised. He climbed to his feet, bleary-eyed, and pressed his nose against my leg. I leaned down to stroke him and felt him flinch when I touched his back. His skin was scabbed and rough.

  ‘Poor fellow,’ I whispered. ‘The veterinary surgeon wasn’t able to help you after all.’

  He whimpered, and I crouched down to let him bury his face in my dressing gown. Normally, when I was proven right in a disagreement with Constance, I was delighted to claim cheerful bragging rights, and she likewise over me. But Huffam was so piteous, for once I would’ve been glad to be wrong.

  I wondered whether my father would have known what to do; Huffam was the last of several dogs he’d owned. But it was too late to ask him now; he’d been dead for nine months. He clung on to life for far longer than the doctors had believed possible. I visited him a couple of times before the end, and we talked civilly enough, him wheezing and blind, losing his thread mid-sentence, and me curled up in an armchair, telling him nothing more personal than what I’d eaten for dinner or whether the sun was shining outside. I supposed that suited us both. I’d been tempted to tell him the truth, but it seemed unfair to burden an old man with that knowledge so close to his death. And anyway, it was fitting that he was the final person who believed me to be something other than what I was.

  I found my eyes drooping, warmed as I was by Huffam’s head in my lap, and so I dozed, sitting on the floor with my back to the wall, only waking when I heard Constance tramping around in her room.

  I leapt to my feet and ran up the stairs, setting Huffam to barking. He still had that much energy, at least. I didn’t want anyone to see me in my pyjamas and dressing gown, not after Miss Vostek. I wondered how often Constance and Alfie had seen me wearing nightclothes before, and whether they had ever doubted.

  It was one more thing I couldn’t risk happening again.

  I worked on Saturday, arriving late and tired, but not as late and tired as Harry Whitford. He seemed to have fallen out with Miss Chive and spent his time morosely scribbling on his notebook. Our desks faced one another, a design insisted upon by Harry’s father who, I suspected, was hoping I would prove a steadying influence on his son.

  I started on a brief summary of a conference paper on bowel disease that had even less chance of reaching the newspaper than my usual output, all the while thinking about what might have motivated Drake’s murder.

  The bells were ringing for three o’clock when I tossed a pencil eraser in Harry’s direction.

  ‘You’re a wrestling enthusiast, aren’t you Harry?’

  He didn’t look up. ‘On occasion. It’s a noble sport.’

  ‘I’m sure it is, but … I’m wondering if there’s any money in it. I mean, if you were managing a champion, would that make you rich?’

  He nodded, putting the finishing touches to a drawing of a soldier who seemed to have taken a bayonet to the chest and was bleeding copiously. I didn’t ask why.

  ‘Oh yes, they can do very well. I saw a fight at the Agricultural Hall once where the purse was twenty guineas for the winner. And there are tours.’

  ‘What kind of tours?’

  ‘If wrestlers make a name for themselves, they can travel about the country doing exhibitions. Posing and sparring and so forth. They get decent crowds, I think, but it’s not my cup of tea. It’s more theatre than actual competition. They work it all out ahead of time, who gets thrown, who ends up in a neck lock and so on, so no one gets hurt. Where’s the entertainment in that?’

  ‘How much money would a business like that be worth?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ He looked up at me with a baleful expression. ‘Are you planning to see Mrs Flowers today?’

  ‘No, I’m visiting another friend this evening.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh yes? Who is she?’

  ‘Mr Kleiner.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  He screwed up his picture of a soldier into a ball and thumped it flat on the desk.

  When I reached Jacob’s shop it was his son, Eddie, who opened the door, clutching an eyeglass to his chest. I guessed he’d been practising, having recently been apprenticed into his father’s business making and repairing jewellery.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Stanhope,’ he said, sounding quite grown up. ‘Please come in.’

  He’d become sombre since the death of his younger brother, Albie, who’d contracted pneumonia the previous September. Jacob himself had started spending more and more time in bed, claiming he was ill, though it was old age and heartsickness he was suffering from, and I knew of no cure for either of those.

  Looking around his workshop, I felt a rush of worry for my friend. He seemed to have abandoned his craft completely. He’d never been a tidy worker, though he was capable of the most intricate work, but now the room was a mess; gauges, burrs and mandrels scattered across the surfaces, and crumbs of shellac crunching under our shoes.

  I found Jacob in his room, and he waved his cane at me as I entered. He kept it near to hand, though he made little use of it other than to gesticulate at visitors or occasionally hammer on the floor for one of his children to bring him another bottle of spirit or empty his chamber pot.

  I held up the bag of fruit I’d brought with me. ‘Plums,’ I announced. ‘And some cherries, though they’re a little soft.’

  He grunted. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever come back.’

  He was lying bare-chested beneath the coverlet. I could only hope that the other half of him was more properly clothed.

  ‘It’s been one week, Jacob.’

  All the same, I thought, I should not leave it so long again. He might fall genuinely ill or soil himself. His wife, Lilya, was blind, so his children would have to clean him, which would humiliate so proud a man.

  I pulled up the wingback chair and the little table, and laid out his chess set, giving myself white. These days it took him an age to move a piece, so if I was white at least I knew the game would start. I pushed my queen’s pawn forward two squares and accepted a glass of the vicious spirit he favoured. I didn’t know its name. Sometimes, I wondered whether the stuff wasn’t actually tarnish remover from his workshop.

  He grinned at me and waggled his beard, which was now so scanty I could see through it to his pink skin. ‘Have you been digging up more gossip for that rag of yours? Or has Charles Darwin done something else of note?’

  ‘He died. Does tha
t count?’

  ‘Truly?’ He seemed quite shocked. ‘Oh, well that is unfortunate.’

  ‘For him, certainly. I did attend a murder scene, though.’

  Jacob huffed and pulled himself into a seated position on the bed, facing the board, revealing that he was, thankfully, wearing drawers on his lower portion, though they hung from him like laundry on a rack. I helped him on with his nightshirt, tugging it down over his uplifted arms. I could feel the narrowness of his bones, the protruding nubs of his elbows and scoliotic curve of his back. I wished with all my heart that he was still as I had first known him: hale, mischievous and wayward with his pawns.

  He drained his glass in one gulp and slammed it down next to the board. ‘What murder?’

  I explained the strange circumstances of Drake’s death, resisting the urge to sip the evil brew and wishing Lilya was there to offer me a cup of tea instead. Most likely, she was asleep in the loft room, as was her habit these days. I contemplated making a pot of tea for myself, but by this time Jacob was fully engaged with the events at the penny gaff and I didn’t want to interrupt his train of thought.

  ‘A telegram was sent to your office telling you of a murder,’ he mused. ‘Who would send such a telegram? A man who wants everyone to know about his crime. A boastful man.’

  ‘Perhaps. Or a woman. Or someone who knew what had happened but isn’t the killer. I explained as much to Detective Sergeant Ripley. Do you remember him?’

  Jacob’s mouth twitched irritably, and I regretted the question. Our unspoken agreement was that I never asked him what he remembered and what he didn’t.

  ‘You’re changing the subject. What happened to the telegram?’

  I thought back. I hadn’t actually seen it. Harry had received it on my behalf and had shown it to his father, who told the police.

  ‘It’s probably been thrown away.’

  ‘Why would you be so foolish?’ He held up a finger and paused for dramatic effect. ‘This could be the exact evidence you need, could it not? And yet you discard it! This is why newspapers are full of nonsense and gossip. You people never understand what’s important.’

  He hadn’t been a supporter of the journalistic profession since The Times had declined to print his letter complaining that the silver duty mark was an unfair tax on the jewellery industry. He subsequently visited their offices to make his case in person, only to be told by a junior copy clerk that their readership didn’t care about Jewish problems and he should go back to Russia or wherever he came from.

  I responded to his move, which had been to match mine, with my king’s knight. This was the way our games usually began; a predictable pattern we could follow without thinking. Of late I had begun to wonder whether we had, on occasion, repeated entire games move for move.

  ‘I don’t think the telegram contained more than basic facts,’ I told him. ‘It simply stated that Drake had been hanged, I believe.’

  He waved his hand at me as if swatting a fly. ‘Bah! It will also say which post office it was sent from. All telegrams have this information. Did you not know?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ I pictured one in my mind, a piece of card with printed type. They were so commonplace, and yet I’d never studied one in detail. ‘Will it say who sent it?’

  His expression soured. ‘No, of course not. Why would it? But knowing where it came from might tell you something, no?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’ He lay back down on his coverlet and closed his eyes, his mouth pushed into a childish pout. ‘You want answers and I give them to you, but it is never enough. Perhaps you wish me to sniff the telegram?’ He made snuffling sounds, like a dog at a butcher’s pocket. ‘I could tell you what the sender does for a living and the brand of soap he uses.’

  I frowned, reasoning that telegrams were sent electrically, so the card you received was never actually handled by the person who sent it. But this didn’t seem the moment for scientific niceties.

  ‘Come on, Jacob. I’m sorry. You’re right, it’s a good idea. Let’s play chess.’

  ‘Later. I’m tired now.’

  He turned away from me, facing the wall.

  ‘Why are you tired? Have you been working?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s Shabbat.’

  He was not normally so devout.

  ‘But the rest of the week? Have you been in the workshop? Or teaching Eddie? He needs to learn your trade. You can teach him, Jacob. You’re a wonderful teacher when you choose to be.’

  He didn’t reply, so I sat and waited, listening to the squawks of the magpies outside and watching the gentle rise and fall of breath in his body. The skin on his neck was grey and blotched with liver spots so profuse they were becoming one big spot. I could have left him and gone downstairs, but even in his sulky silence there was comradeship, whether he valued it or not.

  My eyes were starting to close when I heard him mutter: ‘It’s too late for that.’

  A few minutes later, he started to snore.

  I crept downstairs. Lilya was preparing bread and cheese, sitting at the table with the provender and utensils laid out in front of her, cutting perfect slices and distributing them on to plates so swiftly it was impossible to tell she was blind. She refused all offers of help from me but did accept my bag of plums and cherries.

  After supper we ate the fruit with sticky fingers and played charades: Lilya, Eddie, his sister Millicent and me. Of course, Lilya had no idea what actions we were performing and simply called out baseless guesses – ‘Milkmaid! Bridle! Cornflour! Engine!’ – until we were helpless with laughter and could no longer remember what word we were supposed to be acting out.

  It was the first time I’d seen her happy in months, and it fed my heart with gladness.

  After the children had gone to bed, I listened to her talking of her youth, when she and Jacob had been forced to flee across Europe from the Ukraine. Her voice cracked as she told me that when they reached Belgrade they slept on benches beside the Danube, lulled to sleep by the sound of the river, certain they were finally safe.

  Shortly after St Paul’s rang out for ten o’clock, I left the Kleiners, instructing the cab driver to take me to the newspaper office on Fleet Street. I was determined to find that telegram.

  Mr Yip, the Chinese nightwatchman, was guarding the lobby. He allowed me inside and grudgingly let me borrow his paraffin lamp. I ran up the stairs to my desk and began sorting through the piles of paper.

  I typically received fifteen or more missives a day via the internal system. A few were addressed to me, generally from academic societies – medicine, astronomy and suchlike – wishing me to provide them with free advertising for their latest symposium. But most were sent to other men in the office who, rather than read the contents, simply scrawled ‘Stanhope’ at the top and stuffed them into my pigeonhole. I didn’t object. Having been offered an initial position as an occasional science correspondent, I was now accepted as a full-time member of staff with a weekly pay cheque to match. If the price of that was writing a few dull sentences about road closures and horse shows, so be it.

  About halfway down the pile, I found what I was looking for.

  Oswald Drake is dead by means of hanging. He was an evil man and deserved nothing less. Seek the truth.

  Above that were printed the date and other details. It had been received at our usual telegraph office on Fleet Street and had been sent from the one at Mincing Lane.

  My heart sank. Mincing Lane was an unremarkable side street in the financial district of the city, but its post office was one of the busiest in London, swarming with bankers and merchants.

  I doubted anyone would remember a single telegram among all those thousands, or the person who sent it.

  6

  In the morning, Alfie was getting ready for church, more out of custom than devotion. Constance was still upstairs, her habit being to postpone for as long as possible the moment when she would have to speak to Mrs Gower, who was seated on the stool in the pharmacy waiting for them both.