Humphries put on speed to overtake the working men and women who were dawdling on foot. He attempted to put himself in the mind of a detective like Great Scotland Yard’s Inspector Traynor. How would a proper detective think this through?
Both suspects had alighted from the Newcastle train, both fitted the description of Anthony Smight. It was the first, though, who had given Humphries that tell-tale tremor of intuition. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat as if he felt the need to conceal his face. He was carrying an anonymous little bag, which somehow added to his suspicious air. And, most conclusive of all, he had turned aside for the short cut into Durham, down a path that wasn’t signposted or named in any way. That decision indicated a familiarity with the city, which was certainly what Smight had.
All this passed through Humphries’ mind during the brief time it took him to reach the lookout point and the beginning of the stepped descent. Taking a final view of the back of the second man, who was striding round the curve of the road, the policeman thudded down the first flight of steps. Behind him he heard the chatter and laughter of the women as they too chose this shorter route.
Constable Humphries estimated that his quarry was only a matter of seconds in front of him but, because of the zigzag nature of the steps and the overhanging tree branches, it was possible to see no more than a few yards ahead. He was conscious too that he was in pursuit of a very dangerous individual — ‘If you see this man do not accost him’ — one who might lash out if he believed someone was after him. So Humphries kept darting his eyes among the shadows on either side of the path. He was quite reassured to hear the women clattering down behind him.
But he saw no one until he emerged at the bottom of the final flight of steps and into a jumbled area of terraced housing dominated by the new church of St Godric’s. There, about a hundred and fifty yards ahead of Humphries, was his man! Unmistakable in the wide-brimmed hat, the little bag swinging at his side, the purposeful stride.
Anthony Smight turned into North Road and Humphries’ task became both easier and more difficult. Easier because there was less likelihood of Smight spotting anyone on his tail, more difficult because it was by now midday and, North Road being a main thoroughfare, it was full of carts and carriages and passers-by. Humphries had to get closer to his quarry or run the risk of losing him in the crowd. He walked faster, keeping his gaze fixed on the top of Smight’s hat. Fortunately the murderous doctor was so intent on his own purposes that, without looking back once, he passed among the idling window-gazers and the shop-workers buying their dinner from the costers’ barrows. He smoothly skirted draymen sliding barrels into the vault of a pub and avoided a cluster of argumentative, besuited men coming down the steps of the Miners’ Institute.
Humphries wished that he could lay eyes on a uniformed policeman. He felt isolated in his pursuit of Smight and, had he seen one of his fellows, he would have alerted him. It would have taken only a moment of explanation since the whole force had been shown the picture of Smight and knew what was what. The uniform could have reported back to the police-house while Humphries continued his chase. But there was not a police uniform in the entire stretch of North Road.
So the constable in civvy clothing pursued the tall man with his bag and hat into the start of Silver Street and across the river by Framwellgate. This was a smarter part of town. Humphries began to wonder where his quarry was going. Surely a fugitive like Anthony Smight should be haunting the less reputable areas of the city? And Humphries suffered his first twinge of doubt. Was he on the trail of the right man? What had happened to the other one, the one who went walking on down the station road?
Then Humphries was reassured when he saw Smight turn aside and enter a chemist’s near the marketplace. Reassured, because he knew that Smight might be seeking to purchase supplies of opium or laudanum. This area of the city was sometimes allotted as his beat and Constable Humphries was on nodding terms with the chemist, whose name FRED’K W. PASCAL was emblazoned in a gilded arc across the plate-glass window. Humphries kept his distance, looking in a ladies’ dress-shop before he realized the incongruity of standing before a golden sign for WOMENSWEAR. So he shifted a few yards further to study a gentleman’s outfitter’s. All the time, though, he kept his eyes on the door to Pascal’s.
He waited a long time, almost a quarter of an hour by his pocket-watch. Bert Humphries wondered whether Smight was committing some outrage inside the chemist’s. Had he attacked Frederick W. Pascal in his frantic search for drugs? Had he left the unfortunate apothecary bleeding behind his counter while he made his escape through a back door? But that could hardly be, because during this anxious quarter of an hour several other customers had come and gone through the door of FRED’K W. PASCAL. None of them appeared to have been witness to any horrors.
Unable to stand the suspense any longer, Humphries was on the point of going into Pascal’s himself, when the tall man emerged. He was still wearing his hat and carrying his little bag. He turned, not down towards where Humphries was standing outside the outfitter’s, but up along Saddler Street.
Humphries moved fast. He darted into the chemist’s. Frederick Pascal was not lying bleeding or dead on the floor. He was up on tiptoe replacing a jar on an upper shelf. He finished what he was doing and turned round with a what-can-I-do-for-you-sir? air.
‘Mr Pascal, it’s me. Constable Humphries.’
‘So it is, Constable. I didn’t recognize you out of uniform. Day off?’
‘No. I am on duty,’ said Humphries, conscious that with every passing second his quarry was striding further up Saddler Street. ‘The man who just left, the one with the hat, what did he buy?’
The chemist, a short man with deep-set eyes, scratched his head.
‘He didn’t buy anything.’
‘What was he doing here then? Tell me, for heaven’s sake.’
‘He was selling not buying.’
Seeing the baffled, almost panicky expression on Humphries’ face, Pascal said, ‘That was Mr Fish. I know him.’
‘Fish? Yer sure his name ain’t Smight.’
‘As sure as I am that your name is Albert Humphries. Fish visits the chemists in Durham every month or so to peddle his cod-liver oil. Not his, of course. He represents the manufacturer. The quality of the oil from North Sea cod is second to none. I have just taken four bottles from him and he will be on his way to sell some to Bennet’s up the road. I’ve always thought it humorous that a man with the name of Fish should find himself selling cod-liver oil. Yet we always pass the time pleasantly and the subject of his name has never been mentioned. Are you all right, Constable?’
Humphries had gone to the door. He was gazing up Saddler Street. The tall man with the hat and bag was still in sight. If he’d run Humphries could have caught up with him. But there was no point now.
Humphries wondered about the other man who had alighted from the Newcastle train. Had he made the wrong choice, or was the whole thing a wild goose chase?
Constable Humphries had made the wrong choice. The other man who’d alighted from the 11.45 from Newcastle, the one whom Humphries had bumped into, was Doctor Anthony Smight. The murderer had no inkling that the stolid individual on the platform was a policeman in civvy clothes. He barely glanced at Humphries or at a man of about his own height and build who had got off the train ahead of him. Smight was too intent on the next stage of his plans to pay much attention to others. He walked down the curving road away from Durham station and then, by the arches of the Flass Vale viaduct, turned towards the centre of the city.
It was extraordinary, he reflected, how fate had brought him to the same northern place as Sebastian Marmont, the soldier turned magician. Smight had reason to resent Marmont — what he saw as the theft of the girl Padma from him — but it was a resentment which had burned low over the years although he had tried to cause mischief once by spreading the story in London that Marmont had stolen the Lucknow Dagger. His old antipathy to Marmont only flared again when he’d glimpsed the very man on the stage of the Assembly Rooms. Then he encountered Eustace Flask after his humiliating disappearance and saw a way to achieve a small retaliation against Marmont by enlisting the medium’s help. It had not quite worked out. Smight remembered the sight of Flask’s body, still twitching and bleeding in the wooded glade by the River Wear.
But the death of Flask or Smight’s hostility towards Marmont were less significant than his campaign of revenge against all those who had a share in the suicide of Ernest Smight. Anthony was the younger brother to Ernest. He had revered his brother. Ernest had looked after him and their sister Ethel, who was between them in age. Many years before as children, at the beginning of Victoria’s reign, they had played in the grounds of the large
