Mace were known to every cove that opened a newspaper. But there’s still plenty who’ll pay well to see a set-to with bare knuckles. Mittens haven’t the same appeal.”
It occurred to Thackeray that his sergeant was displaying an unexpected working knowledge of pugilism. Almost, in fact, an affection for it. He decided not to comment.
“If our corpse does turn out to be a pug, Sarge, how do we find his identity? Who got him out of the river?”
“No help there. An old fishmonger. Showed me the body near Blackfriars Bridge. I questioned him and believe he really did find it there.”
Thackeray accepted Cribb’s judgment. Both knew that salvaging suicide victims from the Thames had become a minor industry. Once at safe anchorage, a body could wait until a sufficiently generous reward was advertised by relatives. A patient professional would watch the papers day by day and make his discovery only when the premium was right.
“How do we begin, then, Sergeant?”
Cribb was rarely at a loss. “You begin at once, Constable. Take a walk across the bridge to Fleet Street. See the boxing reporters.
“Yes, Sergeant. Entirely clear.” Cribb, as usual, keeping his subordinate occupied.
“And Thackeray.”
“Sergeant?”
“You might try the
¦ For the second time in two days Cribb appeared that afternoon at Scotland Yard in the office of his inspector. As initiator of this interview, the sergeant was in a buoyant mood. Jowett was plainly ill at ease. He had consented to seeing Cribb when an urgent appointment was requested.
His subordinates rarely visited him voluntarily.
“Well, Sergeant. What’s your business? Have you had second thoughts?”
Cribb enjoyed a moment’s hesitation while the Inspector fumbled, lighting his pipe.
“Not really, sir. It does relate to our conversation yesterday.”
“It does? You challenge my figures, perhaps?”
“Oh, no,” Cribb reassured him. “All quite accurate.”
“What is the problem, then?”
In the cab between Waterloo Road and Great Scotland Yard, Cribb had rehearsed this conversation.
“No problem, sir. Merely seeking confirmation.”
“Are you, then? Confirmation of what?” The pipe was defying ignition.
“Something you told me yesterday. I want to put it into practical effect, sir.”
“Very good, Sergeant. I’m glad to hear that. But you need not refer everything to me, you know. My intention was to encourage initiative, not extinguish it.” Pleased at this pithy rejoinder, the Inspector relaxed a little and propped the pipe on its stand in front of him. “Since you’re here, though, you may as well explain what is bothering you.”
“Bothering isn’t quite the word, sir. You asked me to reexamine my methods of investigation.”
“Quite so. And you have?”
“In a manner of speaking, sir. Intuition, you said.”
“I most certainly did. And inspiration.”
“And flair, sir.”
“Good! And now you have a case, and you require guidance on the appropriate method of investigation.” Jowett intoned his words like a schoolmaster who has recognized a glimmer of intelligence in the class dunce.
“No, sir.”
The Inspector reached for his pipe.
“All I require from you, sir,” continued Cribb, “is your agreement to a novel method of investigating a murder.”
“Novel. .? What exactly have you in mind, Sergeant?”
“I’ve reason for thinking a corpse found in my division is that of a pugilist.”
“A boxer, you mean? That is the modern term, I believe.”
“No, sir. I mean a knuckle fighter.”
Jowett frowned. “But I don’t understand you-”
“London Prize-Ring rules,” explained Cribb. “No gloves. Supposed to have been stopped ten or more years ago. It goes on, though. Not in my division. Other parts of the city.”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Can’t ignore the evidence of a headless pug, sir. Clear signs of having scrapped in the last week or so. Without the mittens.” Cribb put his hands on the edge of the Inspector’s desk and leaned forward confidentially. “I’m taking this corpse very seriously, sir; very seriously indeed.”
“What do you mean?”
Cribb straightened and walked nonchalantly to the window. “Passed an hour with the ‘Dead Persons Foul Play Suspected’ lists this morning, sir. My dinner hour. Thought I’d remembered another headless one last January. I found it, and one more last year for the set, if you’ll excuse a card-player’s term. Each of ’em hooked out of the Thames, and both said to be very well-muscled. Could be pure chance, of course. Might be a pretty little pattern of murder among the fist-fighting mob, though.”
Jowett was shaking his head. “I don’t see how this can be true, Sergeant. Prize fighting was carried on illegally a dozen years ago, as it had been for a century or more. But it was stopped by rigid enforcement and has not been heard of since. It no longer commanded respect as a sport. You remember the ugly incidents, I expect. The fight between Sayers and that American-”
“Heenan, sir. The Benicia Boy.”
“Yes. It put pugilism in very bad odour. There was a damned regrettable episode at Fenchurch Street Station, too, when there was a brawl in the early hours of the morning.”
“The second Mace-King fight,” Cribb confirmed. “End of 1862. The fault lay with the South Western Railway Company that night. If they’d laid on sufficient trains in the first place, the roughs would never have set about the ticket holders.”
“I recall that it led to a good deal of criticism of the police,” said Jowett. “Our point was, if I remember, that everyone present was engaged in an illegal activity so we bore no responsibility for those who were robbed and beaten, poor beggars.”
“That was it, sir. Even Jem Mace was struck. Bob Travers held the roughs off by using knuckle dusters. Bill Richardson laid about them with the butt end of a billiard cue.”
“You seem to have a vivid memory of the occasion, Sergeant.”
Cribb cleared his throat. “Newspapers were full of it, sir.”
“Quite so. But really, Sergeant, I cannot say that I have heard much of prize fighting since. A law was passed banning the special trains, I believe.”
“Regulation of Railways Act, 1868, sir,” barked Cribb.“Section twenty-one. Imposed penalties of up to five hundred pounds.”
“Precisely.”
“Ah, but what goes on now doesn’t involve trains. And it’s all kept very close.”
“So you really think your corpse died in the prize ring?”
“Can’t say for certain, sir. He was a pug, though. And he had a fight shortly before his death.”
“How do you know?”
“Pattern of bruising, sir. State of his knuckles.”
“Really? You seem to be quite an authority. Isn’t yours a famous pugilistic name, now that I think of it?”
Cribb grinned tolerantly. “Tom the Great? No connection, I’m sorry to admit. Ever seen his monument in Woolwich Old Church graveyard, sir? Sculptured from a twenty-ton block of Portland stone. You can see it from the Thames. Been some first-class men with the name of Cribb, sir, but only one has been commemorated on that scale.”
