‘You sure this is the place you want?’ the cabby asked, eyeing Riley’s pristine tailoring and then the squalid area with scepticism.
‘It is, thank you,’ Salter told him, paying the fare. The cabbie didn’t offer to wait for them and was gone as soon as he could persuade his tired-looking horse to move off again.
Several grubby children surrounded the two detectives as they made their way to Mrs Dawson’s abode. Salter shooed them away but they regrouped and came back at them with a barrage of questions and open palms.
‘You can’t go in there, mister,’ one of them said. ‘It ain’t proper. The old woman’s been weeping and wailing fit to wake the dead.’
‘Her son is dead, you great lummox.’
The insult resulted in the inevitable fist fight and the two combatants rolled around in the dirty street, cheered on by their contemporaries. Riley and Salter left them to it and made their way into the building. Riley looked mildly surprised when instead of knocking, Salter pushed the front door open and made for the rickety wooden stairs, stepping around a small girl with a dirty face dressed in an even dirtier pinafore sitting on the bottom step. The smell of dirt and deprivation inside the building caused Riley almost to gag.
‘It’s the first floor we want,’ Salter said, leading the way but glancing back at Riley with a wry smile. ‘A bit of a come down for you, sir, I quite realise that. I’m thinking you imagined the Dawsons occupied the entire house.’
‘Evidently not,’ Riley replied, his expensively shod foot avoiding a wet pile of something that smelled suspiciously like cat urine on one of the steps.
‘Four families at least in this house, and lucky to have the space,’ Salter added, seeming to enjoy educating Riley on the insanitary living conditions of the vast majority of London’s inhabitants. ‘One privy in the backyard between the lot of them, and I’d strongly advise against making use of it.’
‘I shall bear your advice in mind, Jack.’
Riley was glad to reach the relative safety of the first floor landing, conscious of several pairs of eyes peering down at them through the bannisters leading to the upper floors. He heard voices coming from behind the closed door of Mrs Dawson’s apartment. They stopped abruptly when Salter knocked and the door was wrenched open.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ a man said. ‘You’d best come in. I take it you’ve come to tell us who did this to me brother.’ He seemed to notice Riley for the first time and narrowed his eyes in suspicion. ‘What’s this toff doing ’ere?’
‘This is Chief Inspector Rochester, Sam, so keep a civil tongue in your head. Sir, this is Sam Dawson, the victim’s brother.’
‘The victim had a name, yer know.’
‘More than one, I believe,’ Riley said calmly, stepping into the crowded but mercifully clean room. ‘You have my sympathy.’
‘Fat lot of good that’ll do us,’ Sam muttered, but refrained from saying more when Salter’s glare silenced him. ‘This is Mrs Dawson, John’s mother,’ he said, indicating a thin woman swamped by the chair she sat in, fussed over by two younger women, one of whom was exquisitely pretty. The brothers’ wives, presumably. ‘Mrs Dawson, this is my boss, Chief Inspector Rochester, who wanted to come and see you himself to offer his condolences.’
‘All well and good,’ said another man who looked so much like Sam that he had to be his brother, Paul. He had the bulging muscles and ham fists of a manual worker, but seemed slightly more in command of himself. Both men were handsome individuals, as was the mother, even in her time of grief. Riley could understand now why Ezra had appealed to a woman of Ida’s eclectic tastes. ‘But begging your pardon, we’d prefer you to be finding the person wot did this terrible thing.’
‘We will do our best in that regard, I can assure you.’ Riley’s refined tone and air of authority immediately quelled the barrage of complaints.
‘Get a chair for the gentleman,’ Mrs Dawson said, snapping the fingers of the hand that was not clutching a crumpled handkerchief, ‘and one of you girls make him some tea.’
Several children appeared from various corners of the room and stared at Riley as though he was some sort of exotic creature.
‘Thank you,’ Riley replied, seating himself on the stool that someone produced. ‘But tea won’t be necessary.’ A commodity that he took for granted would, Riley knew, be an expensive luxury for people living in such squalor. ‘I am very sorry for your loss,’ he said to Mrs Dawson, meaning it.
Mrs Dawson’s red eyes leaked fresh tears. ‘You are very kind, sir. My John was a good boy and I’ll give an argument to anyone who says differently. He was making something of hisself, working in that big posh house, but he came to see me every week, regular as clockwork. He always brought somefink nice with him. Food and little treats for me and his family. He was a good boy that way.’ She paused to mop up the tears and blow her nose. ‘I don’t know what I shall do without him, so I don’t.’
She convulsed with renewed sobs, clutching her middle as she bent double, and Riley already knew that she wouldn’t be able to shed any light on the reasons for her son’s murder. A slight noise drew Riley’s attention to the brothers, standing side by side with their thick arms folded across barrel chests. One of them had just noisily cleared his throat. It was already obvious that John had been the favoured son. These two didn’t share their mother’s view of his saintly qualities, but would never express their reservations in front of her, especially not at such a time. They would turn on one another soon enough—Riley had seen it frequently in families from all walks of
