throat, a forward lean and he rose irrevocably from his chair, the ridiculous desk in front of him nudging forward with a squeak as his knees straightened.
‘Well, Constable?’
A deep breath. ‘An adjective, sir.’ Spoken with absolute assurance.
The Educational Inspector winced. ‘What did you say?’
‘Adverb. That is to say . . . adverbial pronoun, sir.’
An indrawn hiss from the inspector. ‘Perhaps you should try spelling the word instead.’
Thackeray considered this and decided in the circumstances it was wiser not to make the attempt. He assumed as knowing an expression as he could muster, and smiled.
There was no answering smile. ‘I should have remembered, Constable, of course. It is your practice to avoid spelling any word of more than two syllables. That is why, in the exercise I shall shortly return, you avoided the pitfalls of the word “misdemeanour” and substituted the alternative phrase “minor offence”. An ingenious stratagem, you will concede, gentlemen. The pity is that Constable Thackeray’s spelling is not equal to his ingenuity. His “minor” is a toiler beneath the ground, and “offence” when Thackeray spells it is a wooden enclosure.’ Dramatically, the inspector assumed the pose of a man plagued past endurance, bowing his head and drawing a set of chalky fingers through his hair. Then he rose to face Thackeray, slowly shaking his head. ‘Constable, I have no doubt that in your way you are a most loyal and painstaking member of the Force. If a certificate of efficiency were awarded for qualities such as these, you and I would probably never have crossed paths. Unfortunately, for both of us, the Civil Service Commissioners require evidence of other attainments before they will confer a higher rank upon a constable. That is why, to our mutual discomfort, we have faced each other in this situation twice weekly for four years at various stations throughout the Metropolitan area.’
Thackeray nodded gloomily. He needed no reminding. Twopence a month was compulsorily diverted from his pay into the Educational Inspector’s salary. Twopence a month! A dozen pints of Kop’s ale a year!
‘What depresses me most profoundly,’ continued the inspector, now turning his eyes towards the ceiling, as though making an appeal to a Higher Authority, ‘is that wherever my duties take me—and in four years I have given classes in four widely-separated Divisions—I can be confident that before many weeks have passed I shall walk into a room and find Constable Thackeray sitting at the front desk like a more substantial manifestation of Banquo’s ghost. He haunts me, gentlemen, and his spelling is a continuing torment. He has pursued me from Whitechapel to Islington to Hampstead and now to Rotherhithe.’ He produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘However, I have never altogether despaired of a man, and I shall endeavour, if Providence allows me the time—’
The knock, entry and salute of the duty constable provided a merciful intervention. ‘Pardon me, sir. An urgent message just come on the despatch cart.’
‘“Came”, Constable.’ The inspector examined the note. ‘Extraordinary. It seems, Constable Thackeray, that someone is asking me to release you from my class. I shall not refuse. Since the finer points of orthography have eluded you for so long, I am sure that they can wait another week. You are required to report to Sergeant Cribb— whoever he may be—at Great Scotland Yard as soon as possible.’
For once in his career Thackeray sincerely blessed Sergeant Cribb.
A cab-drive and thirty minutes later he was seated in an ante-room at Scotland Yard. In the centre was an island of faded carpet with two chairs, a desk, a hat-stand and a wastepaper basket. Around the island, with never a foot on the carpet, intermittently moved a parade of clerks in tall collars, oblivious of the occupants, intent only on passing between two doors on opposite sides of the room. Sergeant Cribb jerked his thumb towards the door behind him.
‘Statistical Branch. All the charge-sheets you’ve ever written have gone through there. Diaries, station calendars, morning reports of crimes. Keeps a small army of pen-pushers out of mischief, so I don’t underrate it. And once in a while they come up with something interesting.’
Thackeray prepared to be interested. Cribb, he knew, demanded complete attention. Foot-shuffling and beard-scratching might do for an Educational Inspector; not for Sergeant Cribb.
‘Spend much of your time at the music halls?’ the sergeant asked unexpectedly. It could have been the beginning of a polite conversation, except that Cribb was rarely polite and no conversationalist.
‘Not usually, Sarge,’ admitted Thackeray. ‘I’m more of a melodrama man myself.’ He added knowledgeably, ‘Irving at the Lyceum or Wilson Barrett at the Princess’s.’
‘Pity. You’ve been inside a music hall, I hope?’
‘Oh indeed, Sarge. I did a duty quite regular when I was in E Division. It’s just that music hall ain’t my —’
‘From now on it will be,’ Cribb told him. ‘Take a look at these.’ He handed a sheaf of papers to the constable and then braced his thighs to rock his chair on its back legs as he waited without much patience for the information to be digested.
‘Reports of accidents,’ Thackeray hazarded, in a few moments. ‘From several different Divisions.’
Scornful silence greeted the observation. He returned to his reading.
Cribb got up to look out of the window at the hansoms drawn up outside the Public Carriage Office in the court below. He was a tall, gaunt man, decisive in his movements and unused to periods of inactivity, but it was vital to his purpose that Thackeray fully examined the reports. He waited like a hooded falcon.
‘I see the point, Sarge!’ Thackeray announced after some minutes.
‘Capital!’ Cribb almost swooped back to the chair. ‘What conclusion d’you draw?’
‘Well, Sarge, if I read any one of these on its own I’d pass it over as pure accident, but six in four weeks is uncommon hard to credit. You can’t really put ’em all down to coincidence.’
Cribb nodded. ‘There may have been more, of course. These have all been reported by sharp-eyed constables on duty. Others may have nodded off at the crucial time, or just not bothered to report what they saw. In one police-district a single incident wouldn’t seem rum at all. Put together here in Statistics Branch they form a pattern, and not a pretty one.’
‘D’you mean one person’s behind all of these, Sarge?’
‘Could be. Could well be. Put ’em in sequence, will you?’
Thackeray arranged the papers chronologically. ‘It seems to have begun on September 15th with the Pinkus sisters on the trapeze at the Middlesex.’
‘Ah. The old Mo.’
‘What, Sarge?’
‘The Middlesex,’ snapped Cribb. ‘The old Mo. Wake up, man. It’s built on to the Mogul Tavern in Drury Lane.’
Thackerary smiled sheepishly. ‘Yes, I should have known, Sarge. Well that’s where the Pinkus girls complained to Sergeant Woodwright that someone had tampered with their trapeze. It could have had a very ugly consequence, I should think. As it turned out, though, the young ladies was lucky. The sergeant mentions Miss Lola Pinkus showing him a prominent bruise—“somewhat below the left shoulder,” he says, but that seems to be as far as the injuries went.’
‘Hm. Far enough for the likes of Woodwright. Injuries to young women are best taken on trust. I’ve heard of more than one sprained ankle that lost a good sergeant his stripes. What’s the second report you’ve got there?’
Thackeray scrutinised the sheet. ‘Bellotti the barrel-dancer, Sarge, on September 17th at the Metropolitan in the Edgware Road. He finishes his act with a kind of sailor’s horn-pipe on three barrels. As soon as he stepped on the centre one he fell flat on his face, broke his arm and set light to his hair on the footlights. Not surprising with the macassar some of these foreigners use. Inflammable stuff, I believe. Well, the surprise was that they found a line of axle-grease smeared right round one of the barrels. As soon as Bellotti’s foot touched that he was sure to come a cropper.’
‘Shabby little episode,’ commented Cribb with a sniff. ‘Then there was this fight at the Oxford. Wasn’t that on the next night?’
‘Yes, the 18th. A comedian by the name of Sam Fagan broke a stage-hand’s jaw after the curtain went down on his act. Constable Barton, who was on the spot, did him for assault right away, of course, but the magistrate at Bow Street dismissed the case next morning. It says here “Fagan acted rashly, but he had been subjected to excessive prov . . . er . . . prov—” ’
‘Provocation. That’s the part we’re interested in. Read out Barton’s account of what happened on the
