breath and after delivering it into my employer’s hand, he leaned against a building, gasping for breath. It was my experience that these boys were out of doors much of the time and accustomed to walking the city. He must have trotted all over the East End looking for us.
Barker unfolded the note, and I saw his shoulders sag. There was only one event that could have caused such a reaction.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I asked, putting a few bob into the street boy’s hand and sending him on his way.
Barker nodded and looked away.
“Floating in the river like the others?” I asked. “Where?”
“She was found among the construction pilings at Tower Bridge. They are bringing the Thames police steam launch to collect the body. We are to meet them in Wapping.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
The Guv scratched his ear. “Our chances were even at best, lad. I knew that when I took the case.”
No hansom in London could have brought us there fast enough to suit me. I could feel the blood rushing at my temples, and at one point in our journey I wanted to vault over the top, push the driver out of his box, and whip some speed out of our horse. As for Barker, he had retreated into himself. I think he was preparing to be humbled. He had not found Miss DeVere’s killer nor had he discovered the body. It is not possible for one man to right every wrong, catch every criminal, or save every victim. I worried that perhaps he felt that success was merely his duty while anything less was failure.
When we arrived, we found that as usual we were late and Inspector Swanson was in possession of the body. The launch had arrived a few minutes before we did, and the little corpse was lying on a flat, two-wheeled barrow, which stood nearly upright. She was huddled down on the bare wood, due to gravity, her sodden clothes and hair dripping on the stone dock. She was dressed in white undergarments: camisole, and pantaloons. Her face, despite the rouge and kohl, was gravely still, and she almost looked as if she were sleeping; almost, I say, for the lids were half open, the bottom of her irises visible and blue. Hamlet’s Ophelia, I thought. She reminded me of Ophelia drowned in some painting I had seen, though it was obvious she had died another way.
“Strangled,” Barker muttered, looking at the purple marks like sooty fingerprints on her slender throat. Then he reached down and raised the delicate wrist of her right arm. The tip of her index finger had been lopped off bloodlessly. I walked to the edge of the dock and looked down, trying not to be so angry that I started rampaging through the streets.
Swanson and Dunham were arguing. Scotland Yard was taking this case seriously, but I recalled when it was just Barker and I and Major DeVere who were searching Bethnal Green for this missing girl before it became a question of jurisdiction and a feather in someone’s cap, with a possible commendation or promotion.
“Have the parents been told?” the Guv asked.
“Not yet,” Swanson said.
“May I be the one to tell them?”
“So you can take the credit?”
“Credit for what?” Barker asked, with a bitter edge to his voice. “What have I accomplished? She’s dead, isn’t she?”
It wasn’t fair, I thought. Barker hadn’t been called in until after Miss DeVere had been taken. In fact, it had been hours later, after her father in his shining helmet had ridden the length and breadth of Bethnal Green. Cyrus Barker did not undertake a case he felt he had no chance of solving, but when he did, he took sole responsibility even, I thought, over matters he could not control.
Swanson shook his head. “I’m sorry, Barker. You are not officially involved in this investigation. The duty falls to me.”
“I need to consult with my client. We’re both going to the same destination,” Barker reasoned, “and I am already paying for a cab, but it is your decision. Of course, I could leave now on my own and devil take the hindmost.”
“I shall take my own vehicle,” Swanson offered. “And if you follow and let us do our job, I shall allow you to enter the residence with me unofficially.”
“It is the most I can expect under the circumstances,” my employer answered.
“Have you examined the body?”
“’Tis a wee lass, Cyrus, and in public,” the inspector replied, looking somewhat uncomfortable. “I thought it best left to the coroner.”
“Cover her up,” Dunham ordered. “Sergeant Bellows, I am leaving you in charge. When the coroner arrives, take down anything he says and then release the body to him.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, with a tug on his helmet.
“Come, gentlemen,” Swanson said. “We must give the DeVeres the sad news.”
“Do you think,” I asked as we rattled along in the cab behind Swanson and Dunham’s vehicle, “that Major DeVere shall retain our services so we can find Miacca?”
“One never knows in such circumstances,” Barker replied. “First of all, I am not certain that DeVere will be motivated more by a desire to get this over with or by a need to punish his daughter’s killer. Also, he’s got a wife to take into consideration. I doubt he can make any sort of thoughtful decision on the subject just now. We must prepare to be dismissed and we must prepare to continue.”
“I do not envy the inspector his duty,” I said. “This will not be pleasant.”
“It isn’t an easy thing, but Donald has done it dozens of times before. It’s part and parcel of being a C.I.D. man.”
“Forgive me, sir, but are we any closer to finding Mr. Miacca? Do you think we might have caught him if we’d had more time?”
“I’ll admit, Thomas, that this case has been difficult. He is a clever adversary and has left us with precious few clues. But even he shall eventually make a mistake and thereby expose himself, or we shall find that one clue which will break this case open. Miacca isn’t going to stop killing girls. A pot can only simmer so long before it blows off the lid.”
We eventually pulled up in front of a private residence in Fulham. The DeVere family lived in a terraced house in Dawes Lane and the servants saw that everything was clean and polished and painted. It seemed a cruelty to come in and ruin this domestic order.
Donald Swanson said that he would inform the DeVeres that their daughter was dead, and I suppose in a way, he did. When we were halfway out of our vehicles, the door to one of the residences opened and Hypatia DeVere stepped out, arms out at her sides. Her eyes were as large as saucers, and there was an unspoken question on her lips. Without ado, Swanson answered it by removing his bowler and looking down. Dunham, Barker, and I did likewise. The woman went down just then, the way I’ve seen a deer go down when it is shot through the heart by a hunter. Her servants caught her, but they could not stop the wail of grief that escaped her. It reverberated down the street. I cannot imagine a more mournful sound than that of a woman who has just been told that her child is no more.
I thought it was over, but I was wrong. She was only getting her breath. The next cry was even louder. Leaving the prostrate woman to her housekeeper, the butler stepped out the door and took charge, which meant that he herded us in quickly before we attracted any more attention. DeVere came downstairs then, a picture of abject misery, and after trying unsuccessfully to soothe his wife, he had the butler send for their physician. The four of us stood about in the entranceway while the major helped his wife up the stairs.
I’d noted how clean the street was, and now I was impressed by the front hall. Fulham, its streets and its houses had the order of a German village. All was fashionable and well tended. Each house was similar to its neighbors, save one thing. It seemed nothing so common as dirt had any place here and yet, one of those houses had a little girl who’d been murdered. I could not see things going on as they were after this.
An ashen-faced and sober Trevor DeVere came down the stairs a short while later.
Swanson cleared his throat. “Sir, we shall need you to come and identify the body.”
The man I had seen fall apart when I first met him now summoned control of himself.
“Very well, Inspector,” he replied. “Where is she now?”
“In the morgue in Stepney, sir.”
“Cannot she be transferred?”
