Chapter 44
Four loud knocks on the door. This was how Alderman James always announced himself at premises. He was wary of knocking the three times that felt natural to him because of its connotation with death and his own connection to death in the minds of the people. He looked to Edwards, who was with him.
“What do you suppose she will tell us?” James asked while they awaited the door.
“Lies,” Edwards replied, smiling brightly.
“And what of the husband?”
“Who knows at this stage, Alderman; all the people who seemed likely culprits have turned up clean in all searches and questioning, so it stands to reason that it is someone we haven’t come across yet.”
“There are an awful lot of people we haven’t come across yet,” James said as the door opened.
A plump woman with a red face, from being over a large pot most likely, peered out through the smallest crack in the door. When she saw that it was two gentlemen, she opened it wider and stood to almost military attention.
“Evening, sirs, what can I do for you?” she asked, her voice trembling with the fear of the upper classes.
“Is Mrs. Caldwell in?” James asked politely.
“Yes, sir, I’ll get her for you.”
“Is Mr. Caldwell home as well?” Edwards asked as she was about to go.
“I’m not sure, sir. I can check if you like.”
“No, that’s all right, Mrs. Caldwell will be fine.”
Only a few moments later, a good-looking woman who James was sure was once a beautiful woman came to the door and stood before them timidly.
“Mrs. Caldwell?” James asked, and she nodded. “We want to ask you about the murder of the man who was killed at the laneway at Cutpurse the other night.”
She looked to them both in fright. “Me?” she asked, teetering on hysteria.
“Yes, you,” Edwards said harshly. “We know you didn’t do it, but we also know you and he had a little arrangement.”
“He had an arrangement, and I just had to go along with it,” she said, almost in tears now.
“Calm down now, dear,” the alderman said. “We just need to know: was he on his way to see you the night he was killed?”
“I don’t know. he just came when it suited him. I think he had people who told him when my husband was out in the taverns or the gambling dens.”
“Do you think your husband could have killed him?” Edwards asked bluntly.
She was clearly taken aback, and already James knew they were on to yet another loser.
“No. Have you not seen my husband? He has been crippled by his drinking and late nights; he couldn’t even kill me if he tried,” she said.
James indicated with a nod that he thought they should go, that they were wasting their time.
“Well, at least you won’t have to pay his debts with your body anymore, eh?” Edwards said, tipping his hat and walking away before she had a chance to respond. She looked to James, and he too tipped his hat.
“Sorry to have disturbed you, madam, but we have to follow up on everything.” And he left her standing at the door, dumbstruck after her ordeal.
“Why did you talk to her like that?” he asked Edwards when he caught up with him.
“Like what?”
“Like she was the scum of the earth.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t she?”
James didn’t quite know how to answer this. He’d felt sorry for her at the door but before that and since they left he could feel his natural revulsion at what she was doing, had been doing, rise up again.
“I’m growing weary of this, Alderman,” Edwards said, stopping at a street corner.
“What?”
“This whole thing. It has been going on too long; there has not been enough drama to it.”
“Drama!”
“Yes, finding bodies in the morning is one thing, but where are the eyewitnesses to tell the tales and for us to see the fear in their eyes as they do, the survivors who are so rattled that they can’t even talk to us without jumping at every shadow?”
“I’ve told you before not to talk like this,” James said. Edwards didn’t reply, but he had the look of a bored child.
“I have the Dolocher!”
The cry came from streets away, and for a moment James was not sure that he had actually heard it. Edwards was running, and then James was beside him, and they saw others coming out of houses and looking out first-floor windows. People were looking around and asking where the call had come from, and soon James and Edwards were in a group of people looking in all directions, waiting for another call.
“Over here!” someone shouted, and the crowd ran to a thin laneway not big enough to hold them. Edwards and James could not get through the throng, and they could see nothing though the focal point was clearly just up ahead.
“Let me through!” James cried, but there was no budge in the crowd.
Could it be? Was the Dolocher just up ahead, lying there? Was it dead, alive, dying? What was it? Who was it? It was killing him, but his authority was holding no sway with the blinded people here; he had to push and push and push until he finally got to the opening.