Lost and Gone Forever (Scotland Yard's Murder Squad) - Hardcover

“Peter?” Anna could hear how frightened she sounded, her voice echoing back to her from the flat face of a curio cabinet that blocked the narrow path. She stood still and listened, but there came no answering cry from her brother.

She called his name again, louder this time, but with the same result. Or, rather, the same lack of result.

“Perhaps,” she thought, “if I were to climb to the top of that curio, I would be able to see quite far along the path.”

She approached the hulking cabinet and opened the doors at the bottom. There was nothing inside. She slid open a drawer and pulled it out, set it beside her on the grass. She pulled herself up, hanging on tight to the knurled trim along the side, and used the empty slot where the drawer had been as a toe-hold. Once begun, the climb was easy, shelves positioned at convenient intervals as if it had all been purposefully fashioned for small children to scale. At the top was an elegant pointed facade and she clung to it and crouched low, willing herself not to look back down at the ground. “I am not really so high up, after all,” she thought. “Were I to fall, I might not break my arms and legs.” But this thought was not so comforting as she had felt it would be.

She looked ahead of her up the path, which wound around a dining set and through a great herd of French desk chairs, disappearing at the juncture of a Chippendale butcher block and a dollhouse cupboard. A small blue bird of some sort hopped from the base of a painted white sideboard, then flapped away to the top of a jumbled mountain of coatracks. Behind her, she could see that the sun was beginning to set, the sky bruised and livid.

She opened her mouth to call Peter again, but did not make a sound. All at once she felt utterly alone and afraid.

A grandfather clock chimed nearby. Startled, Anna lost her grip on the facade and nearly tumbled from her perch. She slid down the back of the curio and landed neatly on her feet on the packed dirt of the path.

“Well,” she thought, “I suppose there is nothing for it but to find Peter and drag him back home in time for his supper. Otherwise, we shall both get the switch and I should never forgive him if that happened.”

And so she mustered her resolve and marched away into the ever-darkening Wood without glancing back even once at the warm yellow lights of her house.

— Rupert Winthrop, from The Wandering Wood (1893)

Prologue

He woke in the dark and saw that his cell door was open.

Just a crack, but lamplight shone through and into the room.  He lay on his cot and watched that chink of yellow through his shivering eyelashes. But the door didn’t open any farther and the man—the man Jack—didn’t enter the room. Had Jack forgotten to latch the door after his last visit? Or was he waiting to pounce, somewhere just out of sight in the passage beyond the cell?

He kept his eyes half-shut and watched the door for an hour. The sun came up and the quality of light in the room changed. The crack between the door and the jamb remained the same, but the lamplight behind it faded, washed out by the brighter gleam of the rising sun. At last, he threw his thin grey blanket aside and sat up, swung his legs over the side of the cot and padded across the room to the bucket in the corner. When he had finished the morning’s business, he scooped sand into the bucket and went to the table under the window. He splashed water on his face from the bowl, his back to the open door, ignoring it. He drank from a ladle and looked out through the bars at the narrow stony yard, all he could see of the outside world. Then he went back to the cot and sat down and waited.

His breakfast didn’t come, but sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes Jack forgot or was busy. A missed meal here or there was hardly the end of the world. So he sat and he waited. He began to worry when midday passed without any sign of food. His stomach grumbled. He checked the positions of the shadows in the yard, but they told him nothing he didn’t already know. He had an excellent internal clock. He knew full well when it was time to eat.

When teatime passed with no tea or bread, he stood again and went to the door. He put his hand on the knob and closed his eyes. He concentrated on his breathing, calmed himself. He pulled the door half an inch wider and took his hand off the knob. He stood behind the door and braced himself.

But nothing happened.

Braver now, he touched the doorknob again, wrapped his fist around it and opened the door wide enough that he could see out into the hallway. He put his head out of the room and pulled it back immediately. But despite his expectations, nothing had hit him or cut him. Nobody had laughed at him or screamed at him. All was quiet.

And so he stepped out of the room for the first time in as long as he could remember. He wasn’t at all comfortable being outside his cell. His memory of the things beyond that room was vague and untrustworthy. He swallowed hard and looked back at his cot. It represented all he knew, relative security bound up with stark terror, the twin pillars that supported his existence.

He left it behind and crept down the passage on his bare feet, leaving the lantern where it hung on a peg outside the chamber. When he reached the end of the hallway there was another door and he seized the knob without flinching. He stifled a gasp when it turned under his hand and the second door swung open, revealing a long wedge of wan afternoon sunlight. He had expected the door to be locked, had expected to have to turn around and retreat to his cell and his cot and his bucket. Had, in fact, almost wished for it.

He stepped out into fresh air. He felt the warmth of the sunbaked stones on the soles of his feet. When his eyes had accustomed themselves to the bright light, he looked around him at the empty street and turned and looked up at the nondescript house that had been his home for so long. He didn’t ever remember seeing the front of the house before and it occurred to him that he might have been born there, might never have been outside it. Perhaps his half-remembered notions of the world beyond his cell were only dreams.

A breeze stirred the hair on his bare arms and he felt suddenly self-conscious. After hesitating a moment, he turned and went back inside, back down the passage, back into his room, to the cot. He picked up his grey blanket and draped it over his shoulders and left again.

Back outside he looked up and down the street and smiled. He had a choice to make and he felt proud to have been given the opportunity. Jack was testing him, he was sure of it. He could go left to the end of the road where he saw another street running perpendicular to this one. Or he could go right. Far away to his right he could see the green tops of trees waving to him from somewhere over a steep hill. Perhaps a park or a garden. Trees. He could imagine how their bark would feel under the palm of his hand. He was certain he had touched trees before. He really had been outside his room. He nodded. The trees meant something.

Walter Day turned to his right and limped naked down the street toward the beckoning green.

1

Plumm’s Emporium had for years occupied a large building at the south end of Moorgate, not far from where Walter Day spent a year in captivity and not far from Drapers’ Gardens, where Day found shelter in the trees. Plumm’s was bordered on one side by an accountant’s office and on the other by that famous Gentlemen’s Club: Smithfield and Gordon. In the winter of 1890 it had been announced that Smithfield would be moving to posher headquarters in Belgravia and the renowned entrepreneur John Plumm purchased the club’s building. At the same time, he made an offer to the accountant, who was only too glad to relocate. The Emporium then closed its doors for nearly four months. The great blizzard that hit London in March of 1891 slowed construction of the new building and caused much speculation about Plumm’s financial stability. There were rumors that corners had been cut and cheaper materials used in order to get the place ready for the announced date. But when it reopened it was three times the size and four stories taller and had adopted its founder’s name, John Plumm, though most shoppers continuing to refer to it simply as Plumm’s.

Beyond the cast iron and glass storefront, the ground floor of Plumm’s held two tea shops, a bank, three full restaurants, a public reading room, and a confectionary. There was an electric lift at the back, something most people had never seen, and this generated a fair amount of foot traffic, people coming in just to ride up and down. The first through third stories were supported by thick iron pillars and held a staggering variety of merchandise: toys and dolls, fabric of every variety, ready-made clothing, shoes and umbrellas and hats, groceries, baked goods and bedding, mens ties and cufflinks, coffee, books and maps and sheet music, jewelry, cutlery and crockery and cookware, rooms for lounging, rooms for smoking, and fitting rooms. At the top of the building was an enormous glass dome which was cleaned daily, along with the forty-three windows on the lower floors, by four men hired specifically for that purpose.

John Plumm himself gave a speech on the day of the opening and then stepped aside, gesturing wide for the gathered throng to enter. Men wearing white gloves held the doors open as hundreds of women (and more than a few men) hurried inside, and more staff waited within holding complimentary brandy and wine balanced on silver trays. These men, along with two hundred other Plumm’s employees, were housed on-site in apartments that faced Coleman Street. In this way, as John Plumm explained, there was always someone in the store, and no customer would ever want for advice or service.

There was a workshop next to the apartments at the back, where skilled artisans created papier mache mannequins and display racks made of wood and brass.

John Plumm was rarely seen on the premises, but his lieutenant Joseph Hargreave, who managed the daily affairs of the store, constantly patrolled the floor, adjusting scarves on the mannequins, resolving customer issues, and replacing the employees’ soiled white gloves when needed. Hargreave had an eagle eye for imperfections among his workers and had shown three shopgirls the door before end of business on Plumm’s opening day.

But he did not show up for work the second week after Plumm’s opened its doors to the public, leading many of his employees to think that perhaps Mr Plumm had taken matters into his own hands and let his overzealous manager go. Joseph Hargreave was never seen alive again and was quickly forgotten by everyone. Everyone, that is, except his brother Richard, who eventually decided to hire a private investigator to find Joseph.

2

On Monday, the evening after he left his cell, Walter Day hid, shivering, behind a stand of trees until Drapers’ Gardens had emptied. When he was alone he pulled up the grass beneath him and dug a shallow trench in the hard soil. He lay down and hugged his legs to his chest, waited until his teeth stopped chattering, and he eventually fell asleep.

Tuesday morning Walter kept himself hidden at the edge of the gardens until a vendor stepped away from his wagon long enough to scold a band of street urchins that were driving customers away. Walter snatched a loose cotton dress from the vendor’s awning where it hung. He pulled it over his head, then hungry and filthy and ashamed, but no longer naked, he scurried away. He clung to the side of the footpath, away from traffic and tried to seem inconspicuous in his lady’s dress, his bare feet visible below the hem. He found a half a fish pie discarded in the slush at the side of the road and ate it as quickly as he could, cramming the soggy mess into his mouth so fast that he couldn’t breathe. He watched the shadows and the passing people, while waiting for the man Jack to appear and take him back to his cell. When teatime had come and gone again, and Jack still had not materialized, Walter began to cry.

Wednesday, as omnibuses rattled past carrying early morning commuters, Day crawled out of the box he had slept in and joined the flow of pedestrians. When he came to a busy intersection, he watched a gang of children who rushed forward, one at a time, to assist people as they crossed the wet road, holding up their hands to halt the buses and taxis and private carriages, and collecting small coins in return. Hopeful, Walter caught a young woman’s attention and held out his elbow for her. She looked away, her cheeks red with embarrassment, and a man standing behind Walter threatened to send for the police. As the foot traffic thinned, it began to sleet. He took shelter beneath an oriel and sat on the ground, pulled his muddy dress down so that it covered his ankles, and waited.

On Thursday he returned to that same corner and watched the children more carefully, studied how they solicited pedestrians, and by afternoon had managed to help an elderly blind man cross the street. He earned a ha’penny in return and spent it on a cup of weak tea at a wagon across from the gardens. He slept in the trench again and used the dress as a blanket.

When he woke Friday morning, he found a small pile of clothing had been left on the ground next to him. A pair of patched and faded trousers, a threadbare shirt, a thick wool coat, and boots with a hole in one toe. Next to the clothing was a walking stick with a round brass handle. He recognized it as his own, from some long ago time, like seeing a cherished toy he had played with as a child. He looked around, but saw no one, and so he put on the new clothes and buried his dress next to the trench so that it would not be stolen or discarded. More appropriately attired, he was able to help seven people cross the busy intersection that day and, for the first time since leaving his cell, he ate an entire meal. That night he slept well and was not bothered by any rumblings in his stomach.

The children were waiting for him at his corner on Saturday. Walter listened as they explained their position. This was their corner and, although he was much larger than they were, they outnumbered him and would cause him grievous harm if he continued to interfere with their ability to earn a living. He nodded and wished them well and wandered away in search of another intersection. He had no luck, but later that day he was struck on the back of the head by a cigar butt that was carelessly tossed from a passing carriage. He picked up the smoldering butt and carried it away with him. Over the course of two hours, he found nearly twenty more, an even mix of cigars and cigarettes. He took them back to his trench in the gardens and unrolled them all, using a piece of bark stripped from a tree to catch the precious bits of tobacco left inside them. It took some time, but eventually he was able to form two new crude-looking cigars from the leftovers. He took off hi...