Cover
Dedication
To Cecil William Redfern, 1917–2013
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank the following individuals for their many contributions to this book:
my first readers — Kathy Eberle, Catherine Gildiner, Victor Pianosi
my gate-keeper and logician — Joan Redfern
my first critic — Jim Nielson, member of the Balfour salon
my fellow word-lover — Laura Ferri Forconi
my tireless and ever-supportive agent — Chris Bucci
my acquisition editor at Dundurn — Diane Young
my sharp, smart Dundurn text editor — Laura Harris
my one and only Gladys
my readers
LONDON, 1841, a teeming metropolis, a city of gaslight, new railroads, and steam-powered factories. Gangs roam the night streets; child thieves prey upon the old and the naive. The Metropolitan Detective Police are using new methods of criminal investigation, based on scientific thinking. Their efforts are an essential in England’s march toward the modern age. Over all her citizens, young Queen Victoria reigns as a wife, a sovereign, and a new mother. Her first child is a tiny princess, whose smile of innocence shines like a beam of light over troubled seas....
Chapter One
A Dark Blue Line
“Hold still, Mr. Endersby!”
Inspector Owen Endersby pulled in his stomach. His wife Harriet gave him another gentle punch. “Breathe in,” she scolded, and pushed the final button of his waistcoat into its hole.
“Now, hurry, dear one, and take this tin of chestnuts with you.”
The inspector kissed his wife on her cheek. He pulled on his canvas coat and clumped down the stairs from their three-room flat at Number Six Cursitor Street, flung open the street door, and balked at the shrouded buildings before him. A chill morning mist muffled London’s parish church bells, striking seven times to remind the city that its’ workday was about to begin.
Along the glistening cobbles of Drury Lane, Inspector Endersby’s hired hansom cab rushed its way toward the St. Giles Workhouse. Endersby huddled under the hansom’s half roof to avoid the drizzle, his rotund figure of fifty-one years sporting his favorite plum-coloured waistcoat, his broad hat, and suede gloves.
“Faster, cabby,” he shouted. Beside him Mr. Thomas Caldwell, his sergeant-at-hand, pulled down his cap of wool and shivered. He wondered if his superior felt as uncomfortable as he did. They had been called to duty one hour before six o’clock, the reason being a dead body found strangled in the St. Giles Workhouse — discovered cold and staring — in full view of forty very frightened workhouse orphans.
“Ugly news, sir,” said Mr. Caldwell, flinching. A toothache, which had plagued Caldwell for a fortnight, sent a jolt of pain through his lower jaw. Chewed clove wasn’t helping; its scent made his superior wrinkle his nose.
“Indeed,” answered Inspector Endersby, “most wicked, Mr. Caldwell. Surely there is enough suffering in St. Giles and in all the wretched workhouses of this city without the addition of murder. And a female at that.”
“Most brutal, sir.”
“I imagine, Sergeant, the clove is helping?”
“Not as yet, sir.”
“How unfortunate.”
Inspector Endersby lapsed into silence, allowing dark thoughts to crowd his mind. Trepidation always preceded his observation of a corpse. Any mention to him of workhouses and their cruelty toward children roused a deep anger in his heart. Many times he had passed the filthy courtyards of the city’s eight workhouses and seen their young inmates marching around them in circles, their faces wan, their eyes sad like those of inmates he’d seen in the yard of Fleet Prison. What was worse, an animal urge tempted him to use his fists to mete out preliminary punishment. In his twenties, as a Bow Street Runner, Endersby once had license to use hard force. He had resorted to punches and kicks to subdue his villains. To his later chagrin, he would admit how he enjoyed the sport of cracking bones. “My demon familiar,” he named the urge. Now, daily, he was afraid of its potential, fearing this morning he might strike out at the bullies running the wards in St. Giles.
“Was anything else uncovered — besides the found corpse, Sergeant?”
“The policeman also discovered one of the child inmates outside the workhouse gate at a very early hour. The found waif, it seemed, was in a state of some mental agitation.”
“Outside the gate? Was the waif harmed?”
“Apparently not.”
Endersby leaned back as the hansom cab continued on. The thoroughfare bustled with figures rushing off to shops and work yards, heads bent to avoid the gentle rain. London had grown larger since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Endersby often remarked how the streets never presented anything less than a moving mass of human souls. Two million living in the greater city; one child out of six lived poor and abandoned.
“I assume, Sergeant, that you find your new marital life blissful?” Endersby said to break the silence. It was a courtesy question. Over the past year his feelings toward Sergeant Thomas Caldwell had changed. At one time he had disliked his sergeant, finding him abrupt and presumptuous. But when he had saved Endersby’s life in the summer of last year, stepping in front of him to block an attacker’s knife, his respect grew. They had become friends. Endersby thought of himself as a scientific man — a policeman in a new age where rank took second place to consideration.
“Yes, sir. Most comforting,” Caldwell replied, smiling quickly at his superior’s question.
“You’ve been wedded three months now?”
“Four and half, sir, to be precise,” Caldwell answered.
“Plans for the future?” Endersby lowered his voice. The matter of children, of babies in particular, brought out a tenderness of feeling in the inspector, one mixed with deep sorrow. He and his dear Harriet had suffered the death of a son early in their marriage and had been unable to have another.
“My Alice wishes to have one right away.”
“And you, sir?” asked Endersby.
“Of two minds I am, Inspector. Money. Alice’s health.”
“These are difficult decisions, indeed.”
Endersby opened his mouth to speak again but changed his mind. The task at hand was brutal. A murder of an innocent woman. He noticed Caldwell’s lips held tight with anticipation. “Stir your horse, sir,” Endersby commanded the coachman. Time was pressing. A crime site had to be viewed early on before the blood and the clues were mopped up and hidden forever from the detective’s eye.
In less than ten minutes, the inspector and his sergeant were delivered down a narrow passage that led to the gate of the St. Giles Workhouse.
“Shall I draw up procedure, Sergeant?” Endersby asked.
Endersby and Caldwell planned what each would do just before the body and murder scene were examined. What satisfaction there was in working in this fashion, Endersby thought. During his first years as a junior policeman, the inspector had worked alone, obeying the dictates of the magistrate’s court in Bow Street. Then, arrests were swift, too often based on hasty conclusions, class distinction, and malice. Now his role as a detective inspector was based on principles of impartiality and judicial equity, as