The Murder Pit. Mick Finlay
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as her head struck the wet flagstone, but straight away she was up onto her hands and knees and reaching out for her hat. It seemed to me that the little woman was used to falling.
‘Get up!’ ordered Rosanna, taking Birdie’s arm and yanking her hard to her feet. Birdie gasped again.
‘You’re hurting her,’ I said.
‘I’m not hurting her, I’m helping her.’
Birdie’s smile was gone, her eyes full of tears. It was only then, with her hat off, that I saw the scar at the back of her head where her hair should be. It was about the size of an egg, a shocking bright red of sore, livid flesh, the hair above and below gummed with yellow pus. It seemed as a whole patch of her scalp had been torn off.
‘What happened to your hair, Birdie?’ I asked as clouds of steam rose around our feet.
‘Got it caught in the mangle,’ said Rosanna, pulling the hat from Birdie’s hand and fitting it on her head so it covered the scar. ‘Didn’t tie it up right, did you, silly girl?’
Birdie looked at me. Her eyes flicked real quick at Rosanna, then back at me.
‘It hurt, Norman,’ she said, her voice so soft and low.
‘Who did that to you?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t do it,’ said Birdie.
‘It was the mangle,’ said Rosanna. ‘Now, come. Get on the train.’
‘Your mama misses you, you know,’ I said as a couple of men in black overcoats pushed past us to the carriage door. ‘Why not just come and say hello? Just real quick.’
Birdie was opening her mouth to speak when Walter seemed to explode with rage. He smashed his fist hard against the panel of the train, a wild look in his eye.
‘Stop talking about her mama!’ he bellowed. ‘She doesn’t want to hear about them!’
He stepped forward and took hold of my coat, but he was slow and before he’d got a proper grip I swung my arm, knocking his hands away. For a moment he looked surprised, then the fury returned and he started toward me again.
‘Calm down, Walter,’ ordered his sister, getting hold of his arm and pulling him back. ‘Get on the train.’
She pushed him to the door. He did as she told him, like her touch had made him go soft. As he climbed into the carriage, his too-short britches rode up his legs, showing his dirty grey drawers tied at the ankles.
‘She doesn’t want to see them, Mr Barnett,’ said Miss Ockwell, now guiding Birdie aboard the train as well. ‘You’ve given her the chance. She’d have said if she did. Ask Mr Arrowood to send the documents and any questions to our lawyer, Mr Outhwaite, forty-two Rushey Green. We’ll see she signs.’
She climbed into the carriage and slammed the heavy door. I watched them through the window as they took their seats. The train wasn’t fitted with lights, but I could see Birdie sat between them on the bench, her hands clasped on her lap. Her mouth hung open, her eyes looking down on her knees. She seemed so alone. Walter sat by the window nearest me, his elbow rested on the ledge, his eyes shadowed by the rim of his bowler.
The conductor gave two blasts on his whistle. With a great hiss of steam and a clanking of the wheels, the train moved off. At the last moment before they were gone, Birdie looked up at me again. Now she didn’t smile: instead her brow furrowed and her lips tightened. It was the saddest look I’d ever seen.
As we walked along Blackfriars Road, the guvnor was silent. He tapped his walking stick against the kerb, humming Mrs Barclay’s sad song to himself. I kept quiet, knowing he was pondering our next step.
‘Tell me again what happened at the station,’ he said at last, shaking his head as if to loosen a tangle of thoughts inside. ‘Exactly. Every detail.’
As I went through it, he asked me about their faces and how they stood, how they looked at each other, how they spoke. I knew he’d ask, and on my way back to meet him I’d gone over the details in my mind, describing it to myself lest I’d forget. The guvnor saw people clearer than me, clearer than most people. It was why he was a good detective. He was always trying to improve himself, always reading books on the psychology of the mind and buying pamphlets and papers to follow the big cases as were going on. Lately he’d been into a book by Mr Carpenter about unconscious cerebration, as he was fond of explaining to us, but his favourite for the last couple of years was a book on emotions by Mr Darwin. He’d studied all the pictures in there, learning all the different ways emotion is displayed in the body.
‘It’s clear they control her,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘But more important is why she didn’t answer your questions when she had a chance. Perhaps she didn’t want to disagree with either of you. That would fit with what the Barclays told us about her being meek.’ He ran the tip of his walking stick along the railings next to the pavement. ‘Or she might be unsure of her own mind. It’s likely she’s not used to making decisions for herself.’
‘I wasn’t sure she understood what I was asking.’
‘Her parents said she understands everything. It’s talking she’s not clever with.’
He paused as we reached a pea soup man, his belly gurgling. Then he shook his head and walked on.
‘And Walter said, “He can’t tell you what to do,” did he? That’s interesting. He could have said, “Ignore him, Birdie.” He could have told you to leave her alone. But he chose to say it this way. It suggests he’s concerned about who has the power to tell who what to do. The Barclays say he’s rather slow. Did he strike you that way?’
‘Hard to say, sir. His voice is flat and he seems a bit clumsy. Looked like his sister had charge of him.’
‘I thought the same when we were at the farm. I wonder if he’s concerned about people telling him what to do. And he said, “He don’t own you.” Is that how he sees marriage, I wonder?’
We stepped onto the street to avoid a bent old woman carrying two great sack bundles over her shoulders. A bit of carpet was tied over her head; her filthy overcoat trailed along the greasy street. Behind her wandered a bloke sucking on the bones of a pig’s trotter.
‘Keep up!’ she croaked.
He darted after her, his black suit shining with filth under the gas lamps.
‘Walter’s temper worries me, Barnett. Was he really going to assault you?’
‘Looked like it.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that scar, either. Did Birdie confirm it was the mangle?’
‘She said, “I didn’t do it.” I don’t know if she meant she didn’t tie her hair up or that it wasn’t her fault.’
A boy turned into the street ahead of us, a tray of muffins hanging around his neck. His cap was torn and too big for him; his smock was stained.
‘Lovely muffins!’ he cried at the streams of tired folk trudging along with their carts and sacks.
‘Hello, lad,’ said the guvnor, a great smile lighting his face.
‘Mr Arrowood!’ cried the boy.
It was Neddy, the lad we used now and then when someone needed watching or messages needed taking. He was eleven or so, maybe twelve or ten, and always up for earning a bit of money: his ma liked a drink too much to bring in food regular so it was down to him to feed his two little sisters. Neddy lived on Coin Street, same as the guvnor, but we hadn’t seen much of him that winter. There’d been an arson attack on the guvnor’s building six month before, and him and his sister Ettie had been staying with his oldest friend Lewis as they waited for the builders to repair their rooms.
‘Oh,