IN THE CLUB-ROOM
By the side of the bills stuck at the corner of Hole-in-the-Wall
Stairs--the bills that had so fascinated Stephen--a new one appeared,
with the heading "Body Found." It particularised the personal marks and
description of the unhappy Marr; his "fresh complexion," his brown hair,
his serge suit and his anklejacks. The bill might have stood on every
wall in London till it rotted, and never have given a soul who knew him
a hint to guess the body his: except Viney, who knew the fact already.
And the body might have been buried unidentified ere Viney would have
shown himself in the business, were it not for the interference of Mr.
Cripps. For industry of an unprofitable kind was a piece of Mr. Cripps's
nature; and, moreover, he was so regular a visitor at the mortuary as to
have grown an old friend of the keeper. His persistent prying among the
ghastly liers-in-state, at first on plea of identifying a friend--a
contingency likely enough, since his long-shore acquaintance was
wide--and later under the name of friendly calls, was an indulgence that
had helped him to consideration as a news-monger, and twice had raised
him to the elevation of witness at an inquest; a distinction very
gratifying to his simple vanity. He entertained high hopes of being
called witness in the case of the man stabbed at the side door of the
Hole in the Wall; and was scarce seen at Captain Nat's all the next day,
preferring to frequent the mortuary. So it happened that he saw the
other corpse that was carried thence from Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs.
"There y'are," said the mortuary-keeper. "There's a fresh 'un, just in
from the river, unknown. _You_ dunno 'im either, I expect."
But Mr. Cripps was quite sure that he did. Curious and eager, he walked
up between the two dead men, his grimy little body being all that
divided them in this their grisly reunion. "I _do_ know 'im," he
insisted, thoughtfully. "Leastways I've seen 'im somewheres, I'm sure."
The little man gazed at the dreadful head, and then at the rafters: then
shut his eyes with a squeeze that drove his nose into amazing lumps and
wrinkles; then looked at the head again, and squeezed his eyelids
together once more; and at last started back, his eyes rivalling his
very nose itself for prominence. "Why!" he gasped, "it is! It is, s'elp
me!... It's Mr. Marr, as is pardners with Mr. Viney! I on'y see 'im once
in my life, but I'll swear it's 'im!... Lord, what a phenomenal go!"
And with that Mr. Cripps rushed off incontinent to spread the news
wherever anybody would listen. He told the police, he told the loafers,
he told Captain Nat and everybody in his bar; he told the watermen at
the stairs, he shouted it to the purlmen in their boats, and he wriggled
into conversation with perfect strangers to tell them too. So that it
came to pass that Viney, being called upon by the coroner's officer, was
fain to swallow his reluctance and come forward at the inquest.
That was held at the Hole in the Wall twenty-four hours after the body
had been hauled ashore. The two inquests were held together, in fact,
Marr's and that of the broken-nosed man, stabbed in the passage. Two
inquests, or even three, in a day, made no uncommon event in those
parts, where perhaps a dozen might be held in a week, mostly ending with
the same doubtful verdict--Found Drowned. But here one of the inquiries
related to an open and witnessed murder, and that fact gave some touch
of added interest to the proceedings.
Accordingly a drifting group hung about the doors of the Hole in the
Wall at the appointed time,--just such an idle, changing group as had
hung there all the evening after the man had been stabbed; and in the
midst stood Blind George with his fiddle, his vacant white eye rolling
upward, his mouth full of noisy ribaldry, and his fiddle playing
punctuation and chorus to all he said or sang. He turned his ear at the
sound of many footsteps leaving the door near him.
"There they go!" he sang out; "there they go, twelve on 'em!" And indeed
it was the jury going off to view the bodies. "There they go, twelve
good men an' true, an' bloomin' proud they are to fancy it! Got a copper
for Blind George, gentlemen? Not a brown for pore George?... Not them;
not a brass farden among the 'ole dam good an' lawful lot.... Ahoy!
ain't Gubbins there,--the good an' lawful pork-butcher as 'ad to pay
forty bob for shovin' a lump o' fat under the scales? Tell the crowner
to mind 'is pockets!"
The idlers laughed, and one flung a copper, which Blind George snatched
almost before it had fallen. "Ha! ha!" he cried, "there's a toff
somewhere near, I can tell by the sound of his money! Here goes for a
stave!" And straightway be broke into:--
O they call me Hanging Johnny,
With my hang, boys, hang!
The mortuary stood at no great distance and soon the jury were back in
the club-room over the bar, and at work on the first case. The police
had had some difficulty as to identification of the stabbed man. The
difficulty arose not only because there were no relations in the
neighbourhood to feel the loss, but as much because the persons able to
make the identification kept the most distant possible terms with the
police, and withheld information from them as a matter of principle.
Albeit a reluctant ruffian was laid hold of who was induced sulkily to
admit that he had known the deceased to speak to, and lodged near him in
Blue Gate; that the deceased was called Bob Kipps; that he was quite
lately come into the neighbourhood; and that he had no particular
occupation, as far as witness knew. It needed some pressure to extract
the information that Kipps, during the short time he was in Blue Gate,
chiefly consorted with one Dan Ogle, and that witness had seen nothing
of Ogle that day, nor the day before.
There was also a woman called to identify--a woman more reluctant than
the man; a woman of coarse features, dull eyes, tousled hair, and thick
voice, sluttish with rusty finery. Name, Margaret Flynn; though at the
back of the little crowd that had squeezed into the court she was called
Musky Mag. It was said there, too, that Mag, in no degree one of the
fainting sort, had nevertheless swooned when taken into the
mortuary--gone clean off with a flop; true, she explained it, afterward,
by saying that she had only expected to see one body, but found herself
brought face to face with two; and of course there was the other
there--Marr's. But it was held no such odds between one corpse and two
that an outer-and-outer like Mag should go on the faint over it. This
was reasonable enough, for the crowd. But not for a woman who had sat to
drink with three men, and in a short hour or so had fallen over the
battered corpse of one of them, in the dark of her room; who had been
forced, now, to view the rent body of a second, and in doing it to meet
once again the other, resurrected, bruised, sodden and horrible; and who
knew that all was the work of the last of the three, and that man in
peril of the rope: the man, too, of all the world, in her eye....
Her evidence, given with plain anxiety and a nervous unsteadiness of the
mouth, added nothing to the tale. The man was Bob Kipps; he was a
stranger till lately--came, she had heard tell, from Shoreditch or
Hoxton; saw him last a day or two ago: knew nothing of his death beyond
what she had heard; did not know where Dan Ogle was (this very
vehemently, with much shaking of the head); had not seen him with
deceased--but here the police inspector handed the coroner a scribbled
note, and the coroner having read it and passed it back, said no more.
Musky Mag stood aside; while the inspector tore the note into small
pieces and put the pieces in his pocket.
Nathaniel Kemp, landlord of the house, told the story of the murder as
he saw it, and of his chase of the murderer. Did not know deceased, and
should be unable to identify the murderer if he met him again, having
seen no more than his figure in the dark.
All this time Mr. Cripps had been standing, in eager trepidation,
foremost among the little crowd, nodding and lifting his hand anxiously,
strenuous to catch the coroner's officer's attention at the dismissal of
each witness, and fearful lest his offer of evidence, made a dozen times
before the coroner came, should be forgotten. Now at last the coroner's
officer condescended to notice him, and being beckoned, Mr. Cripps
swaggered forward, his greasy widewake crushed under his arm, and his
face radiant with delighted importance. He bowed to the coroner, kissed
the book with a flourish, and glanced round the court to judge how much
of the due impression was yet visible.
The coroner signified that he was ready to hear whatever Mr. Cripps knew
of this matter.
Mr. Cripps "threw a chest," stuck an arm akimbo, and raised the other
with an oratorical sweep so large that his small voice, when it came,
seemed all the smaller. "Hi was in the bar, sir," he piped, "the bar,
sir, of this 'ouse, bein' long acquainted with an' much respectin'
Cap'en Kemp, an' in the 'abit of visitin' 'ere in the intervals of the
pursoot of my hart. Hem! Hi was in the bar, sir, when my attention was
attracted by a sudden noise be'hind, or as I may say, in the rear of,
the bar-parlour. Hi was able to distinguish, gentlemen of the jury, what
might be called, in a common way o' speakin', a bump or a bang, sich as
would be occasioned by an unknown murderer criminally shoving his
un'appy victim's 'ed agin the back-door of a public-'ouse. Hi was able
to distinguish it, sir, from a 'uman cry which follered: a 'uman cry, or
as it might be, a holler, sich as would be occasioned by the un'appy
victim 'avin' 'is 'ed shoved agin the back-door aforesaid. Genelmen, I
'esitated not a moment. I rushed forward."
Mr. Cripps paused so long to give the statement effect that the coroner
lost patience. "Yes," he said, "you rushed forward. Do you mean you
jumped over the bar?"
For a moment Mr. Cripps's countenance fell; truly it would have been
more imposing to have jumped over the bar. But he was on his oath, and
he must do his best with the facts. "No, sir," he explained, a little
tamely, "not over the bar, but reether the opposite way, so to speak,
towards the door. I rushed forward, genelmen, in a sort of rearwards
direction, through the door, an' round into the alley. Immediate as I
turned the corner, genelmen, I be'eld with my own eyes the unknown
murderer; I see 'im a-risin' from over 'is un'appy victim, an' I see as
the criminal tragedy had transpired. I--I rushed forward."
The sensation he looked for being slow in coming, another rush seemed
expedient; but it fell flat as the first, and Mr. Cripps struggled on,
desperately conscious that he had nothing else to say.
"I rushed forward, sir; seein' which the miscreant absconded--absconded,
no doubt with--with the proceeds; an' seein' Cap'en Kemp abscondin'
after him, I turned an' be'eld the un'appy victim--the corpse now in
custody, sir--a-layin' in the bar-parlour, 'elpless an'--an'
decimated.... I--rushed forward."
It was sad to see how little the coroner was impressed; there was even
something in his face not unlike a smile; and Mr. Cripps was at the end
of his resources. But if he could have seen the face of Musky Mag, in
the little crowd behind him, he might have been consoled. She alone, of
all who heard, had followed his rhetoric with an agony of attention,
word by word: even as she had followed the earlier evidence. Now her
strained face was the easier merely by contrast with itself when Mr.
Cripps was in full cry; and a moment later it was tenser than ever.
"Yes, yes, Mr. Cripps," the coroner said; "no doubt you were very
active, but we don't seem to have increased the evidence. You say you
saw the man who stabbed the deceased in the passage. Did you know him at
all? Ever see him before?"
Here, mayhap, was some chance of an effect after all. Mr. Cripps could
scarce have distinguished the murderer from one of the posts in the
alley; but he said, with all the significance he could give the words:
"Well, sir, I won't go so far as to swear to 'is name, sir; no, sir, not
to 'is _name_, certainly not." And therewith he made his sensation at
last, bringing upon himself the twenty-four eyes of the jury all
together.
The coroner looked up sharply. "Oh," he said, "you know him by sight
then? Does he belong to the neighbourhood?"
Now it was not Mr. Cripps who had said he knew the murderer by sight,
but the coroner. Far be it from him, thought the aspirant for fame, to
contradict the coroner, and so baulk himself of the credit thus thrust
upon him. So he answered with the same cautious significance and a
succession of portentous nods. "Your judgment, sir, is correct; quite
correct."
"Come then, this is important. You would be able to recognise him again,
of course?"
There was no retreat--Mr. Cripps was in for it. It was an unforeseen
consequence of the quibble, but since plunge he must he plunged neck and
crop. "I'd know 'im anywhere," he said triumphantly.
There was an odd sound in the crowd behind, and a fall. Captain Nat
strode across, and the crowd wondered; for Musky Mag had fainted again.
The landlord lifted her, and carried her to the stairs. When the door
had closed behind them, and the coroner's officer had shouted the little
crowd into silence, the inquest took a short course to its end.
Mr. Cripps, in the height of his consequence, began to feel serious
misgivings as to the issue of his stumble beyond the verities; and the
coroner's next words were a relief.
"I think that will be enough, Mr. Cripps," the coroner said; "no doubt
the police will be glad of your assistance." And with that he gave the
jury the little summing up that the case needed. There was the medical
evidence, and the evidence of the stabbing, and that evidence pointed to
an unmistakable conclusion. Nobody was in custody, nor had the murderer
been positively identified, and such evidence as there was in this
respect was for the consideration of the police. He thought the jury
would have no difficulty in arriving at a verdict. The jury had none;
and the verdict was Murder by some Person or Persons unknown.
The other inquest gave even less trouble. Mr. Henry Viney, shipowner,
had seen the body, and identified it as that of his partner Lewis Marr.
Marr had suddenly disappeared a week ago, and an examination of his
accounts showed serious defalcations, in consequence of which witness
had filed his petition in bankruptcy. Whether or not Marr had taken
money with him witness could not say, as deceased had entire charge of
the accounts; but it seemed more likely that embezzlement had been going
on for some time past, and Marr had fled when detection could no longer
be averted. This might account for his dressing, and presumably seeking
work, as a sailor.
The divisional surgeon of police had examined the body, and found a
large wound on the head, fully sufficient to have caused death,
inflicted either by some heavy, blunt instrument, or by a fall from a
height on a hard substance. One thigh was fractured, and there were
other wounds and contusions, but these, as well as the broken thigh,
were clearly caused after death. The blow on the head might have been
caused by an accident on the riverside, or it might have been inflicted
wilfully by an assailant.
Then there was the evidence of the man who had found the body foul of a
rudder and a hawser, and of the police who had found nothing on the
body. And there was no more evidence at all. The coroner having
sympathised deeply with Mr. Viney, gave the jury the proper lead, and
the jury with perfect propriety returned the open verdict that the
doctor's evidence and the coroner's lead suggested. The case, except for
the circumstances of Marr's flight, was like a hundred others inquired
upon thereabout in the course of a few weeks, and in an hour it was in a
fair way to be forgotten, even by the little crowd that clumped
downstairs to try both cases all over again in the bar of the Hole in
the Wall.
To the coroner, the jury, and the little crowd, these were two inquests
with nothing to connect them but the accident of time and the
convenience of the Hole in the Wall club-room. But Blind George,
standing in the street with his fiddle, and getting the news from the
club-room in scraps between song and patter, knew more and guessed
better.