O’Malley said, “Anything dodgy about it?”
“Never been any trouble, as far as I know. Still, I’ve heard some grumbling along the street.”
“About what?” Tennant asked.
“They don’t employ local lads, and they keep themselves to themselves. Makes for bad feeling.” The constable grinned. “Not enough drinking in the neighborhood establishments to keep the publicans happy.”
“Anyone around these parts who might be wise about the place?” O’Malley asked.
The constable considered. “You might try the Swan. Slip the barman five shillings. Ted, by name. He knows most of the local chatter.”
They took his advice. O’Malley sank a Guinness at the pub,and Tennant bought an ale for the barman, pushing a crown in Ted’s direction. It bought him a story about the man’s brother.
“Dan’s a plumber,” he said. “They called him in to fix a leak in the printshop’s warehouse. Maybe a year ago.” The barman tapped his nose. “My brother saw a few things and told me about ’em.”
“What things?” Tennant asked.
The barman leaned in on his elbow. “You’ve heard of French postcards? Well, Dan said they’re nothing compared to what they’re printing in there.”
O’Malley made a two-note whistle. “You don’t say, now.”
Ted winked at the sergeant. “Singe off your eyelashes just looking at’em, says Dan.”
* * *
On Friday morning, Tennant read the night report about the surveillance of the Topkapi with satisfaction. Gordie Havers from the local division had observed the club from his usual beat. At the same time, a plainclothes constable from the Yard got closer, keeping to the shadows near the Topkapi’s back gates, listening for movement. A third copper had idled on Pall Mall with a hansom at the ready. Around nine o’clock, a carriage turned at the entrance and clattered up to the club; the wooden doors swung closed behind it. When it left, the hansom had orders to follow it.
A few minutes past twelve, the detective constable stepped from the shadows, struck a match to light his cigar, and walked away. Constable Havers at the corner of Pall Mall spotted the sign and signaled the copper in the cab.
A few minutes later, a coach rolled by Havers. The following hansom kept its distance, but it had been easy to trail. As Inspector Tennant had predicted, the coachman drove directly from Haymarket to Denmark Court.
A St. Giles constable had noted the time the carriage passed him. And a copper who looked more like a bundle of rags thana man stirred at the curb and lifted his head. He’d watched the carriage stop at the first house on the north side—number two—and discharge its passengers. The coachman and a guard had bundled three girls down the side of the house. Then a door slammed.
Tennant looked up from a second scanning of the report when a constable interrupted with stunning news.
Doctor Preston Scott had been found dead at his house.
CHAPTER16
Tennant looked around the doctor’s study.
For the second time, the shabbiness of Scott’s furnishings surprised him. That, and the nautical touches, reminded the inspector of the man’s seedy medical office. Odd because suits from a storied Savile Row tailor filled the bedroom wardrobe, and Tennant had unearthed Scott’s financial documents from a desk drawer. The doctor had over ninety thousand pounds invested in securities, and his liquid resources amounted to another ten thousand.
A well-dressed miser.Tennant was never surprised by the contradictions in human nature.
The inspector circled an upended chair. Scott had fallen from it to the floor and died in agony. He’d clawed away his cravat, torn off his collar, and crawled a few feet before collapsing. Tennant crouched and retrieved a shirt stud from the middle of the carpet.
The doctor who had pronounced Scott dead looked at his contorted frame and twisted face, frozen in the grimace of death. “Strychnine poisoning, I’d say.”
Tennant had asked, “Suicide?”
“Doubtful. It’s a horrible death. No sane physician would use it when he had a chemist’s shop of poisons at his disposal. There are easier ways to exit this world.”
Tennant had asked the doctor to look through Scott’s medications cabinet. On a middle shelf, he found a half-empty bottle of strychnine tablets.
“More than enough to do the job,” the doctor had said. “But so would a half dozen other pills and potions.”
Two bottles of expensive whiskey stood on the side table: two bottles of the same eighteen-year-old single malt, Royal Lochnagar.Scott drank as well as he dressed.One was empty; the other was missing about an inch of liquid. They would send them for analysis along with the glass from the floor. The D Division coppers had removed the body to the police station on Marylebone Lane, and Tennant had sent for Julia to perform the postmortem.
