Capital Crimes: London Mysteries by Martin Edwards

Author:Martin Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2015-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

The Hands of Mr Ottermole

Thomas Burke

Thomas Burke (1886–1945) was a Londoner whose work was distinguished by an understanding of and insight into working-class life in the capital. Limehouse Nights, a collection of stories published during the First World War, garnered much praise, not least from H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett, and led to Burke being described as ‘the laureate of London’s Chinatown’.

Burke’s stock-in-trade was melodrama, and not all of his work has stood the test of time. ‘The Hands of Mr Ottermole’, however, has long been recognised as an outstanding example of the short crime story. It makes powerful use of a Ripper-type series of killings, adding the bonus of a clever twist at the end. The American mystery writer Ellery Queen (a pen name for Manfred Lee and Frederic Dannay) went so far as to say of it: ‘No finer crime story has ever been written, period’.

***

‘Murder (said old Quong)—oblige me by passing my pipe—murder is one of the simplest things in the world to do. Killing a man is a much simpler matter than killing a duck. Not always so safe, perhaps, but simpler. But to certain gifted people it is both simple and entirely safe. Many minds of finer complexion than my own have discolored themselves in seeking to name the identity of the author of those wholesale murders which took place last year. Who that man or woman really was, I know no more than you do, but I have a theory of the person it could have been; and if you are not pressed for time I will elaborate that theory into a little tale.’

As I had the rest of that evening and the whole of the next day for dalliance in my ivory tower, I desired that he would tell me the story; and, having reckoned up his cash register and closed the ivory gate, he told me—between then and the dawn—his story of the Mallon End murders. Paraphrased and condensed, it came out something like this.

At six o’clock of a January evening Mr Whybrow was walking home through the cobweb alleys of London’s East End. He had left the golden clamor of the great High Street to which the tram had brought him from the river and his daily work, and was now in the chessboard of byways that is called Mallon End. None of the rush and gleam of the High Street trickled into these byways a few paces south—a flood tide of life, foaming and beating. Here—only slow shuffling figures and muffled pulses. He was in the sink of London, the last refuge of European vagrants.

As though in tune with the street’s spirit, he too walked slowly, with head down. It seemed that he was pondering some pressing trouble, but he was not. He had no trouble. He was walking slowly because he had been on his feet all day; and he was bent in abstraction because he was wondering whether the Missis would have herrings for his tea, or haddock; and he was trying to decide which would be the more tasty on a night like this.

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