Murder in Piccadilly by Charles Kingston

Author:Charles Kingston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2015-02-12T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Chief Inspector Wake passed unnoticed through the crowds forming irregular queues at the numerous entrances to the Piccadilly Underground and in a general way scrutinised with his large and lazy eyes the latest exhibition of London’s fascination for the tragic and horrible. The papers had already recorded that the scene of Massy Cheldon’s death had become a resort of pilgrims and that in an effort to discourage the morbid, a cordon of police directed with suggestive curtness the lingering travellers who came to pay a visit to the scene and who qualified for admission to the catacomb by purchasing a penny ticket to anywhere, meaning nowhere.

Yet it was all understandable and pardonable. To the majority of the city’s millions murder was something that did not exist outside a novel or a newspaper, and when it was actually brought to their doorsteps they were aroused to a pitch of excitement and curiosity that affected the nervous system and clamoured for satiation. It was the crime of the year, something peculiar to London itself, something that seemed to strike at London’s very heart. None of your Hammersmith or Whitechapel now. This was London, real London, Piccadilly. And to the hysteria of horror was added the wonder of its daring.

The newspapers concentrated on it and left no rumour untested and no surmise unexploited. Pictures of Massy Cheldon and his mansion in the country appeared everywhere. Mortals think in terms of money, and in the case of Massy Cheldon mental arithmetic centred on the fact that the assassin’s knife had deprived a country squire of an income estimated at not less than ten thousand a year.

“Soho Underworld Combed.” “Scotland Yard looking for an Italian.” “Latest developments.” “The Underground Murder Must be solved.” “Another Murder Mystery.” Chief Inspector Wake read them without comment. His colleagues were fond of dismissing the press with the remark that “them damned papers meant next to nothing,” but he was of the opinion that that “next to nothing” might mean all the difference between success and failure if tacked on to their own discoveries and special knowledge.

At the moment he was of all men in the case the least perturbed and hurried so far as externals went. But then he never moved and never thought rapidly. In his early days in the force he had nearly ruined his career by thinking quickly, having been foolish enough to allow himself to imitate the infallibility of the detective of fiction. Wise and dapper Superintendent Melville had taught him then a needed lesson by pointing out that in a real life mystery the key had to be made to fit the lock, whereas in fiction it was the key that was first manufactured. Now he thought over every line of inquiry and every word and deduction arising out of it. He took his time because he had at his command fifty, a hundred, a thousand men if necessary, to hurry and scurry. Londoners might crowd the Piccadilly Underground and the newspapers give

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