Governing Passion (16 page)

“I’ve come up with a plan,” the Chief said,
smiling tightly. “I’m sick and tired of having the madman make
fools of us. I’m going to set a trap for him.”

“A trap? How?” Wilkie said.

“I’m going to provide the killer with a blond
woman to kill.”

“But sir,” Brown said, “you can’t expose a
woman to the possibility of havin’ her throat slit!”

Bagshaw grinned. “Ah, but I don’t intend
to.”

Cobb looked at the laundry bag. “You’re gonna
go there in costume?” he said.

“Close, Cobb, close. I am not going in
costume. Wilkie is.”

Wilkie blanched. “As a woman?” he gasped.

“As a seductive blond woman. Our killer –
this is likely his night – won’t be able to resist, but he’ll find
himself face to face with a policeman’s truncheon.”

“But I ain’t no woman!” Wilkie wailed.

“You’re the slimmest of these fellows,”
Bagshaw said, glancing at the others, “so you’re elected.”

“What do I gotta wear?” Wilkie said.

“I’ve brought all you’ll need from home,”
Bagshaw said. He began slowly removing the contents of the laundry
bag. First to come out was a large, fluffy, blond wig. Then a
ladies’ evening gown. Then a pair of ladies’ button boots. Then a
ladies’ feathered hat. And finally, a ladies’ cape.

“I’ve got my wife’s face-paint in the
office,” Bagshaw said.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Wilkie moaned.

“It’s time you earned your keep,” Bagshaw
snapped. He had, of course, thought to humiliate Cobb by choosing
him, but Cobb’s bottle shape precluded any dress fitting him, and
the wild shock of unkempt hair would make any wig impossible to
fit. Wilkie was fleshy but slimly built with small feet – alas.

“We’ll help you get ready,” Rossiter
grinned.

“Use the constables’ room,” Bagshaw said.

Rossiter and Wilkie went into the constables’
room with the garments.

Bagshaw turned to Brown and Cobb. “Now,
gentlemen, you’re going to bear witness to how proper police work
pays off. I want you, Cobb, to keep a short way behind Wilkie at
all times, but discreetly. We want this killer to make his move. If
he does, you can yell to alert Wilkie and trap the fellow between
the two of you. Blow your whistle for help. I figure that two
truncheons should be able to take care of that knife. Still, you
must remember here that we’re dealing with a madman.”

“Careful! You’re gonna rip the damn thing!”
It was Wilkie’s voice from the other room.

Cobb and Brown grinned.

“There’s nothing funny about any of this,”
Bagshaw said. “Wilkie will be risking his life.”

A few minutes later the door of the
constables’ room opened, and a sturdy blond woman stepped gingerly
out into the anteroom. Wilkie had successfully squeezed his bulk
into the flowery gown. The wig was bold and curly upon his head,
under the hat. He couldn’t get the cape fastened, so it hung on him
like two flaps. The boots, unbuttoned, pinched his toes inward and
made him walk oddly – more like a woman than a man.

“Splendid! Splendid!” Bagshaw enthused.

Wilkie staggered and was caught by Cobb.

“Now a little rouge on each cheek and we’ll
be all set,” Bagshaw proclaimed.

Wilkie groaned.

***

As Wilkie meandered through the maze of Devil’s
Acre, Cobb stayed close behind, flattening himself against walls to
keep as far out of sight as he dared. Brown and Rossiter were
patrolling other sections of the place – in hopes they might run
into the killer – so Cobb and Wilkie were on their own. And while
Wilkie was certainly comic-looking, Cobb realized there was real
danger involved. This was the third night. The killer could be on
the prowl, and Wilkie certainly resembled a woman from even a short
distance away.

Once, Cobb lost sight of Wilkie, and it was
only by chance that they met face to face coming around a corner.
Wilkie almost jumped out of his dress, then saw it was Cobb.

“I thought you was supposed to be behind me,”
Wilkie complained.

“You’re movin’ too fast,” Cobb said.

“You’d move fast, too, if there was a maniac
on yer ass.”

Cobb resumed his rear position and they
continued.

About two hours into their patrol, near
eleven o’clock, Cobb saw Wilkie make a limping right turn about
fifteen yards ahead of him. He sped up to make sure he didn’t lose
track of his man, when out of the opposite alley the blur of a
figure vanished somewhere in behind Wilkie.

This was it! Cobb raced to the corner of the
alley, fumbling for his whistle. It stuck to his lips. Ahead he
could now see two figures, Wilkie and his attacker. They appeared
to be locked in a deadly embrace. Cobb’s whistle sang through the
moon-lit darkness. The figures broke apart, and Wilkie tumbled
backwards into a drift. Cobb dashed towards his stricken colleague.
The attacker was heading for the far end of the alley. Wilkie waved
Cobb after him.

Cobb’s speed was always underestimated by
those he pursued. His tube-like belly was attached to two slim,
pistoning legs, and seemed even to assist his forward locomotion,
once he got up a head of steam. The attacker aided Cobb by slipping
as he tried to turn a corner and sliding into the snow. Cobb was
quickly upon him.

“Gotcha, ya devil!” he cried as he fell upon
the man, truncheon raised.

No serrated knife gleamed in the moonlight.
The killer lay panting and passive beneath him. Cobb got up and
hauled the fellow up by the scruff.

“Where’d ya hide the knife?” he yelled.

“W-what knife?” the killer said in a choking
voice.

“Don’t mess with me, fella. Where is it?”

“I haven’t got a knife. And I didn’t do
nothing to have a policeman jump on me!” Some vigour was returning
to the villain’s voice.

Cobb took a good look at his captive. He was
a short, paunchy man dressed in gentleman’s attire. His beaver top
hat lay on the ground. He wore a cape, not a great coat. Something
was amiss here.

“You assaulted a police constable,” Cobb said
sternly. “We’ll go back and see what he has to say.”

Cobb dragged the man back to where Wilkie was
just getting to his feet. He had a pained expression on his
face.

“Are you all right, Wilkie? You’re not
injured?” Cobb said.

“’Course I ain’t all right. This bastard
tried to kiss me!”

***

Neither Wilkie nor Bagshaw found the kissing episode
as amusing as the rest of the constables. Bagshaw was in a black
mood the next day, and not amenable to any suggestion by Cobb that
he pursue the big-booted gentleman by going back to Madame
LaFrance’s brothel and seeking out any client of above average
height. There could not be that many tall gentlemen visiting
Devil’s Acre on a given night. There were also three or four other
brothels in there, although their clientele was decidedly down the
social ladder. But it looked now as if – the Wilkie trap having
failed spectacularly – Bagshaw would rely on patrols alone to catch
the killer. There would be no more traps and no more detecting for
Cobb, in or out of uniform.

***

It was Dora who came up with the suggestion:

“Mister Cobb, why don’t you sit down and
write a long letter to Marc Edwards in Kingston?”

“What for?” Cobb asked.

“To tell him all about the killin’s here,
that’s what. You two always made such a great team doin’ yer
investigatin’.”

Cobb thought about the suggestion for a bit,
then said, “You think he might be able to see somethin’ I missed?”
There was no defensiveness in the remark; it was just a simple
question.

“You could give him yer reports, couldn’t
you?”

“Well now, I couldn’t do that, but I could
get Gussie to copy them out and I could send the Major the
copies.”

“It’s worth a try. It sure don’t look like
this loony worries about policeman gettin’ in his way.”

“All right, Missus Cobb, I’ll do it.”

It took Gussie a day to copy out Cobb’s
reports, which contained detailed accounts of all his interviews
with his own analysis and opinions appended. Gussie did not object
because he loved nothing better than to sit at his desk and copy
out important documents. Cobb gathered all the materials together,
packed them in a bundle, penned a brief covering letter, and mailed
the package off to Kingston. It was on his arrival back from this
task that he was met by Bagshaw.

“You just missed Miss Pettigrew,” he said to
Cobb.

“Is she all right?”

“Not entirely. She came here to report that a
stranger looked into her bedroom window last night. She screamed
and he disappeared. But she had the wherewithal to run to the
window in time to see a tall, dark-clothed man striding away across
her back garden.”

“Our killer, come to finish the job?”

“It appears that way, doesn’t it?”

“Devil’s Acre is only a quarter of a mile
away. It’s possible,” Cobb said. “But how would he know who she
was? Our victims seem to have been unknown to the killer.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, Simon Whitemarsh was a man, not a
woman. And I reckon our killer has it in for young, blond women –
of any class. And Sarie Hickson was wearing a wig as well. She was
not really blond. Our killer, I figure, goes after what he
sees.”

“So you figure Miss Pettigrew was frightened
by a peeping Tom?”

“Most likely. I don’t see any connection to
our case.”

Bagshaw’s thin lips quivered. “Well, I’m
afraid she does and she happens to be a member of an important
family. Her father was in solid with the Family Compact.”

“But we can’t very well patrol Devil’s Acre
and Birch Grove, too.”

Bagshaw’s beady eyes grew beadier. “That’s
exactly what we’re going to do.”

“You’re takin’ one of the men off the Devil’s
Acre patrol?”

“I am. And I intend to have this constable go
out to Birch Grove and stay there overnight, from dusk to dawn,
until the madman is caught. We’re here to protect the respectable
members of society, who pay our wages with their taxes.”

“Who’re ya gonna send?”

Bagshaw grinned deliciously. “You,” he
said.

***

Cobb felt his new assignment as the ultimate
humiliation. After all, he had been selected from among the
original four constables, by former chief Wilfrid Sturges, as the
best candidate for the new detective position. Selected because he
was by far the best of the patrolmen. He had worked with Marc
Edwards on more than half a dozen murder cases, all of them
successful. He had learned from the Major (as he called Marc), and
made himself into an investigator, while using his network of
snitches to further his duties as patrolman. Now he had been given
a baby-sitting job for a frightened young woman who, having escaped
the mad killer of blondes, was now in no danger as long as she
stayed in her home.

An order was an order, however galling, so at
seven o’clock that evening Cobb found himself using the bell-pull
on the front door of Birch Grove, a rambling clapboard manor set in
a grove of birch trees off north Jarvis Street. The door was opened
by a black-suited butler. The man’s features were squeezed into the
middle of his round face, as if he had sucked in his breath and the
expression had frozen. It gave him a look of permanent distaste for
the world he looked out upon.

“The tradesman’s entrance is around back,” he
said sepulchrally.

“I ain’t trade,” Cobb snapped back. He was in
no mood to put up with a butler’s shenanigans. “I’m the police. And
I been ordered here to protect yer mistress.”

“Ah . . . I got a note saying a Constable
Cobb was due. Are you he, sir?”

“I am. And I’m gettin’ cold toes standin’ on
yer stoop.”

“Then you’d better come in,” the butler said
stiffly.

From farther within the house, Cobb heard a
female voice say, “Is that the constable, Gulliver?”

“It is, ma’am. But he’s come to the wrong
door.”

“Well, show him in, do.”

Cobb took off his helmet and plunked it in
Gulliver’s automatically outstretched hands. Gulliver winced, as if
a cold fish had been dropped there, but held his ground as Cobb
removed his coat and draped it over the helmet.

Christine Pettigrew, in a plain grey dress,
came up behind Gulliver and held out her hand. “We meet again, Mr.
Cobb. It’s good of you to have come.” The plain dress could not
disguise the tall, regal beauty in it. Her blond hair shimmered,
but in her pale blue eyes there was a wariness bordering on fear,
ready to shy away from whatever it saw before it that might be too
painful to bear.

“I hope me bein’ here will make you feel
safer,” Cobb said.

Just then an elderly woman swept into the
room from the other side. She was a crone with bony features that
might have once been handsome but were now fleshless and
sharp-edged. Her brown eyes seized upon what they took in, seemed
to draw one inward to a powerful and confident personality. This
woman had ruled some roost for a long time.

“Come, come, Mr. Cobb,” she said brusquely,
coming up to him and Christine. “There is no need for you to have
actual contact with Miss Pettigrew. There’s a cup of tea waiting
for you – in the kitchen
downstairs
.”

“I was just gettin’ acquainted,” Cobb said
gruffly.

“Well, you’ve gone far enough in that
direction, sir. Follow me.”

As Cobb turned to obey, he spotted Gulliver
tossing his coat on a nearby stool.

***

Cobb was placed at a small table at one end of the
kitchen, a mug of tepid tea in front of him. Mrs. Baldridge, the
crone, went to the far end, where she engaged the cook and scullery
maid in heated conversation. Cobb drank his tea, but his mood was
hotter than the beverage.

“Where am I to be stationed?” he called out
when he had finished.

“You can stay down here with the rest of the
servants. When the household has settled down – my mistress retires
at ten – you will go upstairs and sit, or stand, in the parlour. Of
course, you may wish to make the rounds of the garden from time to
time.”