The Strings of Murder Read Online Free

know, with everything that’s happening … I was thinking that there’s some space in the storage room, sir. I thought I might stay there when it gets too dark … just ’til the police catch him. You won’t notice I’m ’ere, I promise.’
    I could hear my father’s voice as if he were in the same room – You are too bloody soft with the servants! – but how could I refuse the poor woman’s plea? Even I, a tall, armed police inspector of thirty-one, felt unsafe when walking the streets of the city alone.
    ‘Please, Mr Frey. I can pay you for the room!’ she cried. ‘You can take it off me wages and –’
    She was becoming so frantic I had to stop her.
    ‘Joan, show some composure, for the love of God! Do you not know me at all? I was not going to ask you to pay rent. And stop talking about the damn pantry; there is a maid’s room you may use as you see fit.’ I looked at my pocket watch. ‘It is very late, though. Tonight you may sleep in the guest room – but only tonight.’ Elgie was in the habit of arriving unannounced to claim it, though even he would not come so late as this.
    ‘Oh, thank you, Mr Frey … I …’
    ‘All right, all right,’ I said soothingly and hurried upstairs before Joan abandoned herself to improper weeping. Once composed, she prepared me a light supper and I asked her to polish my very muddy shoes before breakfast.
    I retired to bed thinking of Commissioner Warren’s words: ‘Everything will change now …’
    Agitated though I had been, I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. That would be the last good night’s rest I’d have in a long time for, the next day, everything did change.



2
    London on a November morning smelled of cesspools and stale alcohol from the pubs. I wrinkled my nose at the odours as I walked hastily towards Scotland Yard, dodging the half-frozen horse dung that peppered the streets.
    Stench and turds were not the only foul thoughts in my head. While having breakfast I’d received a note from Wiggins, my assistant, urging me to go to headquarters. James Monro, the new commissioner, had demanded my immediate presence. I instantly knew that my career in the London police was over.
    I’d not seen much of him, but the few times Monro and I had had to collaborate had been enough to fix my opinion of him: square-minded, prejudiced, religious to the point of fanaticism … and to cap it all, the man was from Edin-bloody-burgh – as my father likes to call it.
    It is well acknowledged that any sensible English gentleman will unreservedly abhor anything Scottish, but my father is an extreme case. As a young man some failed businesses in Aberdeenshire lost him an amount of money so obscene that, for the rest of his life, he’d never again utter the name of any Scottish city, town, village or character without inserting some blood in between its consonants.
    If I was to be dismissed, at least I would spare oldMr Frey the disgrace of knowing that one of his heirs took orders from a Scotchman.
    As usual, Scotland Yard was among the busiest spots in the Westminster area. Carriages brought and took people at all times, and a constant stream of officers and constables entered and left the red-brick building. Inside, the place felt equally cluttered, with people running to and fro like frantic ants, and my small office on the second storey was no exception. Files were piled to the ceiling and more than once Wiggins had been buried under an avalanche of paper. New, larger offices were being built at the Embankment, by Westminster Bridge, and I was looking forward to moving there. As I walked into my office I found Wiggins hunched over his usual pile of paperwork.
    ‘Morning, sir,’ he said with a shaky voice. I never quite understood the source of his shyness; the young man was educated and reliable, with a promising career ahead of him if he only managed to gather some self-confidence.
    ‘So the new commissioner wants to see me,’ I said,