CHAPTER 14
Inspector Tennant, Sergeant O’Malley, and two constables dressed as dockmen waited for the prisoner’s release.
They counted eight bells from a nearby church tower. Then the iron doors swung open, and Stackpole emerged. He headed straight to Blackman Street at a rapid clip and turned right. The two coppers on opposite sides of the pavement followed while the inspector and his sergeant trailed behind.
“Heading for London Bridge, I’m thinking,” O’Malley said. “Thirty minutes on foot, give or take.”
The congestion made their task easy. Nothing—neither beast, ’bus, nor cart—moved quickly in the midmorning crush. Stackpole crossed the bridge and hopped on an omnibus heading east. Tennant and company followed in a hackney cab, stopping when their quarry jumped off at the West India Dock Road.
The police arrived at the most exposed part of the enterprise when their quarry turned into a narrow lane with little foot traffic. Tennant and O’Malley hung back, keeping the constables in sight.
The air was dense with the stench of tar and offloaded coal.
Screeching gulls signaled that the riverfront was close.
Their calls vanished when Tennant and O’Malley entered the dark tunnel of the London and Blackwall line, its railway cars thundering overhead.
Tennant’s forehead beaded with sweat. He sucked air between clenched teeth and focused on the light ahead.
When they broke free of the tunnel, he turned away from O’Malley and drew a steadying breath.
Ahead, one of the constables waited, and they caught up to him outside a cooperage on the corner of Limehouse Causeway.
Everywhere, a foreign presence was evident. A grocer and a laundry displayed signage in English and Chinese. Men wearing seamen’s trousers and jackets had tied their hair in long, black braids: sailors who hailed from Hong Kong, not Hammersmith.
Tennant caught up with the constable on the corner. “Where is Stackpole?”
“He ducked into a pub three doors down. My partner gave it a minute and followed him in.”
“Walk by the door,” Tennant said. “Cross over and come back with the name.”
The constable pulled down his cap and ambled off. He finished his circuit and returned.
“It’s a pub and boardinghouse called China Sal’s.”
They watched the comings and goings for about ten minutes.
Then the pub’s door banged open, and Stackpole staggered across the pavement and tripped into the street.
A stocky Asian followed. He grabbed two fists of the lanky seaman’s jacket and hauled him to his feet.
He growled something into Stackpole’s ear, shoved him stumbling down the street, and returned to the pub.
Tennant and his companions ducked behind the cooper’s barrels as the seaman passed them, cursing.
“Go after him,” Tennant told the constable. “The sergeant will trail you at a distance.”
A minute later, the copper who’d followed Stackpole into the pub joined Tennant.
“What happened, Constable?”
“The blighter headed for the back room, so I ordered a pint and waited. After some back and forth that I couldn’t hear, a man shouted, ‘Those effing coolie girls belonged to me. You had no right.’ A woman cut him off, saying, ‘She’s dead’ and ‘He had the papers to take them.’ Then he calls her a liar and a thieving bitch, and she shouts, ‘Yee, Yee.’ A scuffle breaks out behind the door, and the next thing you know, it slams open.
A thuggish Chinaman frog-marches Stackpole to the exit and into the street. ”
“We saw the rest. Sergeant O’Malley and your partner are trailing him now.”
“Looks like this Yee bloke is China Sal’s muscleman.”
“A first-rate job, Constable. I’ll take over from here. I’d rather not have anyone spot you as a copper in civvies.”
“Right, guv. You’ll find a pub room, an office, and a back room. Saw some groggy Chinamen wander out of it.”
Inside China Sal’s, a sweet, faintly floral odor replaced the usual pub-reek of ale and tobacco.
The scent drifted between the strands of a beaded curtain that covered an inner doorway.
Opium, Tennant thought, not surprised. The drug was legal in Britain, and opium had its tentacles around many of Sal’s customers, merchant seamen from the East. China Sal could offer them a beer, a bed, and a pipe while they waited for an outbound clipper ship to hire a crew.
The pub room was empty save for a few idled seamen who had started drinking early. Coughs came from behind the curtain. Between the stringed beads, Tennant spotted the on-and-off glow of opium pipes.
A barman with rolled sleeves and forearms tattooed with sets of Chinese characters polished a pint glass and eyed the inspector.
“Please inform the proprietress that Detective Inspector Tennant of Scotland Yard is here to see her.” When the man turned his back and picked up a second glass, Tennant said, “I know she’s in the back room.
If you prefer, my constables can close the premises to carry out a search for several missing persons. ”
A slight, dark-haired European woman in Asian dress opened the inner door. She wore a gold-colored robe in a dragon-and-phoenix pattern. Whitecapped waves lapped across the gown’s hem and along the edges of the sleeves.
“Come in, Inspector.”
Tennant followed China Sal into an exotic inner chamber.
A low platform in the middle of the room supported three chairs and a tea table.
Walnut columns etched with a lotus design rose from the corners and held up a canopy of emerald silk.
A three-paneled screen painted with a landscape of mountains, clouds, and lakes divided the room.
Brass-fitted cabinets lined the far wall, and he spotted the end of a table stacked with boxes stamped with a lotus motif.
China Sal nodded to a pair of rattan seats under the canopy. “Park yourself in one of ’em.”
She sat opposite him, a tiny figure dwarfed by a wicker chair whose back fanned like a throne. A low rosewood table separated them. On it, a silver tray etched with palm trees held tea for one.
China Sal may have been clothed and cosseted by goods from the exotic East, but she was an East Ender, born and bred. In a Cockney accent, she asked, “Fancy a cuppa?” Without waiting for his answer, she shouted, “Yee. Another teacup.”
The man carried a delicate, bowl-like cup without handles in his square fist. His broken knuckles reminded Tennant of O’Malley’s, except this man’s right hand had three dots tattooed in a triangle above his thumb and index finger. Yee poured, bowed, and withdrew.
China Sal palmed her cup and sipped, eyeing Tennant over the rim. She assumed a candid expression, gazing at him with violet-blue eyes fringed with dark lashes.
“So . . . a missing person at my pub. Someone’s lost a Chinaman?”
Tennant settled back in his chair. “To save time and pointless evasion, I’ll tell you that I know Arnie Stackpole left you in charge of his Chinese girls. They were meant for Margot Miller, and you handed them off to Herbert Rawlings.”
“You know it all, luv. Nothing left to tell.”
“I want to know where he took the girls. And I want Rawlings. Indeed, I do.”
“Can’t help you there. And I don’t know the girls’ whereabouts. Never asked.”
“Why do I find that difficult to believe?”
“Stackpole said Margot would collect them and pay me for their room and board. Then Rawlings turns up with papers, pays me, and takes them away.” Sal shrugged. “With her dead and gone, what was I to do? Right sorry I was that somebody offed her. She was a good customer and a friend.”
“Customer?”
“Bought laudanum off me.”
“Marked S. Cooper, London?”
“That’s right, my own formula.”
“I found your boxes in Margot’s flat.”
She tapped the side of her nose and winked. “Honey, sherry, some spices of the East, and ten percent opium. Arnie Stackpole keeps me supplied with the stuff.” She cocked her thumb at the door. “And smoking it is the only thing that keeps those poor, idle buggers happy until they ship out.”
“You knew why Stackpole brought those girls to London. Or you guessed.”
China Sal shifted in her chair. “They were models for Margot’s painting lark.”
“You don’t believe that. As a woman, have you no fellow feeling, no pity for—”
“Can’t afford it, mate,” she snapped. “And what do you know about it anyway? What women the likes of me and Margot do to survive.”
Tennant looked around the room. “You look snug enough.”
“You think so? You know nothing, sonny boy.”
“Enlighten me.”
“When my Jack hauled me off to Hong Kong, he promised a fortune. Instead, cholera got him and left me on my own with a mountain of debt. Clawed my way back, and Margot was the same. Peas in a pod, she once told me.”
“For your sake, I hope not. Your friend came to a bad end. Nor was she frank with you about her activities.”
“I knew the story about the girls was bollocks, but I did it to help a mate.” She folded her arms into her sleeves and muttered, “Doesn’t mean I liked doing it.”
“What did she tell you about her ‘painting lark’?”
“Gents with an itch for the East. Some blokes like ’em dusky. Fancy a ‘touch of the tar brush,’ as they say.”
“Who? Did she mention these gentlemen’s names?”
“No, but she always said they were all the same with their trousers off . . . more or less.” Sal cackled. “Margot laughed at the toffs with their airs and graces and gentlemen’s club.”
“What club was she talking about?”
“No idea. Margot never said too much. She was nobody’s fool.”
“Someone got the better of her.” Sal’s gaze held steady. She didn’t flinch when he added, “The last time I saw her, she was stretched on a slab with her throat cut.”
“You think you can frighten me? Think I don’t know the world’s a dangerous place? Ask any woman on her own. And it’s no use depending on husbands or lovers or the law to see you through.” She balled her fist and rapped her chest. “China Sal looks after herself.”
Tennant let a few seconds tick by. “Margot Miller thought so, too.”