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Historical Detective Mystery Book Series Set In Dundee, Scotland

Detective Watters Mysteries by Malcolm Archibald

Series Excerpt

Ratcliffe Highway was hectic, with crowds of seamen just off the ships, at least one prostitute for every two men. Standing out among the majority, a few respectable families who had taken the wrong turning searched for a quick escape before the locals contaminated them by touch or association. Watters had exchanged his high hat for a low-crowned affair that was less distinctive and tried to adopt a slouch as he shouldered his way through the crowds.

As he walked, he took mental notes of the places he passed to remind him what sort of place the Highway was. He fingered his cane: it was only two months since an American seaman stabbed Constable Ambridge exactly where he stood. Across the road was the Hope and Anchor where two friends fell out over the immoral earnings of one of them, and close by was the coffee shop of Mr Jones, the bigamist.

At the far corner was where an escaped American slave called himself Eliza Scott had picked up sundry seamen until they discovered he was a man and nearly made his deception permanent. On the farther corner, Watters looked at the building where John Stevens had appointed himself as a medical man and sold all manner of poison until one of his patients died, and he was taken up for manslaughter. Crime and unpleasant characters filled this street, and Watters knew the Wild Geese would be no different.

Watters swung his cane as a drunken Dutch mariner came too close. The man squared up to him, decided discretion was better than a poke in the throat and fell into the gutter instead. Watters left him to the tender ministrations of an over-dressed prostitute who would undoubtedly pick his pocket.

He walked on, remembering the casual violence that made the Highway so dangerous. There was the corner of Fortunate Place where four men recently pounced on Constable Thomas Jones and kicked him half to death. Watters saw the Cock and Neptune, outside which the German seaman Frederick Pratt stabbed his shipmate before a mob chased him down Virginia Lane and took summary vengeance, handing what remained to the police. Then there was Ryan’s coffee shop, kept by a man whose nose was bitten off by George Barry, the so-called cannibal, much to the delight of the prostitutes who lived in the shop.

What a locality, Watters muttered to himself, rapped a well-known pickpocket across the knuckles with his cane and jerked his head in the direction he wished the man to go. This street was no place for a gentlewoman to come, and undoubtedly not a place for a lady with beautiful eyes.

At the corner of Atlantic Street, the Wild Geese proclaimed its identity in garish green and white under a swinging sign that showed a flight of three geese flying into an impossibly red horizon. A screen inside the windows blocked all inquisitive policemen from spying on the interior, although music and laughter told its own story. Watters straightened his hat, tapped his cane from the pavement, pushed open the door and walked into a different world.

He was not sure what he had expected: if anything a typical seaman’s public with a dark bar and a dozen cheap dollymops clinging to the arms of drunken men. Instead, the large brass-framed mirrors reflected the light that sparkled from a brace of chandeliers while a four-piece orchestra played lively music to an establishment that would put the term gin-palace to shame. The seats were of padded leather, the bar of pure mahogany with fittings of brass with a polish that would not look out of place on a Royal Naval flagship and the barmen were uniformed, polite and attentive when Watters ordered a half-and-half. In one corner of the room, sitting on a capacious leather armchair on a raised dais, a tall woman held a pewter tankard in one hand and surveyed everything that happened. Her eyes rested on Watters for a second, roamed around the room and stopped at a young, unaccompanied woman, whereupon the tall woman motioned with her thumb in Watters’s direction. Two large men lounged nearby; one black, one white and both ugly as the devil’s promise. Watters knew they were the porters, the muscle men who would ensure there was no trouble in the establishment.

‘Certainly, sir.’ The barman smiled as he produced Watters’s drink. ‘What ship, sir?’

‘No ship,’ Watters said.

‘Ah, Army officer, are you?’ The barman took Watters’s money with professional skill and returned far more change than Watters had expected. ‘We don’t serve civilians here, sir, and you’re certainly not a swaddie. If you were a civilian, sir, I would ask you to drink up and leave.’ He looked towards the porters.

‘I’m certainly not a swaddie.’ Watters used the colloquial term for a private soldier and wondered why this establishment was so particular; the Highway was anything but exclusive. ‘I am looking for a woman,’ he began, and the barman smiled.

‘Then you have come to the right place, sir. Women come to the best public in the Highway and one of the best in London.’ He leaned closer and lowered his voice. ‘We have all sorts here, sir, suitable for every taste and, eh, requirement.’

‘I am looking for a particular woman,’ Watters said. ‘She is foreign, tall and—’ He stopped as the barman shook his glossy head.

‘About half the girls here are foreign,’ he said, ‘German, Dutch, Jewish, Irish; add the odd black or Chinee for spice.’ His grin covered a multiple of sins. ‘They say God made the Chinee different: sideways.’

‘They’re not,’ Watters said solemnly. ‘They are the same as every other woman.’ He decided to follow a military tack. ‘I served in Hong Kong with the Royal Marines.’

‘Ah,’ the barman began to polish a glass. ‘The famous Royal Marines. Your unit serves all over the world, by land and sea.’

‘We do,’ Watters agreed without a word of a lie.

‘Hong Kong is a long way from the Highway.’ The barman’s initial suspicion gave way to that same broad smile. ‘I understand! You are waiting for a transfer to one of the vessels that are out East.’

‘You are a clever man,’ Watters said. ‘So you have not seen my woman then?’

‘Sorry.’ The barman placed the now highly polished glass on the counter. ‘I have seen so many.’ He adopted the air of a man of the world.

Watters nodded. ‘Thank you anyway.’

The barman selected another glass. ‘She must have been something special if you are looking for her.’

‘I have something of hers I wish to return,’ Watters said.

The barman laughed. ‘Normally, it is the man who has left the girl a little bundle, and she looks for him! What’s her name?’

‘I wish I knew,’ Watters said truthfully.

‘Well I wish you the best of luck, but I am sure you will find a woman her equal in the Geese.’ The barman moved on to another customer as Watters settled into one of the chairs and surveyed the room.

The barman had been correct: most of the clientele in the Wild Geese were bluejackets or scarlet-coated soldiers, with one civilian lounging in the corner. Although the man had a bowler hat covering his face, Watters noticed that his eyes were always mobile, watching everything that was happening. Moving among the redcoats and blue jackets were gaudy, befeathered women who chatted as they paired off with their choice of customer. Or rather, Watters noted, with the customer that the woman on the raised chair selected for them. As soon as a man entered the pub, the tall woman on the chair caught the attention of one of the parading women and nodded in the newcomer’s direction. He wondered when his girl would arrive.

Watters shifted his gaze from woman to woman, trying to picture the bright-eyed gentlewoman from the omnibus in the feathers and ribbons of these fluttering birds-of-prey.

No; Watters shook his head. That woman was no prostitute. He was sure of that. He had met a great many prostitutes and other denizens of the shaded area between crime and poverty, and that woman would not fit in. She was a gentlewoman, of that there was no doubt.

‘Are you talking to yourself, sir?’ The woman was of middle height, with a bonnet complete with the ubiquitous array of feathers slated across her forehead. Her green eyes sparkled with mischief or perhaps gin, Watters was not sure which.

‘I am.’ Watters made space for her beside him and tried to force a smile.

‘They call me Lily.’ She slid beside him with a practised movement that pressed her hips against his.

‘I am George,’ Watters told her. When he looked up, the barman was already waiting for him to order Lily a drink. The price was again more moderate than he had expected. Watters glanced at his change. ‘That was very inexpensive.’

‘Mother Flannery has reduced her prices for military and naval gentlemen,’ the barman explained. ‘It’s her way of helping defeat the Russians.’

‘And of increasing her customer levels,’ Watters said.

‘Only Tommy Atkins and Tarry Jack are welcome,’ the barman said. He nodded to the two large men who were closing on a semi-sober civilian who had crashed through the door. ‘You can see what the porters do to those that don’t fit the bill.’

One of the hefty porters lifted the drunk by his collar while the other cleared a path to the exit. Watters watched unmoved as the porter threw the unwanted customer outside. The two porters returned to their positions beside the woman on the dais.

‘Ben tells me that you are an army officer.’ When Lily pressed herself closer to him, Watters was glad he had not brought a pocketbook with him and had distributed his money in a variety of places in his clothing.

‘Is that what Ben said?’ Watters glanced at the barman, who immediately nodded agreement. ‘Well, if Ben says that, then I am sure I cannot disagree, although he is not quite correct.’

Lily tasted her drink and smiled. ‘You are very generous,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been with an officer before.’

‘Oh, officers are just like other men,’ Watters told her.

‘Except better.’ Lily looked up at him with wide green eyes. ‘I have heard what officers like.’ She slowly walked the fingers of her right hand up the length of his thigh. ‘They are gentlemen and like their pleasures.’ Her finger continued its journey, slanting across Watters’s trousers.

‘And do other men not like similar things?’ Watters did not halt the progress of the fingers. He tried to work out her accent, London overlays but with a background to it.

‘All men are after the same thing, but some take different routes to get there.’ Lily’s fingers reached their ultimate destination and halted, accompanied by a quizzical smile. ‘What regiment are you with, sir?’

Watters thought Lily had to slightly force out the ‘sir.’ ‘No regiment,’ he said at once. ‘I am a Royal Marine.’

‘Royal Marine?’ Lily raised her eyebrows. ‘By land and sea.’

‘You know us then.’ Watters did not have to pretend surprise. Prostitutes would have extensive experience of garrison troops but would hardly be expected to know the mottos and function of individual units.

‘Yes, everybody knows of the Royal Marines.’ Lily’s fingers were doing interesting things to him.

‘And so they should.’ Watters put his hand on top of hers. ‘I am in transit between North America and the Crimea.’ He placed her hand firmly in her lap. Lily looked more scared than disappointed. Her glance at the woman on the dais told its own story.

‘Please sir.’ Lily’s hand crept back to its previous position.

Watters raised his eyes to the mirrors. The woman on the dais was looking directly at them, her long, weathered face as amiable as the muzzle of a loaded cannon. He nodded. ‘You seem a very companionable girl,’ he said slowly, ‘have you worked here long?’

Lily’s smile was composed more of relief than pleasure. ‘Since Mother Flannery took over,’ she said.

Watters jerked his head backwards slightly. ‘The lady on the raised seat being Mother Flannery I take it?’

‘Yes,’ Lily said quietly.

Watters sipped at his drink and looked around again. ‘I am not used to this kind of establishment,’ he said. ‘What happens now, Lily?’

‘Now we go upstairs.’ She stood up with as much grace as a hunting cat and put out her hand. ‘Come, George, and we will get to know each other better.’

Watters had a last look around the room. ‘Give me one moment,’ he said and stepped toward Mother Flannery.

‘George.’ Lily grabbed hold of his sleeve and dropped her voice. ‘Be careful.’

The two large men stepped forward as Watters approached, but Mother Flannery waved them away with a flick of her fingers. They stepped back; the black man had one hand in his inside pocket while the white pushed something back up his sleeve. Watters twirled his cane and held it ready to thrust, slash or swing.

‘Good evening, Mother Flannery.’ Watters ensured he was out of reach of the fists and blackjacks of the two bodyguards. He touched his cane to the brim of his hat.

Mother Flannery inclined her head slightly. Close to, she looked even taller, with intelligent eyes beneath a high forehead. ‘Good evening to you, sir.’

‘May I ask you a question?’ Watters tried to emulate the refined tones combined with the lazy drawl that the officers of the Marines had used. He spun the cane around his fingers, acutely aware of the two porters only a few feet away.

‘You may if you wish.’ The accent was from Ireland, educated, intelligent, not a product of the bog-poverty of Connaught or Donegal. Mother Flannery might hail from Dublin.

‘I was told to come here by a very charming foreign lady,’ Watters said. ‘I had hoped she would be here as I have something of hers to return.’

Mother Flannery held Watters’s eyes, saying nothing. She raised her eyebrows.

‘I know it is unlikely, Mother, but I wondered if one of your ladies had reported missing something.’

‘What?’ That one word sounded like a threat.

Watters felt the two men move toward him. He braced himself. ‘Her purse.’ He gave his best impression of a smile. ‘It was not empty.’

‘My ladies work only for me.’ Mother Flannery’s voice cut like a bayonet. ‘If I ever find they have been working without my permission, I will ensure that they are unable to show their face anywhere again.’

Watters touched his hat again. ‘I must have been misinformed. My apologies for disturbing you, Mother.’ He turned to Lily and proffered his arm. ‘Come my pretty, take me to your boudoir.’

Watters allowed Lily to take him to the back of the room and up a flight of well-carpeted stairs. ‘Your Mother Flannery keeps some style in the Geese,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t always like this,’ Lily said, ‘it used to be like any other house. Only the last few months it’s got better.’

‘Mother Flannery must be a good businesswoman,’ Watters said. If so, he thought, it was not because of the prices of the drink. There was a mystery here, and in Watters’s world, mysteries usually indicated a crime.

The pub’s upper floor had been extended to take in the properties on either side and divided into small cubicles, each with a separate door. Lily stopped outside a cubicle near the centre and pointed to the brass nameplate that had been screwed on. ‘Lily’ she said proudly. ‘That’s me. I got my own name here.’

‘Very nice.’ Watters checked the length of the corridor. It was not unknown for men to be bludgeoned unconscious in Ratcliffe Highway brothels, and to wake up naked and bloody in some filthy back slum, or not wake up at all. This corridor was empty and serene.

Lily’s door opened into a small, but surprisingly comfortable room complete with a bed, dressing table with large mirror, and a simple chest of drawers. The perfume that assailed Watters was more delicate than he was familiar with from soldiers’ prostitutes and the small notepad complete with inkbottle and pen was surprising. On one wall was a garish print of the Madonna and child, while opposite it was an equally colourful picture of a swordsman in a long green cloak, both hung comfortably against a wall of green-painted wood. Everything was neat and astonishingly clean.