Convicted Innocent(28)

“No! I—”

But a backhanded strike aborted David’s reply and snapped his head to one side. It seemed the two thugs were simply hunting for an excuse to work him over.

“Don’t fink we likes bein’ tol’ to lay off, vicar,” the first growled. “Boss said ‘halive,’ but Hi can go a long way afore you gets to ‘dead.’”

The two began to beat David.

All of a sudden, the priest was afraid. Not of the hurt raining down on him, but that these thugs would leave him unable to fulfill his promise to his dear, dying friend.

And David feared that his own ill-considered, despair-spurred anger would’ve driven them to it.





Sunday morning



Hildy went to bed after sitting up with him for a half hour or more, but Inspector Tipple gave up on sleep altogether.

He thought a change of pace might freshen his thoughts on the Harker affair, so he sat down at his desk and pulled out files from different cases. Perusing other problems should jog his intuition and grant him a new perspective. After all, the technique had worked in the past.

However, Horace saw only the details that reminded him of the murderer who’d slipped through his fingers – was that only the day before yesterday? – and one of the case files even included a suspect sketch done by Lewis Todd. There was no mistaking that boy’s handiwork, even if the drawing wasn’t signed, and Horace dropped the file on his desk with a sigh.

Ignoring the matter of Nicholas Harker and Lewis Todd – and Lewis’s friend, the vicar – was impossible. In the night’s silence, he could almost hear them begging to be found.

The telephone rang; Horace nearly started out of his chair at the jarring shrill.

He snatched the receiver from its hook before the second ring (poor Hildy) and leaned toward the call box, which was fastened to the wall above his desk.

“Sir,” came the clipped greeting. Of course it was one of Horace’s policemen: no one else would be calling at half-past three on a Sunday morning. He recognized the voice of Sergeant John Nolan.

“Sorry to wake you, sir,” Nolan went on, “but you asked that we ring you if anything further developed.”

“Do tell.”

What the sergeant then related had Horace Tipple at the station by four o’clock.

Nolan greeted him at the door and together they walked up to the first floor, the station still busy despite the early hour. (After all, a manhunt for a murderer was underway, and a brother policeman was missing.) Nolan was a steady, sturdy fellow not much younger than Horace; they began speaking as soon as they reached a table to one side of the floor’s open expanse. The bobbies who’d been clustered about it made way when the detective drew near.

“The coroner did confirm the identity of the body, sir.” The sergeant said, handing a sketch he’d taken from one of several sheaves of paper on the tabletop to the inspector.

Horace looked at the drawing (yet another one of Lewis’s) and frowned. “Frank O’Malley. He’s been a person of interest?”

Nolan nodded. “Sergeant Todd put together a folio of all the Harkers and their prime lackeys as they figured into the case since we had photographs of only a few. He sketched O’Malley when the chap insisted on coming forward as a character witness for Nicholas Harker.”

“Ah, yes,” Horace nodded. “I remember hearing of his vehement determination…. He wasn’t a material witness, though, was he?”

“No. He was in a pub in Bethnal Green at the time of the murder. But he was Harker’s impromptu guardian after the boy’s mother died several years ago and was adamant the young man couldn’t have killed anyone, let alone one of the family’s chief underworld competitors. Of all the family’s proclamations of the boy’s innocence, O’Malley’s were the most vigorous.”