The Murder at Tom S Chop House

The Murder at Tom’s Chop House

By Chris George

© Chris George 2015

CHAPTER ONE – Thursday 9th May 1850

Being stabbed in the back was bad enough, John Gilbert thought, but being stabbed with your own knife added insult to injury. In the growing light Gilbert could see ‘B.M.’ scored in bad poker-work on the wooden handle. Servedhim right for keeping it sharp, he thought cynically.

Gilbert looked gloomily around the kitchen: even at eleven in the morning it was dim and full of shadows. Little light came from the grubby narrow windows high in the walls. The walls were painted with lime wash; three of the walls were almost hidden behind chipped and faded wooden cupboards, filled with iron and copper pots of all types and sizes; hanging from the nicotine-stained distempered ceiling were sieves, ladles, spoons and other implements, unknown to Gilbert, of the cook’s dark arts. There was one massive open dresser, crammed with faded willow pattern cups, plates and bowls. One whole flank of the kitchen was taken up with a massive cast-iron range and a coal bunker. The range was still warm despite not having been fired up this morning. The bloke on the floor had seen to that, Gilbert thought. He was looking quite surprised, poor bugger; hadn’t seen that one coming at all.

In the centre of the room were a heavy butcher’s block and several grimy tables. Gilbert could see that they were only moderately clean; bits of meat were wedged into the crevices of the butcher’s block, there were what looked like pigeon feathers on the floor under the tables, along with a basket of wilted carrots. The large well-appointed pantry was in an adjacent room. Floors were plain flagstones. There was a cheap wooden chair, tipped over near the body.

Gilbert sniffed the air: not too bad, he thought, a bit rancid, but not unbearable.

‘What’s his name, Robbie?’ he asked quietly.

‘Bob Matthews,’ said Robbie Gray promptly.

‘What time was he found?’

‘Half past six.’

Gray looked expectantly at John Gilbert, as if expecting him to pull the killer from a soup tureen. He was a funny one, was Gil, but he was sharp enough. Gray had known Gil for twelve years, ever since Gil had joined the police, in fact: one of the best, he was, for all that he looked like a haberdasher’s clerk, with his fifty-bob suits and them little specs he used to read papers. Didn’t behave like no clerk, though, when there was a villain to take; mad keen, and wouldn’t never take a backward step. He was quite short for a peeler, only about five foot nine, but stocky, and strong as a horse from his time in the navy. He had longish brown hair and brown eyes, and a bushy drooping moustache that completely covered his mouth.

‘Sawbones been yet?’

‘Yeah, an hour ago. Says he’s been stabbed in the back...’

‘Aye, well, that ain’t hard to spot, is it Robbie? What with that fucking great bloodstained knife on the floor beside it! Bit of a give-away, that.’ He looked again at the body and the pool of blood. He noticed the little bloody footprints crossing and re-crossing the floor. ‘At least he was found soon after he was killed,’ he commented.

‘How’s that, Gil?’

‘Rats ain’t started on him. If he’d been done last night, he’d be a lot more chewed up.’

‘Ah!’ said Gray, impressed.

‘Did the sawbones say how long he’d been dead?’

‘Yeah, he reckoned that wriggly-mortis hadn’t started, so he reckoned less than four hours.’

‘Wriggly-mortis, eh?’ Gilbert smiled to himself. ‘And that was an hour ago? And he was found at half-six? So, that’d mean he was killed at about six, maybe half-five, wouldn’t it?’

Gray nodded.

‘Anybody looked in his pockets yet?’

‘Yeah.A few coppers, keys, tobacco and matches.’

Gilbert scratched his chin: ‘So bugger-all, in fact. Who found him?’

‘Pot boy, name of Joe Walsh.’

‘Alright, Robbie, wheel him in.’

Joe Walsh was a stick-thin youth of perhaps sixteen or seventeen, looking terrified and ghoulishly excited at the same time. He was wearing a huge once-white apron which went down below his knees, smeared with chicken feathers and streaks of blood and guts. He added little to their knowledge. He had worked in the kitchen for six months, knew the dead man only through work, didn’t know where he lived, didn’t know if he had a wife or children, didn’t know how long he had worked in the kitchen.He hadn’t seen anybody else around the area. ‘So, bugger all,’ thought Gilbert wryly.Walsh said that he had come in this morning as usual just after six o’clock, and found the body just where it was now.

The door between the restaurant and the kitchen opened and a dapper little man put his head round: Gilbert had been introduced to him when he arrived. ‘Mr Furnell,’ Gilbert asked, ‘what can I do for you?’

‘Well, Inspector, I was wondering when we might be able to get back in the kitchen?’

‘Very soon now, sir,’ said Gilbert. ‘Actually, Mr Furnell, you can help me a little with some information. Come in, sir.’

Furnell looked squeamishly at the body on the floor. Gilbert noted the look.‘Very well, sir, I’ll come out there.’ Gilbert turned to Gray: ‘Alright, Robbie, roll him up and get him round to the surgeon.’

Gilbert followed Furnell into the restaurant. Tom’s Chop Housewas quite spacious; thirty or so tables in two rows, leading back out to Cowper’s Court. Oak panelled walls and gas lamps on the panels, plus large candelabras running down the centre of the room. They sat at one of the tables. ‘Tell me about Mr Matthews, sir,’ he said.

‘First, might we have some tea, Inspector?’ Furnell waved to a young woman behind a long marble counter: ‘Tea, Maisie,’ he called.

‘So tell me about Mr Matthews, sir,’ Gilbert repeated.

‘Ah, of course. Well, he has been here for fourteen years. He trained in Paris, at one of the restaurants, I can’t remember which one, off-hand.’

‘Was he a good cook?’

Maisie arrived with the tea, and overheard the question: Gilbert noticed her eyes sharpen as she looked at Furnell with, Gilbert thought, little respect.

‘Chef, Inspector,’ Furnell bridled. ‘Matthews was a chef. Women are cooks.’

Gilbert shrugged: ‘What do you know about him? Was he married? Children? Where did he live?’

‘He had rooms in Vauxhall. Anderson’s Walk. He was a single man, I understand.’

‘So, was he a good chef?’

‘He was adequate,’ said Furnell stuffily.

I bet he was cheap, thought Gilbert. He studied the menu on the table: apart from the name “Tom’s Chop House” it was all in French, and there were no prices shown: if you had to ask, you couldn’t afford it. This was that nouvelle cuisine he had heard about: four courses – also called services – starting with soups and hors d’oeuvres, followed by roast game and savoury dishes, followed by entremets which were generally vegetables, and ending with desserts.

‘French, eh?’ Gilbert asked.

‘Yes,’ Furnell replied proudly.

‘So, what’s the French for “Chop House”?’ Gilbert asked, just to take some of the starch out of Furnell. No response. ‘How did he get on with the other workers here?’ he asked.

‘Very well. He was popular.’

‘Not with somebody, he wasn’t,’ Gilbert pointed out. ‘I’ll need the names of your other workers.’

Furnell gave Gilbert names and addresses. ‘So where are they all?’ Gilbert asked.

‘I sent them up the lane to the Jerusalem until you’ve finished. Can we get them back, please? I have lunches to arrange.’

‘In a few minutes, Mr Furnell. Just one or two more questions: where did Mr Matthews come from? Was he a Londoner?’

‘No, he was Welsh,’ said Furnell, ‘but he had lived here for many years.’

‘Any idea whereabouts, in Wales?’

‘None at all, I’m afraid.’

‘Alright, Mr Furnell, I’ll pop up the way and have a quick word with your people, then you can have ‘em back.’

As he went out into Cowper’s Court, Gilbert looked back at the restaurant. ‘Tom’s Chop Shop’ could just as easily have been called ‘Tom’s Coffee House’. Indeed, many referred to the restaurant as Tom’s Coffee House, despite the sign over the door. The names seemed to be interchangeable. The identity of ‘Tom’ was unknown, if there had ever been a Tom. The frontage was stylishly done, in dark oak and brass fittings, with beautiful etched glass in the windows. Alongside was a small door leading to rooms above. Cowper’s Court was a narrow alley off Cornhill, hemmed in on all sides by tall stone buildings: the effect of this was to make Cowper’s Court look like a narrow cave. The cobbles were unusually clean: the alley was too narrow for horses.

The Jerusalem Coffee House was one of the oldest and more famous coffee shops in London, a few doors away in Cowper’s Court, off Cornhill. Called by some a “news-room”, it was frequented by merchants and captains connected with the commerce to and from China, India and Australia. Its main chamber was called the subscription room and was provided with papers relating to the main cities in the far east: Canton, Hong Kong, Macao, Penang, Singapore, Calcutta, Madras, Sydney, Hobart and Adelaide, as well as shipping lists and papers from various stopping points on journeys, St Helena and Cape of Good Hope. There were also ledgers of the East India Company, showing arrivals, departures and casualties. Most of the shipping and maritime business was conducted betweentwo and three pm.

There were twenty or thirty people in the Jerusalem when John Gilbert entered. He immediately spotted the staff from Tom’s sitting together because there wasa woman among them, and she wasgetting some strained looks from the merchants: not the thing at all to see women in here, unless they were waitresses, of course. Gilbert introduced himself and sat down in their booth. They didn’t add much to his knowledge: Matthews was quiet, didn’t “horse around”, didn’t gamble, and didn’t drink much; he had no enemies that anybody knew about; he lived over in Vauxhall, had no family, and no special interests or hobbies; nobody knew of any women friends, but he wasn’t, said the woman with a giggle, a nancy boy either. He came from Wales, but nobody knew where. He was quite old, 40 or so. Gilbert checked their addresses and let them go back to work.

The police surgeon had a small morgue in Seething Lane, a few doors down from the watch house. Gilbert hated the smell of it; a mixture of chemicals and blood, and horse manure from the stables next door. When he went in the surgeon, Dr Quaid, was bent over a body. Quaid glanced round, smiled briefly at Gilbert, and turned back to his work. Quaid was like a ball on legs: large and fat, with only his large round head to give his body any shape at all. He was elderly, about 60, with wisps of white hair around his ears, and slitted blue eyes buried in rolls of fat in a bright red face. He sweated profusely day and night and was forever wiping his face with a succession of red bandanas.

‘What Ho, Gil!’ he called cheerfully.

‘Hello, Doc. What do you know?’

‘Bugger all, as usual.’ He gestured to the corpse on the slab: ‘This one yours?’

‘Yep.Name of Matthews. What can you tell me?’

‘He looks surprised, don’t he?’

‘Yeah, he does.’ Gilbert now had his first proper look at Matthews. Average height, a little overweight by the look of him: straw-coloured hair cut short, pale blue eyes now looking bloodshot, regular features, thin moustache and straggling side-whiskers.‘You’ll have to straighten his face up a bit,’ Gilbert continued, I’m sending a scribbler round and a sketch bloke – don’t want to frighten anybody.’

‘Right ho. Well, knife in the back, you knew that; three stabs, all pretty deep, any one of ‘em could have killed him. One penetrated the heart, but there wasn’t much blood, which suggests that wasn’t the fatal blow because he was already dead or dying. Regular sort of fellow, from what I can see; no scars or tattoos, reasonably healthy up ‘til a few hours ago! One thing more, though...’

‘What’s that?’

Quaid pointed with a bloodstained finger at the side of Matthews’ head: ‘Nice bump here, can you see? Proper whack on the noggin, he had.’

‘New or old?’

‘New. The bruise ain’t properly come out yet.’

‘Was the whack enough to kill him?’

Don’t think so,’ Quaid shook his head. ‘Enough to knock him out, for sure.’

‘Could a woman have done it? Stabbed him, I mean?’

‘I don’t think so: all three blows went through the ribs from the back – must have taken a good deal of force.’

‘Or anger?’

Quaid nodded: ‘Or anger, yes.’

Back at Seething Lane station house Gilbert spoke to the desk sergeant and ordered a sketch artist round to the morgue, and told him to send a constable round to the Illustrated London Newsfor a reporter to go to the morgue, write up the story, and take a copy of the sketch for the paper. He then picked up the keys that had been found on the body, and went out again. One of the keys opened the back door to Tom’s Chop House. Gilbert then made his way over to Vauxhall and found Anderson’s Walk.

Gilbert walked down Vauxhall Lane past the gasworks, his senses assaulted by the glue factories and the soap factories and the general stink of the river: the weather was still and calm, keeping the stink local. One place, glorying in the name of Hunt’s Chemical Works, boiled bones for soap and candle manufacture. Anderson’s Walk was a terrace of ten or twelve houses on two floors, made of cheap second-grade brick. Not knowing which was Matthews’ house, he knocked on the first door and asked: the fourth house yielded the information that Matthews lived at number eight.

The door of number eight opened to reveal a small dumpy elderly woman with a large knife, making it very clear that she wouldn’t be embarrassed about using it; she peered suspiciously at Gilbert: ‘What?’ she asked belligerently.

‘Afternoon,’ said Gilbert evenly, ‘does Bob Matthews live here?’

‘Who wants to know?’

‘Police,’ said Gilbert, showing his badge.

‘What’s he done?’

‘Nothing, as far as we know: I just need to see his room.’

‘Suppose you wanna come in, then?’

‘Bit difficult to see his room from here, ain’t it.’

‘Cheeky bugger. Why ain’t you wearin’ that blue suit an’ the silly hat?’

‘I’m a detective,’ Gilbert said as he nudged past the woman, ‘upstairs, is it?’

‘Ah. On the left.’

The room was small and dingy, and smelled of stale bodies and something unappetising being cooked somewhere else: wet socks, it smelled like. There was a narrow bed, unmade, a small bedside table with a candle on it, a tattered armchair with horsehair bursting out of the seams in one or two places, and a cheap birchwood wardrobe. There were a few clothes on the chair, a cup and a plate on the edge of the bed, and a chamber pot that needed emptying under the bed. There was a shelf on one of the walls, and three books on it. Gilbert was immediately drawn to the books, it being so unusual to see books in a place like this.

The first two were cookbooks: “The Art of Cookery” by Hannah Glasse (1747); the second was “The London Art of Cookery” by John Farley (1783). Gilbert was momentarily distracted by the idea that he would like to have seen Mrs Glasse’s face when Farley’s book came out. The third book was one that Gilbert had heard of: “The Rights of Man” by Thomas Paine (1792). Gilbert idly flicked the book open at random:

Could it be made a decree in nature, or an edict registered in heaven, and man could know it, that virtue and wisdom should invariably appertain to hereditary succession, the objection to it would be removed; but when we see that nature acts as if she disowned and sported with the hereditary system; that the mental character of successors, in all countries, is below the average of human understanding; that one is a tyrant, another an idiot, a third insane, and some all three together, it is impossible to attach confidence to it, when reason in man has power to act.

‘What’s he done, then?’ came the voice from the doorway.

‘Well, missus,’ said Gilbert, turning to look at the old woman, ‘he’s gone an’ got himself killed.’