The Dread Men: a Nat Frayne mystery, #4

By Richard Quarry

Detective-Inspector Nat Frayne of the London Metropolitan Police has seen numerous hanging victims, both official and self-staged. But never one so well-dressed, right down to the topper tilted slightly askew by the noose. In fact the victim's flash attire mark him as one of the Swell Mob, London's criminal elite. And the marks of brass knuckles on his face mark this as murder.

But who in London dares challenge the Swell Mob?

Only one candidate springs to mind. The newly-arrived Dead Rabbits, a havoc-prone Irish gang from New York City now seeking to expand their brutal form of enterprise to London.

If the Dead Rabbits gain a foothold, they can recruit from the thousands of Irish who came to London fleeing the Hunger, and finding only poverty and scorn, remain hungry still.

The Rabbits must be stopped. So proclaim the Voices From On High.

But as to exactly how, they'd rather not know.

Just the sort of job Scotland Yard reserves for its favorite ask-me-no-questions-and-I'll-tell-you-no-lies detective, Nat Frayne.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Quarry
• Release date: Mar 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201767334

Book preview

The Dread Men

THE FIRST THING NAT Frayne noticed about the hanged man was that he wore expensive clothes. Dandified, even, with green plaid trousers clashing defiantly against a burgundy swallowtail coat.

Frayne had seen plenty of hangings, both official and self-staged. And this was the first victim whose clothes wouldn’t have garnered sour looks from a Petticoat Lane costermonger.

Cold murder, then.

Blessed be. He was getting tired of swindlers and sneak thieves.

Not that wealthy people didn’t kill themselves on occasion. They just didn’t hang themselves. The men could afford pistols, the women, laudanum. The noose wasn’t a pleasant way to die. Though if you’d spent the last few nights huddled in some doorway in the rain and cold, not a thing to eat all that time and no hope life would ever get better, Frayne supposed the rope began to lose its terrors.

But there was also the fact that the hanged man’s topper was still wedged onto his head.

Frayne stood with several other detectives staring up at the body dangling in the yard of St. Paul’s Church. Trees with wide-spreading branches convenient for such displays — having grown up in London Frayne couldn’t tell one plant from another beyond tall or short — were scattered across the grass between the high moss-covered brick walls.

Onlookers, most of them porters from the adjacent Covent Garden Market judging by their stained aprons and coats either too large or too small, stood pushed back by a circle of bobbies. Every now and then Frayne heard the crack of a billy against a shin, followed by a string of expressive curses. This close to the market the stench of rotting vegetables, mashed into the pavement for several blocks around, wafted past the church.

Dolly Williamson, Chief of Detectives, pushed his over-sized bowler up from the bridge of his nose. A sharp-faced man with graying yellow hair and wide, staring eyes that saw all without ever seeming to fix on anything in particular, he made the gesture with the same unconscious frequency as a woman brushing back an errant strand of hair. Coppers who’d known him from back in Jack Wicher’s day said he’d never in his life owned a hat that fit.

Marks on the hands, Dolly told Frayne. But not the ones you’d expect. No skinned fingers or torn-out nails from clawing at the rope. Bruised knuckles. Marks on his face as well. Rather interesting ones, as it happens. This chap’s been in a row. Nor does he look like a hanged man. Mouth closed, no protruding tongue. Face isn’t even all that black. Can’t say for sure he was dead when they did this to him, but he definitely wasn’t reciting his prayers. Then there’s the topper. Pushed to the side by the rope, but wedged on tight. Someone’s idea of a joke. Dressed like one of the Swell Mob. Do you happen to know him, by any chance? You’re well up on that lot.

Not from down here, Frayne replied. The sun had just come fully into view as he walked north up Bedford Street from the Strand. Breaking over the brick walls of St. Paul’s, it cast a golden radiance around the corpse, leaving the face in darkness to his squinting eyes.

Frayne mounted the ladder propped against the branch from which the dead man hung. Broadsheets and the penny dreadfuls liked to portray the bodies of the hanged with arms and legs splayed out, even leaning partway forward in defiance of gravity. Like they were just about to holler boo!

But like most, this fellow’s limbs hung straight down, the toes in the expensive but scuffed calfskin boots slackly pointed toward the ground. The killers had gone to the trouble of fashioning a hangman’s noose, though there was no need except for the drama of it. Maybe they were looking forward to seeing a depiction of their handiwork in The  Illustrated  Police  News. The loops of the noose pushed the head slightly askew.

Dolly was right, the victim didn’t look like he’d died of strangulation. Much more composed, the mouth decently shut, no pronounced swelling of the face from trapped blood. The skin, beneath its lacing of bruises and blood, was gray rather than black.

Several purple bruises had swollen around straight lines of blood. Brass knuckles, or he missed his guess. In addition the face was peppered with evenly spaced small puncture wounds. They’d bled, then the blood had dried and blackened, then cracked in a crazy-quilt pattern.

Frayne took a good close look, then climbed back down.

Fred Burke, he told Dolly. Fancy man to a donna named Mariah something. Runs a few flower-girls on the side, working the Drury Lane Theatre. Knocked down by someone, or several someones, with brass knuckles. Then stomped to death with hobnail boots.

My thinking exactly. Hobnails are not so very uncommon around the Garden. We found a few footprints. No sign of a scuffle. But by the time the constables answered the call, there were already maybe twenty or thirty people milling about. Lucky he still had his boots. Watch is gone, but Lord knows who took that.

Finding Burke hanging from a tree was mildly perplexing. In recent years the Swell Mob had done a pretty good job of keeping competition between themselves from rising to murder. If an aspiring gang tried to muscle in on the prostitution in some area of the city, that was a different matter. Examples must be made. Then the Swells might demonstrate just this sort of flare. And of course anyone at all could turn up in an alley with razor cuts. But to find one of the Swell Mob on the receiving end of such a carefully staged event, well, Frayne didn’t imagine it was about to end here.

Are you putting me in charge of the case? he asked Dolly.

I’m assigning this one to Crowe, as it happens. The murder itself, that is. You’ll assist him wherever your paths cross. Once again he pushed his gray bowler back on his forehead. Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Nat?

Frayne answered with a curt not. The Dead Rabbits. Hard to see anyone else going so far out of their way to make a point. Not against the Swell Mob.

Which means, said Dolly, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. A lot worse, more like.

It had started with a stream of telegrams from the New York City police. Members of their largest and most violent Irish gang, the Dead Rabbits, had been disappearing from view. Rumor had it they meant to set up shop in London. Over several weeks more compelling evidence turned up on the streets themselves. Men, in many cases experienced criminals with prominent connections, had come into the hospitals badly beaten. Of course they refused to say a word about what happened to them. That was the underworld code. But they had also, as far as anyone could tell, refrained from the expected reprisals.

That was not the code at all.

Now this.

I’m putting it on your plate, Nat, Dolly told him. We can’t let what happened in New York happen here. From what their police tell me, toughs and rowdies doesn’t begin to describe these lads. Aside from murder, robbery, and extortion, they practice general mayhem for its own sake. I am told they once fought their rivals, a gang called the Bowery Boys, for three days up and down the streets of New York. Dozens were killed, and they repulsed three attempts by the police to disperse them before the militia was brought in. Musketry, Frayne! Right in the streets of the city. Well, that sort of tomfoolery is not going to gain a foothold here. Our own Irish are troublesome enough. Fortunately they never banded together into a wide-spread criminal organization. This could be just the spark to explode that particular barrel of powder. Nose around, Nat. Time we find out what’s what.

Right. I think I may know where to start.

Ah, here’s the photographer. About bloody time. We can finally cut the poor fellow down.

Frayne turned to leave.

And Frayne? called Williamson. Don’t forget that you are a representative of the Metropolitan Police. Having said which.... His eyes shifted from side to side, making sure he would not be overheard.

Desperate times, eh? He laid a finger alongside his nose.

Say no more, sir.

On his way out of the yard, Frayne took a last