A Donation of Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

local accent. He doubted even Tommy knew the correct pronunciation of the name handed down to him by his Huguenot ancestors.
    The boy’s filthy hand crept towards a bulge in the front of his shirt.
    â€˜Against the wall, Tommy,’ Pike said, slamming the boy’s body where he wanted it.
    But Tommy slithered from his grip, dropped to his knees and darted between Pike’s legs. Pike fired a warning shot into the air to alert the men outside, and dashed after the fugitive, down the remaining stairs and into the tenement’s backyard.
    â€˜There ’ee goes!’ one of the policemen shouted, pointing his pistol at Tommy’s fleeing form. The bullet missed its target and splintered into one of the privy doors.
    Another man aimed a rifle. Pike got to him just in time, chopping the rifle downwards with his hand. The rifle discharged, hitting its prey in the lower leg, sending Tommy tumbling into a pile of dustbins.
    â€˜I said aim for the legs, Constable,’ Pike said through gritted teeth. One injured child was enough for one day.
    A couple of constables approached the bins, picking over piles of frozen refuse. Then, like a jack-in-a-box, up Tommy jumped, clapping the closest constable around the ears with a pair of dustbin-lid cymbals. The constable collapsed in shock. The other dived for Tommy’s legs, but he was not quick enough. In the blink of an eye Tommy had scaled the wooden perimeter fence and was legging it down the back lane, pursued by two puffing policemen.
    Pike cursed under his breath. ‘They haven’t a chance,’ he muttered to the red-faced sergeant next to him.
    â€˜You can see why he’s called “the Tadpole,”’ the sergeant said. ‘Slippery little bugger.’
    Pike could not but agree.
    The constable with the rifle scowled. ‘You should have let me take that shot, sir, I’d ’ave hit ’im in the noggin and that would-a-been that.’
    â€˜As the only remaining member of the gang who robbed the jeweller’s shop, he’s more valuable alive to us than he is dead. And next time you disobey orders,’ Pike peered through the sleet at the numbers on the high collar of the policeman’s greatcoat, ‘PC 467, it’s the charge sheet for you. Is that clear?’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ he mumbled.
    â€˜Keep an eye on him, Sergeant,’ Pike said as he walked away from the group.
    A thin trail of red drips upon the slushy grey snow caught his eye. He began to follow it.

Chapter Four
    The clinic was part of a scheme devised by Doctor Elizabeth Garret to turn disused buildings into places of medical care for disadvantaged women. It worked in a similar fashion to the casualty department of the London Hospital not far down the road. But While the London was much bigger, better staffed and better equipped, the women’s clinic offered something the larger institution could not — a refuge from ill-intentioned men.
    Many of the women who sought treatment were vagrants or prostitutes, working by night and sleeping by day in the graveyard of Christchurch Spitalfields, and controlled by dangerous and demanding pimps. Other patients, including children, came from tenements where families of up to fifteen people shared a room. In these places some men claimed unrestricted access to their daughters. Others expressed their misery and desperation through their fists.
    And such abuse was not limited to the poorer classes. Dody was on duty once when a Duchess was admitted through the front door with eight-year-old twin girls. The Duchess had surprised her husband in the nursery on Nanny’s day off. It appeared the Duke had a predilection for his own progeny.
    The poor woman had been in a desperate state. She had applied for a divorce but had been informed by her husband’s lawyer that a divorce would leave her destitute and destroy her daughters’ future. The Duchess had remained in hiding at the clinic