The Formula for Murder Read Online Free PDF

McGuire.

 
     
    7
     
    Archer stands near the corner of Fleet Street and Hood Court as he watches the entrance to the International News Building halfway down the street. He is waiting for a woman he has never seen in person before.
    A cautious man, he occasionally opens up a newspaper to look at a sketch of the woman he is on the lookout for. The story about the woman in the paper is not current news, but a report months earlier on the progress American reporter Nellie Bly was making in her race around the world.
    Archer stamps his feet, trying to keep the blood flowing. It is a cool, damp day with the overcast acting as a ceiling to trap the cold, wet air.
    He would not have noticed the chill in the air if he had been walking instead of standing around, waiting and watching. He can feel middle age creeping up on him, with arthritic pain starting at the bottom of his often aching feet now that he went everywhere by shank’s mare, no longer able to afford cabs thanks to his dear ex-wife who not only put him in this situation, but once the money stopped coming in, she upped and left. Some gratitude.
    For years he lavished her with expensive clothing, even those silly fancy hats she wore like she was going to a garden party or something; a big apartment; dinners out in better restaurants than either of them had ever been in before; even going to plays like they were real gentry … then when he’s ratted out by his fellow policemen at the Metropolitan Police Service for having his hand out too often, she leaves.
    Women … trouble, that’s what they are, nothing but trouble.
    A street vendor is selling roasted chestnuts on the corner. The chestnuts are roasting on a rack over a bed of hot coals in a half-metal barrow set atop a rollaway cart.
    The warm smell of the chestnuts breezes over to Archer and he steps to the vendor and holds out his hand with a piece of newspaper on it.
    The peddler gives a look at Archer’s worn suit that needs sponging off and a hot iron, at his soiled collar; the slightly turned rim on his bowler hat, and his scuffed shoes. He puts two chestnuts on it.
    “Four,” Archer says.
    The man puts two more on. “Four pence.”
    “Police,” Archer says, stepping away.
    “You’re not a copper anymore. I know who you are.” The vendor grabs the poker he uses to stir the coals with and takes a step toward Archer.
    “Back off,” Archer hisses, pulling back his coat, exposing a knife in a sheath hanging from his belt, the only good thing he acquired as a dockworker after he was ousted from being a cop. “A pity job” is what his wife called it just before she left him. And she was right. His cousin, a lead man on the docks, got it for him. Archer hated it, but handling cargo gave him eating money.
    The vendor returns to his chestnuts, muttering curses. “Your kind spits in the soup to spoil it for everyone else.”
    Archer ignores the man as his attention is drawn to a woman getting out of a carriage in front of the building. He glances back at the newspaper sketch of Nellie Bly and then at the woman as she disappears through the entrance.
    Certain it is her and that she will be in the building for a time, he moseys away, toward a tea shop where he will muscle a cup of tea and biscuits much like he did the chestnuts.
    Old habits are hard to stop; besides, he enjoys exerting the privileges he had when he carried a detective’s badge. It had made up for the lousy pay.
    He’s elated that he’s been hired to do something easier and better paying than carrying cargo like a mule. Following the American woman since she got off the boat from America has gotten him enough for a good bit of beef and gin and his instincts are telling him that there is a lot more to be made.
    He’ll be back watching the entrance when she comes out. His work with her is just beginning. If he plays it right, he will be back on top again.

 
     
    8
     
    As the carriage pulls away, I stand on Fleet Street, the hub of