A Death in Chelsea

by Lynn Brittney

  Just then, one of the undercover policemen ‘gardeners’ came up to a tree near the trio and began inspecting its roots and trunk.

  “Mr Beech,” the man said, without looking at the group. “Message from DS Tollman, sir. He said he is aware of the situation regarding the woman on the bench and he and Constable Rigsby are keeping out of sight in the shrubbery. He advises that you move behind this tree, in the shade, and keep yourself hidden as much as possible.”

  “Thank you,” Beech responded. “Please tell Tollman I will take his advice.”

  The man nodded and moved away. Beech and Victoria stood, their backs to the suspect, while Caroline packed up the basket and gathered up the rug. She then spread the rug out behind the tree for the others to sit on.

  “I’m afraid you are going to have to be our eyes, Caro. Make sure you have a good view of everything.” Beech was frustrated. He turned to Victoria. “I can’t, somehow, believe that this Lily is the criminal mastermind behind all of this.”

  “Nor me,” agreed Victoria. “If she is, then she must be an astonishing actress, because her shock and tears after finding Adeline Treborne strung up seemed incredibly real to me.”

  “Her shock must have been real,” observed Caroline. “Don’t forget, we now know that the Bakers hung Adeline’s corpse. When Lily came in that morning, she was expecting to find Adeline peacefully dead on her bed, probably, not swinging at the end of a rope!”

  “That’s true.” Beech took a deep breath. “But I still feel that there is a missing part of this. Lily is, what, fifteen years old? Adeline Treborne has been writing this gossip column for two years – or rather, someone with very neat writing and using pink paper has been writing the column for two years. That can’t be Lily. It means she would have started doing it at the age of thirteen! That’s hardly likely.”

  “Ah, there’s a development!” said Caroline excitedly. “A small, sweaty man has arrived at the bench and it looks as though he is going to sit down.”

  ***

  Samuel Robinson was terrified. He had spent all morning being terrified. His mouth was dry, and his heart was fluttering in his chest. He knew he was sweating – as he always did when he was nervous – but there was nothing he could do about it. He clutched an envelope containing four large £5 notes and his hand was trembling. He deeply regretted allowing himself to be persuaded by the police to engage in this exchange and he wasn’t sure what frightened him the most – being confronted by a violent criminal or his own cowardice, which could induce him to faint at the slightest provocation.

  So, it was a somewhat confused Samuel Robinson who arrived at the bench opposite the Duke of Bedford’s statue to find a young girl sitting there. He decided she must be sitting there accidentally and that at any moment the blackmailer could turn up, so, unsure as to how to proceed, he concluded the best thing to do was to sit down.

  His confusion was replaced by surprise when the young girl said, “I do hope you have brought the money, Mr Robinson.”

  He started and looked at her. She was about the same height as he was, which was really quite small. Her face betrayed nothing. It was neither hard nor frightened. She was calm and looked at him directly. It was a bold look, without any shame, and it made Samuel Robinson replace his fear with a small spark of annoyance. To be blackmailed by this chit of a girl! He almost felt insulted!

  The girl noticed the change in his face and said quietly, “Please don’t think about protesting or walking away, Mr Robinson. I did not come here alone. At this very moment there are people watching us who will not be pleased if you try to change our arrangements. And, don’t forget, you really don’t want all your little business dealings in the newspapers, do you?”

  Samuel Robinson felt afraid again and he looked around nervously. There was no one in immediate sight, except a nurse wheeling a perambulator, who had paused to comfort her infant. Wherever these people were who were watching, he could not see them. Reluctantly, he handed over the envelope. And the girl put it in her dolly bag.

  “Am I going to have to come to this park bench every month?” he asked, irritably. “That’s going to be rather unpleasant in the winter.”

  The girl smiled. “Maybe one more time here, Mr Robinson. Then you will be contacted and given details of a bank account in which to pay your money. Don’t worry, you won’t have to freeze in winter.” Then she added, “You may go now.”

  Robinson felt another surge of annoyance at being treated as though he were a pupil being dismissed by a teacher. He got up awkwardly and left the square feeling foolish and only marginally comforted by the fact that the girl would soon be in police custody.

  ***

  Elsie Rigsby had come prepared to support Lady Maud and when they stepped into the taxicab in Mayfair and sat down, she discreetly passed her a hip flask of brandy. Maud gave her a grateful smile as she put the flask in her bag.

  “Belonged to my late husband,” said Elsie. “Billy’s dad. He always took it with him everywhere and he used to say to me, ‘Else, I just take one gulp before I go into battle, and I’m as right as rain.’” She turned her face away from Lady Maud, as she could feel a tear prickling her eye and she didn’t want to appear foolish.

  Maud understood and patted Elsie’s hand. “It’s not an easy life for army wives,” she said softly. “You spend your whole married life worrying about the worst happening and then, when it does, it takes you completely by surprise.”

  Elsie smiled. “I forgot you were an army widow too, Your Ladyship. And you’re right, when a soldier dies, it doesn’t matter whether he’s high born or low born, his widow still grieves the same as all the other widows.”

  They sat in companionable silence for the journey to Russell Square. Once they alighted, they assumed their roles. Lady Maud was the bossy employer and Elsie the meek employee.

  “Rigsby!” Lady Maud said loudly, in her most autocratic voice. “You can make yourself scarce while I take a turn around this charming square. Here’s some money. Take yourself off to a café somewhere and report back here in half an hour. Then I shall want you to accompany me to Gamages department store in Holborn.”

  “Yes, madam,” said Elsie, giving a brief curtsey, and she watched Lady Maud enter the gardens. “Fingers crossed,” she murmured to herself and she took herself off to a small café she could see on the corner of Southampton Row. From there, she would be able to see the south-eastern gateway to the square.

  She had settled down with a cup of tea in the front corner of the café, by the window, when she realised that she could see the unmistakeable figure of Louise Leighton sitting in the shadows on a bench just inside the gates. So, it was her, Elsie thought. Devious minx. But she wasn’t sitting in the right place. Mr Beech’s plan showed the statue was right in the centre of the south side of the square. In fact, right where the Leighton woman seemed to be looking.

  ***

  Lady Maud entered the square with a certain amount of trepidation, but she was reassured by all the familiar faces she saw around the area, performing their assumed roles. She couldn’t see Beech or Victoria, but she had no doubt that they were there. Caroline was sitting on a rug, seeming to be reading a book. Sissy was strolling down through the tree-lined walk, with her little dog in tow. Mabel was sitting on a bench with the perambulator in front of her, gently rocking it. There were lots of men digging in the two flower beds on either side of the square, so Maud felt quite safe.

  As she approached the designated bench, her brows knitted in concern. A child? Surely not? She sat down gingerly and decided to have a surreptitious sip from Elsie Rigsby’s hip flask, just to give her some Dutch courage.

  As she raised the flask to her lips there was a soft laugh from the girl sitting on the bench. “I heard you were a drinker, Lady Maud,” she said, “but I didn’t think it was so bad that you had to have a snifter at this hour of the morning.”

/>   Maud was astonished but decided to play her role fully and replied haughtily, “How dare you! This is for medicinal purposes only, young lady.”

  “I don’t care what you do, Lady Maud,” was the brazen response. “You can spend all day blind drunk and lying in the gutter. As long as you have the money we asked for. That’s all I care about.”

  Maud noted the use of the word ‘we’. She would relay that to Peter Beech later. She decided to try another approach, so she said, in a voice of concern, “Is someone coercing you into blackmailing people? If you are in fear of someone, I’m sure the police could help.”

  The girl threw her head back and laughed loudly. “The police?! I’m sure that most of them are too busy being on the take themselves to bother with the likes of me. Besides,” she added, “I answer to no one. I am my own mistress. Now, stop wasting time, Your Ladyship, and hand over the money.”

  Maud rifled around in her bag and produced a roll of twenty £1 notes, held in place by a rubber band. She passed them over to the girl, who put them in her coat pocket.

  “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Your Ladyship,” she said with a sarcastic smile. “You can go now, we’ll be in touch.”

  Maud rose, trying to walk away with dignity, but she couldn’t resist turning back to the girl and saying, “You know that you will be caught and punished one day, don’t you?”

  The girl just stared at her sullenly and said, “How’s the shoplifting going, Your Ladyship?” Then she cleverly echoed Maud’s words and said, “You know that you’ll be caught and punished one day, don’t you?”

  As Maud walked away, she realised that Mabel had been taking photographs all the time she had been having a conversation with the girl. I do hope she doesn’t have a picture of me about to have a snifter from a hip flask, she thought worriedly.

  As she came out of the gates, she saw Elsie gesturing to her from the corner of the street and she made her way towards her. Seeing that Elsie was outside a café, she said dramatically, “I need a very large cup of tea and, possibly, an iced bun.”

  ***

  Harold Chen was angry. Here he was, about to go and pay someone money because his father had never been honest about having a Chinese wife and son. In fact, it stuck in his throat. He had spent his entire life concealing his true identity – for what? Even his mother was beginning to find her own explanation of their life of concealment a little threadbare. She had always told him that his father was a great man, a member of the British parliament, his work was more important than anything else and, now there was a war on, he was needed to help run the country. But the revelation that Sir Anthony Jarvis had allowed himself to be blackmailed, rather than reveal the truth about his perfectly legal family, had been one concealment too far for mother and son.

  Ever since the police had visited their home in Limehouse and revealed that his father had been blackmailed, Harold had watched his mother slowly crumple, as though years of disappointment had finally overwhelmed her, and she had realised that she was never going to be acknowledged as Lady Jarvis and her son given his rightful place at the side of his father.

  Harold had a more pragmatic view of the situation. His simmering resentment of his father and the treatment his mother had received at the hands of her husband had coalesced into cold, hard vengeance. The import/export business was in the names of the three of them but Harold, this week, had had papers drawn up to remove all directorships from his father. Sir Anthony had signed them with reluctance but realised that he had no choice. The debt he owed his wife and son was too great to quibble about his control of the companies in London and Hong Kong.

  Then yesterday, Mei Li had informed her husband that she would be returning to Hong Kong for ever. Harold had decided to join her, as soon as he had appointed a general manager for the Limehouse company. It was time for him to embrace his Chinese origins and stop hoping that he would be accepted as an Englishman. A public-school education had already taught him much about his position in life. To the other boys he was always the ‘Chink with money’, just like his friend, the son of the prime minister of Persia, was always the ‘Wog with money’. It had been offensive and designed to tell him, bluntly, his exact position in society. It was a situation he could bear no longer.

  Therefore, when Harold Chen sat down on the bench next to the pale girl, he was not in a mood to be trifled with.

  The girl said, after a moment’s hesitation, “Who are you?”

  Without looking at her, Chen said, “Believe it or not, I am the son of Sir Anthony Jarvis and I am here to pay the blackmail money that you have extorted from him.”

  The girl sounded nervous, which rather pleased him. “This isn’t what should happen,” she said. “Sir Anthony Jarvis should be here.”

  “Well, it’s not going to happen!” said Harold aggressively, between clenched teeth. “You either accept the money from me or I will walk away, and you can say what you like in the newspapers.”

  He wanted to frighten the girl by grabbing her and threatening her. He knew that he was strong and intimidating. He was toying with the idea of upsetting the police plans and physically harming the girl when some nurse pushing a perambulator stopped a few feet away and began fussing with her baby.

  Suddenly, a beautiful, elegantly dressed woman came almost running into the square and straight up to the bench.

  “You have ruined everything!” she screamed in anger at Harold and the girl and promptly drew a gun and shot them both at close range. There were several screams from women nearby and, in an instant, the men digging close at hand descended on the woman with the gun to disarm and restrain her. Lily slumped to the floor and Harold Chen clutched his chest.

  “Lily! Oh, Lily! Speak to me!” Another woman had run from the nearest gate to crouch over the girl’s body.

  “Lily!” a man roared, and came running from nowhere. “What have you done?” he shouted at the dazed woman who had fired the shots, and tried to grab her around the throat, only to be restrained by one of the plain-clothes policemen.

  Caroline reached the bench at the same time as Beech and she immediately knelt beside the girl, Lily. “She’s still alive,” she yelled to Victoria, who was still running towards the bench. “Get my medical bag!” Then she turned to Harold Chen, who was sitting completely still on the bench. Caroline prised his hand away from his chest and discovered a perfectly formed bloody hole in his shirt, no more than an inch away from his heart. It was obvious that he was having trouble breathing.

  Beech looked at the human damage and then spoke to the woman who had fired the shots. “Good God, Lady Patrick. What have you done now?”

  Tollman had arrived, and immediately shouted, “Billy! Grab that man! It’s Albert Wood!” Billy was moving to arrest the man who had tried to strangle Lady Patrick when Wood lunged and headbutted the policeman restraining him. The man staggered back, his nose broken and bleeding, and Wood grabbed the nearest woman to him, which happened to be Mabel Summersby. Suddenly, everyone was aware that Wood had a handgun pointed at Mabel’s head and everything went quiet.

  “Wood,” said Tollman in a warning voice. “Let the lady go. Don’t be stupid, now.”

  Wood gave a hollow laugh. “Arthur Tollman. I might have known they’d bring you back on the force.”

  “Bert, don’t make things worse,” said the woman who was crying over Lily.

  “Shut up, Louise!” Wood was in no mood to bargain. “It’s over. It’s all gone wrong. If Lily’s dead, what’s the point?”

  Caroline spoke. “Lily’s not dead. But she will be if you don’t let me get her to hospital immediately.”

  Wood nodded. “Do it then. But I’m taking this lady and I’m going to walk out of here. I’m not going to prison.”

  Then he began to walk backwards, out of Russell Square, dragging the helpless Mabel with him. At the gate, he turned, placed the barrel of t
he gun in Mabel’s side and, with his other arm firmly around her waist, started walking north.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Family Enterprise

  As Wood disappeared out of the gate, everyone was galvanised into action.

  “Billy!” Tollman pointed after Wood. “Take four men and follow him at a distance. Don’t give him any opportunity to pull that trigger. I’ll take the rest of the men – except him and him.” He pointed to the copper sitting on the path with blood streaming from his broken nose and the one restraining Lady Patrick. “We’ll go parallel and see if we can get ahead of him and pick up some uniforms on the beat to join us. We’ll try and head him off – see if we can trap him, between us.”

  Billy and the four men nearest to him sped off after Wood. Tollman looked at Beech, suddenly realising that he had overridden his seniority in issuing instructions.

  “Yes, that’s fine, Tollman,” said Beech, who was busy holding Harold Chen while Caroline was applying a pressure bandage to his chest. “Get on with it. I’ll supervise the hospitals and arrests. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  Tollman nodded and raced off with the six Whitechapel men in tow.

  Sissy appeared with the dog. “I’m going to follow Billy,” she said anxiously.

  “No…” Beech protested, but it was too late, Sissy was marching off. “Be careful, please, and keep out of the way of everything!” he shouted after her. Sissy raised a hand to signal that she understood. Beech saw, despairingly, that she had met up with her sister and Lady Maud at the gate. “Victoria! Stop them! We can’t have them following Sissy’s example!”

  Victoria ran across to the gateway and Beech could see that Victoria was remonstrating with the three women, but Sissy and Elsie broke away and were gone. To his relief, Victoria started coming back with Lady Maud alongside her.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop Elsie from wanting to follow Billy. She is his mother, after all. They are both worried about him,” said Victoria apologetically.