A Death in Chelsea

by Lynn Brittney

  “Well, let’s hope they don’t put themselves and Billy in danger.” Beech was distracted. Lady Patrick and the woman holding Lily’s hand were crying. Caroline had now turned her attention to Lily and was trying to revive her. Victoria retrieved the picnic rug from the grass and folded it up to put under Lily’s head. Then she took some gauze from Caroline’s bag and started to clean up the policeman.

  “Mother – is there a drinking fountain nearby?” she asked, trying to wipe off the caked blood, which was now drying in the sun.

  “What about this?” Lady Maud proffered the hip flask.

  Victoria looked amused but gratefully accepted it. She moistened the gauze and began to wipe the blood away.

  Caroline stood up. “I think Lily has a bullet lodged in her pelvis, just by the groin,” she said. The woman cradling Lily audibly sobbed. “I need to summon ambulances. I can take Lily to my hospital, but this gentleman will have to go to University College Hospital. I need to telephone…” She looked around anxiously.

  “There will be a telephone in the Underground station,” Beech said.

  “Right.” Caroline quickly ran up the long tree-lined walk.

  Victoria had finished cleaning up the policeman. Beech and Maud helped him up and sat him on the bench next to Harold Chen, who was labouring to breathe.

  “Constable, what’s your name?” asked Beech.

  “Thomson, sir,” was the muffled reply from the man, whose top lip was beginning to swell, and his eye sockets were starting to look bruised.

  “Well, Thomson, you look in a bad way and you need proper medical attention, so I’m going to send you in the ambulance with Mr Chen here. If you could take care of him and make sure he is settled before you get your own injuries dealt with, I would be grateful.” Thomson nodded. “Good man,” Beech added and patted him on the shoulder.

  Then he moved across to the woman sitting on the ground by the unconscious Lily.

  “Can I have your name please, madam?”

  Without taking her eyes from Lily’s face, the woman said, “Louise Wood. Albert’s my husband and Lily’s my daughter.”

  ***

  Billy and the other men were walking at a steady pace, keeping Wood and Mabel in sight at all times. Wood had looked back a couple of times and seen them, but he had just grinned, pulled Mabel closer to him and continued his onward march.

  Billy had looked back at one point to discover, to his horror, that his mother, aunt and dog were following at a distance. He motioned to them to go back but they just ignored him. He resigned himself to the fact that they were too stubborn to take any notice of him and he resolved not to look back any more. He was worried about Mabel. He didn’t know how resilient she was. She’s a lady pharmacist of a certain age, he reasoned, I don’t know if she can cope with all this.

  Wood was proceeding past Woburn Square garden now and as he reached the main thoroughfare, Billy saw him look to his right and shout something. Then Wood turned abruptly left.

  “Let’s see if we can head him off through Woburn Square,” shouted Billy and his band of men turned left into the square and began to run, diagonally, across the lawns. As they burst out of the north-west corner, Billy saw that they had just missed Wood, who was now crossing the road and hurrying down the side of Gordon Square. As Billy looked to his right, he could see Tollman advancing up the main road with his band of men and two uniformed officers in addition.

  “Right, lads, let’s do another sprint up through Gordon Square and see if we can head him off at the next junction!” So, they sprinted across the road and entered the square. As they ran, Billy could see through the trees and foliage that they had passed Wood, who was walking as briskly as he could on the pavement outside the railings. Mabel is slowing him down, Billy thought, and he felt another pang of pity for the poor pharmacist who had willingly volunteered for this adventure.

  As they hurtled out of the top of the square and turned back, they had overtaken Wood by about a hundred yards.

  “Fan out across the road,” Billy commanded.

  Wood stopped dead, faced with a line of men obstructing his way. He looked back and saw Tollman and his policemen advancing. Suddenly, he pushed Mabel sideways and she almost stumbled, but Wood grabbed her again and propelled her up a side street.

  “Bugger!” said Billy. “He’s going into the university!”

  Tollman realised the same thing and both groups ran to join each other and follow Wood. As they headed up the driveway, and the imposing Georgian buildings of University College loomed ahead of them, they could see Wood dragging Mabel up some steps. She stumbled again, her skirt having caught in her boot, and Billy saw her put her hand out and then collapse. “Oh my God! She’s had a heart attack!” he said out loud, but then he saw Wood drag her up and she managed to walk up the final steps, clutching her wrist with the other hand. Then they disappeared inside a door.

  Tollman shouted, “Billy, take the main entrance! Three men go round the back! We’ll follow him in this door!”

  They split up into their groups and Billy’s men started up the staircase that led up to the colonnaded entrance to the building. As they neared the top, they heard a shot, followed by many screams, and suddenly people came streaming out of the building and Billy found himself fighting to get through the tide of humanity. He grabbed one young woman and shouted, “The man with the gun, where did he go? Which way?” She fearfully pointed to the right of the main entrance and Billy pressed on.

  Inside, the people were still trying to push past. One of Billy’s men shouted “Rigsby!” and pointed up the corridor, where the figure of Wood was bundling Mabel through a door. They ran as hard as they could and then ranged themselves either side of the door. Billy carefully opened the door a crack to see that there was a flight of stairs, which seemed to go all the way up to the top level of the building.

  “Take your boots off, lads,” he said quietly. “We need to follow him up this staircase as quietly as possible.”

  Everyone started unlacing their boots, just as Tollman arrived with his men.

  “What’s the score?” Tollman asked breathlessly.

  “Wood’s dragged Mabel up a long flight of stairs. I think she’s hurt. She fell over and I think she might have broken her wrist. We’re going to follow him up as quietly as we can.”

  Tollman nodded, looking grim. “I’ll be up in a minute,” he said. “Don’t do anything until I’m up there. Maybe I can talk him round. Meanwhile, I’m going to get these other men to evacuate the building. Lads, get your warrant cards out and start getting people out of the way. Get them right out of the area. We don’t want Wood taking potshots at people through a window.”

  All the men scattered, and Billy’s group slipped in through the door. As he looked up, Billy could see Wood’s long mackintosh flapping through the struts of the handrail as he made his way up the seemingly endless flight of stairs.

  ***

  Lily was in surgery and her mother was refusing to leave the Women’s Hospital until she knew her daughter was alive and well. Beech took over Caroline’s consulting room so he could interview her.

  Lady Patrick had been taken off to Scotland Yard to cool her heels in one of the cells until Beech returned – but not before her bag had been taken away and she had been subjected to a body search by Victoria.

  “Who knows how many guns this woman has, tucked away,” Beech had said irritably.

  Lady Patrick had looked defiant, even though Victoria had intruded upon her person by raising her skirts and feeling both of her thighs to make sure she wasn’t wearing a garter belt with guns tucked into them.

  Victoria had then volunteered to supervise Lady Patrick at Scotland Yard, although she desperately wanted to go and help release Mabel.

  Lady Maud had been persuaded to go home, with the perambulator and Mabel’s precious camera, on the unders
tanding that she would be telephoned with news the moment that Mabel was rescued.

  Beech was deeply concerned that he should be supervising the operation to capture Wood, but he knew that his damaged leg did not allow him to move quickly and he would probably hinder progress. Besides, he trusted Tollman and Rigsby to do the best that they could.

  Louise Wood had been given a cup of tea and was now sitting anxiously awaiting news of her daughter.

  “Mrs Wood,” Beech began, “Am I correct in assuming that you also go under the name of Louise Leighton and run a club called the Servants’ Sewing Circle?”

  Louise nodded.

  “Can I also confirm that your daughter, Lily, worked for the late Adeline Treborne?”

  “We all did,” she replied quietly. “It was a family business, you might say.”

  “I think you had better explain everything to me, in as much detail as possible,” said Beech firmly, grabbing a notepad and pen from Caroline’s desk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Ladies of Crime

  In Scotland Yard, Detective Sergeant Carter eyed the refined-looking woman and the scruffy-looking man with dirt on his boots with suspicion.

  Word had got around the Yard that a copper in plain clothes from Whitechapel had brought in the wife of an eminent QC, who was cussing and shouting like a fishwife down in the cells. Carter had come to see for himself. He couldn’t see the woman in custody, but he could certainly hear her. She sounded American and she was letting rip in the cell, occasionally banging on the door for emphasis.

  “Do you think I would have married that pompous bastard,” she was yelling, “if it wasn’t for his money?! I’ve never been so bored in my life!” She kicked the door and screamed, “Aagh!”

  The refined-looking woman seemed to be writing it all down, and occasionally the man in grubby clothes shouted, “Mind your language!”

  “Need any help down here?” Carter asked from the doorway.

  “No, thank you, sir,” said the man. “Just waiting for Chief Inspector Beech.”

  Carter nodded and retreated.

  Upstairs he sought out Sergeant Stenton, the fount of all human knowledge in Scotland Yard.

  “What’s all this palaver downstairs, with the American woman and the copper from Whitechapel?” he asked confidentially.

  Stenton, like many of the uniformed section, did not have a lot of time for DS Carter but he was too wise to show it. He shrugged and said, “Something to do with Chief Inspector Beech and a shooting at Russell Square.”

  “A shooting?” Carter was getting more and more interested. He was still aggrieved at being outsmarted by Tollman over the finding of Sidney Baker and he was getting a little peeved about this little ‘team’ of Rigsby, Tollman and Beech. “You don’t get many of them to the pound, now. Anything else?” he probed.

  Stenton smiled. “I don’t mess with Chief Inspector Beech’s cases, son, and you shouldn’t either.”

  Carter was irritated at being warned off. “Why? What’s so special about Beech’s cases then?” he asked shirtily.

  “He’s got the special favour of the Commissioner, that’s why. So back off, if you know what’s good for you.”

  Carter was stung but he couldn’t think of a reply, so he walked away.

  ***

  Louise Wood had told the story of her involvement with not just Adeline Treborne, but the whole Treborne family.

  Beech learned that Louise Leighton, as she then was, had been a housemaid for the Treborne family. She had worked for them since the age of fourteen and it was when she was sixteen that she caught the eye of the son of the house and was seduced. The resulting pregnancy was hushed up. She left the Treborne household without references because she did not give a period of notice. No one, except the son and daughter of the household, knew that she was pregnant and the daughter, Adeline, had been deputed by her brother to deal with the situation. Adeline found a place for her at Ivy House in Hackney – an unmarried mothers’ home run by The Salvation Army – because ordinary maternity hospitals would only help married women give birth. After the birth, Adeline took the child and told Louise that she had organised an adoption through the Catholic Church. Louise was sad but content that her child would have a good home. Then Adeline forged some references from her mother, so that Louise could get employment in a modest household in Richmond.

  After a year, when Louise was almost eighteen, she had met and married Albert Wood who was, at that time, a serving policeman. Albert, it appeared, was making good money from all sorts of little side ventures, not altogether honest, but they were able to rent a decent house in Marylebone and have middle-class pretensions. That year, their daughter, Lily, was born.

  Albert was eventually thrown out of the police force, but not before he had made enough connections to be able to work as a private detective, mostly for the legal profession.

  The Treborne family, meanwhile, had lost everything and a chance meeting between Adeline and Louise, about two years ago, had revealed that Adeline Treborne was very bitter about being without money and filled with rage at the way society had treated her, now that she was penniless.

  That was when Albert had come up with the idea of Adeline being a gossip columnist. He and Louise would feed the gossip to Adeline and she would get paid for it – giving them a commission for the information. They also persuaded Adeline to employ their daughter, Lily, as a maid. Lily was thirteen at the time. Louise wrote the gossip column for Adeline every week. She would visit her very late at night and write down everything that Adeline dictated. But Adeline got greedy and creative. It was then that Louise realised that Adeline was deliberately leaving some of the gossip out of the newspaper column because she was blackmailing people.

  Albert was furious. Not only had she left them out of the blackmail operation but she was also becoming increasingly dependent upon drugs and alcohol and was likely to spill the beans inadvertently at some point and put them all in danger. Albert decided that she must be ‘got rid of’. Louise was fearful of taking such a step.

  Albert said it would be a simple thing to do because, as Louise explained to Beech, she was the one who, over the course of the last six months, had been obtaining the drugs and injecting Adeline with heroin on a regular basis.

  There was something else, though, and this was when Louise became truly tearful and Beech had to summon a nurse to administer a mild sedative. It transpired that, the week before Adeline’s death, in one of her drugged states, she had revealed to Louise that, sixteen years before, she had not taken her baby to the Catholic Church Adoption Society, but she had given it to Ruth Baker, the baby farmer. Adeline had given Louise’s son – the child she had never forgotten and thought about every day – to a woman who had been suspected of killing all the babies put in her charge. When Adeline also revealed that she had found out where Ruth Baker lived and was now blackmailing her, it had proved too much for Louise. She went home and agreed, wholeheartedly, to Albert’s plan to kill Adeline Treborne.

  There were a few details that puzzled Beech.

  “How did you know where these people lived? The people Adeline was blackmailing?” he asked Louise. “Were their addresses in the book?”

  Louise nodded. “But most of them had been found by Albert anyway. He had some contacts in the police that he drew on and he had other methods. He’s a good detective. He found Kitty Bellamy and Reginald Ingham and Ruth Baker. Anything to do with the aristocracy and others, I found out from the maids gossiping at my sewing circle. The thing is,” she added, “Albert didn’t know about the baby I had before I met him. He didn’t know about the importance of Ruth Baker to me. He didn’t have anything to do with her death. That was me. She opened the door, I said ‘Ruth Baker?’, she said ‘Yes?’ and I stabbed her. It was premeditated. I took a kitchen knife with me and I stabbed her. I said, ‘That’s for my baby, you evil wit
ch! May you rot in hell!’” Louise began to cry again. “And, Chief Inspector, I tell you now, even though I know I will hang for it… I would do it again.”

  There was silence for a while, as Beech allowed her to cry and get everything out of her system. Then he asked another question.

  “Did your daughter, Lily, know that you were going to give Adeline Treborne an overdose?” Louise nodded. “Then why was she so upset on the day that we interviewed her?”

  Louise looked at him and said, “Because she wasn’t expecting to see Adeline hanging from the ceiling! She was deeply shocked! We had told her that Adeline would be just lying on the bed – because that was how I had left her, the night before. She hadn’t quite stopped breathing but I could see she was on her way out. I found the blackmail ledger and cut the pages out, so I could stuff them in my handbag, then left, down the back stairs. My Lily was terrified when she saw Adeline swinging there! She couldn’t understand what had happened. I never thought for one moment that the stupid woman would revive from the drugs and decide to hang herself!”

  The Wood family did not know, of course, that Ruth and Sidney Baker were the ones who had strung up Adeline Treborne.

  “Just one more thing, Mrs Wood,” Beech said. “Did you have a key to the back door of Trinity Mansions?”

  “Of course! Lily had one and I had one. Albert never went there. It was just Lily and I who went in and out.”

  Beech said quietly but firmly, “Louise Wood, I’m afraid that I shall have to charge you with two counts of premeditated murder.”

  She bowed her head and said nothing.

  There was a knock at the door and Caroline entered, looking tired and hot as she pulled off her theatre gown and hat.

  “Lily will be all right,” she said simply, and Louise dissolved into yet more tears. “The small-calibre bullet had actually lodged in her pelvic bone. She will probably suffer some pain and it may plague her with arthritis in later life, but luckily it missed a main artery and she has not suffered any great loss of blood.”