Last Nocturne

by M. J. Trow

  ‘A harlot?’ Grand asked.

  ‘Not exactly. But a body in the Cremorne, certainly.’

  ‘Same modus operandi?’ Batchelor asked.

  Bliss chewed his toast. The tea had arrived.

  ‘Very likely,’ he said, when the floozy had gone. ‘She was found in the lake, though.’

  ‘Very Arthurian,’ Batchelor said. ‘Not drowned, though?’

  ‘Definitely not. Metcalfe thought so – but, old mate though he is, poor old Tom isn’t the brightest apple. That’s why he called me in, because of my familiarity with water-borne malfeasance.’

  ‘Do we know who she was yet?’ Grand asked.

  ‘Tom didn’t,’ Bliss said. ‘But I do.’

  ‘Who?’ Grand and Batchelor chorused.

  ‘Funnily enough,’ Bliss said, ‘she’s over there.’

  Both men turned. Through the dingy window, across the street from the Inglenook, a large poster covered a brick wall. It was faded and peeling, but the girl at her toilette with the radiant smile and the bunches of honeysuckle was still recognizable enough.

  ‘The Pears soap girl?’ Batchelor couldn’t see anybody else.

  ‘The same,’ Bliss said, wiping the last of his toast around his plate. ‘To be more precise, Miss Evangeline French, artists’ model extraordinaire. Tell me, Mr Grand, are you going to eat that sausage?’

  ‘Er … no,’ Grand said, still taking in what Bliss had just told them. ‘Feel free.’

  Bliss stabbed it with alacrity, chewing contentedly. ‘Nothing like the full American, is there?’ He chomped his way through the last of the marmalade. ‘By the way,’ he said, as well as the sticky orange stuff would allow, ‘you know you’re being followed, you two, don’t you?’

  NINE

  They parted company at the end of the King’s Road. Grand hailed a cab rattling east; Batchelor took an omnibus, one of Mr Shillibeer’s finest. As for Bliss, he did what he always did, travelled by boat along the river, putting the fear of God into the boatman by his very presence.

  Whoever it was that Bliss had spotted watching the detectives now had a straight choice. He could either hail a cab too and stick like glue to Grand, or he could catch another omnibus behind Batchelor. They always come in pairs and sometimes three after an interminable wait, all of them following the same route and ending up in the same place.

  Batchelor saw him briefly, waving his arm in the air as a gig lurched to a halt alongside him. He was tall and broad, wearing an appalling check suit, and Batchelor thought he looked quite familiar. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he had gone, vanished into the body of the cabriolet. Batchelor was sitting on the open top of the omnibus, at the back where he could watch his entire surroundings. In the end, his neck gave out as he was trying to twist in every direction, but there was no doubt that the cab was following the omnibus.

  He deliberately got off at Charing Cross and made the rest of the way on foot, knowing that his shadow would have to do the same. He paused at the copy of the Eleanor Cross, admiring its Gothic symmetry. Then he bought a flower from a seller and placed it in his lapel. From there, he ducked down towards the river, under the arches at the Adelphi. Whenever he glanced back, his shadow was there, always with his head turned or his bowler tilted forward. At one point, he had his nose pressed up against the glass of a window displaying ladies’ unmentionables. The next moment, he was risking life and limb walking along reading a newspaper, the Morning Advertiser in front of his face.

  This was the Maryanne’s Mile, where men were often followed by other men and nobody turned a hair. Batchelor nipped to his left, up the Embankment garden and back to the Strand. He let himself into the office and glanced down from the first-floor window. There he was, lounging against a tree. And he was sure of it now. He knew who his follower was.

  Meanwhile, Matthew Grand had arrived at the Wentworth London residence without seeing anyone behind him. He had deliberately stopped his cab two streets away and had ducked and dived through gardens and at one point through a cab parked at the side of the road, to the consternation and surprise of the paying passenger. Arriving at the front door, he tapped on the knocker without turning his back on the street, no mean feat.

  The door swung open and he slid inside, closing it behind him. Turning, he saw a startled Eleanor standing there, eyes wide.

  ‘Morning, Ellie,’ he said, breezily. ‘Lady Caroline in?’

  ‘I’ll see if Her Ladyship is At Home,’ Eleanor said in rather more formal tones than usual.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Grand said, heading for the drawing room, ‘I’ll show myself in,’ and he threw open the door.

  The wind that blew between the rooms cut him to the bone. On one side of the fireplace sat his fiancée. On the other, her mother, looking as though she were in the process of being thawed after long years in the permafrost.

  ‘Mr Grand,’ she said, offering a hand wrapped in a wisp of black lace. ‘How lovely to see you at this early hour. Lady Caroline and I are not At Home at the moment.’

  Caroline’s eyes were on his face, filled with mute appeal. This was not the first time he had been in this predicament. It was almost – but not quite – as bad as the time he had waltzed into a dining room one morning in his dressing gown to find his current light o’ love’s grandfather sitting at the head of the table, reading The Times. That would take some beating, but this called for some quick thinking.

  He stepped forward and took her hand, kissing it extravagantly. ‘Lady Wentworth,’ he said, hoping he had it right. If he lived to a hundred he would never get English titles worked out. ‘How lovely to see you. I hope I haven’t interrupted you and Lady Caroline, but I have a question to ask her, concerning a case.’

  He had been doing well enough until he used the ‘c’ word.

  ‘Lady Caroline is involved in a case?’ Her mother’s voice could have etched glass.

  ‘Not involved, Mama, no, of course not.’ Caroline always tended to regress to the nursery when her mother was about. ‘But I was unfortunate enough yesterday to be taken by a friend to an artists’ soirée and … I believe Matthew … Mr Grand, might need some information I gleaned in conversation.’

  Her mother swivelled to face her as if on castors. ‘You conversed with artists, Caroline?’ she asked, aghast.

  ‘No, no, Mama, not at all. I conversed with … Mrs Millais, mainly.’

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed and her mind clicked through a filing system that made Gan Martin’s look like a pile of torn paper. ‘Would that be Euphemia Gray, as was?’

  Caroline shrugged. ‘Possibly,’ she ventured.

  ‘The trollop who was married to John Ruskin?’

  ‘I believe so, yes.’ Caroline felt herself to be on safe ground. She knew her mother was a great believer in Ruskin’s opinion.

  ‘Then you should be ashamed of yourself!’ The woman drew herself up in a scream of whalebone. ‘You have no idea the distress that woman caused to that sainted man. He worshipped her, literally worshipped her, Mr Grand,’ the implied inference that he would never reach those giddy heights vis-à-vis her daughter was written in capitals over her head, ‘and she let him down. Just because …’ She remembered she was in the presence of an unmarried woman and stayed her tongue. She sighed and let herself collapse into the embrace of her corset again, ‘I digress. I merely say, for what it’s worth, that I never want to hear you say you have met with this woman again. It is time I returned to London as your chaperone, Caroline. I had no idea you were living this rackety sort of life.’ She swivelled to Grand again. ‘What was your question, Mr Grand?’

  ‘Umm …’ Grand wasn’t sure how to couch it now. ‘Caro …’ He saw the warning in her eyes. ‘… line,’ he said. ‘Could you tell me if the mod … person you met yesterday at Mrs Millais’s Morning was the girl in the Pears soap advertisement.’

  Caroline screwed up her nose. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Which one?’

  Grand was stuck. He didn’t know
there was more than one.

  She helped him out. ‘Do you mean the one where she is looking in the mirror, or the lounging back one.’

  ‘The second.’

  ‘Then, yes,’ she said. ‘She is.’

  Grand stood irresolute. At this point, he usually kissed his fiancée, but wasn’t sure whether his mother-in-law-to-be would approve. Caroline saved the problem by standing up and offering him her forehead. He dropped a chaste kiss somewhere near her hairline, bowed to her mother and beat a retreat.

  In the hall, Eleanor was dusting ostentatiously.

  ‘You could have warned me, Eleanor!’ Grand hissed.

  Eleanor rolled her eyes and shrugged. She wanted the old besom to clear off as much as Grand did. When she was in residence, she made a point of going round with a pair of white gloves on, checking for dust on a daily basis. When the grocer’s boy next arrived with an order, Eleanor was going to give him the treat of his life. Moral stands were all very good, but it was time she got this young man to the altar, and the quicker the better.

  ‘No harm done, Ellie,’ he muttered. ‘Just don’t let the old bat eat anyone. Especially Miss Caroline. I’ve heard that sows often eat their young.’

  Eleanor was still giggling when Lady Wentworth swept out into the hall. ‘You!’ she said. ‘Eleanor, isn’t it?’

  The maid bobbed a curtsy.

  ‘Any more laughing and you can take your month’s notice. I will not have laughing under my roof.’

  In the drawing room, Caroline let her head fall back onto the antimacassar. Bugger the bridesmaids’ dresses. She was going to have to get this wedding organized as soon as possible.

  Grand was still feeling the chill in his bones when he got to the office. Batchelor was standing in the window, but pressed against the side of his elaborate desk-cum-bookcase, which was still tidy as he hadn’t actually sat at it yet. He was looking down into the street.

  ‘Well?’ Grand asked him, using his elite detective skills to deduce that he was looking for the man supposed to be following them. ‘I didn’t see anybody behind me.’

  ‘No,’ Batchelor said. ‘That’s because he was behind me. It’s …’

  The door clicked open and Martin swept in, his friend Wilde in tow. ‘Good morning, sirs,’ he said. ‘You’re early.’

  ‘What kept you, Wilde?’ Batchelor snapped.

  The younger Oxford man looked at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘Lovely gardenia in your buttonhole.’ Batchelor was acid itself. ‘Did you get that from the flower girl at the Adelphi?’

  ‘The Adelphi?’ Wilde frowned. ‘Good Lord, no. When I’m in town, I get them from Bloomgard’s, St James’s.’ He looked at the rest of the company. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘What about the ladies’ whatsits in the window of Eulalie Lingerie? See anything there to fit you?’

  ‘I must beg your pardon again.’ Wilde was fuming.

  ‘Not like you to repeat yourself, Oscar,’ Martin said, smiling and trying to bring down the temperature. ‘What’s going on, Mr Batchelor?’

  ‘What indeed, James?’ Grand felt obliged to ask.

  ‘Ask Fingal O’Flaherty here,’ Batchelor said. ‘Who has been following Grand and I for days now.’

  ‘Grand and me,’ Wilde corrected him.

  ‘So you admit it!’ Batchelor crossed to Wilde and stared at his cravat.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Wilde retorted. ‘I was merely trying to preserve the beauty of the English language as best I might.’

  ‘Explain yourself, Wilde,’ Grand said.

  But there was no time for that. There was a thunderous knocking at the door and Grand ran to answer it. The other three stood there, fuming still for different reasons. Then Grand was back, dragging a street urchin by the sleeve.

  ‘Say that again,’ he said. ‘You’d think I’d be used to Cockney sparrer by now, but I’d rather have a second opinion.’

  ‘Out with it, young feller.’ Batchelor was London born and bred; he’d have no difficulty.

  ‘This geezer,’ the out-of-breath lad wheezed, ‘bloke wiv a stick, looks like somefink out of the Bible. Artist, he said he was. Or a cricket – I’m not sure which.’

  ‘John Ruskin?’ Batchelor interpreted for the boy.

  ‘That’s ’im. ’E’s round the corner in the Aldwych, gettin’ the shit kicked out of ’im by anuvver bloke. Funny accent ’e’s got, mad hair.’

  ‘Funny accent like mine?’ Grand asked.

  ‘Yeah!’ The lad clicked his fingers. ‘Blimey, they’re all at it.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Batchelor asked.

  ‘This geezer, the bloke with the stick said, “Get round the corner. Go to the hoffices of Mr Grand and Mr Batchelor, tell ’em to give you a quid.”’

  ‘How much?’ Batchelor’s eyebrows threatened to reach his hairline.

  ‘Two bob,’ the lad said.

  Batchelor narrowed his eyes at the boy.

  ‘All right, a tanner,’ he said.

  ‘I assume he needs our help?’ Grand asked.

  ‘S’pose so,’ the boy said. ‘What wiv the gammy leg and all. I don’t know why ’e didn’t ask a p’liceman.’

  ‘No point,’ said Batchelor, snapping up his hat. ‘They don’t even know what time it is.’

  It was scarcely a battlefield, but quite a crowd had gathered at the Aldwych to watch two pensioners, as Grand might put it, slug it out.

  ‘It’s outrageous, Ruskin,’ Whistler was shouting, ‘and I won’t put up with it!’

  ‘For the last time, Whistler,’ the Old Testament prophet was saying, ‘I haven’t touched your blasted painting. Nothing would induce me.’

  ‘Liar!’ Whistler screamed.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ Batchelor arrived, the others in tow. ‘This isn’t very seemly, is it?’

  ‘Mr Whistler,’ Grand murmured in the man’s ear. ‘Not exactly West Point, huh?’

  Actually, it was exactly West Point, and both men knew it. Grand had long ago lost count of the altercations he’d had back in the day, on the banks of the Hudson. If Grand and Batchelor were determined to be peacemakers, much to the disappointment of the raucous crowd, Oscar Wilde was not. He assessed the situation, saw a sixty year old with a stick being bullied by a man in his mid-forties. It was no contest. He brought his right arm back and drove his fist into Whistler’s chin. The man went down like a ton of bricks, much to the crowd’s delight; here and there, money changed hands.

  Martin saw the horrified looks on the faces of Grand and Batchelor. ‘He boxes at Oxford,’ he said, by way of explanation for Wilde’s behaviour.

  From nowhere, there was the cacophony of a police rattle and four boys in blue were forcing their way through the crowd, elbowing people aside, generally making their presence felt.

  ‘He swung the first one, Sarge,’ one of them said to the man with stripes on his sleeve. The two others grabbed Wilde, one to each arm.

  ‘And he didn’t swing at all,’ the observant one pointed to the fallen Whistler.

  ‘Never mind,’ the sergeant said. ‘Bring ’im in too.’

  ‘This does add a whole new dimension, James.’ Grand was lighting his cigar.

  ‘What does?’

  ‘The identity of the lady in the lake.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Batchelor agreed, picking his way through a box of chocolates. ‘Makes you wonder about the others, doesn’t it? Mabel and Clara, I mean.’

  ‘What, were they models as well, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve no idea what an artists’ model earns, but it’s got to be safer than lying on your back under the stars.’

  ‘That’s very poetic, James,’ Grand smiled. ‘You’ve been spending too long in the company of Mr Wilde.’

  ‘Heaven forfend.’ Batchelor pulled a face.

  ‘Coffee cream?’ Grand asked.

  ‘Strawberry delight.’ Batchelor winced as it went down. ‘No, when the boys in blue see fit to let that man go, I want to con
tinue my conversation with him.’

  ‘You still think he was following you? Us?’

  ‘I do,’ Batchelor said. ‘Consider this, Matthew. We take on Gan Martin – all right, he was my contact initially. Then, lo and behold, Gan Martin turns out to have a friend – a year his junior, mind you – still at Oxford; a man who, despite being a student, seems to have all the time in the world. A man who is always there, like Banquo’s ghost. I would expect to have met the man once, not stuck to Martin like glue.’

  ‘But why would he follow us?’ Grand was playing devil’s advocate.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Batchelor said. ‘I only know he didn’t turn up until the bodies began to do the same in the Cremorne.’

  ‘What do we know about Evangeline French?’ Grand pinched the hazelnut heaven just before Batchelor got there. He needed to get him off the vexed subject of Oscar Wilde.

  ‘Worked for G.F. Watts.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Grand said. ‘I thought you went to the Royal Academy this afternoon?’

  ‘I did and I spoke to the curator chappie.’

  ‘Helpful?’

  ‘No. Had rather a smell under his nose. I made the mistake of mentioning the Grosvenor, after which he treated me like shit on his shoe. He didn’t know much about Evangeline. Knew an awful lot more about Elizabeth Siddal, was the impression I got. Seemed to think her hair wasn’t really auburn – or, as he called it, “spun copper”.’

  Grand snorted.

  ‘He found Burne-Jones’s work decadent – what he would expect, apparently, from the son of a frame-maker. Did I mention that he mentioned that Elizabeth Siddal worked in a milliners’?’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Well, he did – and she did. Evangeline, on the other hand, began her working life as a seamstress. She doesn’t seem to have been anybody’s regular model.’

  ‘You mean, she put it about a bit?’ Grand wanted to be sure.

  ‘In the nicest possible way, yes. Rather than assume that the other victims could have posed too, I think we should assume our murderer has changed direction. Could he have mistaken Evangeline for a tart?’