Broken Threads

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘But she took our daughter, she carried her off to London ‒ she let her lover give her away ‒’

  ‘Mr Armstrong, no one saw Mrs Corvill with your daughter.’

  ‘You mean at the London hotel, but we hope to find the chambermaid ‒’

  ‘Even if you do, you know perhaps that in Scottish law we prefer to have two direct witnesses.’

  ‘My mother-in-law, the elder Mrs Corvill ‒’

  ‘The elder Mrs Corvill is dead.’

  ‘But she saw Lucy with Heather ‒ she told my wife so.’

  ‘I don’t wish to sound a note of levity, Mr Armstrong, but you may have heard the phrase coined by Mr Dickens: “What the soldier said is not evidence”.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What your wife was told is not evidence.’

  ‘But her own mother ‒!’

  McArder nodded, as if he had heard the tone a great many times before. ‘It makes you indignant, sir. I understand you. You know your wife is a woman of probity and your mother-in-law would only speak the truth to her. Nevertheless, it is not admissible in court as evidence.’

  Ronald leapt up, towering over the advocate. ‘I don’t believe this!’

  ‘Calm yourself, Mr Armstrong.’ The man was so gaunt, so tall and thin, he was alarming in the sedate office. ‘I’m afraid you must believe me on a point of law. There are no witnesses in the case against Lucy Corvill for the abduction of your daughter.’

  ‘But she herself confessed to it!’ Ronald shouted, hitting the desk with his hand. ‘She admitted it all!’

  To his incredulous amazement, the advocate was shaking his head. ‘No, sir, she did not.’

  ‘But she did! In Dover! She told Jenny ‒’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Yes, my wife Jenny ‒’

  ‘I repeat, Mr Armstrong. What Lucy Corvill told Jenny is not evidence.’

  ‘But how else did we know which inn in Holborn to go to? Only because Lucy told us ‒’

  ‘You may have gone to every inn in Holborn and the Fleet. There is no proof that Mrs Corvill ever took a child there. She made no statement to the police, signed no paper ‒’

  ‘God in Heaven! She was hysterical ‒ too hysterical to be questioned by a police officer, so my wife ‒’

  ‘Your wife heard this information. Exactly.’

  ‘And a police constable was in the room ‒’

  ‘But took no notes which she might have signed afterwards. Believe me, Mr Armstrong, it gives me no pleasure to tell you this, but there is no evidence against Mrs Corvill except her own admissions, which were never written down and signed by her, and which in any case she now denies.’

  ‘Denies!’

  ‘At least, she has sent a statement through her lawyer that she remembers nothing.’

  Ronald twisted one hand in the other, as if he were wringing the neck of Lucy Corvill. ‘A convenient loss of memory, is that it?’

  ‘She was ill, confused, she remembers nothing. That is the gist of the statement she has now made to her lawyer.’

  Ronald folded slowly on to the chair behind him. He ran fingers through his sandy hair. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘The attack on my mother-in-law, from the results of which she has since died ‒’

  ‘There is no evidence that the young Mrs Corvill had anything to do with that. It could have been a simple accident.’

  ‘But ‒’ He broke off. Only Millicent could prove the contrary. And Millicent was dead.

  After a pause he said, ‘There could be a charge of simple theft. That would be better than nothing.’

  ‘What did Mrs Corvill steal? She says she knows nothing of Mrs Massiter’s diamonds, and as for the jewels and some other items ‒’ he glanced through his papers ‘‒ a gold watch and shirt studs and etcetera, her husband says she took those with his permission.’

  Ronald felt as if a mighty hand had smitten him. His breath seemed to have deserted him. After a long moment he said, ‘Are you telling me that this wicked little bitch is going to get off scot-free?’

  McArder smiled. ‘Well, ah, hardly scot-free. Her husband will of course divorce her, she will be left penniless and cut off from good society. I think you may say ‒’

  ‘I may say that you’re quite wrong,’ Ronald interrupted harshly. ‘Her husband’s shown you what he feels by claiming he gave permission for her to run off with her jewels and his belongings.’

  ‘Oh, that’s different. He doesn’t want her to face a criminal charge. But on the marital charge ‒’

  ‘He won’t bring it.’

  ‘But he must, Mr Armstrong. After such a flagrant episode ‒’

  ‘He won’t, you’ll see. He’s already forgiven her.’

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘The only way she’s going to be made to suffer for what she’s done is if we bring her to court for abduction or assault or manslaughter. We have to do it, Mr McArder.’

  Now it was the advocate’s turn to fall silent. At length he said, ‘I can only tell you what the law allows. The evidence we have against Mrs Corvill is negligible. We cannot prosecute.’

  With this news Ronald had to go back to Galashiels. But when he reported it to Jenny she didn’t cry out against it. She listened in silence, then nodded without comment.

  ‘Don’t you care?’ he shouted at her. ‘Doesn’t it matter to you that that selfish guiser is going to live and be happy after what she’s done?’

  ‘It matters less to me than it does to you, my dear ‒’

  ‘I want her punished! She ought to swing at the end of a rope!’

  ‘Ronald, man, how would that help? Would it bring Heather back?’

  He realised all at once that they were strongly at odds, that they might very well quarrel if he didn’t mind what he said. He fell silent, but it broke something in him to think she didn’t feel as he did over this bitter defeat.

  Ned turned up at Gatesmuir the following evening, when Jenny and Ronald were picking at a dinner for which they neither of them had any appetite. Thirley came to announce she had shown him into the drawing room. He awaited them there with obvious trepidation, but with his words rehearsed.

  ‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he began. ‘The Procurator Fiscal has let us know that no charges are to be brought against Lucy, so we’re going away.’

  ‘Are you, my bucko,’ said Ronald. ‘Take her to Italy. She wanted to go to Italy.’

  His brother-in-law went red at the sneer. ‘We’re going to the West Indies. To tell the truth, we have had some hints that Lucy wouldn’t be safe if she went out and about in London ‒’

  ‘That will be from Mrs Massiter,’ Jenny said, with ironic amusement. ‘Mrs Massiter is a good hater.’

  ‘I think she’s demented,’ Ned remarked in a chill tone. ‘But I didn’t come here to speak of that. I came to say that you won’t be seeing me again for a very long time. I wanted to ask, Jenny, if we might say goodbye without hard words ‒’

  ‘If you imagine we’re going to wish you and your wife well, you’re out of your senses,’ Ronald said.

  ‘I don’t expect your good wishes. But we are members of the same family, after all.’

  ‘Blood is thicker than water, you mean.’

  ‘After all, Ronald, there’s truth in that ‒’

  ‘But blood has been shed. Lucy killed your own mother ‒’

  ‘I don’t think we can be sure of that. Lucy denies she ever saw Mother.’

  ‘Carefully coached by the lawyer you hired, I take it.’

  Jenny had listened in silence to most of the exchange between the two men. She spoke now. ‘There’s one thing I should like to ask, Ned.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Has Lucy ever uttered a word of contrition?’

  He looked confused and flustered. ‘She’s sorry, of course she’s sorry Heather went missing ‒ she loves the child. Do you think she hasn’t suffered?’

  ‘But has she sent you here to ask for forgiveness?’ />
  ‘She … I …’

  ‘I see she has not,’ Jenny said, feeling once again that wild anger that often threatened her these days. ‘Very well. There’s no more to be said on that score.’

  ‘I don’t want us to be enemies, Jenny.’

  ‘You just intend to leave, is that it? Just walk away?’

  ‘There seems nothing else to do.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten something, brother. You are the owner of Waterside Mill, of William Corvill and Son. There are always papers that need your signature, agreements that await your approval.’

  ‘Och, you know I never played any real part in the business, Jenny.’

  ‘Quite so. But if you are in the West Indies, who is to sign the papers that need your name?’

  ‘You can do that.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be legal.’ Jenny stared at him, her eyes dark. ‘I need your power of attorney, Ned.’

  ‘Of course. You shall have it.’

  ‘I need a legal agreement giving me full control of William Corvill and Son.’

  ‘Yes, I understand. I’m willing to give you that.’

  ‘We’ll go to see Mr Kennet this evening. He’ll draw up the papers in the morning and you’ll sign them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘After that you go to the West Indies and you never interfere in anything to do with the mill.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you don’t need to labour the point. I agree, of course I agree.’

  ‘Very well.’ She rang for Thirley to bring her brother’s hat and coat. She went upstairs to fetch her cloak. Ronald followed her.

  ‘What is this? Do you think it’s some compensation for our daughter, to make him give up what he never cared for?’

  She was tying her cloak as she turned. ‘It’s going to make me rich. And I’m going to spend every penny profit we ever make on finding our little girl, Ronald. I’ll find her, if she’s been taken to the ends of the earth.’

  In his mind, Ronald amended that to ‘if she’s still alive’. Taken on his search through London by the members of the Metropolitan Police, he had been shown evils he could never have imagined.

  If Heather had been abandoned among those wild and cruel dwellers in the criminal ‘rookeries’, she was probably already dead. And if she was still alive, she was the more to be pitied.

  Chapter Ten

  For a time after her little girl was lost it seemed as if Jenny’s emotions ruled her. She was sometimes overwhelmed by grief when she was alone, and when others were with her a baffled undirected anger would seize her. The only defence had been to make herself feel nothing.

  But now her intelligence had reasserted itself. A month had gone by since Lucy Corvill took Heather away. Police inquiries had had no effect. No trace of the child could be found, no one remembered Lucy with her in London or en route to the capital from Galashiels. The one person of whom the police had slight hopes ‒ the chamber-maid of the Mitre Inn ‒ remained obdurately missing.

  Inquiries went on, and would continue to do so. But Jenny understood that the police were convinced they were wasting their efforts.

  It was time for her to act. And, having thought the thing through, she decided to act in a different way. The Metropolitan Police were the force equipped to find a missing person in London, if anyone could. But, besides the chambermaid, there was someone who might shed light on Heather’s fate.

  That someone was Harvil Massiter.

  He might be said to have disappeared as thoroughly as the chambermaid. But to Jenny’s mind, he might prove possible to find.

  ‘But he’s gone abroad, Jenny,’ Ronald objected, when she told him her thoughts.

  ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t track him down.’

  ‘You don’t have the least idea where he went.’

  ‘He actually sailed on the Calais packet. The Dover police ascertained that much.’

  ‘But from there, Jenny? He might have gone anywhere.’

  They were in the office at Waterside Mill. Jenny, having spent the morning in the design studio on the top floor, had been planning while she worked. She had come down to tell him her conclusions.

  In her mourning, with her flesh thinned down by grief and anxiety, she seemed too slight to be planning a campaign of any kind. Her husband studied her with alarm. He wondered if it might not be kinder to convince her that the task was hopeless. Heather was gone, probably dead. Perhaps it would be best if Jenny could accept that fact and let it become part of the past.

  ‘We might be able to find out where he went, and get some information ‒’

  ‘You’re not thinking of rushing about all over Europe, Jenny? I forbid it!’

  She half-smiled. She knew as well as he did that if she really wanted to go, he couldn’t prevent her. Although as a wife she was subject to her husband’s will, they didn’t have that kind of marriage.

  ‘I didn’t think of going myself. It requires someone with experience of investigation.’

  ‘That means a policeman, but the British police could hardly ‒’

  ‘I saw an advertisement in the Times yesterday ‒ a Private Inquiry Office in Paddington.’

  ‘But you’ve no way of knowing if they’re reliable.’

  ‘I could check with Inspector Simmons in London.’

  It wasn’t after all a hare-brained scheme. There might be something in it. At any rate, it brought back some of the animation to her eyes. Ronald didn’t feel entitled to argue her out of it.

  So Jenny went to London, to speak to Inspector Simmons in his sombre little office in the second Metropolitan Police District. He had been dreading her visit, because he had nothing to report, and he expected tears and recriminations.

  But no, Mrs Armstrong was calm and businesslike. She explained her idea. Simmons couldn’t fault it.

  ‘If you want to go to Pollaky, the inquiry agency in Paddington, I have nothing against it,’ he said. ‘But I would say they restrict themselves to inquiries in this country. What you want is a man who would work for you on a full-time basis, travelling wherever he saw a chance of success.’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Can you recommend such a man?’

  ‘Well, in fact, there’s a man who retired from this station last year. His name is Baxter, Sergeant David Baxter. And it so happens …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He speaks some French. He married a Frenchwoman, you see.’

  Jenny drew in a breath. She hesitated to believe that fate had sent her this man, but it seemed a good omen. ‘Do you think he’ll undertake the work?’

  ‘I’ll send him to see you,’ Simmons said, drawing a pad of paper towards him and beginning to write. ‘I’ll send word immediately. He does some work for a legal firm in Theobald’s Road so he’s kept his hand in.’

  That afternoon Sergeant Baxter presented himself in Eaton Square. He was a tall, portly man, grey-haired and whiskered, very respectably clad in navy broadcloth and a spotless shirt. His cravat was dark blue poplin. The one sign of individuality was a silver cravat pin in the shape of a horseshoe. When he saw Jenny glancing at it he said in an easy manner, ‘My good luck charm. You need all the luck you can get in investigation.’

  ‘Inspector Simmons sent you. Did he tell you what I need?’

  ‘I went to see him, ma’am, before coming here. If you don’t mind me saying so, it has to be something worth the wormwood to make me cross the Channel in a March gale.’

  His forthright manner pleased her. ‘It is very important to me to get in touch with Mr Massiter.’

  ‘So I gathered from Inspector Simmons. I should warn you, though, that it may cost more than a tanner or two. Foreign travel isn’t cheap, and there’ll be bribes and pourboires.’

  ‘I understand that. There’s no problem about money.’

  He had already guessed that from her address and the appearance of the house. There was money in plenty. ‘Perhaps you could tell me the story in your own words, Mrs Armstrong.’

  Briefly, and as unemotionall
y as she could, she related the events that had ended with the disappearance of Heather. Sergeant Baxter listened attentively, noting that it was almost identical with Inspector Simmons’ account. The lady knew how to organise facts.

  ‘So what we want to know is, first, if Massiter actually gave the little girl to some other person ‒’ He heard her draw in a gasping breath and paused. ‘Mrs Armstrong.’

  ‘Yes?’ she said unwillingly.

  ‘You have faced the fact that he may just have done away with the child?’

  She took a long time replying. She was gazing over his head, at the sky beyond the window. ‘I only know Harvil Massiter slightly,’ she said. ‘I think he is a vain, frivolous man. I don’t think he’s a murderer.’

  ‘Very good. Then the second thing we want to know is, who was this “respectable woman” who’s supposed to have taken the kid? Where was she actually going? On the northern stage-coach, so we gather, but how far up the route? If he asked her name and destination, we’re off to a good start.’

  ‘If he could tell us that …!’

  ‘First we have to find him. As far as the other lady knew, they were going to Rome.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you can be sure of one thing. A jemmy like him wouldn’t go to Rome after he left that poor silly woman in the lurch, all ready to squawk it out to anybody who rescued her. So that’s a place not to look.’

  Jenny nodded. His reasoning seemed sound.

  ‘Have you any idea where he might head, Mrs Armstrong?’

  She tried to remember all she knew about Massiter. ‘I would think he would head for the sun. What I mean is, there are German spas and there are casinos in northern countries, but he left England in January. He would go towards the sun.’

  ‘Right you are!’ But though he sounded enthusiastic he was thinking, that only leaves the rest of Italy outside Rome, and southern France, and Spain, and Portugal, and Greece, and Turkey …

  He stood, saying he would make some inquiries among Harvil Massiter’s London acquaintances, to see if he could learn if the gentleman had expressed a particular liking as regards foreign parts.

  ‘His wife might know something,’ Jenny said with reluctance. ‘But whether she would tell you anything …’