A Better Quality of Murder: (Inspector Ben Ross 3)

by Granger, Ann

  Benedict stood up well to the ordeal. This time he did not faint away or mutter incoherently. He looked resolutely at the uncovered face of the sheeted body and said, ‘Yes, that is Isabella Marchwood, who was companion to my late wife. Do you need me any more?’

  ‘Not today, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Then I’ll return home.’ He began to walk towards the door, not waiting for me, but paused before leaving. ‘I hope you will not be requesting me to come a third time to identify the victim of a murderer you appear unable to catch.’

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Scully grin. But when I turned towards him the smirk had gone.

  ‘The gentleman appears to be bearing up, sir,’ he said blandly.

  ‘He can do nothing else,’ I retorted.

  There was the sound of voices in the corridor outside. Dr Carmichael walked in. Scully, as usual, ran forward to help him off with his street coat and on with his dissecting one.

  ‘Good day to you, there, Ross,’ Carmichael greeted me. ‘I understand the gentleman has identified the deceased. I met him on the way out.’

  ‘Isabella Marchwood,’ I said. ‘As we already knew, of course.’

  ‘Hum!’ said Carmichael. He walked to the marble table and turned back the sheet, which had reached to the corpse’s chin. ‘You may wish to see this, Ross.’

  A little queasily, I went to look. I never get used to it. The familiar red line scored her throat.

  ‘I took the liberty of removing the cord,’ Carmichael said, ‘as you had already seen it in place round her throat, in the railway carriage. There is something rather interesting about it.’ He produced a folded piece of paper and opened it out flat. Two lengths of cord, identical in type to that round Allegra Benedict’s neck, lay side by side. Carmichael looked at me and raised his bushy eyebrows, waiting for me to make an observation.

  ‘They are not knotted together,’ I said, ‘as the other cords still were, after you cut them from the victim’s neck.’

  ‘Indeed they are not. I did snip the cord to take it from her neck. But it fell apart quite easily; I found myself with two separate lengths, as you see here. It had not been tied in a double knot as on the previous occasion. I suggested to you, at that time, the murderer had wished to make sure the noose did not slip and release the victim. But this time he either did not bother, or perhaps, as I understand the murder occurred in the course of a railway journey, he did not have time. He tied it once, pulled it tight, was satisfied she was dead and left his victim in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said slowly, staring down at the two short lengths of cord. ‘To murder in the park, unseen in the fog, was one thing. But in broad daylight, in a railway carriage when someone might have got in at the next stop . . . that must have been a rushed affair.’

  Or a desperate one. And yet . . . I stretched out my hand and touched one of the cords with my fingertip. ‘I like patterns,’ I heard myself say aloud to Carmichael. ‘And there is no pattern in this business, only a number of events and people who touch at some point but then spin away on a different path.’

  Carmichael gave a short, unexpected chuckle. He was not usually given to humour so I was surprised and looked at him.

  ‘Have you never seen Scottish country dancing, Inspector? The couples join hands, part, turn, go in, go out, exchange places, move up to the head of the queue to replace another pair . . . for anyone who has never tried it, and finds himself caught up in it for the first time, it is bewildering. But there is a pattern to it, oh yes, and once the novice has worked out the pattern, then he is away, spinning merrily around with the rest.’

  ‘We should have found him before now,’ said Morris sadly. ‘Then the poor little lady would still be alive.’

  He was only saying something I had said to myself a dozen times since seeing Isabella Marchwood’s body slumped in that railway carriage. But there was no point in my giving way to despondency.

  ‘Come, Sergeant!’ I admonished him. ‘We will find the wretch.’

  ‘I can’t even find that butler, Seymour,’ growled Morris. ‘He seems to have vanished. I’ve been round all the central London employment agencies for domestic staff. I think I must know the whereabouts of nearly every butler in the country except Mortimer Seymour.’

  ‘Ah, there perhaps I can help,’ I was able to say. I handed him the piece of paper on which Benedict had written the name and address of the agency where he’d originally found Miss Marchwood. ‘This one, as you see, is a little out of town in Northwood. If he contacted them regarding a companion, he may have done so because previously they’d supplied his butler, and he was well satisfied with Seymour. So satisfied that he was angry when the butler left his household! So try them. At the same time, find out if they have any next of kin on record for Isabella Marchwood. They must keep files on all the people who pass through the establishment.’

  Morris took the paper and sighed. ‘Like as not a wild goose chase, like all the others I’ve been on this week,’ he said.

  After Morris’s gloomy appraisal of our situation, it was a relief that Lizzie and Bessie bore the news well when I broke it to them that night. Bessie, I’m sorry to say, even displayed a certain relish, reminding me of those in the crowd at Waterloo.

  ‘What an awful thing! Poor Miss Marchwood. In a train carriage, too? Just imagine. Cor . . .’ Her eyes shone with excitement.

  Lizzie turned a little pale and said very quietly, ‘It is dreadful news. I was so afraid for her.’ She hesitated. ‘I wonder . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ I encouraged.

  ‘I was worried for her safety on Sunday evening, because she was intending to walk quite alone to the station from the Temperance Hall, after nightfall. Of course London streets are well lit, but on a Sunday there are fewer people around. Yet it puzzles me that, if there is any connection with the hall in all this, she wasn’t followed from there and attacked on her way to Waterloo. Especially if it is the Wr—’ Lizzie broke off with a glance at Bessie. ‘But she wasn’t,’ she resumed. ‘Doesn’t that seem to rule out anyone who was at the hall that evening?’

  ‘She was also talking to you for a few minutes outside the hall,’ I pointed out. ‘If anyone there had noticed that, they could have been put off. They would have to have waited until you and Bessie were out of sight before they set off in pursuit. Miss Marchwood would have been well ahead of them by then. There are always people and traffic around stations. It might not have been so simple.’

  Lizzie looked unconvinced. ‘I do wish I knew what she and Fawcett had to discuss privately.’

  ‘I think I can guess at that. But I need to be sure.’ I also glanced at the listening Bessie.

  Fawcett and Miss Marchwood had probably been discussing the money Allegra Benedict had been giving the man. He wouldn’t want that known. He would have elicited Miss Marchwood’s promise not to tell anyone. She had kept her word. Her killer had made sure of it.

  ‘I’m also thinking,’ said my wife slowly, ‘what a very great shock this will be to Mrs Scott. She and Miss Marchwood were very much involved together in the running of the temperance meetings. I wouldn’t like her to read of it in the newspapers, unprepared. I could call on her first thing in the morning, before she has a chance to see the papers, and break the news. It would be the kind thing to do.’

  ‘She lives at Clapham,’ I reminded her.

  ‘It’s only a step to the station from here and there are plenty of trains to Clapham. It must be a short journey. I should imagine she’s well known and I can find the house.’

  ‘I know the address,’ I admitted. ‘I saw it in Angelis’s ledger.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a good thing!’ said my wife brightly. She knew that already, of course. I’d told her about Angelis delivering a painting to Clapham.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ I said a little sarcastically. ‘Well, go by all means. I know I can trust you not to talk unwarily.’

  My wife gave me a look.

  ‘The house is called Wisteria Lodge
,’ I said hastily. ‘That seems a fanciful name for the home of the rather fierce female you’ve described to me.’

  ‘I ought to come with you, missus,’ announced Bessie. ‘There’s a murderer loose on the railways. He might jump into your carriage and strangle you! If there were two of us, he couldn’t do it. He might try it, but I’d jump on his back and pull him off you.’

  ‘Thank you, Bessie,’ said Lizzie. ‘I appreciate you wanting to protect me. But I don’t think that’s necessary or an attack likely.’ She relented as Bessie’s face fell. ‘However, you can come with me.’

  Bessie beamed, before turning down the corners of her mouth with comical haste. ‘That’s right, missus. Better safe than sorry!’

  Chapter Eleven

  Elizabeth Martin Ross

  ALTHOUGH I knew Mrs Scott would consider it both impolite and ignorant to pay a social call before noon, nevertheless Bessie and I arrived before the gate of Wisteria Lodge a little after ten, in pale sunshine.

  Three years earlier, when I had arrived in London from Derbyshire, my Aunt Parry, to whom I was to be companion, had handed me a guidebook. She said she had found it helpful when she had arrived in London from the provinces many years before.

  The guide must already have been out of date even then, because it was entitled The Picture of London for 1818. I had nevertheless consulted it the night before, since I knew nothing of Clapham. I found it listed among places of interest in the environs of London. Clapham, the guide informed me, was ‘a village in Surrey, three miles and a quarter S. from London, consisting chiefly of handsome houses.’ Well, London’s tentacles had spread out far further since the guide was written. The coming of the railway had placed Clapham within the orbit of those whose business was in the centre of the capital, but who had made enough money to move away from the city’s smoke, fog and smells and take up residence somewhere more comfortable and discriminating. There were many more houses here than fifty years before, nearly all of them solid, middle-class dwellings. But still much of the countryside remained about the area together with a feeling that we were out of town. This was due in large part to the spacious area of grass and woodland popularly called ‘the Common’ that we had observed on our way to the house. It had been busy, even this early in the day, with people strolling or riding, or with nursemaids who had brought their young charges to run about in the open.

  ‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ Bessie had observed, and she repeated this comment as we gazed at Mrs Scott’s residence.

  Wisteria Lodge was a substantial red-brick villa, not more than twenty years old. There really was some wisteria, climbing across the façade, although at this time of year it showed only bare brown branches, here and there festooned with yellowed leaves. The thickness of them suggested it had been planted when the house was new, and in spring they would make a fine show with their trailing purple sprays of flowers. Certainly it had always been called Wisteria Lodge, or named that before the gateposts were built, because the name was chiselled into them.

  ‘She might not be ready to receive, missus,’ Bessie warned me. ‘Mrs Parry never received visits before twelve. Mrs Scott might not be dressed and most likely she won’t have breakfasted.’

  I nearly replied that my Aunt Parry was never dressed for the day before noon, having risen from her bed, where she had breakfasted, about eleven. To see her downstairs before half past twelve was rare, although she always appeared in good time for the substantial meal she called a light luncheon at one. But I couldn’t say that to Bessie. I was confident Mrs Scott would have considered such a timetable idleness; and we would find her at least dressed, if not expecting visitors.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I hope she’ll realise, from the early hour, that only something very important could have brought me.’

  ‘She might send down word by a maid that we should leave a note,’ continued Bessie. Now that we actually stood before the house, her enthusiasm for the visit the evening before had changed to a marked reluctance to beard the ogre in its den.

  ‘Come on!’ I ordered and we marched briskly through the gates, up the short drive and the three steps to a square porch and rang the bell.

  After a few minutes a dour, respectable female in bombazine, who could only be a housekeeper, opened the door and surveyed us with some surprise.

  I had come prepared. ‘Please take my card in to your mistress,’ I said, handing over the little white oblong. ‘Tell her, if you will, that I apologise for the early hour, but I have brought some news I thought she would wish to hear without delay.’

  Curiosity alone, I hoped, would make the lady agree to see me. The housekeeper read the card carefully and invited us to wait in the hall.

  While we were alone, both Bessie and I took the opportunity to look round us. There was certainly plenty of Mrs Scott’s favourite kind of painting, according to what Angelis had told Ben. Most representations were of Middle Eastern scenes, but some might have been Indian. I wondered if it was one of these that Angelis had been seen delivering by Mr Pritchard; one bought to replace a more valuable picture, sold surreptitiously. Other oriental items indicated the travels of the late Major and Mrs Scott. A bronze many-armed figure stood on the hall table, next to a box for the reception of outgoing letters in some dark wood inlaid with ivory.

  The hall itself, indeed the whole house, was very quiet. Only a long-case clock ticked softly in the corner. I felt uneasy, not only because being here uninvited and so early was a social solecism, as Bessie had aptly pointed out, but because this was unknown territory in so many more ways than one. I had only met the lady twice. Both meetings had been brief and neither had been cordial. Apart from what Bessie had told me of her past history, that her late husband had been a soldier, I knew almost nothing of her. Ben had learned from Angelis that she had survived the dreadful siege of Lucknow. So I could deduce one thing: Mrs Scott was battle-hardened. My only poor weapon was surprise. I was sure she would soon dismiss that.

  The housekeeper returned. ‘If you would care to come through to the morning parlour, ma’am? If your maid waits here, I’ll take her down to the kitchen afterwards.’

  Bessie, lurking in the shelter of a recess containing a potted palm, perked up at being taken for a lady’s maid and emerged. I followed the housekeeper.

  The back, or morning, parlour at Wisteria Lodge was a pleasant sunny room, even on this bleak early winter day. A fire had been lit to take the chill off the air, but within the last half-hour; it still crackled and spat as the kindling took hold and the smell of smoke was noticeable. On an opened writing slope lay a half-written letter. A pen protruded from an inkwell. I saw no sign of the morning’s newspapers.

  Mrs Scott, in a plain, silver-grey skirt and bodice, came to meet me. She wore a little lace widow’s cap over her hair and detachable muslin cuffs over her wrists to protect her sleeves while she was busy with her morning tasks. She greeted me with a schooled politeness.

  ‘Mrs Ross? How very nice to see you. How have you come from town?’

  ‘By train,’ I told her. ‘And I must apologise for what will appear an extraordinary intrusion. I see I have disturbed you at your letter-writing. I hope I won’t keep you from it for long.’

  ‘Not at all . . .’ murmured Mrs Scott, gesturing towards a chair. ‘Would you care for some tea after your journey?’

  I declined the tea but sat down. My hostess sat down opposite and folded her hands in her lap, half covered by the muslin cuffs. I saw she wore her wedding band but no other jewellery. She was waiting for me to explain myself. Her face told me nothing.

  ‘I have come to convey some sad news,’ I said. ‘I learned it last night from my husband. I was afraid it might be in this morning’s newspapers, or if not, in tonight’s evening ones. In any event, I thought I should come and tell you of it in person. I did not want you to read about it. I’m afraid I have to tell you of the death of Miss Isabella Marchwood.’

  Within the muslin cuffs I saw her hands whiten a
s they were clasped more tightly. After only the merest pause, however, she replied. ‘I am obliged to you for your thoughtfulness. As for your news, I am more than sorry to hear it. Are you able to tell me how and where this happened? You say you learned it from your husband. Am I to understand, then, that the circumstances were – unusual? It is certainly unexpected. When I saw her on Sunday night she was in poor spirits, but otherwise of good health.’

  ‘Miss Marchwood,’ I said carefully, ‘was on her way to London from Egham yesterday morning by train. On arrival at Waterloo, a ticket inspector, glancing into the first-class carriage at the head of the train, saw a woman he thought was asleep. He went to waken her and found she was dead. She had been murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’ Mrs Scott’s face at last betrayed some emotion. ‘How can this be? Who would want to murder Isabella Marchwood? She was a pleasant person but of no importance.’