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

by Granger, Ann

  ‘I understand you perfectly, Mr Seymour,’ I assured him. I had put Benedict’s jealous guardianship of his beautiful young wife down to possessiveness. Seymour put a kinder interpretation on it. Either way, it had left Allegra vulnerable.

  Seymour raised a hand in a gesture of resignation and then let it fall again. ‘You are a man of the world, Inspector. You can guess what came about. A sordid entanglement. I don’t doubt Mrs Benedict imagined it a great love affair. The poor lady was entirely carried away. She had no thought for the future, where it would lead. Where it could lead! And indeed, there was nowhere it could lead but to disaster; but she rushed on headlong.’

  A sudden vivid and painful image leapt into my mind: The Triumph of Death, that gruesome masterpiece shown to me by Sebastian Benedict. Like the young men in the painting, Allegra fled from the inevitable towards the false shelter of Fawcett’s arms.

  ‘If I blame Isabella Marchwood for anything, it is that she did not realise the danger in it either,’ Seymour was saying sadly. ‘We all saw the difference in Mrs Benedict. She was happy, sir. Really happy, and excited, like a child. There were letters . . . Miss Marchwood sometimes carried them, I believe, or posted hers for him for Mrs Benedict. And there were replies from him, which were definitely not posted because they could so easily have fallen into the hands of Mr Benedict. Those Miss Marchwood must have brought by hand. I cannot understand her complicity. She was such an upright woman!’ Seymour flapped his hands again in distress.

  ‘Such people are often the first to fall under the spell of a man like Joshua Fawcett,’ I told him. ‘They are themselves good and see only goodness in others. But these letters, between Fawcett and Mrs Benedict, you saw them?’

  ‘Mrs Benedict’s maid Henderson did, Inspector. She twice came upon Mrs Benedict reading them and once found her mistress kneeling before the grate in her bedroom, burning them. Then there was . . .’ Now Seymour reddened and pressed his lips tightly together.

  ‘Go on,’ I said gently.

  ‘Mr Benedict will learn of this, I suppose?’ he said, gazing at me hopelessly.

  ‘I believe he already guesses. It may be he will not learn the details you are telling me. I can’t promise it.’

  ‘It is a wretched business!’ Seymour burst out. ‘Can you understand now why I left the house so suddenly, why I couldn’t remain once I had been informed?’

  ‘By Henderson, the maid?’

  ‘Yes, as I explained, she came to me, as head of the staff, to ask my advice. She did not know what to do. She was worried, frightened . . . Most of the household linen went out to a washerwoman in Egham. But Henderson washed some of Mrs Benedict’s more personal and delicate items. That included her . . . underlinen.’

  Seymour was now so miserable that I had to encourage him. ‘I do understand what you are about to tell me, and how difficult it is for you. But, you understand, as the investigator gathering evidence, I have to hear you say it. My guess at what you mean is not enough.’

  ‘No, Inspector, I do understand that. I am making a statement, am I not? Well, Henderson was distressed at finding – stains – on her mistress’s undergarments, after she had returned from some shopping visits to London. Or so-called shopping visits,’ Seymour added bitterly. ‘Don’t think, Inspector, that I simply packed my bags and ran from the situation without trying to attempt some late remedy. I spoke seriously to Miss Marchwood, pleaded with her! But it was no good. By then she was in too deep, to put it frankly. Mrs Benedict fancied herself in love. She wouldn’t give up Fawcett and Miss Marchwood could do nothing but stand by and let things run on to the wretched end. She was afraid; by then of course she was. She had begun to realise far too late . . . But she would do nothing and I could do nothing. With much regret, I handed in my notice.’

  Seymour fell silent and after a moment, took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

  ‘You did all you could, Mr Seymour,’ I soothed the wretched man. His situation had been impossible.

  ‘I could not speak to Mr Benedict. How could I? It would have been the end of my employment there whether I had been believed or not.’ Seymour waved the handkerchief around helplessly.

  ‘Mr Seymour!’ I urged. ‘I can only repeat, you did all you could reasonably do.You couldn’t speak directly to either Mr or Mrs Benedict and Miss Marchwood was your only hope. She failed you.’

  Seymour tucked away the handkerchief and some of his former stiff manner had returned.

  ‘She failed Mrs Benedict!’ he said tersely.

  How deep Isabella Marchwood’s complicity had run. Not just surreptitious meetings in the parks. Not only girlish love letters. No wonder the companion had been unable to confess it all to the police, or that Seymour’s pleas had come too late. Benedict’s wrath would have known no limits. Isabella’s own reputation would have been in shreds. No one would ever have employed her again. Not only Allegra had rushed on to her doom. The wretched companion had been tugged along in her wake.

  ‘Tell me, Inspector,’ Seymour said quietly. ‘Do you think this wretch, Fawcett, killed Mrs Benedict to protect his own sorry reputation?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said frankly.

  And I did not. It would not have been the first time a lover had become a dangerous embarrassment, to be removed by any means. But I did not think that Isabella Marchwood, however frightened for her own future, would deliberately have led Allegra Benedict towards a meeting in the fog with her murderer. Towards a meeting of some kind, yes, almost certainly a lovers’ tryst beneath the oak in Green Park. But to her death? No, there was another element here and we had not yet discovered it.

  This was pretty much the gist of what I later told Superintendent Dunn on my return to Scotland Yard.

  Dunn, to my alarm, immediately relegated Benedict as a murder suspect to secondary status, and installed Fawcett in his place. We had our man! We could be sure of it. He became quite agitated, rubbing his bristling hair until it looked like a hedgehog’s spines as he strode up and down his office.

  ‘We shall bring the fellow in for questioning. We now know he and the Benedict woman were having an affair. He had motive, powerful motive, Ross!’

  ‘Yes, sir, but I am not convinced that alone makes him our man. I believe him to be a quick-thinking, ingenious confidence trickster. However, would he kill? Do something so crass? He is a thinker, sir, not a bully boy.’

  ‘If pushed to it, why not kill? It’s not the prerogative of the thug. How many quiet, apparently inoffensive men, well respected in their neighbourhoods, have you seen hanged for murder? There again, how many flash men-about-town, who have found themselves in an inconvenient entanglement, have resorted to the ultimate way to rid themselves of the problem? More than a few, as you and I well know. Would that not describe Fawcett? He’s a gambler and sooner or later a gambler’s luck runs out.’ Dunn snapped his fingers and sat back in his chair, well pleased with his own argument.

  ‘He will run for it,’ I said. ‘We don’t have enough to hold him. To pull him in for questioning, perhaps, but nothing more. What evidence can we put before him? Do we accuse him of this affair on the basis of letters half glimpsed by a barely literate lady’s maid? Or stains of unknown origin? We can be reasonably certain Allegra Benedict had a lover, but if Fawcett denies it was him, how can we prove otherwise? The one person who could have told us about it all was Isabella Marchwood; and she won’t speak now, poor woman. And what of Marchwood’s death? Are you saying Fawcett killed her, too, as well as his mistress?’

  Dunn leaned forward and gave a positively evil grin. ‘To kill the first time is difficult, Ross, but to kill a second time or a third . . . that’s a different matter. It becomes progressively easier, especially when it seems to the killer the deed can so easily be got away with!’

  ‘He will run,’ I repeated obstinately. ‘We know he’s adept at reinventing himself. He’s surely played his present game elsewhere. You have no news from your correspondents in other forces, I suppose
?’

  ‘If I had,’ said Dunn sharply, ‘I should have told you. No, not yet, but I trust the expense in sending out so many telegraph messages will not be without result.’ He sat down and placed his stubby fingers on the desktop. ‘Besides, we are not bringing him in to question him about his activities at the Temperance Hall. We’ll be questioning him about a murder and if he then runs, he will look guilty.’

  There was no point in arguing with Dunn about it any further. I still thought it premature to bring in Fawcett. At the same time, I admit I was curious to see the fellow. In any case, the decision was Dunn’s and he had made it.

  I left Dunn’s office and went along to find the colleague who had been given the job of investigating the blackmail attempt on Colonel Frey. His name was Phipps. I explained about my trip to Newmarket and how I had been taken for someone sent by him.

  ‘I hope,’ I said, ‘I have not jeopardised your own enquiries. I didn’t seek to pass myself off under false colours. They just assumed . . . I went along with it. I couldn’t do otherwise without explaining myself to all and sundry. I didn’t want to frighten Seymour; and I didn’t want to meet the colonel face to face if I could avoid it. The opportunity presented itself and, well, I took it.’

  ‘If you had wanted to meet Colonel Frey face to face,’ Phipps said irritably, ‘you could have done so here a few days ago. He is a peppery old gent. He came marching in here with his bundle of letters and addressed me as if I were a subaltern. Pretty illiterate letters they are, too. I told him, don’t reply, don’t pay and set an armed guard, which he apparently has done. What does he expect of us? I have set enquiries going among all the known racecourse tricksters. We may find the writer of the letters. But my guess is that if it proves too difficult to get to the horse, or to frighten the colonel, they won’t bother. Besides, with so many Scotland Yard men crawling over the place, they will keep well away!’

  He gave me a meaningful look.

  I apologised again.

  ‘Oh, well, I would have done the same,’ said Phipps graciously. ‘Obviously you didn’t want to speak to the colonel if you didn’t have to.You did well to avoid him. I will brief whomever I send down next week to follow up your story. It may do no harm, after all, if Colonel Frey as well as the blackmailer thinks we are sending every available man.’

  I left Phipps’s office, relieved that he had taken my interference so well. I returned to my own office and there I found Constable Biddle.

  ‘Oh, Mr Ross, sir!’ he called out eagerly as soon as he set eyes on me. ‘They have found the girl, Clarrie Brady.’

  ‘Found her? Thank goodness! Where?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘In the river,’ said Biddle.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Inspector Benjamin Ross

  CLARRIE BRADY lay in the morgue reserved for bodies pulled from the river, at Wapping. Morris and I stood beside the table on which she lay, together with Daisy who had been brought to identify her friend. A sergeant of the River Police stood by, watching us with a dispassionate eye. He had seen too many girls like Clarrie dragged from the watery embrace of Father Thames.

  ‘That’s her . . .’ snuffled Daisy. ‘That’s poor Clarrie. Who done that to her, Mr Ross? Was it the Wraith?’

  ‘That’ was a reference to the cord tied round the dead girl’s neck. It was difficult now to say if she had ever been pretty. Immersion in the river had not helped the ravages of death and of strangulation. The scar where Jed Sparrow had cut her with a broken glass showed up lividly on her swollen face, as did the mole on her forehead. She had very black hair which I guessed was not dyed, as were Daisy’s scarlet tresses. Other than that she was tiny, a broken doll cast out by a thoughtless child.

  ‘Thank you, Daisy,’ I said, ‘for coming and confirming her identity. I do understand how sad this is for you. I wish I could tell you who killed her; but the truth is, I don’t know. Of course I haven’t forgotten what you told me about the River Wraith. I have him in mind, but perhaps I should be looking for another.’

  The day was a cold one. Winter was setting in seriously and here, in this grim, dark room with the water scarcely a stone’s throw away, there was an unwholesome clamminess in the air. Daisy had thrown a blue woollen shawl over her light dress and, with her bright red hair, struck a colourful note, but it jarred. She had been shivering since we entered, I guessed both from the chill and from fear. She pulled the shawl more tightly about her thin shoulders and looked up at me, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

  ‘What will they do with her now, Mr Ross?’

  ‘Do with her?’ The question took me by surprise. But Clarrie had been Daisy’s friend and it was natural she should want to know about a funeral. ‘Well, there will be an inquest—’ I began.

  She interrupted me. ‘No, I mean, will they give her to the anatomists?’

  This also hadn’t occurred to me. Daisy’s question had not been prompted by a wish to attend a burial, but by a fear there wouldn’t be one, or not one in any normal sense of it. I stammered awkwardly, ‘I have no idea, no, I shouldn’t think so . . .’

  She grasped my sleeve and peered up at me urgently, the feathers on her hat nodding and making her look like a bedraggled cockerel. ‘Don’t let them give her to the learner doctors, Mr Ross! They do that with bodies of people like us who are poor and ain’t got no one to claim ’em!’

  ‘Has Clarrie no one who will claim her body? How about her mother?’

  ‘Oh, she’s long gone!’ said Daisy dismissively. ‘Clarrie was a workhouse brat, like me. We run away together, the two of us. They never got us back. Well, I expect they didn’t look very hard. There are plenty of others in the workhouse. So Clarrie and me, we finished up on the streets making our living the only way we could. We shared our money at first, so that whatever happened, we both ate. But then Jed Sparrow got a hold of her. He’d have liked to get hold of me, too, but I managed to keep clear. I dare say you don’t approve of none of it, Mr Ross, nor your wife. But see, the business has kept me from ever going back into the workhouse. Anyway, Clarrie’s mother wasn’t never married, I shouldn’t think, none of our sort ever is. If the workhouse ever had any record of her name, I expect they’ve long lost it. So if it ain’t a legal relationship they won’t give you the body anyway.’

  ‘Perhaps Sparrow could claim her?’ I suggested, knowing this was a foolish suggestion.

  ‘He won’t!’ snapped Daisy. ‘He don’t care and anyway, he’s not legal either, he wasn’t her husband and he won’t pay for any funeral.’ Her grip on my sleeve tightened and desperation entered her face. ‘Oh, Mr Ross, if they cut her up she’ll never be able to rise up at the Last Day!’

  I was now completely taken aback. ‘At Judgement Day, Daisy? Whatever made you think of that?’

  ‘How can she rise up if she’s been chopped up into pieces by the anatomists?’ demanded Daisy wildly. ‘There will be bits of her all over the place! It’s in the Bible. I’ve never read it, but I’ve been told about it. There will be an angel blowing a trumpet and all the dead folk will get up and dance around. But you can’t dance around if your head is in one place and your legs is in another, your insides is pickled in jars and someone’s gone and lost your arms . . . No matter how hard that angel puffs away at his trumpet! That’s how it will be for poor Clarrie, if the learner doctors get at her!’

  She was in such real despair at this idea that I said soothingly, ‘I doubt very much the body is in a good enough state to interest the medical schools, Daisy. She has been too long in the water.’

  Daisy’s grip on my sleeve slackened. ‘I ’ope so,’ she said sadly. ‘Can you speak to the coroner, Mr Ross? Ask that she’s not chopped up?’

  ‘I will,’ I promised. ‘But I think it is unlikely it will come to that, as I told you. The bodies for the medical school are required to be fresh.’

  Daisy sniffed and rubbed her nose vigorously with the back of her hand before muttering, ‘I’ll be going, then. Thank you for finding her, Mr Ross
.You said you would and you did.’ With that, she ran out of the room.

  ‘I wish I could have found her alive,’ I said, to no one in particular. I glanced at Morris. ‘What was all that talk about Judgement Day, do you think?’

  The River Police sergeant, silent until now, answered. ‘The poor are very superstitious, Inspector. It’s not the first time I’ve heard of a lot of distress being caused when an unclaimed body’s been taken to a medical school. It’s because of the fear that somehow the dead person will miss out on the Resurrection, like that girl was saying. A lot of’em believe the body should be left in one piece, you see. It’s no use arguing with them; they’ve got it in their heads. But you are probably right, sir. I don’t think the medical school will want this one.’

  Morris, who had been staring down at Clarrie’s body with wordless sympathy, now asked, ‘Think this is the work of the River Wraith, sir?’

  ‘It’s possible. May we have the cord round her neck cut, Sergeant?’