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

by Granger, Ann

  ‘And you took it to Mrs Scott that very evening, Sunday?’

  He nodded. ‘I went straight there from the railway station. I did not go home first. I thought it was important. Mrs Scott agreed. She had not long been at home herself, having first taken Mr Fawcett to his lodgings in her carriage. She told me Miss Marchwood must be stopped, just as the Benedict woman had to be stopped. Miss Marchwood told her, in the letter, that she would come the next day, Monday, to Clapham to see Mrs Scott. She wrote the time of the train she hoped to take from Egham, so that Mrs Scott should know about what time to expect her at Wisteria Lodge.’

  ‘“You know what must be done, Pritchard!” Mrs Scott said to me. I certainly did know. The next morning, very early, I left my assistant in charge of the shop and took the early train down to Egham. I intended to wait outside The Cedars, the Benedict house, and intercept Miss Marchwood on her walk down the hill into Egham to catch the train. That would have been the best place to waylay her. She would have died well away from London, you understand, and probably the police would have suspected Mr Benedict. There would be nothing to link her death with the Temperance Hall. But I was out of luck.’ He went on sadly, ‘There was a carrier’s cart on the road, well laden, and making very heavy weather getting up the steep climb. The horse was really struggling. I thought the beast might slip and fall. Most of the time Miss Marchwood was walking down the hill – and I was following behind discreetly – one or the other of us was in sight or sound of the carrier. It meant I could not hide but had to walk openly and I feared, you know, that she would turn her head and see me. I had a sort of story ready if she did – that I had come out there hoping to talk to her. But I didn’t have to use it.

  ‘At the station, she got into a first-class carriage; there was only the one of them, just behind the engine. I got into a third-class carriage much further down the train. At each stop I put out my head and took note who got on or off, and whether anyone else got into first class with Miss Marchwood. No one did. It was not a popular time of day for people of means to travel. There was a ticket inspector, however. He was working his way from the back of the train to the front, entering each carriage, one at a time, between stops. He could have presented a problem. But at Twickenham he reached the first-class carriage and got in there. That meant that he got out again at Richmond, the next stop after that, and began to walk down the whole length of the train to begin again. It was my chance. I slipped out of the train, hurried along to first class and got in, behind the inspector’s back, as he was walking down the train. He didn’t notice me.’

  ‘Miss Marchwood was surprised to see you, I don’t doubt,’ said Dunn heavily, ‘and alarmed, too, perhaps guessing you, and not some other person wandering in the fog, had murdered her employer, that afternoon in the park?’

  Pritchard gave that smug smile again. ‘Ah, but, you see, the train had started moving again and she could not get out.’

  So it had been easy for him. Until trains were built with a connecting corridor running along them between carriages, as Burns had told me was under consideration, a single woman alone in a carriage would remain vulnerable.

  ‘It was a cowardly attack!’ I said fiercely.

  Pritchard looked sullen. ‘I had my orders.’

  So that was how I found myself again at Wisteria Lodge. Mrs Scott received me in her drawing room and showed no surprise at my being there. She must have been waiting for me. She knew, once she heard that Pritchard had been arrested, that he would talk freely, proud of what he had achieved. So it would be only a short time before the police arrived to arrest her too.

  The drawing room that Styles and I had so disrupted in our pursuit of Fawcett had been restored to order. There was no sign that anything untoward had ever happened here, except the parrot had apparently lost a few feathers when cannoning around his cage in all the excitement. Nor, I fancied, had he forgotten me, the cause of all the hubbub. He had fixed me with a vicious eye since I entered the room. From time to time he shuffled along his perch and uttered a low squawk, indicating that if only he were to be released from his prison, he would delight in getting at me.

  His mistress probably harboured much the same feeling towards me but sat rigidly upright on a hoop-backed parlour chair with her hands folded in her lap. The housekeeper had shown me in. She, too, had remembered me and looked at me in trepidation, probably wondering what havoc I would wreak this time.

  ‘You will know why I am here,’ I said. ‘We have had several long interviews with Owen Pritchard and he has fully explained his part in it all – and told us of yours.’

  She made no reply other than to raise one eyebrow.

  I gestured at the room around me. The parrot seized a wire of his cage in his beak and chewed at it, demonstrating what he’d like to do to me. ‘Allegra Benedict,’ I said, ‘met Joshua Fawcett, as you know the man, here, did she not? In your drawing room during one of your private parties at which Fawcett spoke?’

  Mrs Scott drew in a long deep breath. ‘Marchwood brought her along and I believe had some hope her employer would be able to help our cause. Instead of that, she destroyed it utterly! From the moment the Benedict woman set eyes on Mr Fawcett, I saw she meant to set her cap at him. She was an immodest creature with no natural decency of manner at all. He had no defence against her tricks. Like so many men whose minds are set on higher things, Joshua was an innocent in the ways of such women.’

  I think not! I thought but only waited.

  Mrs Scott pursed her lips. ‘She came twice, I fancy. Then she did not come any more and at first I was very relieved. I thought the danger had passed. But then Isabella Marchwood came to see me in great distress.’ Mrs Scott shook her head. ‘Marchwood was a well-meaning person after her own fashion, but far from being the most sensible. To my horror she explained that Joshua had been seduced into a tawdry affair that would be the ruin of him. The woman Benedict was without shame or discretion and Marchwood feared the cuckolded husband would soon find out about it. Marchwood herself had been persuaded to facilitate the affair by carrying messages. As I told you, she was far from being the most intelligent of women. Even so, I cannot imagine what made her agree to be their messenger. I can only suppose that Allegra Benedict held sway over her as she now held sway over Joshua Fawcett. Marchwood did not know what to do. She turned to me.

  ‘I saw that there was need for drastic action. I enquired where the lovers met and was told that often it was at a certain oak tree in Green Park. “Very well,” I told her. “Tell Mrs Benedict that Mr Fawcett wants to meet her there on Saturday afternoon. I will wait there with Mr Pritchard, as representatives of our little group.” I went on to explain we would speak very seriously to Mrs Benedict; tell her that the affair was now common knowledge and that it was only a matter of very little time before her husband became aware of it. The fact that Pritchard and I already knew of it would frighten the woman enough to make her break off the liaison. Marchwood accepted the plan and was only too willing to put her trust in me – and Pritchard.’

  She fell silent and I asked: ‘Was that what you really intended, to talk to Mrs Benedict, nothing more? Or was that simply the version you told Miss Marchwood to get her to agree to her part in the deception?’

  ‘Of course, nothing more,’ she said calmly.

  I found I was fascinated by this dreadful woman. She spoke so coolly of their wicked plan. She had had no qualms and now she expressed no regrets. ‘And you were prepared to stand by while Pritchard killed her?’ I asked in a voice that shook despite my best efforts.

  ‘No, of course not, that was not the intention. As I told you, we would just speak severely to Mrs Benedict. However, as things turned out, I didn’t go there on the day. I had told Marchwood I would be there; but a dreadful fog came up and reached out as far as Clapham from the centre of London. I have spent many years in hot dry climates and such weather affects my health. I dared not venture out lest I take a dangerous chill. I stayed here, in Clapham, and Prit
chard went alone to meet Mrs Benedict. He took it upon himself to kill her.’

  She met my gaze evenly. I could not disprove it. She knew that. It was her word, that of a wealthy woman of some social standing, against Pritchard’s. What jury would believe such a woman, living here so respectably and comfortably in a Clapham villa, would plan cold-blooded murder?

  Well, she might escape responsibility for Allegra’s death; that of Isabella Marchwood was another matter. She would not be able to explain that away!

  ‘What did you think when Pritchard told you, or you heard, that he had strangled her?’ I began.

  ‘I thought it was probably for the best,’ she said with that same inhuman calm. ‘It would cause a good deal of fuss but that would have to be borne. It would die down in time.’

  ‘But Miss Marchwood did not go so conveniently away!’ I said sharply.

  The parrot let out a harsh squawk at my change in tone.

  ‘No,’ his owner said thoughtfully. ‘She did not. I realised, of course, she would be distressed. But I thought fear of discovery of her part in it all would frighten her into silence.’

  ‘On the Sunday evening before her death, Miss Marchwood ran up to your carriage door, observed by my wife, and asked to talk to you.You told her to come to see you here in Clapham,’ I said.

  A faint frown creased her brow. ‘Yes, Mrs Ross told me of that. I did not see Mrs Ross in the street. I cannot imagine where she was.’

  Hiding in an entranceway to a stableyard . . . but it was not for me to tell the woman that.

  ‘When we found Miss Marchwood’s body in the train at Waterloo, my first thought,’ I told her, ‘was that she had been on her way either to see me, or to try and find my wife. But that was not the case, was it? She was not on her way to central London, but only to Clapham, where she meant to get off and walk to your house to see you.’

  Again that raised eyebrow.

  ‘When my wife came to see you here, the Tuesday following Miss Marchwood’s murder, you disapproved of her arrival unannounced on your doorstep,’ I continued.

  ‘It is not the usual social convention,’ she replied.

  ‘Miss Marchwood would never have flouted convention in that way,’ I went on.

  ‘No,’ she agreed.

  ‘So, when she conveniently met Pritchard again at Waterloo Station on Sunday night, she asked him to take you a note, explaining she would come the next day, Monday, and the time of the train she would take from Egham – so that you would know about what time to expect her. The note was written in pencil on the back of a leaflet of the sort given to Bessie Newman to distribute, advertising the meetings.’

  ‘Your wife objected very unreasonably to your maid distributing the leaflets,’ said Mrs Scott. ‘But no, I received no message scribbled on one.’

  ‘Pritchard says he brought it here on Sunday evening, as soon as he got back to Clapham.’

  ‘Pritchard came to see me here,’ she corrected firmly, ‘but brought no letter. He is mistaken in that or, for some reason he alone knows, has invented it. Pritchard spoke to me and expressed his fears. He sought my advice. He was worried about Miss Marchwood and also, I have to tell you, alarmed at the obvious interest your wife was taking.’

  I ignored the sly implication that Lizzie was somehow to blame for Isabella Marchwood’s death. ‘You realised neither Pritchard nor you yourself could be sure she would never speak of the plot you had hatched,’ I said.

  ‘I realised she was unreliable,’ she agreed. ‘A weak brain, I fear, and no backbone! I thought your wife might wheedle it out of her.’

  ‘So you told Pritchard she must never reach this house.’

  ‘That is what he says?’ she asked, her gaze sharpening.

  ‘It is. Pritchard received his orders, as he did on the previous occasion, and set about carrying them out.’

  ‘You are wrong. I soothed Pritchard’s fears and promised him I would speak to Miss Marchwood and explain that she must remain silent. That is what I intended to do.’

  ‘You would do that when she arrived at your house on Monday?’

  She did not fall into that trap. She recognised it for what it was, gave me a strange little smile, and said, ‘There was no such arrangement, no letter written on a leaflet or on anything else. I have told you so. That is an invention of Pritchard’s.’

  I pressed on. ‘He has described the sequence of his actions that day to the police in some detail. After strangling the helpless Miss Marchwood, he descended from the train at Clapham. He walked away calmly with other passengers, leaving the dead body of the poor woman in the carriage behind him, and went back to his own shop. The body was not discovered until the train reached the terminus at Waterloo. That must have seemed a stroke of luck to you and Pritchard.’

  ‘She would be alive now, if she had kept her head,’ Mrs Scott said dismissively. ‘And not alarmed Pritchard.’

  She smoothed a fold of her skirt with a careful hand. ‘When your wife came to see me so unexpectedly on that Tuesday morning, with the news of Isabella’s death, that was the first I had heard of it. I was very sorry. I realised Pritchard might have been carried away and gone a little too far. If indeed it was Pritchard’s doing.’

  ‘You certainly put up a cool front,’ I said. ‘And the girl, Clarissa Brady? Did you know that was Pritchard’s doing, as you put it?’

  Until now I had told her nothing she didn’t know, whether or not she was yet prepared to admit it. But this was a new name to her. She betrayed a momentary surprise. ‘Who is she?’ For the first time, she sounded just a little uneasy.

  ‘She was Pritchard’s first victim, a prostitute. He practised the method of strangulation on her before going on to strangle Allegra. He rolled her body into the Thames, from which it was later retrieved by the River Police.’

  ‘I know nothing of this!’ she denied vigorously. ‘A prostitute, you say? However should I know anything about such a girl?’

  ‘Did you know that Pritchard had a habit of dressing up in a shroud and, on foggy nights, leaping out and frightening the street girls who work near the river by putting his hands on their throats?’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘He says he wanted to frighten them away from their trade.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Scott, ‘then he meant it for the best, I dare say.’

  ‘Perhaps you did not know he had strangled Clarissa Brady,’ I said. ‘But I think you did know about his activities as the Wraith and that is why you chose him to kill Allegra Benedict. He was malleable to your will and easily accepted your superior authority. What is more, I believe it is possible that even his activities as the Wraith were originally your idea. You sent him out, wrapped in a bloodstained sheet and papier mâché mask. Before you turned your attention to combating the scourge of drink, you had decided to do something to clear the streets of prostitutes.’

  ‘The police seemed to be doing little to achieve it!’ she suddenly burst out. ‘The country is going to rack and ruin and the authorities do nothing! It is the duty of every right-minded citizen to fight against every kind of loose living in our society! What was wrong about Pritchard’s harmless little charade?’

  She clamped her thin lips together, realising she had said more than she intended.

  ‘A right-minded citizen,’ I said, ‘would surely have gone immediately to the police when Pritchard told her he had killed Allegra Benedict. If what you have told me is true, and you did not intend him to murder the woman, you seem to have taken the news remarkably calmly and to have done nothing to bring him to justice.’

  ‘I decided he had been overenthusiastic, but the result was what we would have wished. Joshua was freed from that woman. That was all that mattered.’ Her grey eyes, so cold until now, suddenly sparkled with triumph. ‘We had achieved our purpose.’

  I could not sit here any longer. I had heard enough. I got up and went to the window to signal to Morris who was waiting outside.

&
nbsp; When Morris had joined us I turned back to Mrs Scott.

  ‘Jemima Scott, I arrest you on two charges of aiding and abetting a murderer and of a further charge of concealing information relating to a crime. I must ask you to accompany us.’

  The parrot began a frenzied beating of his wings against the bars of his cage.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Elizabeth Martin Ross

  BEN TOLD me everything that evening. We sat before the fire in the parlour, which was obstinately refusing to draw, and I listened to the whole sorry tale. We could hear Bessie in the distance, clashing pots around in the kitchen. I was glad he didn’t hide the details from me. I wanted to know everything, though I admit I was very distressed at Mrs Scott’s cruel suggestion that I had hastened the death of Isabella Marchwood by attempting to befriend her outside the hall, and being observed doing so by Pritchard.