The Coffin Lane Murders

by Alanna Knight

  'A jealous swain, tormented and angry,' suggested Conan.

  Faro shrugged. The woman's body and the lack of evidence of a struggle had not suggested an attack where the victim had exchanged angry words with her assailant but rather that she was taken by surprise.

  He opened the reticule, praying silently that it held some means of identification so that the search for her killer would not be impeded.

  'Ah,' he said triumphantly. Their guess that she was a servant girl was correct. He took out a letter, wet but still legible, a former employer's reference recommending Molly Blaith for her excellent qualities of honesty and industry. It was headed 'To whom it may concern', and such letters were always the most guarded possession of anyone in domestic service.

  'And there's more. Here!' He produced another letter with a stamp on it addressed to a solicitor's firm in Queen Street. Opening it gingerly, he said: 'This is all we need. The poor girl had been sent out to post this by her employer, a Miss Errington in Minto Street.'

  'Then we have something to go on,' sighed Vince.

  Faro frowned. 'We do indeed. But why should she have chosen to walk down Coffin Lane right past a postbox at the end of her road?'

  'The answer isn't too difficult. No doubt she had an assignation,' said Vince.

  'Of course,' said Conan, 'with the murderer. A crime of passion, I'm surer of it every moment. He stabs her, rushes off in a panic. Let's face it, if he had had time to think it out, then he wouldn't have left anything to reveal her identity.'

  Faro considered this possibility thoughtfully, staring at the sodden patch of snow-cleared ground where she had lain.

  'Perhaps and perhaps not,' said Vince. 'She might have met him earlier, he attacked her and she ran away from him - ran down here.'

  Faro put an end to speculations which merely confused the issue. 'I expect much will be revealed by a visit to Miss Amelia Errington.'

  He was dreading the encounter, expecting tears, vapours, fainting and the application of smelling salts.

  He felt his worst fears were to be confirmed when he encountered Dr Mills leaving the house.

  They had a slight acquaintance through Vince's practice and Dr Mills looked at him curiously after an affable greeting.

  'You are Miss Errington's physician?' said Faro.

  'Indeed, yes.'

  'Is she ill?'

  Dr Mills smiled. 'Not exactly ill, but in poor health generally. She has a heart condition - why do you ask?'

  'Because your attendance may be needed, sir. Her maid's body has just been found in Coffin Lane.'

  'Good Lord. Not Molly?'

  'Alas, yes.'

  Dr Mills gripped his bag firmly. 'Then I must go to her. An accident, I take it?'

  'She's dead, I'm afraid. Her body has been removed to the police mortuary.'

  The doctor stared at him in disbelief and repeated, 'The police?'

  'We have reason to believe she was murdered.'

  'Good Lord,' repeated Mills. 'This is dreadful - dreadful. Then I had better come with you. This is very bad news for Miss Errington.'

  'They were close?'

  'Indeed yes. Molly was more than a personal maid. She was also a companion.'

  Faro decided to take advantage of this fortuitous meeting with the doctor who probably knew more than most the workings of Miss Errington's household.

  He put a delaying hand on Mills' arm as they climbed the steps. 'Tell me, sir, can you think of any reason why Molly should have been murdered?'

  The doctor frowned. 'None at all.'

  'Was she a patient of yours? Doctors frequently have intimate information unknown to even the closest friends or relatives.'

  Mills smiled. 'I see what you are getting at, sir. The secrets of the confessional.' He shook his head. 'Alas, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. Molly never consulted me on any occasion and as far as I know she is - was - a strong and healthy young woman.'

  'Would you have considered her the kind of young woman who might have enemies?'

  Mills stared at him for a moment. Then he laughed. 'I see what you are driving at, Inspector. You are hinting that she might have had a jealous or over-zealous young man.'

  'I must confess I was hoping for something of the sort, sir.'

  Mills shook his head. 'Then I am sorry to have to disappoint you once again. Molly was completely devoted to her mistress and as far as I have gathered she had no other life outside this house.'

  Regarding Faro's doubtful expression, he laughed softly. 'You will understand a lot more when you meet Miss Errington.'

  Chapter 4

  Admitted after several onslaughts on the doorbell by a scared-looking maid obviously relieved to see that one of the two gentlemen on the doorstep was Dr Mills, they were shown into the sitting room while she went to see if her mistress was receiving callers.

  Suspecting that they might be in for a long wait, Faro used this admirable opportunity to invite the doctor to fill in some details of Miss Errington's background.

  'Her father served Her Majesty in India. Her mother died when she was fourteen and she devoted her entire life to taking care of her father. Molly has been with her for the past two, or is it three years ...'

  Faro found himself listening to a familiar tale of an only child, a daughter who gave up a life of her own to look after a bereaved parent, only to find when death released her from her duties that the marriageable years had also vanished.

  More fortunate than some who were doomed to single blessedness, Amelia Errington could at least enjoy the remainder of her years in comfort, if not the happiness that wealth could not buy.

  The house, a typical middle-class Georgian villa, was already showing signs of luxury somewhat decayed. There was an Aubusson carpet, elegant furniture and bric-a-brac on small tables. The stern and forbidding expressions of the family portraits on the walls indicated states of mind not noticeably cheered in the graduation to family photographs on the grand piano.

  The atmosphere, those first impressions, told Faro much about the house's owner and were confirmed when Miss Errington entered the room in her wheelchair.

  Faro was introduced but left the doctor to break the horrific news. The invalid Miss Errington was shocked. However, she did not faint or have a heart attack, armoured from her earliest years against showing any emotions relating to the fate of that lesser breed of mortals, the servants.

  Her attitude showed clearly that it was the stigma attached to such a dreadful happening that affected her most. What interpretation would her influential friends and acquaintances, to say nothing of neighbours, put upon such a happening?

  Molly was after all only a servant, but Miss Errington's house had given her shelter and she had paid her wages. Murder taints those nearest regardless of their innocence and might well be calculated to throw considerable doubts on matters relating to her mistress's reliability and respectability.

  'How will you manage without her?' asked Dr Mills gently.

  Miss Errington turned to him from a somewhat glazed contemplation of the garden beyond the window. 'I have a housemaid, Adie; she answered the door. I presume she is competent to deal with such elementary matters until I find a replacement.'

  And quite unexpectedly there were tears. She sobbed for a few moments, swiftly applying a lace handkerchief.

  Dr Mills patted her shoulder, and Faro cleared his throat, embarrassed into thinking that he had been too hasty in his judgement of her character. Her reaction had merely been shock and disbelief. She had a soft heart after all.

  She looked up at the men appealingly. 'I really don't know what I'll do without Molly. She was absolutely devoted to me.'

  'Has she any family?' Faro asked.

  Miss Errington shook her head. 'None. She was a workhouse child. I took her on trust and she repaid it well. She was eighteen when I took her in. She had been a servant with a very respectable family who were moving to Spain. Although her working life began with scrubbing floors in a local ho
spital, I was prepared to overlook this since she took enormous pride in having risen in the world from such lowly beginnings.'

  She sighed. 'A very reliable girl, she had excellent references, of course,' she added, a fact which Faro already knew.

  'A young woman, surely she had some private life, friends in the area perhaps?' asked Faro.

  Miss Errington looked suspicious and a trifle apprehensive at the word 'friends'. 'Your meaning, Inspector?' she said stiffly.

  'I mean, madam, perhaps a young man.'

  Miss Errington, who had never experienced feelings of being in love and therefore hadn't the least idea what he was talking about, was outraged at such a wicked idea.

  'Of course she didn't have a - young man.' She spat out the words, managing to make them sound an obscenity. 'I assure you she was entirely devoted to me.'

  Faro smiled. 'Quite so, quite so.' Apparently Miss Errington moved in a wilderness where the natural inclinations of man and womankind did not exist. A wilderness devoid of the emotion that kept the world turning and carried those who fell beneath its spell beyond the call of duty to their employers.

  'Is there anything else, Inspector?'

  'I should like to see her room.'

  Miss Errington was not at all pleased at this request and for a moment he thought she was going to refuse. Such behaviour in someone less invalidish would have made him immediately suspicious.

  Adie was summoned and waited at the bedroom door, eyeing him apprehensively as he opened the rickety cupboard and looked through the two drawers in the shabby chipped chest to reveal darned underwear and stockings. A nightgown lay neatly folded beside what was probably poor Molly's only other dress.

  'Done something wrong, has she?' demanded Adie as he closed the door.

  'Not that I know about,' said Faro. 'Was she a friend of yours?' he asked hopefully of the shivering kitchen maid. As she watched him she rubbed together hands blue with cold. Her nose was red and the house icy except for the fire in Miss Errington's sitting room.

  The thin dress under the starched white apron and cap looked hopelessly inadequate to keep Adie warm although he doubted that such a thought had ever crossed Miss Errington's mind, cosily wrapped in cashmere shawls against the chilly corridors.

  'That one!' Faro realised that Adie was speaking not of present injustices by her employer, but launching a tirade against Molly.

  'A friend, that one! Not likely! Proper snob she was, thought herself somebody, being the mistress's companion. Tried to imitate her proper manners. It was "do this, Adie, do that", never a kind word. Above her station, she copied the mistress, even the way she talked,' she added darkly.

  'Did she have friends outside the house?' Faro asked and Adie's lips twitched into a sneer.

  'Not her. Never went out nowhere except with the mistress. Close as two peas in a pod, they were, probably had hopes of being left something in her will when she goes.'

  Faro went to the door.

  'Is that it then? Seen enough, have you?'

  'I would like to see your kitchen, if I may.'

  Adie looked at him. 'What on earth for?'

  He pretended not to hear the question and with a shrug she led the way down the back stairs into a kitchen which nursed an inadequate fire and was only marginally less cold and forbidding than the rest of the house.

  She was surprised at his request to inspect the cutlery drawer.

  'The best silver's kept in the dining room. Locked away. Is some of it missing too? Is that what's up? Done a bunk with the silver, has she?' she asked eagerly.

  'Not as far as I know.' Opening the drawer on a formidable array of unhappy-looking knives, forks and spoons which had seen better years, he said, 'What about carving knives?'

  She stared at him, frowned and said: 'We have only the one, and it's hanging on the nail - over there - by the stove.'

  He nodded. 'Any other long sharp knives?'

  'No. Just the one. Why do you ask that?'

  Ignoring the question he hurried towards the door leading upstairs and into the hall. 'Are you and Molly the only staff Miss Errington employs?'

  'Yes. She doesn't hold with armies of servants. Waste of money-'

  'Thank you, Adie. You've been very helpful.'

  Emerging from the baize door, he observed Miss Errington in the sitting room with Dr Mills attentively pushing her wheelchair towards him.

  'Well, Inspector, what did you find?' Miss Errington demanded. There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice, as if she knew the answer that there was nothing of a personal nature in the bleak, cold room to indicate that Molly knew the identity of her murderer.

  'Nothing of value. But thank you for your assistance, madam.' And preparing to leave as Dr Mills offered consoling words to his patient, Faro produced the contents of Molly's reticule. 'There was an unposted letter to your solicitor, madam.'

  'How very tiresome. It was most urgent.' She tut-tutted. 'Wretched girl.' And suddenly realising how the wretched girl had met her end, she said stiffly, 'Thank you for letting me know. Perhaps you would be so good as to put it in the mailbox at the end of the street.'

  Faro bowed assent, waiting politely on the doorstep to be joined by Dr Mills. He stared up at the windows. 'Big house for one invalid lady to keep up.'

  Dr Mills smiled. 'Miss Errington belongs to the old school. Values her privacy above all else. Has plenty of money, you would guess, but refuses to countenance the upkeep of a flock of servants in accordance with her station in life.'

  Such ideals obviously did not run to a sturdy fire or two, and Faro shivered as he trudged through the snow down the Pleasance towards the High Street.

  There would be a good fire in his office and a good strong cup of tea at his command.

  Hoping there would be something more in the nature of evidence relating to Molly's murder, Faro was eager to see the police surgeon's report which stated that the stab wound was superficial, not severe enough to be fatal, having missed any vital organ. She had bled to death in the snow.

  Faro sighed. This frenzied but inept murder attempt confirmed his own conclusions. Namely that Molly had some secret life beyond the walls of the house he had just left, but spared her employer's feelings, or more likely spared herself the chill wind of Miss Errington's displeasure.

  Had he been a betting man, he would have put his money on Conan's theory of a jealous lover who had lured her to her death in Coffin Lane, almost certain to be empty on such a night.

  Why, was the first question. Who, would come later. A married man, perhaps, and, desperate to escape from Miss Errington's clutches, was Molly threatening to reveal all to his wife?

  Blackmail was a common enough occurrence, a costly business, which all too often rebounded and cost the blackmailer his or her life.

  Whatever the reason, their meeting had been urgent enough to occupy all Molly's thoughts and let her walk past the post-box carrying her mistress's important letter, her excuse for leaving the house in such appalling weather.

  Her agitation and forgetfulness had been greater than her regard for that lady's wrath, which Faro suspected might be considerable.

  Murderers, he knew from thirty years' experience, were usually known to their victims and most likely to be found in the family circle or in the ranks of close friends.

  In Molly's case, for family circle, he read Miss Errington or some other occupant of the house. An unlikely enough choice between an invalid and a shivering kitchen maid. Although Adie disliked the upstart Molly he could not see either maid or mistress blindly hitting out with the murder weapon, that still-missing knife which was not from Miss Errington's kitchen.

  He was almost certain that knowing the victim's identity, it would not take long for evidence to mount up that would point clearly in the murderer's direction.

  But events were already taking shape which were to change his mind and make nonsense of his careful theories.

  Chapter 5

  Faro had just set foot in the Centra
l Office when Superintendent Spens appeared at his door.

  'Another murder, have you, Faro?' he asked. His somewhat weary tone indicated that such events happened every day and that his chief inspector attracted them as other men attracted the present influenza epidemic.

  Superintendent Spens ('No relative to Sir Patrick of that ilk' he insisted) had replaced Superintendent Mackintosh, recently retired, his decent pension failing to compensate for the list of woes with which he regaled listeners on the subject of 'How I failed to qualify for my knighthood'.

  Despite the abrasive quality of their relationship over the years, Faro missed him. His successor was of a different breed from Mackintosh, who had worked his way up from the ranks, a fact that he had been proud to remember and keen not to let anyone else ever forget. It was perhaps the only ground for agreement between Faro and himself.

  Percival Spens was college-educated, he had left the University of St Andrews with first class honours in history. Many of the rank and file in the Central Office suspected that his appointment came by virtue of influence rather than a lifetime's devotion to crime, if such an unhappy and grisly occupation could qualify for the description 'devotion'.

  Superintendent Spens was as keen as his predecessor had been that no one should forget his impressive background. Addicted to Latin tags, which mostly fell on deaf ears and produced dazed expressions among his subordinates, he resorted to quoting Shakespeare and was somewhat dismayed that Chief Inspector Faro, who had scant education, was an authority on the Bard. Faro even had the temerity to correct his superior officer ever so politely: 'That was from Othello not Hamlet, sir;' and 'May I point out, sir, that is from Henry IV Part 2, not Henry V?

  His ego thus dashed, the superintendent took refuge in the more obscure works, hoping to catch Faro at a disadvantage.

  He was unsuccessful. Those who knew the inspector hid their smiles, aware that his retentive memory was remarkable; he was able to remember not only the words but the page they appeared on. And Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens were foremost in Faro's leisure reading.