‘And you were happy there, ma’am?’
‘I was. Very happy. I never saw that aunt and uncle again, but the fees were paid faithfully until I left the school at sixteen, in 1871, and went to Homerton College in Cambridge, to train as a teacher. I taught at a local school there for a year, and then I met Mr Robinson.’
This lady, thought Bottomley, is very obliging to tell me all this about her life. Almost too obliging…. But it was rapidly becoming clear that the legend of the coach carrying off little Helen in the night was true. Solomon Williams, the old gypsy man on Piper’s Hill must have been mistaken.
‘And this school, ma’am,’ said Bottomley, rummaging in a capacious pocket for his notebook and a stub of pencil, ‘would you tell me where it is?’
‘Why, certainly, Mr Bottomley. Meadowfield School for Girls is at a place called Upton Cross, here in Warwickshire. Are you going to visit them?’
‘I am, Mrs Robinson. Just to tie up a few loose ends. Thank you very much for seeing me today. I’ll be off, now, ma’am.’
Mrs Robinson rose from the sofa, and pulled a bell beside the fireplace.
‘My maid will see you out, Sergeant. I must say that I am intrigued about the crime that you are investigating, and my role in the affair. What exactly are you engaged upon? Or must I not ask?’
‘Oh, it’s no secret, ma’am,’ said Bottomley, pocketing his note book. ‘We – the police, I mean – have just uncovered the skeleton of an eleven-year-old girl hidden in the grounds of Mayfield Court—’
‘Oh, God!’
Helen Robinson, née Walsh, also known as Helen Paget, uttered a shriek of anguish and fainted away just as the startled maid entered the sitting room.
‘Meadowfield School, Mr Bottomley, is well known to discerning families. Old girls will send their daughters here, and those daughters, ultimately, send us their offspring. We have a long waiting-list. We were established in 1802.’
Helen Paget’s old school occupied a very fine mock-Tudor house, set in extensive grounds. Miss Jellicoe, the principal, strolled with Bottomley along a shale path that cut across the front lawn. A number of senior girls were playing a rather listless game of tennis on a hard court.
‘I’m nearer seventy than is decent,’ said Miss Jellicoe with an engaging smile, ‘and I suppose I should retire. But somehow, that prospect appals me.’
This school-marm, thought Bottomley, isn’t a bit like some of the vinegary old parties he’d met in the course of his life. He recalled Miss Fitt, (aptly so named), who had hated boys, and had a habit of hauling them around the classroom by the short hairs of their sideburns when she was in angry mood.
‘And so you’ll remember Helen Paget, ma’am? I saw her yesterday, and she told me how much she’d enjoyed being here.’
‘She was a good pupil,’ said Miss Jellicoe. ‘She was unceremoniously dumped on us, you know, arriving very early one October morning in a closed carriage. She fitted in immediately, was good at her studies, and at games, and went on to become a teacher herself for a short time. Then she fell, smitten by Cupid’s arrows.’
Miss Jellicoe laughed.
‘And did you ever see her guardians – her aunt and uncle?’
‘Never. All we ever knew was that she had come to us from a place called Mayfield Court on the other side of the county. Her fees were paid faithfully, and stopped when she left.’
‘Was she very shy when she came to you?’
‘Shy? No, not particularly. She was quiet and polite. This is a Froebel school, Mr Bottomley – do you know what that means?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Well, Froebel was a German educationist, who invented kindergartens – schools for little children. He also introduced the rewards system, where children are given little gifts to mark their progress. Helen Paget responded very well to this. She was in every way a model pupil. Shy? No, I don’t think so. Do you have daughters of your own?’
‘I have eight daughters, ma’am,’ said Bottomley, with what sounded like a stifled sigh. ‘Eight daughters, all living. Two are married, two are in service, and the rest are at home with the wife and me.’
‘Good heavens! So you have a ready-made girls’ school of your own. How do you cope?’
‘Well, ma’am, I follow the same system as that German chap you mentioned. What I can’t achieve by looking stern I achieve through bribery.’
Miss Jellicoe laughed again, and motioned towards the house.
‘Come, Sergeant,’ she said, ‘it’s a hot day. Let us go indoors and partake of some refreshment. I have tea, or I can send for beer if you’d prefer that. It’s time for you and me to compare notes on the education of children!’
On the following Tuesday, Jackson and Bottomley, each fresh from his own investigation talked together for over an hour, sitting in the back room at Barrack Street.
‘So that’s that,’ said Jackson. ‘Helen Paget was indeed whisked off to school on that night in October 1864, and the old gypsy man was wrong. But I wasn’t dreaming when I spoke to that old clergyman. I found his straw hat half-hidden in the graveyard, suggesting that he had been discovered and hustled away for some reason. He said that this Gabriel Forshaw had been murdered.’
‘It looks as though he’s the “silly old fool” the murderous lady talked about,’ said Bottomley. ‘I wonder how he fits in?’
‘And another thing,’ said Jackson. ‘I don’t trust that blandly helpful baronet, Sir Leopold Carteret. Too obliging by far, he was. He saw me politely off at the door of his house, and sent me to the rector, who clearly thought that I’d dozed off and imagined the Reverend Walter Hindle.’
Jackson glanced at the tall railway clock fixed high on the wall of the office.
‘It’s nearing twelve,’ he said. ‘I think you and I should stroll up to the cottage and partake of some refreshment. Then we can go over a few things again in peace and comfort.’
A steep walk uphill from Barrack Street Police Office took Jackson and Bottomley very quickly into the green countryside. The cobbled road changed into an unmade winding track, along which several hundred years’ worth of sparse buildings had sinuously arranged themselves into a hamlet. The summer sun flooded the quiet enclave of Meadow Cross Lane, as the winding track from Warwick was called, bathing the walls of the cottages in golden light.
It was cool inside Jackson’s cottage, because the back door on to the orchard was open, secured with an iron weight in the form of a goblin. Jackson motioned to Bottomley to take a seat and, after he had divested himself of hat and coat, he went into the kitchen, where a jug of mild ale stood in an earthenware bowl of cold water. He filled two pewter tankards, and returned to the living room.
‘There you are, Sergeant,’ he said, and sat down gratefully in his old wicker chair by the empty grate. ‘Mrs Jackson’s talking to the tenants she got for Brown’s Croft after we married. She’ll be coming back across the orchard soon.’
Herbert Bottomley had chosen an upright chair near the front door, which meant that he was uncomfortably near an old grandfather clock that stood in the corner. He had retained his yellow overcoat, but had placed his battered bowler carefully on the floor. He took the tankard from Jackson, and drained half its contents in a single avid gulp.
‘So what it amounts to, sir,’ he said, ‘is this. Rose Potter says that Helen was carried off in a carriage from Mayfield Court on such a night, at such a time, etcetera. I interviewed Helen in Birmingham, the other day, and she confirmed that that had been the case. Helen Robinson she is, now, and she told me how much she’d hated that house and its owners, or lessees, or whatever they were, and how much she’d enjoyed being at school.’
‘That’s what she told you,’ said Jackson, ‘but your gypsy, Solomon Williams, says that Helen never left that house in a coach – in fact, she never left it at all. If your gypsy is right, then your Helen Robinson is telling fibs. Down there in the office, I believed what “Helen” told you. But now, I’m not so sure. As you kno
w, Sergeant, in our profession it’s not a good idea to believe everything that we’re told.’
‘But sir,’ said Bottomley, after refreshing himself by draining his tankard, ‘after I visited Helen, I paid a call on her old school. The headmistress, a lady called Miss Jellicoe, confirmed that Helen had arrived on that very date at Meadowfield School for Girls, early in the morning in a carriage, and that she had stayed there happily until the age of sixteen. Her fees were regularly paid, and she proved to be a very happy and successful pupil. All of which, sir, gives the lie to our old gypsy.’
‘Which leaves us with our little skeleton, Sergeant. She can’t be ignored, or left out of the equation. Dr Venner told us that it was the skeleton of a girl child of eleven, whose body had been concealed in that garden for thirty years. How far do we stretch coincidence?’
Sergeant Bottomley looked into his empty tankard, and Jackson got up to replenish it. When he returned from the kitchen, Bottomley was ready with a question.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘that place where you saw the old clergyman in the churchyard – Upton Carteret. Meadowfield School was at a place called Upton Cross.’
Jackson rummaged through a number of papers on a small table beside the fireplace, and produced a rather tattered county map. With some difficulty he opened it out and spread it across his knees.
‘Let me see…. There’s Copton Vale, so we follow the railway line as far as Monks’ Stretton. And there’s Upton Carteret, where I saw old Mr Hindle, and there’s Providence Hall, standing in its grounds. That’s where I had that rather embarrassing interview with Sir Leopold Carteret, an interview that seemed to lead nowhere….
‘Ah! Yes, there it is, just half a mile beyond Sir Leopold’s demesne – Upton Cross, and there’s a little plantation of trees drawn on this map, with the word “school” written above it. That’s a curious point, Sergeant, Helen Paget’s school being so near to Providence Hall. There’s something about that proximity that I don’t much like.’
‘There’s a picture of sorts emerging, sir.’
‘There is, and it all holds well together, Sergeant. But there’s still the stumbling-block about little Helen. Is she the woman that you met, the woman who fainted at the mention of a skeleton, or has she been dead for thirty years, hidden until recently in the ruined washhouse at Mayfield Court? It seems to me—’
Jackson stopped speaking as his wife Sarah came into the cottage from the orchard. By force of habit she still knocked on the back door, as she had done when she was just a welcome visitor, coming through the trees from her own house, Brown’s Croft. She had been a widow then, a woman who had lost both her first husband and her three little boys in the cholera outbreak at Sedley Vale, in the spring of 1880. She was carrying a bowl of russet apples, which she placed on the table.
Herbert Bottomley had risen from his chair near the grandfather clock, and had given Mrs Brown a clumsy bow. Sarah was a friendly, quiet woman without airs and graces, but she was the guvnor’s wife, and had to be treated accordingly.
‘Oh, do sit down, Mr Bottomley,’ said Sarah. She took her place opposite Saul Jackson at the hearth, smoothing her white linen apron, and folding her hands in her lap. Bottomley glanced at the inspector, as though seeking permission to speak. Evidently Jackson knew what he was going to say, because he gave his sergeant an almost imperceptible nod.
‘I was wondering, missus,’ said Bottomley, ‘if you’d let me tell you a story, and when I’ve finished, maybe you’d like to tell us what you think about it.’
Herbert Bottomley proceeded to give Sarah an account of their investigation of the mystery unearthed at Mayfield Court. From time to time Jackson added a few comments, but he was content to give Bottomley his head. The sergeant was possessed of a remarkably retentive memory, and very rarely got any fact wrong when discussing a case.
When he had finished, Sarah Jackson seemed lost in thought for some minutes. The grandfather clock ticked away in the corner. Out in the orchard, a lively blackbird was informing all and sundry that this was his territory, and that they had better watch out.
‘Well,’ said Sarah at length, ‘it seems to me that there’s a very wicked person at work, someone who’s single-minded enough to sweep away anyone who stands in his path. Or her path, because it could be a woman – perhaps that heartless woman who lived at – what did you call the place? – Mayfield Court.’
‘You’re right, missus,’ said Bottomley, ‘and in my mind it is a woman who’s left a trail of deaths behind her for thirty years. I think I know who she is, but now’s not the time for me to speak. The insoluble mystery, as I see it, is what happened to Helen. One of our informants, an old gypsy man, is convinced that she was murdered, and that it was her little skeleton that was revealed to the light of day not so long ago at Mayfield Court. But I actually met Helen, now a married woman with children, so if Helen’s alive, whose is the skeleton?’
‘Well, Mr Bottomley,’ said Sarah, ‘I don’t see any difficulty there. You can’t just have a skeleton, you know, hidden in a garden without someone having put it there. From what you told me in your story – and a very wicked story it was – they were the bones of a little girl of eleven. Helen was eleven, and lived for one night in that house, never to be seen again. Why complicate matters? Of course that skeleton was poor little Helen’s. She was murdered, most like, by that horrible couple who lived in the house, the aunt and uncle, or whoever they were.’
‘But what about the Helen I interviewed, missus? That’s the stumbling-block, you see.’
‘Well, she must have been an imposter,’ said Sarah. ‘She told you how much she disliked her domineering aunt, and how kindly the servant-woman was – Rose Potter. And she said that the husband was a weak-willed kind of man. She knew a lot about that old house and its occupants – but she was only there for part of one night! Whoever that woman in Birmingham was, Mr Bottomley, she’d had all those details drilled into her, to repeat when required to do so, like a piece of poetry.’
‘But Sarah,’ said Jackson, ‘if the woman in Birmingham was an imposter, where did she come from? I don’t quite see—’
‘Saul, the aunt told the servant that Helen was going to school that very night across the county. So she must have arranged for another child – the daughter of some poor, improvident woman, perhaps – to take her place. This other child was drilled as to what to say, told to accept a change of name, and sent to the school. You’ll have to find out all that. As for the real Helen – well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Sarah,’ said Sarah’s husband, ‘what you’ve just said is pure supposition—’
‘Well, of course it is, but it’s an explanation, isn’t it, Saul? It leaves you with an identity for your skeleton, and sends you off after the imposter. If I ever met that woman in Birmingham, I’d soon get the truth out of her.’
‘But—’
‘Why do you think she fainted away when you mentioned the skeleton, Mr Bottomley?’ said Sarah, turning to the sergeant. ‘She suddenly realized that she had been groomed to take the place of a child who had been murdered! That’s why she fainted. Grown women don’t faint at the mere mention of a skeleton. Dear me, is that the time? I must put the cabbage on the kitchen fire.’
Sarah Jackson rose from her chair and left the living room. Jackson and Bottomley sat absorbed in the ramifications of what she had just suggested. Two Helens, one of them an imposter….
‘It might be an idea, sir,’ said Bottomley, ‘if you were to interview the Helen that I saw in Birmingham. You could take a local uniformed constable along with you, to put the wind up her, asking pardon for the coarse expression. I don’t expect she knows much, but she’ll know enough to put us back on the right trail of our mad, bad killer.’
7
Margaret Gates’s Story
Helen Robinson stood at the door of her smart house in Aston Road, and watched her husband as he climbed into the cab that would take him to the station of the London and Nort
h Western Railway. They had enjoyed a night out with friends who played whist, but it was now Wednesday morning, and the office beckoned.
How smart he looked! And how settled! She and Adrian had both turned forty not too long since, and the word ‘settled’ was one that appealed to them both. The children, too, were content at their respective boarding-schools.
Her husband, as well as being a very successful businessman, was a pillar of the community, who had been appointed Chairman of the Board of Guardians at the Union Workhouse in May. There was a suggestion that he might become chairman, too, of the parish council.
She herself was an active member of the Gentlewomen’s Sewing Guild, and an able organizer of clothing collections in the borough, but whatever she did as an individual was ultimately designed to reflect the glory of her husband. They both loved their spacious villa in Aston Road, and hoped to remain there for life.
The cab clattered away from the kerb, and Helen closed the door. She went down the hallway and into the morning room, where her maid was clearing away the breakfast things.
‘Emily,’ said Mrs Adrian Robinson, also known as Helen Paget, ‘Emily, I’m worried about that big, shambling man who came here last Thursday.’
Emily put down the tray on the table, and regarded her mistress with open affection. She loved this handsome, kindly lady, who had brought her from an orphanage when she was twelve, and had trained her as a domestic servant. Emily was seventeen, the same age as Miss Alexandra, and the mistress treated her at times as though she were a second daughter of the house. Miss Alexandra was very clever and accomplished, but she didn’t have much sense.
‘He were the policeman, weren’t he? Wanting to hear all about when you were a little girl. When I came in to see him out, you’d fainted away on the rug. I told him to be off, and that he’d no right to frighten a lady, policeman or no policeman. Why are you worried about him, mum?’
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