by J C Briggs
‘Did Miss Lambert benefit from Mrs Wyatt’s will?’
‘She was left an annuity which reverted to the estate on her death, and Mrs Wyatt left her three hundred pounds to be paid as a lump sum, but then the letter came from the hospital in Malvern. Rest and water treatments had been prescribed, but the disease was more advanced than had been realised. Every care had been given, the doctor said.’ She rose from her seat. It was clear that they would learn nothing more. ‘Now, Superintendent, I must get back to my brother. I have much to do and I have to say that, though I am grateful for the return of the ring, I fail to see what more assistance I can give you over the matter of a skeleton in a water tank.’
10: An Invitation
Number one Devonshire Terrace was a matter of a few minutes’ walk down by Regent’s Park and to Dickens’s house they went after Miss Anguish’s door closed smartly upon them.
‘Let us think while we walk,’ said Jones. ‘This is a jigsaw in which there are missing pieces, but I wish to ponder the incomplete picture before we talk about it.’
Cups of tea and slices of cake came on a tray to Dickens’s study. Jones ate his slowly, noting with amusement that Dickens wolfed his down and was, as always, eager to give his impressions.
‘Excellent cake,’ Jones observed, brushing the crumbs from his jacket.
‘I should not have given you any had I known how long you would be about it. Thinking, were you?’
‘I was. About tuberculosis of the bone and the coincidence of a skeleton with signs of that disease and a young woman suffering from the same disease — as I think it must have been, from the symptoms Doctor Symonds described — who dies suddenly at a sanatorium in Malvern —’
‘Whose death is reported by letter and whose funeral is not attended by any relative.’
‘As far as we know. I think my first call tomorrow must be on Miss Lambert’s Doctor Adam to find out if he recommended her stay at Malvern.’
‘If she were there at all. It all sounds a bit odd to me, and there were other things: her lover, an artist, a portrait painter and foreign, foreign, Sam.’
‘Thought to be, Charles, by Miss Temperance Peach whom I must see.’
‘Miss Fane was having her portrait painted by an unknown artist. Suppose — I merely suggest — bashfully, humbly, meekly —’
‘I know what you suggest and suppose, and I can see how you suppose it, but for the moment, it is just supposition — and very thin, I may say, equally meekly and humbly, of course —’
‘The very image of humility, Samivel, but do go on. I shall hear you with all meekness.’
Jones grinned. ‘Until you can find out more from the Fane household, or from Mrs Sabatini who may or may not be in touch with you, I must follow the clear set of footprints which lead me to Doctor Adam and Miss Peach.’
‘Miss Anguish has broad shoulders and large hands and —’
‘Changed your mind, have you?’
‘She didn’t like Miss Lambert. She could be suspect.’
‘Everyone’s a suspect —‘
‘Even my Italian artist.’
‘Very clever. If he exists and if he is Italian, or foreign, or anything at all. When you find him, you can bring him to me bound in chains. Will that do?’
‘Five bob on it?’
‘It would be a cruelty to do so.’
‘Faith, Samivel, where’s your faith in the Inimitable? Have we not stood shoulder to shoulder looking into the canon’s mouth?’
‘As to shoulders, no doubt Miss Anguish had the strength to do it, but dislike is not necessarily a motive for murder, and I should think she’s a God-fearing woman.’
‘Yes, I noted the Bible — repentance, perhaps?’
Jones laughed, ‘Give over. We’ll keep her in mind. Now, I must go. However, as you are so interested in artists, Italian, or otherwise, you might like to come with me to see Mrs Peartree and Miss Peach. If they’re anything like as grim as Miss Anguish, your youthful charm might be needed to smooth my path.’
‘Ah, them woz the days, old ’un, when I woz a brisk young blade, whose gradual decay, I observe with increasing melancholy.’
‘You’ll be a mere sprig to them. Come to Bow Street at eleven. I shall have seen Doctor Adam by then.’
Dickens sat in his library after Jones had gone. The fire burnt low and a chill crept into the room. He shivered, but made no move to stir the coals. He was thinking of Venice and a monk’s cowl and a bone-white face. After all these years, it came back so vividly. That dead girl dragged from the canal with a rosary round her white neck. And a girl dead in a water tank where a rosary had been found and her neck broken.
Of course, it was impossible. Jones was right to be sceptical. He hadn’t time to be chasing ghosts. Yet Dickens felt as though something vibrated in the air, that the events in which he was entangled were somehow connected. Some intuition, he thought, a feeling like that of one of Macbeth’s witches: a pricking of the thumbs.
There was a knock at the door. Something wicked this way comes. He laughed to himself as it was only John, his manservant, whose anxious face peered round the door.
‘Shall I make up the fire, sir? It’s cold in here, and I’ve brought the letters.’
‘No, John, thank you, I will do it.’
Dickens put on more coals and stirred up a warming blaze and looked at his letters. Well, here was a turn-up. A letter from Mrs Carlyle.
My dear Mr Dickens,
I have been avisiting and taking comforts to the ailing, and have seen Mrs Pick to whom I took some cranberry jelly — my own, I boast to say. Scottish cranberries, too. My excuse was that I had heard that Lady Fane was unwell and thought the jelly might do her some good.
It is astonishing what a forthright, eccentric old creature like me can accomplish. Mrs Pick was too surprised to do more than take the jelly, and, of course, too polite to wonder about my enquiries, on behalf of Fanny, about Jemima Curd. It was clearly news to Mrs Pick that Fanny and Jemima were such friends, but I assured her on that point. She did seem rather flustered about the matter. And, oddly, Mrs Pick said that she did not expect Jemima Curd to return. As far as she knew, Jemima Curd was with her family. That is a matter upon which you may speculate, I daresay.
Now, to a more significant matter: my justifiable pride in the ease with which I had scaled the walls of the fortress led me to enquire if I might see Lady Fane. Mrs Pick went to ask and I was ushered into the presence. In the drawing room by a very cheerful fire, I babbled about cranberry jelly, extolled the virtues of the wine of Constantia, produced a little bottle — what Thomas will say, I know not — advised a small restorative glass with a home-made biscuit and produced — not my own — a little packet of oatcakes sent from Scotland — and hoped that Lady Fane would soon feel better.
Lady Fane was quite bowled over — she would be, thought Dickens — she confessed to feeling delicate and complained of breathlessness and headaches. I confided my own torment with the migraine, we exchanged various possible solutions, and ended firm friends, becoming quite confidential. Lady Fane became quite pale and fluttery again when I enquired about Miss Fane’s health — as was natural in the circumstances — and I think I am right in sensing alarm — and fear. There is some secret in that house, I am certain. However, I changed the subject and I did not refer to Miss Pout or the tutor, not wanting to seem merely nosy.
However, the end of this thrilling tale is that Mr Carlyle and I are invited to a reception at Wisteria Lodge tomorrow night. I trust that you may wish to escort me. I am, as you well know, such a retiring old soul that I could scarce go alone, and what a pleasant coincidence it will be that my gallant friend, Mr Dickens, is visiting Mr Carlyle who is too indisposed to attend. Naturally, I must hope that Lady Fane is not put out by the appearance of Mr Dickens. Sir Neptune’s feelings he will no doubt keep to himself, and we may pursue our discreet enquiries…
Dickens laughed to himself at the word “our”. Clearly Mrs Carlyle had t
aken to her investigations with zest. He wrote back immediately, expressing his regret that Mr Carlyle should be so indisposed as to miss the engagement and averring that nothing would give him greater pleasure than to accompany Mrs Carlyle to the reception.
And then he thought for a while longer. Jane Carlyle had written of Lady Fane’s “alarm and fear”, and had sensed that she should change the subject. Had Mariana Fane loved Rolando Sabatini and had he betrayed her by running away with Violet Pout? Sir Neptune would be furious if his daughter had been hurt. That might well account for the couple’s disappearance. Was Lady Fane afraid of what Sir Neptune might do? But they would not want a scandal. Better that it should be hushed up and Miss Fane sent to the country. Perhaps he would find out more tomorrow night, or Jane Carlyle would. There might be gossip. Jane had sharp ears.
And he thought of Jemima Curd. It was odd that Jemima Curd had not returned to see Mrs Pick about a possible position — she would surely be in need of employment, but then her family might have needed her more if she had found them.
11: Sour Grapes
‘Doctor Adam wasn’t much help. He remembered Miss Lambert only vaguely. He consulted his records, told me he had prescribed laudanum for her aches and pains, and thought he may have suggested that she might try hydrotherapy at the sanatorium in Malvern. It was what he usually suggested. He heard about Mrs Wyatt’s death and had assumed that Miss Lambert had moved away. He thought no more about her.’
Dickens raised his eyebrows. ‘And that was it?’
‘It was,’ Jones said. ‘I asked him if he had heard anything about her death from Miss Anguish or her brother and he said not. I’ve written to the Malvern sanatorium enquiring after Doctor Lucas and his patient, Miss Flora Lambert. In the meantime we’ll go up to Camden to see what our ladies know. Rogers got the address from Mr Faithfull, the house agent — Little College Street.’
‘I know it.’
‘I want to know about that cistern and when they stopped using it, and if there were any other young women employed at South Crescent. I know there’s the ring, but it could have been stolen from Miss Lambert.’
‘And Miss Anguish did not recognise the beads. I suppose they could have belonged to someone else, but how did they come to be in that water tank?’
‘No idea, but let’s see what we can find out about Miss Lambert’s young man.’
The cab took them up the Hampstead Road towards Camden. Dickens knew it all. Here where the railway bisected the road by Granby Road had been his old school, Wellington Academy, and beyond, across a few streets with their shabby terraces, gloomy little shops and lodging houses, was Bayham Street where he had lived when John Dickens had brought his family to London.
Then there was Johnson Street, the house his father had rented after his release from the Marshalsea debtors’ prison, a narrow street of red brick houses, very dark at night for there was no gas light then in 1824, and from there he had walked to the blacking factory which had moved from Hungerford Stairs to Chandos Street off Covent Garden.
He knew Little College Street, too. It hadn’t changed much, he thought, since the days when his family had lodged with Mrs Roylance at number twenty-seven — the same smoky, muddy, dingy street. What a nomadic life they had led. It was odd, he thought now, how this case seemed to be taking him over old ground. He had, in one sense, not moved very far. Devonshire Terrace was not so far away. But where was home? Not here, certainly, in this dreary terrace of houses.
They stood outside the house at the end, larger than the others. It was neat, true, and the steps were swept and the curtains clean, but he knew that inside it would be like Mrs Roylance’s, likely to be dark, cramped and gloomy, and smelling of cabbage as if the ghosts of every cabbage that had ever boiled there wafted about the rooms in search of spectral diners.
Jones was about to knock on a peculiarly long-faced miserable knocker when the door opened and a girl stood before them, a maidservant, they assumed, with a long, narrow face not unlike the door knocker, though without the shine. She looked about fifteen, but she was neatly dressed, and clean, apart from a black smudge above her mouth like a moustache. She carried a hearth broom, wielded like a weapon.
‘Single ladies only, ’ere, sir. We don’t takes gentlemen. There’s a lady — which she ain’t — Miss Wozenham — at the end. Takes single gentlemen — which they ain’t — if yer don’t minds the damp and cares for gravy. Gentlemen sits up too late an’ they drinks spirits an’ smokes an’ knocks at doors where they ain’t wanted.’ She glared at them as she recited this catechism, ‘An’ no dogs neither.’
Dickens glanced round to see if some slavering hound had pursued them and was panting to be admitted as a board lodger, but there was only a one-eared, peevish-looking cat which made for the door. The girl shook her broom at it. ‘You ain’t welcome, neither.’ The cat fled. It must have been male, thought Dickens, or a lady back from some disgraceful liaison.
‘I should like to see Mrs Peartree, if you would tell her that Superintendent Jones of Bow Street is here.’
The girl’s eyes opened very wide. She gazed at Jones as if he were a being from another planet. Clearly this was not a house where policemen made morning calls.
‘Mrs Peartree, if you please.’
She turned back into the house and a door opened. They heard a sharp voice. ‘Make sure they wipe their feet.’
Dickens obediently used the boot scraper and Jones was placing his foot on that useful object when the girl came back to announce that Mrs Peartree and Miss Peach would see Superintendent Jones. She waited while Jones scraped both boots. Then they were shown into a parlour, a neat carpeted room with a large black horsehair sofa resembling some gloomy catafalque. A coffin would have fitted on it very neatly. Two upright chairs were placed at each end of a square table behind which the two women stood like a pair of undertaker’s mutes. There was no smell of cabbage — just of carbolic, cleanliness, and godliness of the kind shrivelling to the soul.
Fruit did come into Dickens’s mind as he looked at the two women who were waiting — but neither pears nor peaches. The bloom was long gone on the peach. Two pairs of sharp eyes like pale gooseberries or sour grapes stared at them. Keep your eyes peeled. They looked as though they did.
They must be sisters, Dickens thought, though Miss Anguish had not said so. They were both tall with large, flat faces, wore black dresses shaped around them like grave clothes, and looked as melancholy as Hamlet’s aunts — if he had had such relations. He wondered if Mrs Peartree had been married. Cooks were often given the courtesy title of Mrs. He failed to imagine a Mr Peartree in this angular room. Men were not admitted, so the gaunt maid had said.
The taller woman announced herself as Miss Temperance Peach. Mrs Patience Peartree was the younger. Miss Peach nodded grimly as she rolled down her sleeves over two brawny arms — they could have hefted a ton of coal, never mind poor little Miss Lambert.
Jones wasted no time. He explained that he was investigating human bones found in the cistern at South Crescent. He wanted to know when the cistern had last been used.
‘We had an indoor cistern installed well before Mrs Wyatt’s death. The old cistern wasn’t clean. The laundry — well, I can’t tell you what it was like sometimes. It must be —’
Mrs Peartree finished her sister’s sentence. ‘Seven years ago, at least, Temperance. You remember what a muddle we were in — workmen an’ their dirty boots an’ whistlin’ like a flock of birds. But, I suppose —’ her gooseberry eyes looked sharp again — ‘Bones, you say — in our old cistern?’ She sounded affronted.
Miss Peach looked similarly outraged. ‘Human bones! Someone put a body in there. We might all have been poisoned, but it can’t have been when we were there. Think of the smell, Patience, we’d have noticed, surely. The wickedness of it.’
‘Were there any other servants employed — any young women, for example?’ Jones asked. ‘The bones we found belong to a young woman between sixteen years
and twenty-two.’
‘Sometimes we’d have a charwoman — we had Mrs Fudge when the cistern was put in the kitchen, but she wasn’t young — strong, though — a bit coarse, for our liking,’ Miss Peach answered.
Mrs Peartree agreed with that, and continued, ‘Her daughter, Polly — now she was a young thing. Strong, mind, and willin’ about shiftin’ the heavy things.’
‘She married, though, and now I think of it, she went off to Australia. Mrs Fudge couldn’t —’
They were never to know what Mrs Fudge couldn’t for Jones interrupted, ‘Any other young women you can think of?’
‘Only Miss Lambert, Mrs Wyatt’s companion — or was supposed to be,’ Mrs Peartree replied.
‘She died in a sanatorium in Malvern or somewhere,’ added Miss Peach.
‘Miss Anguish told us that. Miss Lambert’s doctor, however, told me that he did not actually send her there. Can you remember the circumstances of her going?’ Jones asked.
Mrs Peartree answered, ‘She wasn’t well — all kinds of aches and pains. After Mrs Wyatt died, she upped and went — left us to do all the work. Said she’d to go to a clinic or some such place. Miss Anguish wasn’t pleased. She thought Miss Lambert should wait until the house was closed up. Oh, but no, she had to go at once.’
‘Did someone take her to Malvern?’
‘You’re thinking about the young man, I daresay.’ Miss Peach’s peeled eyes glittered.
‘Miss Anguish told me that there was some acquaintance — a foreign gentleman, she said. What can you tell me about him?’
‘Supposed to be an artist. Italian, she said. I wouldn’t care to say what he was. Not a person you’d want to know. Very quiet — up to no good, that’s what I think.’ Dickens glanced at Jones, but his face was studiedly neutral.
Miss Temperance Peach was in full flow, ‘She went too far, did Miss Lambert. He was in the house — at night. Drinkin’ wine in the drawing room, the pair of them. Givin’ orders, indeed, for dinner. It’s one thing giving orders, and quite another to take ’em. A person might order a dinner — t’ain’t for certain she’ll get it —’ Miss Peach had the Danish family’s failing — a tendency to soliloquise.