by David Field
The man shook his head. ‘No, except that he seemed a bit distracted when he was planning his Dublin trip, then I received a telegram from the man he was supposed to be meeting over there, to say that he hadn’t arrived. It’s unlike him to be away from London for so long a time, and not to be in touch with instructions regarding his wardrobe. Although most of it went with him, and he gave me a massive tip just before he got into his coach for Euston that morning. He also gave one to Preedy, the coachman, almost as if he wasn’t expecting to return. Anyway, assuming that you’re here to conduct a search, where would you like to start?’
Two hours later they’d been carefully through the master bedroom, three spare bedrooms, a sitting room, a drawing room, a kitchen with attached scullery, and several rooms on the top floor that were allocated to live-in domestic staff. That left just a study of some sort, and as they closed the door behind them and contemplated the neatly maintained collection of desks, chairs, bookshelves and cabinets, Jack gave voice to his innermost thoughts.
‘In view of all the filth I heard during the Wilde trial, and what I had the misfortune to witness in that Molly House, I half expected to find some women’s dresses in the wardrobes upstairs.’
‘You’re guilty of assuming that he was a Mary-Anne, are you not?’ Percy smiled. ‘And for all you know, he took his fancy dress with him. Remind me to enquire what was in all those clothing bags in the Pullman. If I’m correct in one of my deductions, he dressed as a woman in order to leave the carriage at Crewe, but I assume that when he changed back into a man in the Waiting Room he carried the ladies’ attire back out in the bag he was carrying. If it’s in the Pullman, then we know he got back on board it. I hope so, because if not he could have hopped on board any other train at Crewe — possibly one back here to London.’
‘Let’s see if there’s anything here to give us a lead,’ Jack suggested, ‘since I hear the call of Farringdon Market. Do they do cooked lamb roasts, can you remember?’
‘You’ll settle for fish and chips again, I assume?’ Percy began opening the drawers to the main desk that sat in pride of place in front of a window with a commanding second floor view of Regents Park.
Jack wandered over to what looked like a writing desk in front of the bookcase, most of whose volumes seemed to be about Irish history — a curious taste in literature for someone who hadn’t been back to the land of his birth for several years. Jack was about to reach out for one particular volume that promised to be illustrated when there was an excited shout from Percy.
‘Look at this, Jack my boy! All Stranmillis’s bank records for the past couple of years, with a very interesting series of cash withdrawals in recent months. Fits the blackmail theory, does it not?’
‘So might this,’ Jack replied distractedly as his eye fell on a blotting pad lying face up on the desk. It contained a few smudgy remnants of items that it had recently been employed on, and one in particular seemed to possess a nagging familiarity. It was an address of some sort, but because it was the blotted version of the inked original, it was written backwards.
‘What have you got?’ Percy walked over with a handful of bank records.
‘This blotter pad,’ Jack advised him as he nodded down at the item in question. ‘There’s some sort of address that looks vaguely familiar, but it’s written backwards, since it’s obviously the inked impression left when it was blotted, presumably by Stranmillis.’
Percy picked up the blotting pad and walked over to the mirror on the far wall. As Percy held the blotter up before the mirror Jack gave a yell of delight as he was able to read the address the right way round in the mirror image.
‘That’s Allen’s address! You know, the man I visited — Wilde’s friend, the blackmailer?’
‘Of course I remember,’ Percy advised him. ‘You have the only colander brain in the family. But it further confirms the blackmail theory, does it not? Stranmillis chose to bow out of public life because he could no longer tolerate paying Allen’s price for his silence.’
‘That’s one theory,’ Jack conceded. ‘Another is that if we don’t go home bearing dinner in the next hour or so, I’ll need to leave the country to escape Esther’s nagging.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Perhaps Stranmillis isn’t dead,’ Jack suggested to Percy as they sat in the latter’s office on the Sunday morning, awaiting replies to the telegraph enquiries that Percy had launched northwards the previous afternoon.
‘Let’s look at the facts as we know them,’ Percy suggested. ‘Stranmillis organises a very clever and complex operation to secure his apparent disappearance, after clearing his bank account of all but a token amount of money sufficient to keep that account operational, and also plans to take most of his clothes with him. In order to make his escape possible, he switches identities at Crewe, and plans to head off to who knows where, leaving instructions for his clothing to be forwarded to him in due course, once he’s re-established himself in a new identity somewhere where he’s not well known.’
‘All of which suggests that he’s very clever, very determined, and very wealthy,’ Jack argued. ‘But that’s all it suggests. What makes you think he’s been murdered?’
‘Well, for a start, why was the Pullman lobbed into the lake, containing all his precious clothes?’ Percy queried. ‘Not only would that not have been done on his instruction, but it must have been done by those who knew that he wouldn’t be requiring them. Nor did anyone steal them, which suggests a far more important motive, namely that of disposing of the man himself. Then there’s the sheer number of people involved in the operation — two at the railway crossing, at least one — if not more — at the salt workings, and the substitute Stranmillis who was a hired actor, at an absolute minimum. Also, if it was known that he was travelling with a large amount of money in cash, the temptation for murder and robbery would have been almost overwhelming.’
‘Aren’t those two motives inconsistent?’ Jack argued.
Percy smiled. ‘You are still awake, aren’t you? But either way, the man’s probably dead.’
‘So where did he go after Crewe, and where’s his body?’ Jack challenged him.
‘Put yourself in Stranmillis’s shoes.’ Percy smiled as he filled his pipe with his favourite ‘Navy Plug’ and applied a match. ‘You want to get away completely. Where would you go?’
‘Abroad, clearly,’ Jack replied. ‘Perhaps America — can’t you get there by ship from Liverpool?’
‘One of the reasons why I sent a cable to the Liverpool Constabulary, who even as we speak are likely to be contacting the shipping lines for convenient sailings at around that time, with tickets booked by either “Lord Stranmillis” or a “Mr Bunbury”. Also the Liverpool hotels, for overnight accommodation acquired under either name.’
‘Liverpool can be reached by train on the LNW Railway, certainly,’ Jack conceded, ‘but so can Manchester, and — by way of connecting services — anywhere in Scotland, where Stranmillis has an estate, remember. Or even, as you pointed out yesterday, back to London via Rugby, which gives access to the whole of the Midlands. You’re looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘I’ve sent the same request to Manchester,’ Percy advised him, ‘and if neither of those cities has heard of him we might consider what you’re suggesting. At least I’m not just sitting waiting for him to walk in here and shout “boo” — like this chap.’
‘This is for the Sergeant, sir,’ the uniformed constable advised them as he laid a sealed envelope on the desk in front of where Jack was seated. After thanking and dismissing him, Jack opened the envelope and smiled.
‘At least Esther and I can go ahead with our plans for tomorrow, although I’m not looking forward to showing this to the woman who was planning on making a life with him.’
He slipped the photograph across the table to Percy, who found himself staring at the somewhat ethereal image of a pale face that had presumably once been handsome, the ghostly image of which was rendere
d even more spectral by the deposits of salt in the eyebrows and moustache, and around the eye sockets and nasal cavities.
‘This your man from the Welsh coast?’ Percy asked. ‘The one who impersonated Stranmillis on the train from Crewe? I don’t envy you the job of showing that to his beloved. That’s one aspect of this rotten job of ours that I’ve always hated. Do you really think that she can take our enquiries much further?’
‘No idea at this stage, but this photograph will give her a powerful incentive to help us find whoever launched him into the Irish Sea.’
‘Anything from the examination of the body?’
‘Just confirmation of the cause of death. In the usual medical terms, of course, but it reads to me like a smack on the back of the head with an iron bar. I bet they have plenty of those available aboard an ocean-going vessel. And apparently he had thirty pounds on him, so robbery wasn’t the motive.’
‘Quite. But doesn’t it strike you as curious that they did away with him, when he’d already fulfilled his part of the operation?’
‘They would hardly have done it before then, would they?’
‘Very funny. But my point is that somebody clearly wanted to tie up all the loose ends, and all we’ve learned about Stranmillis so far suggests that he wasn’t a murderer, so why did someone else want to cover their tracks? The man who hired him perhaps — Ryan, wasn’t it, according to the poor man’s fiancé?’
‘I’ve just remembered something! When I spoke with that blackmailer Allen the other day, he revealed that he was apprehensive that I might have been sent by Ryan.’
‘Just adds weight to my argument.’ Percy smiled in his self-satisfied way. ‘If Ryan is the violent type, which Allen’s reaction tends to suggest, and Ryan hired his niece’s boyfriend with every intention of having him done away with, then he could well be capable of organising Stranmillis’s demise.’
‘Aren’t the two of them good friends?’
‘So were Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, once,’ Percy pointed out. ‘Read some history, instead of that rubbish by Dickens. And even if only one man was responsible for the killing on board the boat to Dublin, that’s one more to add to the collection, and it suggests a sizeable team, possibly with an Irish connection.’
It fell silent until a man hurried down the corridor towards them with a message. Percy scanned the incoming wire urgently, then threw it down on his desk with a frustrated noise.
‘No passages booked to New York on either of the vessels leaving at around that time, at least not under either of those names.’
It was late in the afternoon, during their tenth game of ‘hangman’, that a cable arrived that caused Percy to leap from his chair in excitement.
‘One for the patient plodder! A hotel in Liverpool reports the curious behaviour of a man calling himself “Sir John Bunbury”, who paid cash in advance for two nights, failed to use the room on the second night, and was being closely observed for possible Fenian connections because he spoke with a faint Irish accent and had no luggage other than one large carpet bag which, when opened by the hotel’s security manager, proved to be full of ladies’ clothing.’
‘When was this?’
Percy’s smile grew even wider. ‘The twenty-second and twenty-third of February — precisely when Stranmillis might be expected to have jumped a train at Crewe, and headed for Liverpool. Presumably he planned to pay for a crossing to New York or somewhere in cash, the following day or shortly thereafter.’
‘So you’ll be heading for Liverpool?’
‘No we will, but by separate trains, I suspect. You have to speak to the dead man’s actress fiancée tomorrow, and I have some important questions to ask of a man currently missing the daylight in Crewe. The bloke who was in charge of the salt workings — I gave orders for him not to be granted bail, and he’s being held on a suspected murder charge, which is probably a little harsh. But now he can earn his redemption. May I borrow that photograph of Stranmillis with his two university pals? I have a feeling that it will come in useful.’
The other customers in the cafe in Cathedral Walk, a neat little alleyway to the rear of the St James Theatre, looked the other way out of politeness as the pretty young girl cried her eyes out, with the occasional scream, on the shoulder of the older woman and the stern looking man who was with them.
‘I knew in my heart that something was wrong,’ Emily gasped between sobs, ‘but I could never have imagined in a thousand years that someone had killed him! I just can’t bring myself to believe that anyone could do such a thing to such a gentle, loving soul like Giles. Do you have the remotest idea why?’ she pleaded as she gazed through her tears at a grim-faced Jack.
Jack braced himself to give the only answer he could. ‘How well did your fiancé Giles get on with your uncle — the one who hired him?’
‘Pretty well, or so it seemed,’ Emily gurgled through her tears as she wiped her nose on the handkerchief she was handed by Esther, being one of several she had brought along for the occasion. Then the penny dropped with Emily, and she stared at Jack with eyes wide with shock and disbelief. ‘Do you honestly believe that it could have been Uncle Paddy who had Giles murdered? I know that at first he was a bit suspicious of him, mainly out of a desire to protect me, I thought, but once we became engaged he seemed to accept him, and went to considerable lengths to make him welcome at our Summer house parties.’
‘Those parties,’ Jack persevered. ‘Was there anyone else there who might have intended harm to either Giles or Lord Stranmillis?’
‘Why are you asking about him?’ Emily asked, confused but by no means lacking the ability to put two and two together.
Jack sighed and opted for the entire truth. ‘Lord Stranmillis has disappeared, and he went missing at exactly the same time that Giles accepted your uncle’s offer of an acting role “somewhere out west”, as you described it to Esther. The “somewhere out west” turned out to be Crewe, in Cheshire, where Giles was hired to impersonate Lord Stranmillis as part of his Lordship’s desire to disappear for a while — possibly for ever. Do you know any reason why he’d want to do that?’
‘Not really,’ Emily replied in an uncertain voice. ‘Although at my twenty-first party he seemed to be having some sort of argument with another of the guests. I can’t remember the guest’s name, and the argument was only brief, then they seemed to get over it. Dermot — Lord Stranmillis, that is — left the party early that particular weekend, which was unusual for him. He normally stayed on until the Monday morning, after breakfast, but he left on the Sunday afternoon. However, he seemed all right during my big party on the Saturday night; his argument with whoever it was had taken place around lunchtime on the Saturday.’
‘This was your twenty-first party, you said?’ Esther asked, and Emily nodded. ‘Attendance was by invitation?’ was Esther’s next question, and again Emily nodded.
‘Yes, but there were a huge number of people invited. I remember, because I did the seating plan for the tables at my birthday dinner, and it took ages. One of my hobbies is calligraphy, and I did the table plan in old English copperplate, using a special pen and coloured inks.’
‘Do you still have it?’ Jack asked eagerly.
Emily nodded. ‘I’m pretty sure I kept it, because I was so proud of it. Do you want me to see if I can dig it out?’
‘Yes please,’ Jack urged her, ‘since from what you were saying it sounds as if the person that Lord Stranmillis was arguing with was one of those guests.’
‘Why are yer ’oldin’ me on a murder charge?’ Jed Blower demanded as he sat across a rickety table from Percy Enright in the only interview room that the local police station in Crewe possessed. ‘I ain’t done no murder, an’ yer knows it.’
‘I don’t know anything, other than what you’re prepared to tell me.’ Percy smiled encouragingly. ‘But what you do tell me may help to clarify matters regarding how that Pullman carriage finished up in your brine lake — and why.’
‘It we
re ’is Lordship ’imself what ordered me ter do it, an’ if — like yer said — it were ’is own private carriage, then where’s the ’arm done?’
‘Tell me the whole story,’ Percy demanded, and Blower obliged without any apparent hesitation. Mind you, Percy reminded himself, he’d had a day or two to dream up the story he was about to deliver.
‘Well, it were like this,’ Blower began. ‘I were in me cottage one day, feedin’ the dog, when ’is Lordship turned up in ’is coach. ’E told me as ’ow a train from Crewe were gonna be deliverin’ ’is private carriage down ter the top o’ the sidin’s one night, an’ when that ’appened me an’ the boy was ter tow it down ter the lake an’ use the crane ter chuck it in.’
‘A rather unusual instruction, you’d have to admit,’ Percy commented.
Blower nodded. ‘Particularly since it were gonna be delivered after dark, an’ we was ter chuck it in the lake as soon as it arrived.’
‘How did you know which night it was to be?’
‘I were given the date by ’is Lordship.’
‘He came to the salt diggings personally in order to give you this instruction?’
‘Yeah. That were pretty unusual — in fact it were the first time — since I normally got me orders from ’Arry ’Ardcastle, the site manager.’
‘So that was the first time you’d ever seen his Lordship?’
‘Yeah.’
Percy reached inside his inside jacket pocket and extracted the university reunion photograph that he’d been given by Jack, then placed it in front of Blower with a question.
‘Do you recognise anyone in this photograph?’
‘Yeah, that’s ’is Lordship, on the right.’
‘You’re quite certain of that?’ Percy said with a beaming smile that he couldn’t prevent, given its spontaneity. ‘Not the one in the middle?’
‘The short one? No — it were definitely the one on the right. Did yer find ’is body in that railway carriage? If yer did, I knew nowt about it, ’onest ter God.’