A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4)

by Granger, Ann

  Ben opened it at once and took out a piece of card. I could see that it was a photograph, but annoyingly I couldn’t make out the subject.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Poole,’ said Ben to her. He pushed the photograph back in the envelope and put it in his pocket.

  I could have screamed in frustration. Miss Poole was looking mournfully round the room, avoiding the spot where the body lay, concealed from view now by the velvet curtain that had been torn down from the sleeping alcove.

  ‘I shall not easily come to terms with this,’ she said. ‘The memory of it will haunt me. I – I shall miss his friendship. Sometimes, when he had nothing else to do, he would come up to my workshop and just sit, drinking tea and chatting to me. He told me of his adventures in America. I always liked to hear about those. It seemed so cosy, sitting there with him. I did allow myself to wonder if . . .’

  She did not go on. The tragedy was complete. Miss Poole had had hopes of Mr Jenkins.

  Inspector Benjamin Ross

  Lizzie conducted Miss Poole back to her workroom but, as I expected, she was down again almost at once.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded eagerly as I opened the envelope again.

  ‘It is a photograph,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes, yes, I can see that! But of whom?’ She answered her own question at once. ‘It is the photograph the French lady gave Jenkins, so that he would recognise Mr Tapley.’

  ‘It might be . . . all right! Yes, it is. But don’t speak of that to anyone.’ I pocketed the photograph.

  Lizzie was looking around the ransacked room. ‘Clearly she wanted it back. Why did she not take it back when she paid Jenkins? That would have been the obvious time. She gave him his money. He should have returned the photograph.’

  ‘But he didn’t,’ I said. ‘Jenkins was a cautious person. He knew the sitter in this picture,’ I tapped my pocket. ‘The sitter was a man he had himself tracked down, a man who had just been murdered. This photograph was the equivalent of Jenkins’s penny insurance. It is proof she had been in touch with him about Tapley. I don’t know what excuse he gave her for not returning it. Perhaps he just said he had lost it. She would have been angry, but there would not have been much she could do.’

  ‘You think this a woman’s crime?’ Lizzie was horrified.

  ‘Oh, no, she had help. I don’t believe a woman crept into Mrs Jameson’s house and bludgeoned Tapley. Such a brutal attack is the work of a man. Nor do I see a woman knifing Jenkins. Whoever killed Jenkins had used a knife before. We are looking for someone you might call a professional.’

  ‘She hired a killer?’ Lizzie goggled at me.

  ‘I’m not saying that. Rather that she had a male accomplice.’ I could see Morris giving me an old-fashioned look. He thought I should not be chatting so easily to my wife about the case. But Lizzie, too, was looking unhappy.

  She glanced at Morris who took the hint and removed himself to the staircase out of earshot.

  ‘Ben,’ said my wife, ‘I have been stupidly vain, really, quite intolerably so.’

  ‘I find this hard to imagine,’ I said encouragingly. There was something else, and she had not told me. From vanity? Surely Lizzie would not have been swayed by such a silly thing. But she had turned a furious pink.

  ‘There was a man . . .’ She recounted her observation of the man in a tweed suit of knickerbockers (I had heard about such an outfit all too recently, too). ‘He was watching this building when I arrived, wasn’t he? Picking over the fruit and spinning out the time. He wanted to see if Jenkins had a visitor and when Bessie and I came, he was rewarded. He probably crept upstairs to make sure we had called on Jenkins, or perhaps he saw us through the window. At any rate, he followed us afterwards. I should have realised.’

  That is our man, I thought with a mix of triumph and frustration. That was Hector Guillaume, for want of any other name. Where the devil is he now?

  ‘Did Miss Poole have anything else of interest to say?’ I asked.

  Lizzie stopped looking disconsolate and gave me a rapid account of her conversation in the workroom, like the precise witness she normally was.

  ‘Thank you,’ I told her. ‘That’s very helpful. You really must go home now. Take a cab. Ask the local constable downstairs to go with you to make sure you find one.’

  ‘To make sure I go home, you mean!’ said my wife crossly. ‘Don’t worry, I shall do that. What will you do with that photograph?’

  ‘It will form part of the evidence.’ I sounded very policeman-like. My wife gave me a look that spoke volumes, but she did march out, head high.

  ‘Sergeant,’ I called out to Morris. ‘I shall leave you in charge here now. I am going straight away back to the Yard to see Superintendent Dunn.’

  ‘Very well, sir,’ said Morris stolidly. ‘The police surgeon will likely be here shortly. Not that he’ll be able to tell us much more than we can see for ourselves.’

  I looked for Lizzie in the street outside but there was no sign of her. However, the constable I’d ordered to go with her was plodding towards me.

  ‘I put Mrs Ross in a cab, sir,’ he announced. ‘It was a growler not a hansom, all decent. I did hesitate to put your wife in it at first on account of the look of the cabbie. He was a big old fellow with a squashed nose, touch of the prizefighter about him. But he seemed to know Mrs Ross and she him, so I thought it all right. She hopped up into the cab quite happy.’

  That could only mean her old acquaintance, Wally Slater. It was a bit of luck. He would make sure Lizzie got home. That is, if she didn’t persuade him to drive her off somewhere on another detecting foray.

  ‘Thank you,’ I told the constable. ‘I’m glad you found a growler. I think I know the cabbie.’

  I next hastened to make my own way back to the Yard. As I entered, the sergeant on the desk hailed me at once. ‘Mr Dunn is asking for you, sir. He said for you to go straight up to his office when you got here.’

  Was this about Lizzie? I braced myself for another lecture and hurried up to Dunn’s office. I tapped on his door and opened it, to be stopped in my tracks frozen in the doorway, very likely with my mouth open.

  Dunn was not alone. A woman was sitting in a chair by his desk. She turned her head to look at me. She was a fine-looking female, not young perhaps, but with remnants of former beauty still in her face. She was smartly dressed. I have learned, since being married, that women expect a fellow to notice what they are wearing in some detail, as if a man didn’t have enough on his mind. So I noted now that the visitor wore a pale grey skirt and a jacket that, to my mind, looked rather military. It had rows of frogging and brass buttons. She had a pile of black hair, intricately coiled, and I did wonder if it were all her own. Atop it was perched, tilted forward . . .

  Ah, there was something in this taking note of a woman’s dress, after all. I fancied I already knew the lady’s hat, having had it described to me just under an hour before by Lizzie, courtesy of Miss Poole. The little hat was round with lavender flower buds on it and a lot of crunched-up green ribbons on the top. It was held in place by a couple of ribbons tied in place at the nape of her neck.

  Dunn’s face had been inscrutable as he watched me study the visitor. ‘I am pleased to see you return so soon, Ross,’ he said now in a voice just as devoid of expression. ‘I wanted you to meet this lady and asked her if she wouldn’t mind waiting a little. May I introduce Mrs Thomas Tapley?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  * * *

  Elizabeth Martin Ross

  WALLY SLATER drove me at a sedate pace across London and set me down at my own front door. He clambered down from his perch and accepted his fare with a sigh.

  ‘I’m pleased to see you, ma’am, but not too pleased to know you’re meddling in murders again. There’s been another one, ain’t there? Near to where I picked you up? That bluebottle as was sent out to find a cab for you, told me of it.’

  ‘The constable should not have gossiped,’ I said crossly.

  ‘I as
ked him, didn’t I? The minute I saw him bringing you along. What does your old man think of you poking your nose in like you do?’

  ‘My husband,’ I said with dignity, ‘has learned to live with it.’

  Wally chuckled. ‘Well, I dare say he knew what he was getting when he married you.’

  ‘You are going to tell me it’s not respectable,’ I interrupted.

  ‘No, I’m telling you it’s a dangerous business,’ he retorted. ‘But you’ll do what you want, anyways, I dare say. Mrs Slater is of much the same turn of mind, only she ain’t as yet taken up investigating corpses.’

  ‘She keeps well, I hope?’ I asked politely.

  ‘Oh, the old girl keeps well enough, excepting her knees which gives her trouble. Well, neither of us is getting any younger. Nor is Nelson here.’ He patted his horse’s rump.

  ‘He looks fit.’

  ‘He is fit, ’cos he’s well looked after. I spent an hour this morning early, grooming him and getting him ready to take out. That and cleaning all the harness and keeping the cab itself spick and span, it’s a job in itself, without driving it round the town all day.’

  ‘You could do with some help, perhaps?’ I asked thoughtfully.

  He nodded, grimacing. ‘I’d have to pay and it would have to be someone I could trust. Nelson and I, we’ve worked together a few years now. I rely on him and he relies on me.’

  Nelson swung his head round and blew gustily through his nostrils at us.

  ‘He’s asking’, explained Wally, ‘what I’m doing hanging around here talking to you when I could be out looking for a fare.’ He turned to climb back on to his perch.

  ‘Mr Slater!’ I called up to him impetuously. ‘If I could find a boy, who wouldn’t cost you much and really likes horses, to help you out, would you be interested?’

  He stared down at me. ‘I might. I don’t say yes and I don’t say no. Depends.’

  ‘I do have someone in mind. He’s quite a small boy, I mean in size. I don’t know how old he is, but I suppose him to be about ten or eleven. He’s very observant and bright.’

  ‘I respect your opinion,’ said Wally. ‘If you says he’s bright, then he is. But he’s got to be able to reach up to groom Nelson, so if he’s a real little’un, that might be a problem.’

  ‘Oh, I think he could do that, or stand on a box. He’s the sort of boy who, if he set himself to do something, would find a way to do it.’

  ‘Would he now?’ asked Wally drily. ‘Seems to me, meaning no disrespect to your good self, that you and this boy are much of a kind. Bring him along.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ I said confidently. ‘Only it might take me a little time. I don’t know where he is at the moment. I shall have to find him.’

  ‘I hopes’, said Wally grimly, ‘as I have not let meself in for something. And he’d have to pass muster with Mrs Slater, you know! Mrs Slater is very particular. She wouldn’t have anyone hanging round the place she thought would look bad as far as the neighbours is concerned! If you get hold of him, take him to Mrs Slater. Then she’ll decide on it and let me know what I think.’ He chuckled.

  ‘Rely on me, Mr Slater.’

  He only gave me a look, touched the brim of his hat and called to Nelson to ‘Walk on!’ The growler rumbled away.

  Inspector Benjamin Ross

  Dunn’s words had completely taken away my gift of speech for the moment. The woman in the hussar jacket seemed unperturbed. She nodded graciously at me in acknowledgement of the introduction and said, in English,

  ‘I am very pleased to meet you, Inspector Ross. I understand you have been searching for the villain who murdered my poor husband.’

  Two things occurred to me at once. One was that the lady spoke good English, with an attractive accent, in a low husky voice. Had Jenkins been lying when he’d told Lizzie that his lady client spoke little English? Had it just been a ploy to require his presence as interpreter at any future interview? Or had he really not known that she had good command of the language? I didn’t doubt this was his elusive female client (even without a description of her hat to go by, and in spite of the colour of her hair now being black).

  The second thing to strike me was how self-possessed the lady appeared. At any rate she was not pretending excess grief. She showed little at all. Perhaps she was someone with extraordinary command over her emotions. Perhaps she was just too shrewd to fake what she didn’t feel. But could she really be the widow of Thomas Tapley, so recently deceased and whose mortal remains still lay unburied? Thomas’s corpse had been removed, at Jonathan Tapley’s insistence, to an undertaker’s establishment. It rested there, encased in an expensive coffin, awaiting instructions.

  Perhaps she could read minds or, at least, read mine. Not a muscle of her face twitched, but comprehension gleamed in her dark eyes as she watched me.

  She said, ‘Superintendent Dunn has seen my marriage certificate. Thomas and I were married in Montmartre, over three years ago. Montmartre is a small community, a village on the outskirts of Paris. It is a very popular place for Parisians to visit, to be out of the city and just to enjoy themselves. We have many restaurants, music-halls, ballrooms and open-air dancing in the summer. The atmosphere is bohemian. There are also a number of small hotels. In Montmartre no one asks questions . . .’

  Her self-control slipped there for a second and she smiled coquettishly. At once she seemed to realise it was inappropriate in the circumstances. In the firm, contained way in which she’d begun, she continued, ‘I have kept a lodging house of respectable name there for some years. Thomas came to live with me there nearly four years ago, first as a paying guest and then as my husband.’

  For my benefit Dunn silently held up an official-looking document that had been lying on his desk. He barely met my eye.

  ‘I have told Superintendent Dunn that I have no objection at all to his keeping my marriage certificate for a little, long enough to verify that the marriage is properly registered. But you will keep it safe, Superintendent?’ she turned to Dunn. ‘I must have it returned.’

  ‘Of course, madame,’ said Dunn gruffly. He dropped the certificate back on his desk.

  It occurred to me that he was as much at sea here as I was.

  ‘You speak very good English, madame,’ I said, adopting the form of address Dunn had used to her.

  Again that graceful inclination of her head. ‘Thank you.’

  But no indication of where she’d acquired the skill! This was a very clever lady. She placed her cards on the table one at a time, with great care. Information would have to be finessed from her. I began with the obvious.

  ‘May I ask whether you have been able to pay your respects to your late husband? If not, it can be arranged.’

  ‘I have just come from the undertaker’s, Inspector. I needed to satisfy myself that it is indeed my poor Thomas, before I came here to see you.’

  She had just viewed the body? And yet not even a tear?

  ‘Mrs Tapley,’ said Dunn woodenly, ‘has signed a declaration that the body is that of her husband.’

  ‘Mr Thomas Tapley,’ I began tentatively to take my questioning further, ‘returned to this country alone early last year. It seems it is quite some time since you last saw him – and he was then alive. I am indeed sorry for your distress.’ (Not that she was showing any. If she thought my words ironic, then so be it.) ‘But I must ask you about the circumstances under which you parted. Was there an estrangement? Had you agreed—’

  ‘No!’ she was quick to interrupt. ‘It did not come about like that at all. It is true he disappeared early last year. I have been seeking him anxiously all the time since, Inspector. Unfortunately, I was looking in France.’

  Dunn’s features twitched but he said nothing, content to let me flounder.

  ‘In France? You didn’t think to find him in this country? Being an Englishman . . .’

  ‘But one who lived and had lived for many years in France. Who had married me in France. Who lived with me
in our home there. Who never spoke of leaving or had any reason to do so.’

  Again she’d been quick to interrupt but perhaps I didn’t look impressed. She broke off and sighed.

  ‘It must seem strange to you,’ she began again. ‘Let me explain how it came about. You should know that Thomas was very ill the year before last. I nursed him back to health. Sadly, after he recovered he was a changed man. Before his illness he had been of a placid, cheerful disposition. We had been so content, he and I. But now, after his illness, he had become quite another person, irritable, suspicious . . . His mind wandered sometimes. I spoke to the doctor about it. The doctor told me that severe and prolonged episodes of fever sometimes had such a result, especially when the sufferer was older. Memory can be lost. It can play tricks; invent episodes. Thus my husband began to – to imagine things. This, too, the doctor declared was not unusual. I tried hard to return him to his former good state of health in mind as in body. I even managed to persuade him to visit the seaside, hoping a change of air would help. We went to Deauville. But after our return to Paris, I fear his condition grew worse.

  ‘Then, one day, he disappeared without any warning at all. I returned to the house to find he had gone and taken his travelling chest with him. I traced a carter who had taken him from Montmartre into central Paris. The man had been delivering fresh vegetables to the market area of Les Halles. He had deposited Thomas, and his box, at a cab rank nearby. I hurried to this place but . . .’

  She gave an elegant shrug. ‘You have not perhaps visited the area of Les Halles. They call it the belly of Paris. There are so many people, so much produce of all kinds coming from all over France, so much business being done, such a noise, such a running to and fro. There is a hill of empty crates and boxes waiting to be taken away, and another of full ones being delivered by all manner of carts. The cab rank nearby is also busy. A cab arrives with a fare only to depart almost at once with another. The poor horses are ready to drop with fatigue. My question about a man with a travelling chest earned me only laughter. They see dozens of such every day. No one remembered Thomas. No one had time to talk to me. No one cared. I returned to Montmartre in despair.’