Depths of Deceit

by Norman Russell

  ‘And what, I wonder, did a nice, down-to-earth young man want with a thing like that in his pocket?’ asked Box, more to himself than to Miller. ‘Well, we’ll look into that later. Now, what’s this? Here’s a tin case, containing a pair of spectacles.’

  ‘They’re reading glasses. Quite strong, of their type.’

  Box opened the case, and looked briefly at the gleaming lenses in their neat gold frames. Then he read the name of the optician, displayed on a little printed label in the lid of the case:

  Reuben Greensands, Optician. 14 Catherine Lane, EC.

  ‘Greensands…. I noticed a few optician’s shops when I was in Catherine Lane this morning. I suppose one of them belongs to this man Greensands. It’s odd, though …’

  ‘What’s odd, Mr Box?’

  ‘Well, if Walsh had started work on examining the reredos close up, why hadn’t he put on his reading glasses? It’s just one of those little things, Doctor, that require some kind of explanation.’

  Arnold Box had not visited Carshalton, a thriving little Surrey town a few miles distant from Croydon, since boyhood. It was much as he remembered it, with large houses belonging to wealthy merchants and financiers, a town centre which still had the appearance and feel of a country village, the man-made Lower Pond with its elegant Portland stone bridge, and a memorably beautiful park. As Sergeant Knollys had observed, it was ‘a very nice little place’.

  Enquiry at the railway station had taken him out to a suburb called Hackbridge, where a number of mills and small factories lined the bank of the River Wandle. Box knew that he had located the Royal Albert Cement Works when he saw a smart uniformed inspector standing in the road in front of a solid, four-square granite house, which was separated by a tall privet hedge from a busy works yard.

  ‘Inspector Perrivale? I’m Detective Inspector Box of Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Box,’ said the inspector. He was a man who exuded an aura of responsibility and rectitude. He had a narrow, serious face, and a fair clipped moustache. His uniform was immaculate.

  ‘This is a very peculiar business, Mr Box,’ he said. ‘It’s quite beyond what we can cope with down here. I hoped it would be you they sent, because it was you who solved that Lord Jocelyn Peto business up at Croydon last year.’

  As Perrivale talked, he led Box through an arched gate that brought them to the rear of the house. Behind a small back garden the cement works stretched in an array of irregular buildings down to the river. Despite the murder of the proprietor, the hands had still reported for work. The ground, the men, and most of the buildings, were covered with a fine white powder.

  ‘This is Wellington House, Mr Box,’ said Perrivale, ‘and it was here, in the conservatory, that the body of Mr Abraham Barnes was discovered yesterday morning. He had been murdered – killed with a single blow to the back of the head, delivered with a sharp instrument, according to the local doctor here.’

  ‘Could the blow have been inflicted with an adze, or hatchet?’

  ‘Why, yes, Mr Box. In fact, that’s what Dr Lowrie suggested. Do you want to interview the family first, or examine the scene of the crime?’

  ‘I’d like to look at the scene of the crime, if it’s all the same with you, Mr Perrivale,’ Box replied.

  The conservatory was a fanciful creation in cast-iron and glass, built out into the front garden of Wellington House. Perrivale opened a glazed door which was reached from the garden path, and the two men entered the site of Barnes’s murder.

  Box looked around him. There were plenty of potted ferns, some of them wilting in the heat, a few exotic blooms in brass tubs, but not much else. The place had been built for show, rather than as a centre for someone passionately interested in horticulture. There was a white-painted table of wrought iron, and two similar chairs, one of them overturned. Someone had drawn an outline in chalk to indicate where the body had lain on the elaborately tiled floor. A clever idea, that.

  ‘Mr Perrivale,’ said Box, ‘I was told that you found peculiar and sinister aspects to this murder. Would you mind telling me what those aspects were?’

  To Box’s surprise, the Surrey inspector blushed, as though with shame, but when he spoke, Box realized that the man’s face was suffused not with shame, but anger.

  ‘Mr Box, I was summoned here by Mr Barnes’s resident manager, a man called Harper. The police station is only a stone’s-throw from here. He led me into this conservatory from the garden, where the door stood open. I saw poor Abraham Barnes lying on his back in a pool of blood. It’s all been mopped up since. There he lay, where you see the chalk-marks drawn by my sergeant before we had the body removed to the mortuary.’

  ‘What did you do when you started to examine the body?’

  ‘I put my hands around the dead man’s neck, and pulled him upright. I was able to see the wound in the back of his head. After that, I turned him right over on to his front, so that I could examine the wound more closely. And then, from his mouth …’

  The inspector stopped to compose himself. The initial rage that had suffused his honest face had still not abated. Box hazarded a guess.

  ‘You found that his mouth had been filled with honey?’

  Perrivale looked at him as though he was mad.

  ‘Honey? In God’s name, man, what are you talking about?’ he cried. ‘I turned him over to look more closely at the head wound, and a stream of quicksilver flowed from his mouth on to the tiled floor.’

  ‘Quicksilver? That’s another name for mercury, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. Who could have done such a wicked thing? What’s the point of it? Here was a man who killed his victim with a savage blow, turned him on his back – unless, of course, he fell down on to his back – and poured a bottle of quicksilver down his throat. It stayed down in his stomach, or at the back of his throat, perhaps, until I turned him over, and then it flowed out on to the tiles.’

  It was very humid in the conservatory. For a moment it seemed to Box like a savage jungle, and beyond the overgrown palms he fancied that he could see the shadow of a pagan face in a leathern cap, and hear the dying bellows of a sacrificed bull…. Not honey this time, but mercury. It was insane.

  ‘After that,’ Perrivale continued, ‘I sent my sergeant to fetch our local doctor, who arrived about twenty minutes later. He examined the body, and concluded that poor Barnes must have been killed between three and four in the morning.’

  ‘Was Mr Barnes in his nightgown?’

  ‘No, Mr Box, he was fully dressed. Later, I found that his bed had not been slept in. Without wishing to be indelicate, I must mention the fact that Mr Barnes and Mrs Barnes occupied separate rooms. The fact that his bed hadn’t been slept in makes me think that he was keeping a rendezvous with someone he knew.’

  ‘That sounds more than likely, Mr Perrivale,’ said Box. ‘Did you find anything odd in Mr Barnes’s pockets?’

  ‘Now, what made you ask that, Mr Box? As a matter of fact, I did. And I still have it here, in my own pocket.’

  Inspector Perrivale placed something in Box’s hand. It was a lapis lazuli token, the size of a halfpenny. On one side was depicted a carved representation of a bird, and underneath it the word Corax. On the reverse was a familiar seated figure, adorned with a garland, beneath which was engraved the words Diu Pater. Jupiter. It looked very much as though the obscene mysteries of Mithras had not confined themselves to Clerkenwell. They were here, in the attractive little Anglo-Saxon town of Carshalton.

  ‘There’s nothing more of interest here, Mr Perrivale,’ said Box. ‘This murder may be connected with a similar case I’m investigating in Clerkenwell. In both cases, a token with the words Diu Pater written on it was found on the body, and something had been put into the victim’s mouth. In this case it was mercury; in the other, it was honey.’

  ‘It’s certainly no coincidence, Mr Box. If you ask me, there’s an insane killer on the loose. You know the kind of thing I mean. Someone with a twisted c
oncept of justice, imagining wrongs to be righted by arcane rituals – a mad brain in a killer’s body—’

  ‘Or it might be the work of someone who’s very sane, very cunning, and very wicked. I’d like to speak to the family, now, Mr Perrivale.’

  ‘They know you’re here, Mr Box, and they’ve assembled in the drawing-room. There’s the widow, Mrs Laura Barnes, and Mr Barnes’s unmarried daughter, Hetty. It was poor Hetty who found the body. Oh, and Mr James Harper is there. He’s the resident manager of the works. He’s only just come in from the yard.’

  Perrivale led Box out of the conservatory and into the main house. It was a gloomy kind of place, thought Box. It was quite luxuriously furnished in the heavy styles of the 1870s, but there was a faded air about it, and the costly wallpaper was stained and peeling in places. The works buildings at the back of the house, too, had looked in need of repair and refurbishment. Maybe the late Mr Barnes had been tight-fisted. Or maybe he was on the brink of Queer Street.

  They walked along a dim passage and emerged into a wide hallway. Perrivale knocked on a door to his left, and ushered Box into the drawing-room of Wellington House.

  Three people stood before the fireplace, a handsome woman, with well-coiffured blonde hair, an older, thinner woman with a pale, tear-stained face, and a good-looking man of thirty or so. They turned to face the door when it opened, and created the illusion that they were three figures in a wax tableau: the elegant daughter, the grieving widow, and the loyal employee.

  ‘Inspector Box,’ said Perrivale, ‘let me present Mrs Barnes, Miss Barnes, and Mr James Harper.’

  The thin-faced tearful woman suddenly broke ranks, rushed forward, and seized Box’s hand. Fresh tears gushed from her swollen eyes.

  ‘You must bring them to justice, Mr Box!’ she cried in anguish. ‘What fiends could have done such a terrible thing? They poured quicksilver down his throat!’

  ‘Hetty!’ The single word, uttered with chilling authority by the handsome younger woman, told Box that he had confused the identity of the two ladies in the family. The tearful mourner still holding his hand was Abraham Barnes’s daughter. It was the younger blonde woman who had been the cement manufacturer’s wife.

  Hetty suddenly released Box’s hand, and rejoined the others in front of the fireplace. She appeared both confused and humiliated. Mrs Barnes threw her a look of unconcealed dislike. Box saw immediately what he had to do.

  ‘Ladies,’ he said, ‘and you, Mr Harper, I’m sure that my colleague Inspector Perrivale has already asked all the questions that needed answers, and he and I will consult together later. At the moment, though, I want to interview each of you again, as my kind of questions will be different from those asked by Inspector Perrivale.

  ‘Miss Barnes,’ he said, turning towards the still tearful daughter of the house, ‘I’d like to hear from you how you came to discover your father’s body yesterday— There, now, miss, there’s no need to take on so! You must try to be brave. The more I know, the quicker I’ll be able to bring your father’s murderer to justice.’

  Box found his eyes drawn involuntarily to a full-length portrait hanging above the fireplace. It showed a proud, heavily moustached but balding man in his late fifties, his hands clutching his lapels, his dark eyes glaring balefully from his pale face. This, surely, was the late Mr Abraham Barnes. The handsome young Mrs Laura Barnes must have been his second wife.

  ‘Take Inspector Box into your father’s office, Hetty,’ said Mrs Barnes. Her voice now held unconcealed contempt for the other woman. ‘James and I will remain here until we’re called for. Mr Perrivale, will you stay with us?’

  The faded Miss Henrietta Barnes made no reply to her stepmother’s command, but she obeyed it nonetheless. Leaving the room, she led Box across the hall and into a small office near the main door of the house. It contained a roll-top desk bulging with papers and bundles of letters, a small round table, and a few upright chairs. Box opened his notebook, and put it down on the table.

  ‘Now, Miss Barnes,’ he said, ‘tell me exactly what happened yesterday morning which, as you know, was the fourteenth of August.’

  ‘My alarum-clock woke me as usual at six,’ said Hetty nervously. ‘After I had washed and dressed, I came downstairs. My stepmother, I knew, was already stirring, but it was too early for her to be down. Mary, our maid, had made a cup of tea for me in the kitchen, and while I drank it we chatted about various things—’

  ‘What did you chat about, Miss Barnes? I need to know everything, you see.’

  ‘Well, we talked about the forthcoming marriage of the vicar’s younger daughter. We were both excited about it, because she was going to marry a foreigner, a man she met on holiday last year in Florence. We wondered whether she’d go out with him to live in Italy, or stay here. Oh, dear, it was such a normal, happy morning!’ Hetty produced a handkerchief from her sleeve, and began to dab her eyes.

  ‘What happened next?’ asked Box gently.

  ‘When I’d finished the tea, I filled the watering-can at the sink and made my way into the conservatory. It was a favourite place of my mother’s, and I try to keep the plants alive in her memory. I’m not much interested in plants myself. Neither is Laura – Mrs Barnes.

  ‘I stepped over the threshold, and there was Papa, lying on his back, with his head in a pool of blood. He was fully dressed, in his day clothes. The garden door was wide open. The world seemed to stop turning. I just clutched the watering-can and stared down at him. I knew he was dead. And that’s all.’

  ‘What time was it when you discovered your Papa’s body?’

  ‘It would have been about a quarter to seven. Suddenly I seemed to come back to life. I screamed, and Mary came running out of the kitchen to see what was the matter. I told her to run out into the works, and fetch Mr Harper in. Then I ran upstairs to break the news to Laura.’

  Box scribbled rapidly in his notebook, and then looked at the young woman sitting opposite him. How old was she? No more than thirty-five, but she dressed like a woman twenty years older than that. She rose at six, while young Mrs Barnes luxuriated in bed. She chatted to the maid, no doubt, because the maid was her only friend. Miss Henrietta Barnes was evidently treated as a skivvy.

  ‘You did very well, Miss Barnes,’ said Box. ‘Did you by any chance touch your father’s body?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ The horror in Hetty’s voice was all too genuine.

  ‘And you sent for Mr Harper…. Surely he must be an early riser if he was out at the works before seven?’

  ‘James Harper is always out of the house before six o’clock. He’s a very conscientious man, who works very hard.’

  ‘Do you like Mr James Harper?’ It was a curious question, and totally unexpected. Hetty blushed. She looked suddenly both confused and resentful.

  ‘I neither like nor dislike him. He works hard, but he’s fickle and changeable. You can see how handsome he is, and Laura – well, I’ll say no more. In fact, I think I’ve said more than I should. If that’s all, Mr Box, I’ll go, now.’

  4

  The Power of the Press

  After Hetty Barnes had left the office, Arnold Box sat for a while in thought. He had sensed the tension in the family as soon as he had seen them, standing in front of the drawing-room fireplace like so many waxworks. There had been no feeling of unity in the face of a common ordeal. And now the daughter of the house had hinted at what he’d already suspected: the handsome works manager and the attractive young widow had already come to some kind of understanding.

  Had that understanding between Laura Barnes and the works manager included murder? Had Abraham Barnes been lured to the conservatory at an early hour by Harper, and then slaughtered? It was possible. But then, what about the mercury, and the pagan amulet? He would have to tread very carefully.

  The door was flung open, and Mrs Laura Barnes came into the room. Dry eyed, and in full control of herself, she exuded an air of invincible triumph. Without waiting for Box to say a word, she laun
ched into speech.

  ‘I don’t know what that mewling cat has said to you, Mr Box, but now I’m going to tell you a few home truths. It’s time that somebody cleared the air. Abraham Barnes, my late husband, was a mean, grasping hypocrite. Mr Perrivale will have told you that Abraham Barnes was a pillar of the community, without an enemy in the world. True, he was an elder in the Methodist Church, and one of the vice-chairmen of the Board of Guardians. But he was a penny-pincher, although he could always find money for whisky and cigars, which he’d consume alone in this vile den of his. Oh, yes: plenty of money for drink.’

  ‘You mean—’

  ‘Why don’t you listen to what I’m saying? He drove his first wife to the grave by his meanness and his little cruelties. That fool Hetty adored him in spite of it all, and look at her now – a dried-up spinster, with no prospect of marriage. “Poor Papa!” she cries. Well, “poor Papa” can’t help her now, and very soon she’ll have to strike out for herself.’

  Mrs Barnes seemed to be working herself into a passion. Her face flushed with anger, and she glanced around the stuffy little office as though wondering how best to commence its demolition.

  ‘And the business, which is basically sound, is being run on a shoe-string. Nothing’s invested back into the plant. James – Mr Harper – had pleaded with him to release money from the family trusts to shore up the works before it collapses. But no. My husband had all but retired. He wasn’t interested. So here’s what I’m going to do. After I’ve buried Abraham, and the will’s been proven, I’m going to marry James Harper, and together we’ll develop this business until it’s a leader in this particular trade. I expect that Abraham has left Hetty a small competence, so she can make her own way in the world as she thinks best. This is my house now, Mr Box, and my works, and in a few months’ time, James Harper will be my husband!’