Death at Epsom Downs

by Robin Paige

  But the damp situation and the occasional spring rises of the River Cam had not done the cottage any good, and whatever pastoral romance it might have offered to a harried city-dweller in search of a weekend rural retreat was obscured by its dilapidated reality. The plaster on the walls had sloughed off, exposing the lath underneath; the thatched roof was ragged and pocked; the plank door sagged at an angle; and the window frame gapped so widely that, open or closed, there must be no want of fresh air indoors, especially when the winter winds blew. Through the dirty glass, Charles saw that the ground floor was one small, dark room, like a cave, brick-floored, with a fireplace at one end and a ladder at the other, reaching up through the low ceiling into a loft. Mrs. Sally Thompson seemed not to have made a great success of life, at least so far as material possessions might testify, for the room contained only a bare table, three chairs, and a narrow bed under a gray wool coverlet, pushed against the back wall. There was no china on the mantel, no pots of geraniums on the sill, no braided rug on the floor, no cozy cat warming itself by the fire—walthough an old black-and-white dog lay under the willow tree. Two empty whiskey bottles in the dustbin outside the door suggested one possible reason for the lack of niceties and knicknacks. Mrs. Thompson was fond of her tipple.

  Inside the cottage, a slender man in a light-blue checked suit was just descending the ladder from the loft, a blue tweed cap on his head and a portmanteau in one hand. He turned toward the door just as Charles stepped inside, followed by Jack Murray, who was followed in turn by the dog, who stood just inside the doorway, scratching. They seemed to fill the small room.

  The man looked up, his face draining of color, his eyes wide with sudden fear behind thick-lensed glasses. Then, seeing men whom he did not recognize, his fear turned to nervous belligerence.

  “Who’re you?” he demanded thinly. “What do you want?”

  “We’ve come to talk to you, Mr. Baggs,” Charles said, wondering just who the man had feared might find him. The police, perhaps? Or someone else?

  The man cleared his throat. “There’s no Baggs here,” he said indistinctly. “You’ve got the wrong house. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be off. I’ve a train to catch.”

  “It’s Baggs, all right,” Murray said in a low voice to Charles. “I saw him once, with Badger. No mistaking those glasses. He’s blind as a bat without them.” At the mention of Badger’s name, the man pressed his lips together.

  “Mr. Baggs,” Charles said. “I am Charles Sheridan and this is Jack Murray. We are conducting a private investigation, commissioned by the Jockey Club, into the murder of your partner. We would like to ask you a few questions, please.”

  The dog growled low in his throat. Baggs put down his portmanteau and straightened his shoulders, the muscles in his jaw tightening. “A . . . private investigation?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Right,” Murray answered gruffly. “We ain’t police.” He booted the dog outside, closed the door, and shoved the bolt into place. The action was clearly a threat.

  Baggs’s chin began to quiver. “I . . . I don’t know anything about Badger,” he said plaintively. “I heard he’d been shot, but I’d already made plans to leave before that happened. I’ve been . . . I’ve decided to go into a different line of work, you see. In America. I’m looking for more opportunity.”

  “That’s interesting,” Charles said, as Murray began to edge around the table. He gave Baggs an encouraging smile. “It is a natural thing to want more opportunity, and I congratulate you on your initiative. But what about your business in Newmarket? I’ve heard that it’s thriving. I shouldn’t think you’d want to leave it.”

  “Business?” Baggs asked uneasily, his glance shifting from Charles to Murray. He took a step backward, in the direction of the fireplace. “That’s all over. Badger and I ended our partnership the week before, quite . . . quite amicably.”

  “Amic’bly, huh?” Murray snarled, now standing within an arm’s length of Baggs. He spoke in a thick Cockney accent that made him seem larger and more menacing than he was. “That ain’t wot Sobersides sez. ’E sez you threatened to kill Badger if ’e didn’t lay off about the doping. ’E sez ’e’ll swear to it in court. So wot about it, huh? You killed ’im, right? You killed Badger.”

  “No!” Baggs took another step backward. His eyes were wide and frightened behind his glasses, his mouth was working. “We . . . we may have had a few hard words. But—”

  “When I said that your business was thriving, I was speaking of your connection with the Americans,” Charles said mildly. “I understand from various sources that you have undertaken a new business arrangement with them, which was in part the reason for terminating your relationship with Mr. Day.”

  “That ain’t all,” Murray said menacingly. He thrust his face close to Baggs’s and growled, “You ’ad a row wiv Badger at the Great Horse jes’ before ’e was killed—a big row. You wuz seen, and ’eard, Baggs, so don’t try to lie out of it.”

  Charles pulled out a chair from the table and sat down, crossing his legs. He leaned back. “I fear that Mr. Murray is correct,” he said regretfully. “The proprietor will testify that you followed Badger out of the pub and didn’t come back. I’m very much afraid that the police believe that you are the killer, Mr. Baggs. They’re looking for you, you see. They will no doubt trace you, just as we did.” He shook his head, the gesture seeming to say that it was a pity that such a promising career could be cut off by so dreadful a misunderstanding.

  Baggs sagged against the fireplace mantel. “I . . . I’m not the man they’re looking for,” he whispered. His eyes were terrified. “I . . . I swear it.”

  Murray yanked the other chair forward. “Oh, yeah?” He put a thick hand on Baggs’s shoulder and forced him into the chair. “You sure look like that man to me, Baggs, you do fer a fact. You and Badger ’ad a row, you followed ’im out in the alley, you shot ’im.” He leaned over and shouted into Baggs’s ear. “You did it. Didn’t you?”

  Baggs shook his head wordlessly, his eyes rolling.

  Charles leaned forward. “Then who did?” he asked softly.

  “I . . . don’t know,” Baggs said. He blinked rapidly, as if he were blinking back tears. “I . . . didn’t see.”

  Murray reached down and snatched Baggs’s thick glasses. “Lemme see them specs o’ yers. Mebbe you need better lenses, huh? Mebbe that way, you can see.”

  “Give me back my spectacles!” Baggs cried, leaping up from the chair and grabbing at the air. “I can’t see without them!”

  Roughly, Murray pushed him back onto the chair. “But you couldn’t see wiv ’em, now, could you, guv’nor? You couldn’t see ’oo killed Badger, right? So they ain’t much good to you, are they?” He held up the glasses with a grating laugh. “So mebbe I’ll jes’ step on ’em.”

  “No, no!” Baggs turned to Charles, begging. “Stop him, please, sir!” He rubbed his eyes with the backs of both hands, like a schoolboy. “Make him give them back, sir!”

  “I’m afraid that Mr. Murray is deplorably single-minded,” Charles said sadly. “He has his own methods for getting information, and he does not take direction well. You will have to undertake to persuade him yourself.”

  Baggs was openly weeping now. “What . . . what do you want?”

  Murray leaned close. “The truth!” he thundered. “ ’Oo killed Alfred Day?” He put the spectacles on the floor and raised one foot as if to crush them.

  Faced with this terrifying loss, Baggs broke down completely.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  At Hardaway House

  Search then the Ruling Passion: there, alone, The wild are constant and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere . . . This clue once found, unravels all the rest.

  Alexander Pope

  Call me a spider-catcher.

  Love-Tricks

  James Shirley

  Kate put Amelia on the afternoon train back to Bishop’s Keep; then, carrying one small portmanteau wit
h her, took a hansom to Hardaway House, stopping along the way to buy a few things for tea. She lit the fire, put on the gas kettle, and had just sat down on the sofa to write in her journal when Charles entered the room, accompanied by a small man in a checked tweed suit, green bow tie, and bowler hat, smelling strongly of cigars.

  “Kate!” Charles exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you, my very dear,” Kate replied quietly. She lifted her face for his welcoming kiss, glad to be out of the emotional storms which seemed to whirl around Lillie, glad to be back in the calm haven of her husband’s presence.

  “But why aren’t you at Regal Lodge?” Charles asked. “I assumed that you would be staying another day, at the least.” From his expression, Kate could see that he was both excited and troubled. He turned toward the other man. “Kate, this is Mr. Jack Murray, the Jockey Club’s investigator and formerly of Scotland Yard. Mr. Murray, Lady Sheridan, my wife.”

  “Delighted, ma’am,” Murray said, snatching off his hat.

  “I am glad to meet you, Mr. Murray,” Kate said. “Charles has spoken highly of your abilities and experience.” She turned to Charles. “I left Regal Lodge,” she said in answer to his question, “because I couldn’t bear to stay. I fear that a little of Mrs. Langtry goes a very long way, at least for me.” She glanced up. “Please pardon me if that seems a rude thing to say, Mr. Murray.”

  “I’m afraid I know just what you mean, my lady,” Jack Murray said ruefully.

  “Jack was one of the Scotland Yard men on the Langtry jewel theft case,” Charles explained. “He had dealings with Mrs. Langtry then.”

  “More than I cared to, ma’am,” Murray put in fervently, “begging your pardon.”

  “I understand,” Kate said with a sympathetic smile. She could imagine the scene: Lillie a study in astonished horror and dismay; Lillie complaining melodramatically about the inability of the Yard to catch the criminals; Lillie indignant and betrayed when the police failed to return her jewels. And if she had been complicit in the theft, the whole thing would have been nothing more or less than a grand performance: Mrs. Lillie Langtry starring in the role of the beautiful and helpless victim of an appalling robbery.

  The kettle was steaming. Kate got up, poured hot water into the tea pot, and set out three china cups she had found in the sideboard. As she assembled a tray of cheeses and purchased biscuits, she said, “I met Spider this afternoon.”

  “You met him?” Charles asked, with open excitement. “He came to Regal Lodge?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “He gave Lillie a horse.” She smiled as she added, over her shoulder, “A horse named Tarantula, of course. Exactly as one might expect from a Spider.”

  “Tarantula?” Murray frowned. “That’s Lord Hunt’s horse. The one he lost on so heavily last year.”

  “Lord Hunt?” Kate looked around sharply. “Is that Spider’s real name?”

  “You didn’t get the man’s name, then?” Charles asked.

  Kate shook her head. “I asked, but both he and Lillie avoided answering, and I didn’t like to press, for fear of seeming overly curious. The man had ridden a horse, so there was no driver I might ask.” She put the tray on the small table in front of the sofa. “Will you be so kind as to pour the tea, Charles?” she added, going for her purse. “I have something to show you.”

  While Charles poured, Kate opened her purse and took out the derringer and the brandy snifter, each wrapped in a handkerchief. She put them on the table next to the tray and opened the handkerchiefs.

  “By thunder!” Mr. Murray exclaimed, letting out his breath. “Is this—”

  “The missing derringer,” Charles said, with satisfaction. “Kate, my sweet, you are a treasure of treasures. Where in the world did you happen on it?”

  “In the drawer in the drawing room,” Kate said, sitting beside Charles on the sofa. “Spider was alone in the room when I came in. It occurred to me that if he were indeed the man who took the gun, he might have taken the opportunity to return it. After he and Lillie went out to the stable, I looked in the drawer—and there it was.”

  Charles slipped his arm around her waist and hugged her. “Wonderful, Kate!”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Mr. Murray said, “but what about the brandy snifter?”

  “The man called Spider was drinking from that glass,” Kate said. “I thought you might like to see if his fingerprints are on it, Charles. To be compared to any you might be able to find on the gun,” she added. “I was wearing gloves when I picked up both objects.”

  “Fingerprints?” Murray asked, surprised. He raised both eyebrows. “You’re speaking of that dactyloscopy business that Edward Henry is pushing at the Yard?”

  “Oh, you know about that, then, do you, Jack?” Charles asked, pleased.

  Murray nodded. “A friend of mine, Sergeant Randal, has been taking fingerprints at Sir Francis Galton’s South Kensington laboratory for some years, and he keeps me posted on the progress. According to Sergeant Randal, Henry has been using dactyloscopy in India with a great deal of success. He thinks there’s a chance that the Anthropometry Bureau might be compelled to at least give the method a trial.” His face became gloomy. “Although I personally doubt that will happen. The Home Secretary is convinced that anthropometry provides the best means of identification. Barking up the wrong tree, if you ask me,” he added. “Measuring noses and ears isn’t precise enough. Too much chance for error. And the record-keeping is preposterous.”

  “Fingerprint records aren’t much of an improvement,” Charles remarked. “And even if the Yard takes up fingerprinting, the courts will still have to accept it as evidence. And that is some distance in the future.”

  Kate frowned. “It’s all well and good to have the fingerprints on the gun—they might be of some help. But isn’t the first task to match the gun to the crime? How is that to be done without—”

  “Without the fatal bullet?” Charles reached into his pocket and took out a bullet, putting it on the table. “Here it is, Kate. Taken yesterday from Badger’s body by Dr. Stubbings. We’ll fire a test round and see whether we can determine any similarities.”

  Murray was even more gloomy. “The experts at the Yard don’t think ballistics evidence counts for much, either. And no court in England has ever been presented with a case involving such a thing. However, it won’t hurt to give it a try. There’s a first time for everything.” He put down his teacup and stood. “I don’t imagine any of us has a .41 caliber bullet handy for a test-firing, so I’ll just pop around to the gun shop before it closes.” He bowed to Kate. “Ma’am.”

  When Murray had gone, Kate turned back to her husband, feeling a surge of excitement. “Charles, this is wonderful! Now that you have these pieces of physical evidence, you can confront Lord Hunt and force him to confess to killing—”

  “Lord Hunt?” Absently, Charles got up from the sofa to get his fingerprint kit out of his satchel. “But Reggie Hunt didn’t kill Alfred Day.”

  “He didn’t?” Kate frowned. “But I thought Mr. Murray said that Taratula belonged to Lord Hunt. Charles, I am very confused.”

  His kit in his hand, Charles sat back down on the sofa. He seemed lost in thought. “Reggie Hunt owed a great deal of money to the man Mrs. Langtry calls Spider,” he said slowly. “In payment of the debt, Spider took Hunt’s estate and half his stable—including the horse, I suppose.”

  Kate stared at Charles, wide-eyed. “Then who is Spider? And how did you find him out?”

  “We learned Spider’s identity from Eddie Baggs,” Charles replied. “Baggs followed Badger out of the pub and was standing in the shadows at the back of the Great Horse. He saw, and heard, the entire encounter from beginning to end.”

  “But that means that there’s an eyewitness!” Kate exclaimed excitedly, “and that none of this fingerprint or ballistics evidence matters! With the testimony of an eyewitness, any jury in the land will convict the man. Who is he, Charles?”

  “Hi
s name,” Charles said soberly, “is Henry Radwick. He’s a moneylender—and quite a successful one, at that, judging from those who patronize him. Half of the members of the Jockey Club have been in the man’s debt at one time or another. Lord Hunt certainly isn’t the only one who has owed him money.”

  “But why did he shoot Mr. Day?”

  “According to Baggs, Radwick was in a violent temper. He had discovered that Badger was attempting to blackmail Mrs. Langtry. According to Baggs, as Radwick pulled the trigger, he shouted, ‘She’s mine, do you hear? I won’t let you hurt her!’ ”

  “So it was a crime of passion,” Kate said, thinking of what she had heard through the drawing room window. Yes, the man who had declared that he would not let Lillie marry Suggie de Bathe was capable of killing someone in a fit of rage. She felt sure of that. There was something wrong with that scenario, though. The crime was committed with Lillie’s gun, coolly and deliberately taken from the drawer in her drawing room.

  Kate frowned. “Spider—Radwick, I mean—stole Lillie’s gun. He anticipated using it. That doesn’t sound like a crime of passion. It sounds quite deliberate.”

  “You’re right, Kate,” Charles replied. “By Radwick’s own admission, which you overheard, he was involved in the jewel theft and in Edward Langtry’s death. In fact, it’s entirely possible that he masterminded both, with or without Lillie’s prior consent. I’m conjecturing that Radwick knew something of Badger’s threat—although perhaps not the entire scheme—and that he took Lillie’s gun, anticipating its possible use. After all, if Radwick allowed Badger to blackmail her, how long would it be before Badger began making demands on him, as well?”