by Granger, Ann
I had carried in my head an image of Uncle Pickford since Lizzie had first told me of his existence. In my mind’s eye I had seen him as tall, broad, red-faced and assertive. He would be proud of being plain-spoken and as sensitive as a block of granite; much like the men who ran the coalmines I had worked in as a young child. Now the man himself was shown into my office.
Pickford was a stout person, true enough, red-faced and with protuberant eyeballs that bulged at me from beneath bushy eyebrows. Otherwise, he was of scarcely middle height. He had short legs and stood with his feet planted well apart to balance his sturdy frame.
As a result, he gave the impression of measuring the same in all directions, a cannonball of a figure. He had thinning iron-grey hair and (in compensation, perhaps, for the loss of hair on his head) luxuriant mutton-chop whiskers, matching those hedgehog eyebrows.
‘Pickford is the name!’ he boomed at me and stood before me with his silk hat under his arm and the skirts of his frock coat open to reveal a remarkable embroidered waistcoat. A heavy gold ‘Albert’ watch chain was looped across his substantial frontage.
‘Please sit down, Mr Pickford,’ I invited him. ‘I have heard of you.’
‘Oh, have you, indeed?’ he retorted. ‘From my scapegrace nephew, I suppose?’ Before I could reply he asked abruptly, ‘Where do you hail from?’
‘Derbyshire,’ I told him.
This was well received. The cannonball looked less likely to explode; instead he gave a nod. ‘I thought, from the sound of you, you weren’t a Londoner. Well, now, Mr Ross – or Inspector Ross I should call you, I dare say – what have you done with my nephew?’
‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘I took a signed statement from him. I warned him not to talk to his friends – or anyone else – about the investigation; and not to leave London. Then I let him go.’
‘Why?’ asked Pickford disconcertingly. ‘That fellow Carterton told us Edgar is accused of a murder. Utter nonsense, of course. The only person he’s ever likely to murder is one of his patients some day; and then it wouldn’t be on purpose. You don’t let murderers free to roam about the town, do you? If you suspect my nephew of such a crime, why don’t you have him locked up?’
‘Edgar Wellings is a junior doctor at Bart’s and won’t want to jeopardise his situation there,’ I said. ‘I am confident he won’t abscond and I can find him, if I need him.’
‘So can I,’ said Pickford grimly. ‘And when I leave here, I’ll be off straight to the hospital to get the whole story out of the lad.’
‘Ah, now, Mr Pickford,’ I began carefully. ‘May I suggest it would be very helpful to me – and, indeed, to your family – if you did not do that?’
‘How so?’ snapped Pickford.
‘Consider what a busy hospital is like, sir, if you would. It is a large place full of people of all sorts. There are patients, nurses and doctors, naturally. But also ward cleaners, porters, visitors, accident victims brought into the casualty area and attended by friends or family. There would be no privacy to be had for you to talk to your nephew on such a delicate matter. Besides, he could not leave his duties to attend to you, without explanation. The hospital authorities would find out the truth and – this is a murder investigation, after all – he’d be suspended from duty at once. All his colleagues and the nursing staff would know. The gossip would run round like wildfire. From there it would travel outside via every visitor who left.’
‘Ah . . .’ murmured Pickford.
I struck a last blow. ‘Quite often there is a press reporter hanging around the entrance of large hospitals, hoping for a titbit to make a lurid headline in the evening papers. This is not, I think, what you would like for something touching your family’s good name, as it does.’
Pickford glared at me with those alarming orbs, but agreed reluctantly that I was correct. ‘We don’t want all the world and its wife knowing about it, right enough.’
‘Quite so, Mr Pickford. I recommend that it would be better for you to send a note to the hospital by a secure hand, suggesting that you call on your nephew at his rooms later, when he is off duty. Better still, that he calls to see you in Goodge Place, where you would control the situation.’
The idea of controlling the situation clearly appealed to Pickford. ‘Very well, then,’ he said, ‘I’ll send one of my clerks with a letter for him, making sure he puts it into Edgar’s hand.’ He studied me for a moment. ‘It’s a relief to hear you have not charged him,’ he went on. ‘Do you think you will charge him later?’
‘I have no idea,’ I told him. ‘The investigation is at a very early stage.’
‘The boy’s an idiot,’ said Pickford, ‘no denying it. I had imagined him sensible and I’m sorry to be proved wrong. Oh, he’s a pleasant young fellow and has taken to his doctoring well. But, to go playing cards and losing money like some young rake with nothing better to do . . .’ He gave a snort. ‘Worse, to borrow from a moneylender! That is what he did, I understand.’
‘That is what he did,’ I agreed.
‘Young fool. I am told the lender is, or was, a woman. That sounds extraordinary to me. Not a woman’s business, is it, hey? Can’t say I’m surprised she ended badly. No doubt of it being murder?’ He pulled an alarming face. In anyone else, I’d have said he squinted at me. But his bulging eyes did not quite allow him to squint. Instead, his eyelids seemed to be struggling to meet. I wondered what happened when he went to sleep.
I wrenched myself from this entertaining speculation. ‘No doubt whatsoever, sir, I am afraid. The woman was the subject of a vicious attack.’
Pickford shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘I can’t see my nephew doing that. Strike a woman? No, sir, he would not do it. Clearly someone set about this woman and the fellow, whoever he is, might go battering another one. I don’t believe it was my nephew.’
‘He does indeed deny it.’
‘So, why did you arrest him, then? Yes, yes, you told him to remain available, but see here, I am looking at it as I imagine you must do. So, hey, what else is there?’ Another fraught manoeuvre of the eyelids.
‘There is a witness, sir, who accused him. But I wouldn’t say I arrested him, exactly. I had questioned him at the probable scene of the crime. He arrived there, with your niece and my wife, while we were examining the scene. I later requested him to accompany me to the Yard so that his account could be formalised. You must admit, Mr Pickford, Edgar Wellings does have a strong motive. He could not repay the money and was terrified his father would find out. He does not deny he was at the house on the evening in question, when the crime took place. The witness I mentioned saw him there. Nor does he deny that he and the deceased argued fiercely during that visit. That is why it is important that he stay in London. I shall certainly have to talk to him again, if only to verify certain points – or if any new evidence should emerge.’
Pickford tapped the lid of his silk hat with a stubby forefinger. ‘There has to be something else,’ he said shrewdly. ‘If you’ve got a witness, I’d expect you to hold on to the boy. There must be some other reason you didn’t lock him in a cell last night and throw away the key.’
‘The victim’s body was moved.’ I did not want to reveal to him more than I had to, but Edgar himself would tell his uncle that detail. ‘We do not know in what circumstances, and as yet we have no evidence to show your nephew moved it. When it was discovered it was at some distance away from the house, although still in Deptford.’
‘Moved when she was dying or moved when she was as dead as mutton?’ demanded Pickford.
‘Oh, I think she would have been dead as m— she would have died before her body was moved. But establishing the exact time of a death in a case of murder is not as easy as many people imagine it to be. It is not impossible that she was fatally injured but still alive when she left the house. Though it seems unlikely she could have left unaided and got some distance.’
‘Rum business,’ muttered Pickford. ‘Confound it, what am I to tell
all those women?’
‘Which women?’ I asked, startled.
‘At the moment, I must find words to calm only my wife and little Patience. But the boy’s parents will come to London at once, as soon as they get my letter. They’ll bring my wife’s sisters with them. I don’t just mean the boy’s mother. She’ll come, of course. But Caroline and Amelia, they’ll tag along, too. There are four of them, you see: my wife Matilda, Dorothy – the boy’s mother – and the other two. The Briggs sisters they were known as, when they were girls. Not by separate names, just as a matched set, always seen together, went to church together, went to our little gatherings at the Assembly Room together. Their father was an ironmonger, and did very well out of it. I married one of them. Walter Wellings married another. The other two remain maiden ladies.’
Pickford paused and looked suddenly milder, reminiscent. ‘They were good, sensible girls and not bad to look at. It is a pity no one came to marry either Caroline or Amelia. I say this not only because a pair of unmarried women in a family are a responsibility to the rest of us. But I also feel it’s a great pity because they would have made fine wives. Caroline, now, a young fellow did ask for her. As things turned out, the marriage never took place. It was a mercy, for I didn’t like the look of him. He was a clerk employed in a wholesale business. He had an eye to better his chances and pocket her dowry, that’s my belief.’
Uncle Pickford – I caught myself thinking of him thus and told myself sternly that I must take care, or in an unguarded moment I’d refer to him by that title! Mr Pickford, then, shook off his reflective moment and fixed his bulging eyeballs on me.
‘As it is, they’ve become regular busybodies, have Caroline and Amelia. Nothing else to thinking of but other people’s business. The house will be full of women,’ finished Pickford despondently. ‘All weeping and fainting and then coming round to talk nineteen to the dozen, blaming me.’
‘Why you, sir?’ I asked in surprise.
Pickford rose to his feet and clapped his silk hat on his head. ‘Because, Inspector Ross, when in London I represent the family business. That makes me, here in town, de facto the head of the family. I stand in the place of my brother-in-law with regard to his children. Little Patience is living in my house. I should have been keeping an eye on young Edgar. You cannot imagine it, Ross. Edgar has always been the apple of everyone’s eye. How to tell them about all this? It is the very devil of a situation, sir!’
‘You, ah, have not met Mr Carterton’s aunt? Mrs Julia Parry?’ I asked.
‘No, heard of her, of course.’ Pickford glowered at me. ‘She’s another of them, is she? Swooning away and shrieking?’
‘I don’t know about the fainting. I believe she inherited her late husband’s numerous property interests; and is a shrewd woman. But she is devoted to her nephew, Frank Carterton, whom Patience Wellings is to marry. She will certainly have a lot to say.’
‘That’s another thing,’ said Pickford gloomily. ‘That young fellow, Carterton, has prospects, a career in politics. So, how is all this going to affect that marriage, eh? Will it now take place? All the women will be worrying about that!’
Chapter Ten
NO SOONER had Herbert Pickford left than I received another visitor in the person of the excitable Constable Evans.
‘Inspector Phipps’s compliments, sir. Harry Parker, the witness who found the body, he’s turned up again. We’ve got him in a cell now over at Deptford. We’re holding him, sir, in case you want to talk to him. Mr Phipps said to tell you that we’ll keep him as long as we can. But we can’t arrest him because he’s not committed a crime, only left the area against orders. And we’ll need the cells later on this evening, sir. There are two new ships in, one out of Bergen and one out of Hamburg.’ Evans saluted me both at the beginning and at the end of this speech.
‘Where did you find him?’ I asked.
‘Constable Barrett found him, sir. Parker was at the docks, seeking work,’ Evans told me. ‘He’d run out of money.’
So, I thought, if Parker took the fob watch, ring and earrings, he hasn’t sold them, not even a single piece. The ring would have been the most obvious. Gold is easily disposed of. But he hasn’t. Lack of funds has driven him from his hiding place. Phipps was right: Parker’s home turf is Deptford and away from the place, he’d starve.
So someone else took the jewellery. I remembered how busy Deptford had been the night Morris and I had been called out there. A dozen passers-by might have blundered into Skinner’s Yard, found the body, stolen the valuables and run off. No one there would have wanted to tangle unnecessarily with the police. It had been Harry Parker’s misfortune that he had rushed out of Skinner’s Yard into the arms of Constable Barrett. I allowed myself a wry smile. Barrett appeared to be Parker’s Nemesis.
Daylight allowed me to see Parker more clearly than I had been able to do in Skinner’s Yard, but it had not improved his appearance. If anything, he looked smaller, more wizened, and decidedly more nervous. He had carried into the room the odours of his dockside haunts: stale beer, oil, coal dust, tar and bilge water. Mixed in with these I caught the unexpected hint of exotic spices and tobacco. Some cargo, perhaps, he had helped unload or from which he had pilfered.
‘You were told to remain available,’ I told him sternly. ‘Why did you run away?’
‘I never run away,’ Parker defended himself. ‘I had to leave my lodgings, didn’t I? Landlord threw me out.’
‘When?’
‘That same night. You told them to send a rozzer home wiv me to see where I lived. The landlord don’t like lodgers brought home by the p’lice. He told me to leave, there and then, chucked me out into the street. I was too late to get a place in a casual ward and had to sleep in a doorway. The next day I went over to Limehouse to see my brother, see if he’d take me in, just for a bit. But I couldn’t get work there. So I had to come back.’ He sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.
He was probably telling the truth. I asked him where he was living now. He said he had found a room locally. ‘Got to share it,’ he added gloomily. ‘Share wiv two other blokes and I don’t like the look of either of them.’
‘You must tell them here where it is you are lodging. If you leave, you must notify Deptford police station that you have moved; and where you have moved to.’
Parker was gazing at me in a mixture of bewilderment and fear. ‘What d’you want to know so much about me for? I ain’t done nothing.’
‘You found the body,’ I reminded him.
‘I didn’t want to find her, did I?’ His voice rose plaintively. ‘It’s like I told you that night. I fell over her. I thought she was drunk. I gave her shoulder a shake because I thought she ought not to lie there on a cold night, likely catch her death of pneumonia.’
‘That was thoughtful of you,’ I said drily. ‘You were not looking to see if there was anything of value on the body?’
‘Of course I never did!’ Harry Parker attempted some dignity. ‘You ain’t no right to accuse me. I ain’t no thief. I found her, like I said. I run out into the street and found a constable.’
‘You did not have to look far for him, did you? You ran into him, as I understand it from Constable Barrett.’
‘Whether I run into ’im, or whether I went and found ’im,’ retorted Parker, ‘it makes no difference. I told him there was a body.’ He sat back and gave me a satisfied look. ‘So there,’ he said ‘And you can’t prove different.’
I could not prove differently, he was right. But I was sure there was something he wasn’t telling me. He’d had time to think about his story and had made it – so he believed – solid.
‘Did you recognise her?’ I asked him, not because I expected him to say he had, but because I needed time to think.
Unexpectedly I had struck some vulnerable point in his story. I saw the fear flash into his little eyes before he cast his gaze down to his hands, twisting his cap.
‘No idea who it was,’ he mumbl
ed.
‘You knew it was a woman.’
He sounded exasperated when he replied, ‘Of course I did! She wore a dress.’ He looked up. ‘There’s no gaslight in Skinner’s Yard. I couldn’t see her face and I’ll swear that on a stack of Bibles if I have to. You can’t expect me to put a name to every woman in Deptford!’
I was thinking furiously. He had been so certain he had got his story watertight. Despite that, he’d slipped up.
‘I recall you said you were carrying a box of lucifers,’ I reminded him.
He gaped. ‘Me? No, never. Whaffor?’
‘I don’t know what for. Anything!’ I retorted. ‘But you told us the night the body was found that you struck a match to see more clearly what you had stumbled over.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s right. I forgot! Yes, I just looked to see what it was nearly brought me down. Gave me a nasty turn to find it was a body. Yes, I did just check to see if she was only drunk. But I never looked at her face, not close.’ He sounded more than certain; he sounded relieved. I had asked the wrong question. A pity, I had thought it a possibility. So what then?
I leaned forward and asked him quietly, ‘So, tell me, Harry, what – or whom – did you see?’
Now there was no disguising the naked terror in his eyes. His beady gaze flicked away from me towards the corner of the room. ‘I never saw anyone,’ he said sullenly, addressing the wall. ‘That’s why I went into Skinner’s Yard, because I thought no one was there. I didn’t think I’d be there more than five minutes. I’d never have gone near the place if I’d known all this was going to happen to me.’
He had regained control of himself. He turned his gaze back towards me. His little dark eyes, so like a rat’s, were now unreadable. ‘I never saw nothing. I never saw no one,’ he said. ‘And that’s that.’ His lips parted, showing his discoloured teeth. Did he laugh at me or did he, like a cornered feral creature, defy any further approach?
‘Parker,’ I said to him firmly, ‘if you withhold information in the matter of a serious crime, you will find yourself in a lot of trouble. You could be accused of seeking to obstruct the police in their inquiries. After all, you have the opportunity now to tell me every detail.’