The Dead Woman of Deptford: Inspector Ben Ross mystery 6

by Granger, Ann

  The woman looked at me a little doubtfully, but picked up a silver tray from a side table. I placed Mr Morton’s letter on it. We were then shown into a small parlour. The woman, some sort of housekeeper I supposed, left bearing the silver tray with the letter. The limpet, Bunce, had at last detached himself and disappeared, probably to the kitchen for refreshment. For the first time since leaving Deptford, we were alone.

  ‘Well, now, Lizzie,’ said Patience, seating herself on one of the chairs lined up against one wall. ‘Is this where the patients wait to see the doctor, do you think?’

  ‘It probably is,’ I told her. When I had been a girl and my father alive, he had been in a medical practice in a small town. Our house had a parlour reserved for just such a purpose and this one resembled ours. It was furnished with more straight-backed chairs than normal. A small table in the centre of the room offered reading matter by way of a newspaper and a copy of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. A very small fire struggled to survive in the grate. The modest heat it generated was enough to take the chill off the air, but not enough to warm the visitor and make him or her relax. If you were really ill, it would not worry you. If you were a time-waster, it discouraged you to linger. The only thing to look at, if you didn’t want to read the newspaper or the magazine, was an amateurish watercolour painting on the wall depicting Windsor Castle. Otherwise the only thing a patient could do was study any others waiting; and conjecture what might be wrong with them. It was very quiet and even Patience became subdued and silent.

  The silence was broken by the rapid approach of heavy footsteps and the door flew open. A gentleman stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. This must be Henry Morton. He held his uncle’s letter of introduction in his hand. Morton, a young man, perhaps a couple of years older than Edgar Wellings, was of middle height, stocky in build, with reddish fair hair. He had the sort of pink skin that sometimes goes with such a hair colour. His eyes were very blue and his lashes the same blond as his hair, which made them almost invisible.

  He glanced quickly from one to the other of us and then fixed his gaze on me. ‘I have the honour to address Mrs Ross?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told him, and indicated my companion. ‘This is Miss Wellings.’

  ‘Yes, yes! A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Wellings.’ He pulled out one of the chairs and sat down facing us both. I thought he seemed embarrassed. He fidgeted on his chair in a boyish way, as if uncertain how to begin. ‘How may I help you?’ he asked at length, looking very much as if he’d rather not know.

  ‘I believe you are acquainted with my brother, Edgar, sir,’ said Patience. She leaned towards him. ‘We are hoping you can help us find him. He is missing. You should know he is in something of a scrape.’

  ‘Yes, I do know, Miss Wellings,’ he told her. Hastily he added, holding up his uncle’s letter, ‘My uncle has written here about it.’

  The hesitation had been almost imperceptible but my ear had caught it. The letter was not the first time he had learned of Edgar’s predicament.

  ‘We are hoping, Dr Morton,’ I said, ‘that you might have some idea where we might find Edgar. You see, he has become involved in a police investigation.’

  ‘Quite innocently, of course!’ burst out Patience. ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong. Well, nothing criminal, you understand. He did lose a lot of money gambling.’

  ‘Edgar was always fond of a game of cards,’ said Henry Morton awkwardly.

  By now I was quite sure we had done right in coming here. The doctor could tell us something. A suspicion had also crossed my mind. Edgar had told Ben that he had originally gone to Mrs Clifford on the recommendation of a medical friend. Henry Morton’s uncle lived in Deptford and he visited him there. He might well have known of a local moneylender; perhaps even have used her services himself? If Morton were a gambler too, and had a losing streak, he would no more have gone to his irascible uncle than Edgar had been prepared to go to his father or Uncle Pickford.

  I was careful to keep my thoughts from showing in my face even as my mind was abuzz. Was all this trouble down to this pleasant young doctor? I thought I could detect a touch of embarrassment, even an awkward defiance, in his attitude. But perhaps I was being fanciful.

  ‘He has panicked and run away!’ explained Patience. She was sticking to the matter in hand and not worrying about what had happened to bring the present problem about. ‘Such a silly thing to do, but Edgar was afraid . . . not just of the police, you know, but of having to face my family. They have all come to London to discuss his debts.’

  ‘Yes, quite, so I imagine,’ said Henry, transferring his gaze to Windsor Castle, and studying it as if he had never seen the picture before.

  ‘I think it is possible you can help, Dr Morton,’ I said.

  His gaze jumped from Windsor Castle to my face. He looked both startled and guilty. ‘Well, I, of course . . .’

  ‘You see,’ I continued, ‘the police now know that Edgar cannot be found. It has made them even more suspicious because they had ordered him to stay. If he is not back in London by tonight, they will begin hunting high and low for him. Indeed they are probably doing so already. The newspaper reporters might get to hear of it. The police went to the hospital looking for him, and reporters do hang about the hospital, don’t they?’

  ‘Vultures,’ said Henry Morton succinctly, ‘blood attracts ’em.’

  ‘Edgar is in a serious enough situation,’ I added. ‘This is making it so much worse. He must go back as soon as possible, tonight at the latest.’

  Henry Morton heaved a deep sigh and stood up. ‘I see you have a growler waiting at the gate,’ he said.

  I wondered if we were about to be ordered to leave.

  ‘I’ll take you to him,’ said Henry.

  ‘Oh, Dr Morton!’ gasped Patience, jumping to her feet. ‘That’s wonderful! Where is he?’

  ‘At my lodgings.’ Henry waved a hand to indicate the room generally. ‘This house belongs to the senior partner, Appleforth. I have rooms nearby.’

  He gave us a stern look. ‘I must make one thing clear. He’s not my patient. He didn’t come to consult me on any medical matter, so I am not breaking any confidentiality. But he did come to me because he needed time to think things over. He expected, wrongly, no one would look for him here. I don’t know how you tracked him down, ladies?’ He paused and waited.

  ‘By purest chance,’ I told him. ‘We were seeking news of him in Deptford, and happened to see your uncle making his daily outing. A friend of your uncle is a Mrs Belling and Mrs Belling is a friend of my aunt, Mrs Julia Parry—’

  Henry waved his hands to stop the flow of information. ‘Well, it’s probably just as well. Edgar was – is – in a bit of a state. He confessed he was hiding from his family. But if the police are seeking him, he must of course return at once. I’ll just go and let them here know that I am going out for an hour.’

  When Patience and I stepped out into the hall, we found Bunce had reappeared as if by magic, ready to resume observation duties.

  Henry did not look best pleased to see the footman. ‘Ah, Bunce,’ he said. ‘My uncle sent you with the ladies?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Henry,’ said Bunce in a voice that managed to be both obsequious and unmoving. ‘He asked me to look after them special. Those are his wishes, sir.’

  Morton took a deep breath. ‘Very well, then, let us not waste time.’

  The four of us set off together in the cab.

  It took only a few minutes to reach the house where Henry Morton had rooms.

  ‘If you would wait down here for a moment, ladies,’ Henry said to us in the hall. ‘It is going to come as rather a shock to Edgar to see you here. Also, I need to explain to him that I did not contact you. You found him yourselves.’ He turned to the hovering Bunce and ordered sharply, ‘Wait here with the ladies!’

  Bunce looked discomfited, but I was pleased to see Henry had also identified the footman as his uncle’s spy; and had no inte
ntion of letting the man witness Edgar’s reaction on learning he had been discovered.

  We waited a few minutes during which we could hear the murmur of voices above our heads. Then came a sudden shout of ‘What?’

  ‘That is my brother’s voice,’ declared Patience. ‘We have found him!’

  A clatter of feet on the stairs heralded the return of Henry Morton, even pinker in the face than earlier.

  ‘If you would like to go up, ladies?’

  Patience and I climbed the staircase while Henry remained tactfully in the hall. Bunce skulked in the background, ‘his nose out of joint’ in the popular parlance.

  The door to a small first-floor sitting room was open and we entered to find Edgar, in shirtsleeves and with tousled hair, facing us in a defiant attitude. He opened his mouth and began, ‘Patience – Mrs Ross – now, see here . . .’

  But that is as far as he got. At the sight of her brother, Patience’s fears that he had come to harm were dismissed. From a very worried young woman, she was transformed into a small package of fury. She flew across the room, seized his arms and shook him.

  ‘Edgar! How could you? You have behaved despicably, do you hear? You left me to cope with Mamma and Papa – and both aunts! How could you abandon me like that? It is your entire fault, anyway, that the whole family is in a dreadful state. You didn’t think of me for one minute, did you? My wedding to Frank is postponed until I don’t know when. Perhaps we’ll never be married now! The police have been to the hospital looking for you; and you are suspended from working there until everything is sorted out. Mamma is in floods of tears, the aunts keeping fainting, Aunt Matilda is mad with worry trying to cope with them, and Papa used strong language in front of the aunts and me!’

  Edgar’s defiant attitude had crumbled. ‘Sorry, Patty,’ he mumbled. ‘I just needed some time. I wasn’t ready to face them all.’

  ‘Did you think you would never have to face them?’ demanded his sister. ‘Did you think it all right to leave me to try and find excuses for you? I see now, Edgar, that I have made excuses for you all my life. Well, that is at an end. You are coming back with us now, straight away, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Edgar promised. ‘Just let me explain to Henry—’

  ‘That’s another thing!’ Patience was adding to her list of accusations. ‘You have involved Dr Morton, who had nothing whatsoever to do with it until now, and Mrs Ross. They are innocent parties, Edgar, and you have dragged them into the— the sordid muddle you have made of things.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t think you would find me here,’ protested Edgar weakly. ‘I know I shouldn’t have troubled Henry—’

  ‘We shall wait for you downstairs!’ declared Patience, cutting short his excuses with an imperious gesture. She turned and swept out of the room.

  ‘I am truly very sorry, Mrs Ross,’ said the crestfallen Edgar to me. ‘Will you explain to your husband? I wasn’t running away. It doesn’t mean I’m guilty. Oh, Lord . . .’ His words tailed off in a groan.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I told him. ‘But you must go straight away to Scotland Yard and explain yourself. They will be looking for you by now, you know.’

  ‘Perhaps Ross will lock me in a cell?’ A sudden note of hope entered Edgar’s voice. ‘Then I won’t have to face the family.’

  Oh, dear, I thought. The wretched fellow is incapable of good judgement. When all this is over and settled, he will get into another scrape; Ben was quite right about him. Frank and Patience will have to worry about him all their married lives. I told him I would wait downstairs with his sister.

  ‘The cab will take you all to Egham railway station,’ said Henry Morton to us when we had all gathered before the house. ‘I’ll walk back. It isn’t far. I walk it every day.’

  ‘I am much obliged to you, Henry,’ said Edgar, shaking his hand. ‘And I apologise most profoundly.’

  ‘Not at all, my dear chap!’ Henry clapped Edgar heartily on the shoulder. But there was distinct haste in the way he bundled us all into the cab and called out to the cabbie, ‘Drive on!’

  ‘Yes, he came,’ said Ben, in answer to my anxious question when he arrived home that evening. ‘Turned up at the Yard with a feeble apology and expected me to sympathise with him. I soon disabused him of that!’

  I had parted from Patience and her brother at Waterloo, where they had found a cab to take them to Scotland Yard, and I had walked home. Bunce had accepted the modest tip I gave him and reluctantly taken himself off to make his report in Deptford. I did wonder what version of events he would give his employer.

  ‘Edgar knows he’s behaved foolishly and selfishly,’ I said to Ben. ‘He was afraid of facing the whole family, all telling him how badly he’s let them down.’

  ‘Well, he has let them all down,’ said Ben unsympathetically. ‘He let me down, as well. I accepted his word that he would stay in London. I hope, when Uncle Pickford and all the rest of them see him, they give him a terrible time – all of them, individually and together.’

  ‘When they see him?’ I asked. ‘Oh, Ben, you haven’t . . . ?’

  ‘Yes, I have!’ said Ben. ‘Don’t look so reproachful, Lizzie. The fellow was practically begging me to lock him in a cell and keep him from his relatives. I was more than ready to oblige. A night in the cells will teach him a lesson, and concentrate his mind far better, than one sleeping on Henry Morton’s sofa. So that’s where he is tonight. It’s all right; I’ll turn him loose tomorrow – if Dunn agrees. My locking up Wellings is about the first thing I’ve done right in this matter, in the superintendent’s view!’ Ben hesitated. ‘So far your name has been kept out of it. Dunn is under the impression Wellings returned of his own volition. But if Dunn asks more questions about Wellings’s stay in Egham, well, he may find out you and Miss Patience had a hand in things. Not,’ added Ben with a sigh, ‘that he’ll be surprised.’

  ‘Honestly, Ben!’ I protested. ‘I do think Mr Dunn and you might both of you be a bit more grateful for all my hard work tracking down Wellings – and Patience’s part, too, for making him come straight back to London with us.’

  ‘Dear Lizzie,’ said Ben. ‘Believe me, I am very grateful indeed. If I had lost Wellings, I think Dunn would have reduced me to sergeant! It was very clever of you, sweetheart.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘And you know,’ said Ben, ‘Dunn makes a great fuss about your interference, but he has the highest regard for your abilities. He’s told me so, more than once.’

  So much praise all at once was too much. I was reduced to silence.

  Inspector Ben Ross

  Superintendent Dunn had been delighted to know Edgar Wellings was in a prison cell. My difficulty the following morning was to persuade Dunn to authorise his release.

  ‘He has wasted police time!’ thundered Dunn, marching up and down his office, scratching his crop of bristly hair. ‘That is an offence and by rights he should be charged with it. My time, your time, the working hours of half the constabulary on the beat, notified to look out for him, when they ought to be looking out for wrongdoers of every other kind! As if I had not enough problems to deal with that day. As I had told you, Ross, I had decided the hospital must be informed of what has been happening so I went in person to explain things to senior staff there. Can you imagine how they reacted when learning that one of their young doctors had become caught up in a murder inquiry? And then there was the matter of his gambling and his debts . . . He is suspended from his duties there, of course. I shall be surprised if they ever have him back again, supposing that he is cleared of any part in the murder of Mrs Clifford.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I do understand,’ I assured him.

  Dunn wheeled round as if he were on parade and jabbed an accusing finger at me. ‘Then, while I was at the hospital, the wretched fellow’s father and uncle appeared, seeking him. That was how I learned he was missing. Not by any official communication, oh no, but through a chance encounter! On top of everything else,
we had lost him. I was made to feel a complete fool.’

  I protested, ‘No, sir, not at all—’ But I was not allowed to finish.

  ‘Did you know he’d taken himself off?’ asked Dunn accusingly.

  ‘Well, I didn’t, not until – not until you came back from the hospital.’

  This feeble reply rightly elicited another outburst from the superintendent.

  ‘You see? The Yard was made to look ridiculous by that worthless scamp. If that is all that he is! He might well be our murderer. And, now that we at last have him locked up safely, you would let him go again? Are you out of your mind, Ross?’

  ‘I am sure,’ I urged, ‘that his family will keep a close eye on him and not allow him to do anything like that again.’

  ‘The family? They are as bad as he is! Would any of them have come to the Yard and told us he had absconded, if they had not run into me at the hospital, and been obliged to admit it? I tell you, Ross, they would not. That whole family was determined to keep us in the dark. For what? For fear of some scandal in their home town – and a wedding!’

  When Superintendent Dunn is in a mood like this, there is nothing to be done but let him work off his rage. However, I did eventually manage to persuade him to authorise Edgar’s release, upon the guarantees of his father and uncle.

  ‘If you do this again, Wellings,’ I told the wretch, ‘you will find yourself in Newgate, and I won’t be asking for your freedom! You have gravely embarrassed me. If my wife and your sister hadn’t tracked you down, I might have finished back where I began my police career, pounding the beat.’

  He was almost grovelling when he left.

  About an hour after Wellings had gone and I was beginning to recover my peace of mind, Biddle appeared.

  ‘Someone very desirous of seeing you, Mr Ross, sir.’

  Biddle is a well-meaning youth and shows promise; but ambition has led him to study books on self-improvement. I know this from our maid, Bessie, with whom Biddle is ‘walking out’.