Touchstone Season Two Box Set

by Andy Conway

  He would have no peace until she was dead and out of his life forever.

  He paused at a pharmacy on Temple Street, his eye caught not by the display of brightly coloured water bottles but the gentlemen’s razors, sheer and gleaming.

  He stepped inside.

  23

  DANIEL RETURNED TO the table, light headed, walking on air, to find Arthur spooning sickly bright yellow mustard onto his beef sandwich. He gagged a little but he had voided his stomach of everything he could.

  He slumped in the chair and was glad that Arthur had packed away all the contents of the carpet bag and stowed it away, under the table.

  Tom’s bag.

  The murderer’s bag.

  “How can you possibly eat at a time like this, Arthur?”

  Arthur chewed on beef and bread, chuckling to himself. “Because I must. And so must you.”

  “I couldn’t possibly.”

  Arthur took a swig of porter and wiped his mouth with a crisp white napkin. “We must take this to the police. You must tell them that your old friend Thomas Conway is the murderer.”

  “I don’t think I can face that.”

  “Alas, no matter how difficult it is, I think you’d rather have Tom wearing James Berry’s noose than yourself.”

  Tom was to hang. Of course he was. He was a murderer. He had murdered Louisa Gill, and no doubt Lily Moore in Highgate. And if Tom Conway was the murderer, that meant he, Daniel, was not.

  Relief flamed his senses, quickly doused by a flood of guilt.

  “I knew there was something fishy about the man, right from the start,” Arthur said, chomping on his sandwich. “Nothing he said seemed right.”

  The day he’d arrived. He’d looked so shifty when they’d seen him, with no excuse for his strange appearance.

  “He had obviously been in Birmingham a good while already, perhaps even a day. He had of course, left his bag at Sherlock Street. He had possibly attacked Lily Moore the night before. And then the following night he slept on your sofa and slipped out and murdered Louisa Gill in her home.”

  “But how did he know where she lived?” Daniel asked.

  “He talked to her at one point, in the Prince of Wales. I remember now. They shared a few words and some laughter at the bar. Unusual, for a teetotaller, I thought at the time.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “Or he simply sneaked straight out and waited outside the pub for her to finish cleaning up and followed her home.”

  Daniel rubbed his eyes, trying to awaken from a nightmare. His old friend Tom Conway was a murderer and now he would hang, because Daniel would have to tell Inspector Beadle and Sergeant Macpherson all about it — how they found the pawn ticket under Louisa Gill’s bed and how it had led them to Tom Conway’s bag.

  Tom, the writer of all those gallows ballads, was going to hang. And perhaps someone would write a ballad about him and sell them a penny a piece to the crowd that gathered outside the prison gates to hear the moment the trapdoor fell.

  “I knew there was something off about him when he avoided talking about his military past,” said Arthur. “That man was no more in Bombay and Madras than you were. I’m certain of it. He’s a complete fraud.”

  Daniel groaned. He had known Tom longer than he’d known Arthur. Could everything about his old friend have been an elaborate web of lies and deceit?

  Arthur shoved the plate towards him. “We have a long and arduous day ahead of us. And you have a very difficult and onerous duty to perform. You need sustenance. Eat. That’s doctor’s orders, my man.”

  Daniel felt a sudden pang of guilt, because he actually felt violently hungry. He was going to put a noose around his old friend’s neck and he was going to eat a beef sandwich before he did it.

  It was disgusting.

  But he ate. He pulled the plate towards him and picked up the hunk of bread and sunk his teeth into it, devouring it with a strange and liberating euphoria.

  24

  WHEN THEY HAD EATEN and supped, Arthur sent word that they were on the move through to the saloon bar for their cabman, and found him sitting waiting on the Victoria with a smile on his face.

  “Where to now, sirs?”

  Arthur answered for Daniel because he could see that Daniel was in no fit state to issue the command. “To Moseley village, my good man. We’ll direct you further once we arrive.”

  He gave Daniel a supporting arm and handed the carpet bag to him, climbing aboard himself, and the cabman whipped the horse to a measured trot up the steep slope of Bradford Street.

  It was a pleasant ride through Highgate and Balsall Heath, despite the fact that both villages had burst the banks of their former idyllic rural state and become overcrowded urban slums, teeming with life. But the sun was in their face and the measured clop of the horse relaxed them.

  Daniel said nothing all the way, no doubt dreading the imminent confrontation with the police who had threatened his arrest this morning; knowing he would shortly give up his old friend as the killer.

  But Arthur could not help feeling a hum of pride radiate through him. They had solved the mystery, just like his detective hero, by setting out to examine the crime scene, by finding a clue and pursuing it, using logic and abductive reasoning, till the killer was revealed. It was perhaps rather too simple a mystery for the purposes of fiction, even a short story, and he would have to insert several false leads and surprise twists, but the mere fact of solving a true crime story made him want to shout out with joy.

  He held back for the sake of his friend.

  They had solved the mystery of the Moseley Cutter. Or should it be the Balsall Heath Slasher? Which sounded better? He pondered it over as they rode on up the never ending avenue of Alcester Road till they crested the small hill where Daniel had first appeared, an orphan of memory, and then took the gentle slope to Moseley village, from where he directed the cabman to the secluded mews where Daniel resided.

  At the entrance to the mews, a buzz of activity greeted them. Several coaches and police wagons were parked and two uniformed constables stood guard, engaged in an argument with an elderly gentleman and a younger woman.

  “Arabella,” said Daniel with surprise. The first word he had uttered in the last half hour. “And her father.”

  Mr Palmer was quite red faced and waving his arm angrily, one of the constables attempting to placate him. Daniel jumped from the Victoria immediately and rushed to intervene.

  Arthur tried to observe, while counting out money for the cabman, neither of them looking at the exchange in hand, so that the coins missed the cabman’s hand and dropped to the floor of the Victoria.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Mr Palmer was shouting to Daniel. “I demand an explanation!”

  Arthur couldn’t catch Daniel’s response, his back to him and his voice lower, but he noticed Arabella cower away, unable to look at her husband to be.

  “I find my daughter in a state of distress and try to get out of her what the matter is, and find it is you, Daniel Pearce! There’s a wedding the day after tomorrow and I want to know why my daughter says it’s no longer to happen! Explain yourself!”

  Arthur jumped from the cab and heaved the carpet bag down with him. Daniel was trying to explain something to Mr Palmer, but that wasn’t of interest. What had caught his eye was the look on the faces of the constables at the mention of Daniel’s name, and the glance exchanged between them, of surprise and delight and determination. They had the unmistakable look of two peelers whose prime suspect had fallen right into their net. One of them already had a hand on Daniel’s arm.

  “Arabella simply saw some paintings in my studio. Nudes. Unfinished and in a rough state,” Daniel was explaining. “Fairly standard fare for the studio of an artist, and a teacher in life drawing.”

  “You said they were not from life, Daniel!”

  This was Arabella. Arthur noted she had a fresh complexion and beneath her obvious distress and the deference for her father, a plu
cky determination shone through. He liked her immediately and thought her a perfect choice of bride.

  “They were imaginative sketches, yes,” said Daniel, with the look of a man caught out, changing his story, confused.

  “Mr Pearce? Mr Daniel Pearce?” the policeman asked.

  “And just how obscene were they?” shouted Mr Palmer.

  “No art is obscene!” Daniel shouted, anger exploding from him.

  “Mr Daniel Pearce?” the policeman asked.

  “Yes! What is it?”

  He was looking into the face of a constable; one who had a firm grip on his arm. Arthur took hold of Daniel’s other elbow and pulled him back a little, if only to resist the momentum of inevitable arrest, holding the bag as high as he could, as if it might explain everything.

  “You have to come with us, sir.”

  Mr Palmer’s mouth fell open for a moment. “What the devil?”

  “Step this way, sir. We’d like to speak with you.”

  “Of course,” said Daniel. “I have some very important information for you.”

  Daniel turned and looked for Arthur and smiled to find him right there next to him, holding the carpet bag.

  “We have evidence that will solve the case,” said Arthur. “Right here.”

  The constables exchanged another glance. This one was not as confident as the first. They had been bowled a googly and didn’t much care for it.

  “Will someone explain to me what the ruddy hell is going on here?” Mr Palmer shouted.

  “There’s been a terrible crime, sir.”

  “I come here to talk to this man and you won’t let me through, and now he appears and you want to take him inside. What is going on?”

  “There’s been a murder, sir. And we have to talk to this man here.”

  The other constables stepped quickly in, shoving Arthur back, taking Daniel’s other arm, and they quickly frogmarched him down the path.

  Arabella gave out a cry. She was weeping. Mr Palmer’s mouth fell so far open his chin obscured his bow tie. Arthur held out his arm, to shepherd them into the mews.

  “Come quickly. All will be explained in a moment.”

  “A murder?”

  “Indeed,” said Arthur. “And Daniel has solved it.”

  There was no one to stop them now that the two constables on guard duty had taken Daniel into the house, so they quickly followed and entered.

  Arthur noted the front door had been jemmied open, the wood all splintered like a gaping wound. He spied a constable in the parlour to the left, looking through drawers. They followed the two constables marching Daniel through to the dining room, where two more were turning over everything.

  “Out the back,” said one of them. They stopped their searching and grinned. Every policeman in the house knew they had their man.

  Daniel was marched through the kitchen and out into the garden. Arthur followed on their heels, aware of Mr Palmer’s wheezing breath just behind him, and Arabella’s sobs.

  A crowd of policemen was gathered around the summer house. Arthur recognized the inspector and the sergeant they had run from earlier. Two constables were stacking Daniel’s paintings outside and propping them up against the summer house.

  The burly sergeant was on his haunches, his hat tilted back on his head, looking them over with curiosity.

  “Daniel Pearce. Just the man,” said Inspector Beadle. He held out a piece of paper, which Daniel took and glanced over. “The search warrant we talked about. You’ll find it’s all in order.”

  Arabella turned her face away from the paintings and her father held her close. Arthur saw them: naked women, roughly rendered in slashes and daubs, lying on rumpled beds in dim rooms.

  “Interesting artwork,” said Beadle.

  “Very interesting,” said Macpherson.

  Daniel tried to remonstrate but his arms were firmly in the grip of the constables. “Really, Inspector! What is the meaning of this?”

  “This one, for instance,” said Beadle, pointing to the largest, “looks very familiar.”

  Arthur gasped. The rumpled bed, the brass railings of the bedstead, the sketch of Christ Church above the bed, the dressing table with its mirror and the objects scattered across it. He recognized it too.

  They had been in that room this very morning.

  “How did you paint Miss Louisa Gill’s room so accurately? And her lying dead in it?”

  Daniel stared dumbfounded for a moment. “But I painted that a week ago. You can tell by the dryness of the paint. It was impossible for me to paint it this morning as you well know.”

  Beadle scratched his chin and smiled. “Perhaps it was a preparatory study?”

  “How many times did she pose for you before you killed her?” said Macpherson.

  “I didn’t kill her!” Daniel cried.

  “It’s true,” Arthur intervened. “We visited her room for the first time this morning.”

  “For which we can add impersonating a police officer to your list of crimes,” said Beadle.

  “Not so,” said Arthur confidently. “We introduced ourselves as consulting detectives, not policemen, and she asked for no identification.”

  “Is that so?”

  “We examined the crime scene and discovered a clue that you and your men had failed to see.”

  Sergeant Macpherson stood up now, towering above them all. Something in Arthur’s accusation of neglect clearly riled him, but Arthur carried on boldly.

  “We discovered a pawn ticket, under the bed. We redeemed it and found this bag, which we believe belongs to the actual killer. His identity is contained within. What’s more we know the man.”

  “Oh really?” said Beadle. “A friend of yours?”

  “We believe we have solved the murder,” said Arthur. “And it completely and totally exonerates this man of any part in the crime.”

  Beadle put his hands on his hips and grinned, too confidently for Arthur’s liking. He didn’t seem to be taking this new evidence at all seriously. A desperate thought sprung to his mind: what would Sherlock do?

  “Well, these nice little portraits of two of the murder victims, and no doubt a few more I should imagine, are telling me a very different story, sir.”

  A sudden scramble of activity inside the summer house turned everyone’s head to the open door, from which a constable emerged holding up a knife.

  “Sir. Found this in his drawer, sir.”

  Beadle took it from him and held it across his palm. The wooden handle was grubby, the blade long and dirty but with a keen edge, recently sharpened. It appeared to have clay plastered over it.

  “Blood,” said Beadle.

  Daniel stared with horror. Arabella screamed.

  “I believe we have our murder weapon,” Macpherson beamed.”

  “That’s not mine!” Daniel cried. “I’ve never seen it before!”

  “Take him down the station,” Beadle barked. “And him.”

  Arthur saw that two of the constables that had been turning over the house were right behind him. They took hold of him immediately.

  “And take that bag as well.”

  And with that they were marched through the house and down the mews to the waiting paddy wagon. Arthur tried to twist and turn. A procession behind him: Mr Palmer leading his distraught daughter, Beadle and Macpherson following.

  They shoved Daniel into the wagon first.

  “Fear not, Miss Palmer!” Arthur shouted. “He is innocent and we shall prove it! Trust in him!”

  The constables yanked him back and shoved him into the wagon, a sharp pain jack-knifing through his shin as he fell onboard. One of the constables chained him to the seat, opposite Daniel. Over his shoulder, through the bars, Arthur caught a glimpse of Arabella crying out and burying her head in her father’s chest.

  “That monster?” shouted Mr Palmer. “He won’t marry my daughter! Over my dead body!”

  More constables climbed aboard and they slammed the door closed. Someone wh
ipped the horses and they shunted away down the street. Arthur craned his neck, holding onto his last view of the street.

  Inspector Beale and Sergeant Macpherson were talking to Mr Palmer and his crying daughter.

  Watching from across the street. Mingled with a few other curious pedestrians, Arthur could see a strange couple that stood out from the rest. Though he’d never seen them before, he knew who they were: a fallen woman and a man wearing a ridiculous deerstalker hat.

  And then he was yanked lower, chained to the seat, and could see nothing but the sky through the bars.

  They were arrested.

  25

  CATHERINE WAS ALREADY two sheets to the wind and was not far off three. Bury knew he would have to get her to cut it back or he’d have to carry her out of there and all the way back to the their room above the beer house. They’d walked it once today, and back here to Moseley, just in time to see the artist get arrested. He wasn’t going to carry her all the way back. He’d rather leave her lying in the gutter.

  She was singing again. That god awful song about the green rushes that went on for hours. It would be a corporal work of mercy for someone to cave her head in with a hammer and shut that racket up for good, so it would, then the rushes could grow green all over her grave, ho ho.

  Always opening her tripe hole to sing a song. Couldn’t she just shut it for once in a blue moon and leave a man to think? No wonder her husband in London wasn’t sending out a search party. He was probably lying awake every night just to enjoy more of the silence — a day of it not enough after six years of listening to her warbling every minute like a bleeding canary any sane man would want to feed to the cat.

  She came back through the crowd, fluttering her eyelashes at every man in the room like the cheap whore she was. Swore she’d never walked the streets in all her life, but he knew an old tart when he saw one.

  She came to the table and slid the pint of foaming ale across to him. He drank it half down in one gulp just to blot out the noise in his head, her constant chatter.