A Fatal Freedom

by Janet Laurence

  Daniel looked modestly pleased.

  ‘Can we talk, or do you need to meet up with anyone?’

  There was the slightest of hesitations then, Daniel said, ‘I’d be delighted to converse with you.’

  ‘A drink downstairs, perhaps?’

  ‘By all means.’

  Daniel took his farewell of the stocky chairman and thanked him for the opportunity to read his verse.

  ‘Sorry there weren’t more people here, I’d expected a larger audience but it probably isn’t a good time of the year. Winter’s better. We’ll do another one in a couple of months’ time, say early November.’

  The girl who had been taking the money went up, looking coquettish. For a moment Thomas was reminded of Millie. ‘Daniel, are you not to lunch with us? Boris said all the poets were invited.’

  ‘Now, Esther, I never said they were all coming.’

  ‘Boris has been very kind but Mr Jackman needs to talk to me.’

  The girl’s face fell. She was sweet looking and Thomas didn’t think he’d have been as curt with her as Daniel had.

  Downstairs, to enter the saloon bar they had first to exit on to the pavement. Standing in the road were two women handing out leaflets from a hessian bag bearing the slogan Votes for Women. Not many passers-by were taking the offered leaflet.

  Daniel made an exclamation of disgust as he followed Jackman into the pub. Thomas got them two pints of the landlord’s special and they took their glasses out into a small courtyard. The day was warm and the courtyard, with two wooden benches and a dilapidated iron table, was more private than the bar.

  Thomas looked at the young man speculatively. ‘You don’t approve of giving women the vote?’

  ‘They wouldn’t know what to do with it. Women are made for creating a home, not interfering with politics.’

  ‘Yet women serve on some councils now, and decide on matters pertaining to their lives.’

  Daniel looked down at the foam of his beer. ‘Can you see Alice Peters running a campaign for, I don’t know, testing fallen women for sexual diseases?’

  Thomas was shaken. ‘Is that the sort of thing that’s being talked about?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Talk to Rachel, she’ll fill you in on all the shameful ideas these women have.’

  ‘I thought she was a friend of yours.’

  ‘Oh, she is. Rachel’s sterling, top of the pole, if only she didn’t have these ridiculous ideas in her head.’ Daniel put his glass down, removed a cigarette case from inside his jacket and offered it to Thomas. Both men lit up. The cigarettes were Turkish and strong. Thomas resisted an urge to cough and studied Daniel. He might look like a cartoon version of a poet, with his velvet jacket, tasselled beret and linen trousers, but the verse he’d presented had been, in Thomas’s estimation, a cut above that of the other fellows. Someone who could compare sods of earth to the creation of a potato showed more sense than poets usually managed. Yet his radical objection to the Votes for Women campaign struck an odd note. Surely one expected a poet to be liberal, at any rate with a small ‘l’? And the night he had come with Rachel Fentiman and Ursula Grandison to his house to enlist his help, Daniel had been obstructionist and a downright boor.

  ‘Have you been in communication with Mrs Peters?’

  Daniel flushed. ‘I am not a relative and the Trenchards look down on my relationship with Alice.’

  ‘Was Mrs Peters in touch with you after her husband died?’

  Daniel kicked moodily at a stone on the courtyard. ‘There was hardly time before that sod of a policeman arrested her.’

  Thomas did not agree with the use of such language to describe members of His Majesty’s Police Force but it matched so exactly with his own opinion of Inspector Drummond that he let it go.

  ‘It must have been a shock when Mrs Peters decided to leave her husband and fly to your protection.’

  Daniel looked at him suspiciously. ‘I don’t like your use of the word “protection”, it seems to refer to a different sort of woman altogether.’

  Thomas made a graceful gesture, ‘I apologise. Yet,’ he mused aloud, ‘would I be wrong in suggesting that Mrs Peters was indeed in need of protection from her husband?’

  ‘No, by God, absolutely right!’ The words were almost shouted. ‘He was a fiend of the first order.’

  ‘Because of the way he treated his wife?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No other reason?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I wondered if Mrs Peters had ever suggested to you that her husband was involved in illegal activities.’

  ‘What sort of “illegal activities”?’

  Thomas shrugged his shoulders. ‘I was hoping it was something you might be able to give me a hint about.’

  ‘You mean, something Alice, Mrs Peters, had told me about her husband?’

  Thomas nodded and waited.

  Daniel dropped his cigarette stub, ground it out with his foot, lit another one and offered the case again to Thomas, without success.

  ‘You’re a dashed careful sort of cove, aren’t you?’

  Thomas contemplated the glowing end of the man’s cigarette and said nothing.

  ‘Look, I reckon Alice, Mrs Peters, would want me to be square with you. She might, in fact, I suppose, already have said something when she was arrested. Though if she did, I can’t work out why she was hauled off to gaol like that.’

  ‘Yet you didn’t say anything at that meeting when you came to my place.’

  Daniel shifted his feet uncomfortably. ‘Thing is, she made me promise I wouldn’t. But that was before …’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before it looked as though the police were happy to accept the evidence of her diary as sufficient proof she … she dosed that rotter with prussic acid.’

  ‘Now you think she would want you to be “square with me”?’ Thomas felt exasperated. This young man didn’t seem able to put two thoughts together logically. He was reverting to his first impression of Daniel Rokeby. When he had been following Alice Peters, he had been unable to understand what she found attractive in him. All right, he was tall and handsome. He seemed to be fathoms deep in love with her; he would stroke her cheek, take her hand, buy her a rose, hold animated conversations, but was that enough for such a lovely girl?

  Thomas had finally come to the conclusion that life with Joshua Peters was so difficult and unpleasant, it made spending time with Daniel Rokeby like being offered a glass of clear spring water after having to drink the muddied remains at the bottom of a well.

  ‘So, what did Mrs Peters tell you about her husband?’

  Daniel drank deep of his beer then lit another cigarette.

  Thomas waited.

  ‘It was nothing definite,’ he said at last.

  Thomas gave an inward sigh. He had been mad to think anything concrete would come of this conversation.

  ‘There must have been something that suggested … what? Illegal activities? Abuse of some sort?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ Daniel seemed truly shocked.

  ‘Perhaps if you told me what, exactly, Mrs Peters said about her husband?’

  ‘Of course, you are quite right. So, let’s see now.’ For a long moment Daniel seemed lost in thought. ‘What she said was,’ he broke off then said, ‘I hope I get it right.’

  Thomas gave a long sigh.

  ‘She said that if she had known what sort of man Joshua Peters was before they became engaged, she would never have promised to marry him.’

  ‘And what sort of man was he?’

  ‘I asked her that and she said she couldn’t tell me, it was too dreadful. But she promised that if ever she decided to leave him and he made trouble, she would act.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She didn’t say, only that it would mean we could be free to live our lives together.’

  ‘Why do you think that means she didn’t poison her husband?’

  ‘You can’t think that is what she did
!’

  ‘The evidence is beginning to mount against her.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  ‘Her diary and now what she said to you.’ Thomas felt he was being brutal but Daniel’s lack of understanding made him feel he was hewing at a coal face that refused to yield usable fuel.

  ‘But she must have meant something else!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, that she would tell Peters she knew something about him that was to his detriment.’

  ‘We come back to the same question. What did she know?’

  Daniel was merely holding the cigarette he’d lighted.

  ‘Surely you have to see that that evidence against Joshua Peters is the only thing that could save Mrs Peters from the hangman’s rope?’

  Daniel stared at him aghast. ‘You can’t mean that.’

  ‘I’m afraid I do. Apparently the evidence given in the diary is damning. Mrs Peters wrote that she hated her husband and wished he could vanish from the earth. I have witnessed his treatment of her and it was not pleasant. I can well understand that she would want him removed from her life. Now you tell me that if she left him and he made trouble, she would act. We know she did leave him and we know that she returned to him because, she says, she was with child by him. Now the only way she could give that child a respectable life and fund its upkeep and education was if her husband died. Or,’ Thomas deliberately paused. ‘Or, if she decided that maybe life with him was not so insupportable after all.’

  ‘Don’t say that! I can’t believe it!’ Daniel walked agitatedly around the little courtyard.

  ‘Did you believe it when she told you she was returning to him?’

  ‘No!’ Another agitated walk. He stopped and turned to face Thomas. ‘I truly believed that once she’d returned she’d find she couldn’t after all stand life with him. I waited for her to contact me. I hung around outside the house and gave notes to Millie to give to her. Even when days stretched into weeks, I still believed it was only a matter of time.’

  ‘And when you heard Joshua Peters had been poisoned, you didn’t suspect for one moment that Alice Peters might have been responsible?’

  ‘No! No! No!’ Daniel sank on to one of the benches and put his head in his hands. ‘It was the last thing I could think.’

  ‘And even after he had died, she didn’t tell you why she so despised and hated him?’

  He shook his head. ‘She only ever said what I have told you. Why can’t you believe that?’

  ‘It seems I have to.’ Thomas felt extreme frustration. Here he was so near to the heart of the mystery and, like an eel, it slipped away from him.

  ‘You should speak to Rachel, she might know. After all, she worked for him.’

  Jackman looked at him in consternation. ‘Rachel Fentiman worked for Joshua Peters?’

  ‘Not for long. It was after she came down from Manchester.’

  * * *

  Daniel left the public house with every appearance of having realised, at last, just how perilous was Alice Peters’ situation.

  For Thomas the question was, could he believe Daniel’s fervent conviction that she was incapable of poisoning her husband?

  He had hoped that Daniel would manage to produce some sort of lead that he could follow. Instead all he was left with was the upsetting news that Albert had disappeared from Montagu Place. He decided to set out immediately for the docks again. He was unlikely to be lucky enough to run into the valet but at least he could ascertain if Albert had informed Peters’ company of his new address.

  And he must talk to Rachel Fentiman.

  Chapter Twenty

  Two days after visiting Alice, Ursula walked into chaos at Wilton Crescent. Paint-splashed drugget lined the hall and stairs. Dungareed workmen carried canvas tool holdalls up to the first floor. Already, hammering could be heard from the bathroom. As Ursula emerged from the basement, Mrs Bruton was drawing on a pair of grey kid gloves; two leather cases had been placed by the front door and her maid, Huckle, stood stolidly beside them, while Enid watched the road through the front door’s glass side panel.

  ‘Ah, Miss Grandison. Thank you, my dear, for being so punctual. Dick is fetching me a hansom and I’m expecting it to arrive any minute. I cannot stand the mess and the noise here a moment longer. I am removing to Brown’s Hotel. Call on me there tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. You will need to bring my post so I can go through it.’ Mrs Bruton checked her appearance in the mirror above the hall side table, adjusted two of the curls that artfully emerged from below the brim of a wide felt hat festooned with feathers, and gave a little nod of satisfaction.

  ‘Cab’s here, Madam.’ Enid opened the door and Huckle and she each carried out a suitcase.

  ‘There are a few letters with notes on them that I’ve put on your desk, Miss Grandison. Please be good enough to deal with them. Then you can perhaps go through the cupboards and see if they need tidying. Here are the keys.’ Mrs Bruton handed over a small, inlaid wooden box that rattled as Ursula took it. ‘And, Miss Grandison, please to keep an eye on the workmen.’

  Mrs Bruton picked up a slim leather enveloped-shaped handbag that matched her grey suit, tucked it under her arm and followed Enid and the second suitcase out to the cab.

  One of the workmen came down the stairs. Ursula caught his attention. ‘How long before you finish the work you are undertaking for Mrs Bruton?’

  ‘Better ask the guv, miss. He’s the one what knows.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘No, miss, not now.’

  ‘When your boss arrives, please ask him to let me know the timetable for these works.’ Ursula went off to the room she thought of as her office, found the letters, looked at them, then decided to investigate what was going on upstairs.

  It had been a little while ago that Mrs Bruton had mentioned that her bathroom needed bringing up to date.

  ‘I was shown such a handsome bath when I visited a friend a little time ago. And the room was lined with marble; Cleopatra would have felt so at home there. I asked for the details of all the suppliers. ’

  Orders had been placed, Ursula’s opinion sought over the choice of taps, tiles and floor covering. The fittings were to be exactly the same as the ones Mrs Bruton’s friend had had installed.

  A thunderous noise came down the stairs as Ursula climbed up to the first floor. It sounded as though a major work of demolition was taking place. As she approached the bathroom, dust filled the air. Coughing, she stood in the open doorway. Two sturdy men wielded heavy hammers; huge pieces of the existing porcelain bath already lay on the floor and total destruction was well on the way.

  ‘This door surely should be kept shut,’ Ursula said firmly, retreating and closing it as she left.

  Back in her office, sneezing from the dust and envying Mrs Bruton’s ability to remove herself from chaos, the letters were attended to. Enid, complaining about the dust, brought her the usual mid-morning coffee together with the latest delivery of mail.

  ‘It’ll take I don’t know what to get rid of it when those dratted men have finished. Any idea how long it’s going to take, miss?’

  ‘I’ve asked the foreman to tell me the timetable, Enid. If I’m not here when he comes, please ask him to return early tomorrow morning, will you?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ The girl sounded doubtful.

  ‘Tell him Mrs Bruton has requested his presence.’

  ‘But she won’t be here.’

  ‘He won’t know that, Enid.’ Ursula gave her an encouraging smile.

  There was little to engage her in the letters that had been brought in. Ursula set them in a small pile ready for her to pick up with the early morning mail the next day to take over to Brown’s Hotel, making a mental note that she would have to call in at the library on her way home to see if they had a gazetteer that would reveal the location of Mrs Bruton’s new habitation. Then she opened the little wooden box that she’d been entrusted with and found the key for the first of the cupboards that
ran beneath the built-in shelves along one side of the room. It contained the files that held all the details of Mrs Bruton’s properties.

  Ursula placed these on the floor. It seemed to her that how she had organised them the day that Mrs Bruton’s stepson had visited, was not necessarily the best method.

  Soon she was immersed in her task, until the chiming of the clock on the mantelpiece warned that it was lunchtime and Mrs Evercreech would be expecting her downstairs. Ursula looked at the papers on the floor. With workmen upstairs it would be reprehensible to leave them on view. Carefully she placed them back in the cupboard and locked it again.

  There was a knock at the door and a flustered-looking Enid entered.

  ‘Oh, miss, Mr Bruton has called. He wants to see the mistress.’

  ‘Have you explained that she is not at home?’

  ‘Yes, miss, and now he wants to come in here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘He says he needs to consult some of the mistress’s records. I don’t think Mrs Bruton would like that, miss, do you?’

  Wanted to see his stepmother’s accounts again, did he? Ursula looked at the maid’s worried face. ‘I will see him. Have you put him in the drawing room?’

  ‘Yes, miss. Thank you, miss.’ Enid almost gasped her relief.

  Arthur Bruton was standing by the mantelpiece, drumming his fingers on one of his heavy thighs as he waited. He came forward as she entered.

  ‘Ah, Miss … ?’

  ‘Ursula Grandison, Mr Bruton.’ She held out her hand.

  ‘Ah, yes, of course.’ His small eyes narrowed and he ignored the hand. ‘Well, Miss Grandison, I understand my step-mama is not at home.’

  ‘No, sir. Can I take a message?’

  ‘I wish to consult again the account books I was shown the other day when I lunched here. You can bring them to me.’

  At their brief previous meeting, Ursula had already decided that Mr Bruton was a man used to getting his own way but the peremptory nature of his request took her by surprise.