A Fatal Freedom

by Janet Laurence

  ‘He could ’ave gorn out,’ said Mrs Duggan slowly.

  ‘If he’s not there, we’ll leave; you can lock up and Mr Pond will be no more the wiser,’ Thomas said soothingly, he was damned if he was going to ante up more money, a sovereign was more than enough, perhaps more than had been wise. He’d think of some way to be left in the apartment once they were inside.

  With a quick sigh, the caretaker inserted the key and opened the door. As they stepped into a small living room, a stale scent compounded of dirty clothes, unwashed body odour and unaired rooms greeted them.

  If Albert reckoned moving into Dorset Square meant he’d gone up in the world, it could only be because of the number of stairs he had to climb to reach his accommodation. Maybe the lower floors offered apartments with more style. Here a rapid glance revealed a threadbare carpet, dirty walls that were ignorant of any pictures, a few unassuming items of furniture, a small fireplace with an aged wing chair before it, and on the floor, face down, with his head resting on the fender, Albert Pond.

  Ursula gasped. Thomas held out a hand to her but she swallowed hard and straightened her back. ‘I’m fine,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Gawd save us!’ The caretaker brought a hand to her mouth. ‘Yer was right! ‘Is ’eart must’ve given out. ’Ere, I got to sit down.’

  She swayed and Thomas moved the armchair a little distance from the body and helped her sit.

  ‘Would you like some water?’ Ursula asked.

  Mrs Duggan shook her head. ‘Nah, but ’e keeps brandy in that cupboard …’

  Ursula opened the doors of a wooden cabinet and revealed a few items of crockery, a couple of glasses and a half-empty bottle of fine cognac. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘Albert Pond is not going to need it,’ poured some out and gave it to the caretaker, who downed the drink in one, coughed slightly, wiped her mouth with her sleeve and gave the empty glass back to Ursula. ‘Better ’ave one yerself,’ Mrs Duggan said.

  Ursula looked across at Thomas but he shook his head and she returned the bottle to the cupboard.

  Thomas bent and carefully turned the body over. One look at the contorted face and the way the hands clutched at the throat convinced him that heart attack was not the most likely diagnosis.

  ‘When did you last see Mr Pond?’ Thomas asked.

  She looked vacantly at him until he repeated the question. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Think, woman,’ he said urgently, then caught himself; they’d not get anywhere by upsetting her. ‘A doctor may well order a post-mortem examination to establish exactly how he died. It may even be possible that the police need to be informed.’

  ‘Police!’ Mrs Duggan looked stricken.

  ‘They could well ask you the same question, so you might as well establish the answer now,’ he said slowly and calmly.

  She took a deep breath and considered his words. Then, ‘It would be Tuesday, that was the day I did ’is rooms.’

  Looking round, Thomas thought that ‘doing the rooms’ couldn’t take very long. ‘’E was going out as I came up. ’E was in an ’urry, said ’e’d left me money on the table and ran down the stairs. Didn’t seem no difficulty with ’is ’eart then.’ She carefully avoided looking at the body.

  ‘And you haven’t seen him since?’

  ‘Not until I opened that door.’

  ‘Did you see him return that day?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Or see anyone visit him between then and now?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘But I doesn’t ’ave the time to winder gaze.’

  ‘Do you clean rooms for anyone else in the building?’ Ursula asked.

  ‘I looks after most of them. And they got more furniture and stuff in them than ’ere.’ She shot a glance at the sparse furnishings. ‘Respectable, they are, them that stays ’ere. What they’re going to say about this, I don’t know.’

  ‘So you would be in and out of the apartments, up and down the stairs?’ Thomas said.

  A nod.

  ‘Which would mean that, without window gazing, you might well see a visitor paying a call?’

  ‘That’s as may be, but I didn’t see anyone that didn’t ’ave any right to be ’ere. Nor anyone to see Mr Pond.’

  ‘We shall need a doctor to examine him,’ Thomas said. ‘Please send for one, Mrs Duggan.’

  ‘Me? I ain’t got no one to send. Stan’s no use and I can’t leave the building.’ She looked at him almost pleadingly.

  Thomas sighed and brought out another sovereign. ‘If I write a note, I’m sure you can persuade Stan to go, or you can leave him looking after the building and go yourself.’ He held up the coin.

  The woman looked greedily at it and finally gave a little nod. ‘Suppose I could.’

  Thomas took out his notebook, extracted a page, wrote a quick request and handed it to Mrs Duggan together with the money.

  ‘Could take me a little time. Stan’ll not understand.’

  ‘The dead can wait and Miss Grandison and I will keep him company. You’ll need us as witnesses.’

  ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘That you didn’t do him in.’

  ‘’Ere, what you suggesting?’

  ‘Nothing, Mrs Duggan; I’m suggesting nothing. But you need us to declare that you opened that door in all innocence and were as horrified at what you saw as we were.’ Thomas looked at Ursula.

  ‘You have had a very nasty shock,’ she said in a calm voice. ‘We all have. But I’m sure you can understand that Mr Jackman is giving you very good advice. When the doctor calls, he can examine Mr Pond’s body, and we can state exactly what has happened this morning. Then you should have nothing to worry about as far as police are concerned.’

  Mrs Duggan looked from her to Thomas and back again. ‘Well, yer seems to know yer fingers from yer toes, which is more than wot I can at the moment.’ She levered herself out of the chair and plucked coin and note out of Thomas’s hand. ‘I’ll get Stan to go along to Dr Morrison’s, ’e knows where it is, been there often enough.’ She cast another glance at the body on the floor; her face seemed to have grown older since they’d entered the apartment. ‘’E wasn’t a bad old sod, which is more than I can say for everyone in this building; stuck-up lot some o’ them.’ She sniffed hard and left.

  ‘Sure you don’t want a drop of that brandy yourself?’ Thomas said to Ursula as the door closed behind Mrs Duggan.

  ‘Thank you, no. One of the benefits of living in a California mining camp is that you are no stranger to unexpected death and I prefer to keep a clear head.’ She gave a quick look at the body. ‘Is your verdict a heart attack?’

  Thomas was profoundly grateful for the hardening effects of rough living, the last thing he needed at this moment was an hysterical woman, or one prone to swooning. He undid Albert’s waistcoat, tie and shirt and pushed the material back to reveal his chest. ‘No, it looks more like a case of cyanide poisoning to me, the same cause of death as Joshua Peters.’

  ‘But wasn’t he killed with prussic acid?’

  ‘Another name for cyanide.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ursula forced herself to look at Albert Pond’s body. ‘What tells you he was killed with prussic acid, or cyanide?’

  ‘I can’t be certain but look at those livid spots and discolourations; they are more likely to be caused by cyanide than a heart attack.’

  Ursula looked at Albert’s mottled chest and thought about the awful result of swallowing poison. She drew a sudden breath. ‘Could it have been in the brandy? Mrs Duggan drank some!’

  Jackman unstoppered the bottle and smelled the contents. ‘No trace of almonds and I think if she had ingested any cyanide, she would have collapsed. It’s not quite instantaneous but doesn’t take long to take effect.’

  ‘What a relief! But if not the brandy, what? There doesn’t seem anything here to eat.’

  ‘The killer could have removed the means when he left,’ said Jackman.

  Ursula tried not to show how sh
ocked she felt. The dead body, with its twisted limbs and contorted features, looked horrible. Had Joshua Peters looked like that when he’d been found? No matter how unpleasant or even evil both men were, it was a terrible end.

  She went into the other room and returned with a bedcover which she spread over Albert’s body. ‘I can’t help remembering the way he was ejected from Maison Rose the other day,’ she said. ‘How he stood on the pavement and shook his fist at the closed door. He was a very angry man.’

  ‘We should try and find something that will tell us why he was there,’ said Thomas. He opened the doors to the little cupboard, and placed the pieces of crockery and glass on the top beside the brandy bottle. Then he knelt and ran his hands over the interior.

  Ursula went back into the bedroom. Sun shining through a dormer window that matched one in the other room revealed that Albert had not yet managed to surround himself with the trappings of a genteel lifestyle. There was a night cabinet beside the bed but the china pot it should house was beneath the iron bedstead. Ursula wrinkled her nose at the odour of its contents. She opened the cabinet’s door but found only empty space inside. Nor was anything in the drawer. She checked that nothing had been fixed to its underside.

  In a corner was a basin supplying water. A cupboard to one side held shaving equipment, a small bar of soap and a bottle of pills. A pharmacy label announced that they were aspirin. Ursula picked up the thin rug that lay on the boarded floor but could see nothing that required closer attention. She stripped the bed and examined the pillow, establishing that it contained nothing more than a meagre supply of feathers. The horsehair mattress had a stained ticking cover that looked undisturbed. Only bare springs were underneath.

  She dropped the mattress back into place and went over to the dormer window. Instead of a bird’s eye view of Dorset Square, she saw Albert’s furious figure shaking his fist at the Maison Rose’s front door. Why had he been there? Was her theory that Count Meyerhoff was a German spy any more than the result of reading an ultra-persuasive work of fiction? When she had been outlining her theory to Jackman, it had sounded thin, a romantic girl’s fantasy. She was not, though, normally the sort of person who got carried away by novels. And, whatever Mrs Bruton’s opinion, Ursula felt there was something slippery about the count. Her father, at one time a top financier, had a saying about men he didn’t trust: ‘I wouldn’t leave a kitten in his care.’ Ursula had laughed when he used it but found that it became a rule of thumb for her when dealing with men.

  A pigeon swooped down on to the narrow windowsill and sat cooing. Ursula hardly noticed. What, exactly, was Count Meyerhoff’s motive for being involved in Maison Rose? Purely financial? So far the income didn’t cover the expenses. Did he really believe the clinic and Madame’s preparations were going to make a great deal of money? How much had outside patrons invested? Ursula had seen no capital sums deposited in the company bank account. And what was the relationship between the Count and Madame? Hilda Ferguson, the assistant who worked closely with the beautician, didn’t like Count Meyerhoff, that had become clear during the session she and Ursula had spent filling the beauty preparation jars. Her loyalties and affiliation were to Madame, for whom she seemed to have a passionate regard.

  Ursula sighed and gave the bedroom a final survey. Then, satisfied no possible hiding place had been left unexplored, she picked up the bottle of aspirin and went back to the other room.

  The investigator was standing beside the fireplace and Albert’s shrouded body was now lying a little way away from the fender.

  ‘Look here,’ Thomas said.

  A short floorboard by the side of the grate had been raised to reveal a space large enough to hold a box of some sort, or perhaps an attaché case.

  ‘Nothing there now,’ he said. ‘But I would lay a monkey that it has held someone’s secrets.’ He replaced the board. ‘The doctor may well be here any time now, the place should not seem to have been searched.’

  Ursula hurriedly replaced the items he had taken out of the cupboard. ‘Do we give him the same story as Mrs Duggan?’

  Thomas checked the replacement of the floorboard then gave a satisfied nod. Nothing suggested now that it might have been raised. ‘Exactly the same. Albert Pond was a friend. He had invited us to see his new accommodation, after which we were to repair to some local hostelry for a drink and something to eat. We are very shocked by the discovery of our friend’s body. And, yes, we can say that he had been worried about the state of his heart.’

  ‘Let the doctor diagnose a suspicious reason for his death, rather than suggest it?’

  Thomas nodded. ‘That would be much the best. He will have to inform the authorities in any case.’

  Ursula pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her new coat. ‘I’ve just thought – if it can be proved that Albert has been poisoned by the same way as Joshua Peters, wouldn’t that mean Alice could be released from prison?’

  Thomas looked doubtful.

  ‘Surely the same person must have committed both murders?’

  ‘You and I might believe that, but whether Dandy Drummond will be as easy to convince is questionable.’

  ‘“Might believe that”?’ Ursula looked at him and her eyes narrowed. ‘You believe she’s guilty, don’t you? And yet you accepted a commission to prove her innocent!’ Ursula could not bring herself to consider for a moment that the girl was capable of killing her husband. Yet, nagging at the back of her mind was the bit of paper that the maid, Meg, had rescued from the fire. Why hadn’t she shown it to Thomas, and why did she feel so guilty about that? Because it was difficult to read into the fragmented words Alice had written anything that wasn’t incriminating, that was why.

  ‘Look, I said I would investigate the circumstances of Joshua Peters’ death. I approached the matter as I would if I’d still been in the force and officially on the case. I had no idea whether Alice was guilty or not; in fact, I still haven’t.’

  ‘Because you went away!’ Ursula hadn’t forgiven him for disappearing from London.

  Thomas sighed. ‘That was most unfortunate but there was little I could do. It was connected with a previous case and I couldn’t refuse. I’d expected it wouldn’t take more than a day or so. Once back I gave my full attention to the matter of Peters’ death.’

  Ursula found that she believed him and that, yes, she would leave a kitten in Thomas’s care.

  ‘The more I looked into things, the more it became apparent that Peters and his servant, that is Albert, were up to something.’

  ‘You mean blackmail?’ When Thomas didn’t immediately respond she said, ‘Surely that’s the most obvious conclusion. You said that the business is in trouble. Rachel told me that Felix Trenchard, the man who is trying to sort out the legal situation, has said there’s no money for the upkeep of the house and that it’s heavily mortgaged. It will have to be sold. Joshua Peters must have been desperate for money.’

  ‘So Alice Peters will have nothing?’ This seemed to be news to Thomas.

  ‘She apparently has a small income left to her by her mother; Rachel has the same. What I’m getting at is that Alice is not a rich widow.’

  ‘She may have believed that she would be. And with or without money, she is now free to marry the man she is in love with, who may or may not be the father of the child she is carrying.’

  ‘I believe her when she says her husband is the father and that she did not kill him.’ Ursula spoke steadily but she felt so frustrated she could scream. She had not thought that Thomas Jackman could be so obtuse. ‘And now, if Albert has been poisoned, surely it has to be by the same person who despatched Joshua Peters. Alice is in prison, ergo she could not have done this.’

  ‘But how about her sister?’ Thomas asked quietly.

  Ursula stared at him.

  ‘You yourself have told me that she believes in women turning militant to achieve their aims. Isn’t she prepared to break the law to persuade the government to give women the vote?’
>
  ‘Chucking a brick through someone’s window is not the same as killing someone! And she brought you in to prove Alice innocent.’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘Maybe she thought she was. Maybe Albert showed her evidence that her sister did poison her husband. Evidence that she was desperate to get hold of. If she didn’t have money to pay Albert off, killing him and seizing the evidence would solve the whole situation.’

  Ursula’s mind felt like a rat caught in a maze. He made it all sound horribly plausible. Yet could Rachel or Alice actually be a killer? Once again she thought about that bit of half-burned paper.

  ‘But what about the count and Maison Rose?’

  ‘Blackmailers usually attack more than one victim. Your theory that Count Meyerhoff is a spy for the Kaiser could have foundation. Or maybe there is something fishy about the beauty clinic. I am convinced Albert removed papers and maybe other items from his master’s desk. There was that pot of Maison Rose cream I found there. Maybe he missed that or thought it wasn’t important. If we could find what he did take, we’d know a great deal more.’

  Ursula cast a look around the room. ‘If they were here to find, we would have discovered them, surely.’

  ‘I fear they will have vanished with his killer and have probably been destroyed.’

  ‘Leaving us with nothing,’ Ursula said helplessly.

  ‘We can try and find a witness.’

  ‘You mean someone might have seen Albert’s visitor?’

  There came a knock at the door and Mrs Duggan entered without waiting for permission.

  ‘I’ve brought doctor. It’s not our usual. He tells me he’s sitting in. Well, here is Mr Pond, sir, as I told you. Ah, covered him up, have you? Quite right.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Duggan. You have been very helpful. We’ll say goodbye when everything has been taken care of.’ Thomas took firm hold of her upper arm and guided her out on to the landing.

  The doctor had entered in haste, then had seen the body beneath the coverlet. ‘Doctor Barton,’ he said. ‘This is the heart victim, I take it?’