An Oxford Scandal

by Norman Russell

  ‘Inspector Antrobus? How are you? I’m Inspector Smollett. And Sergeant Maxwell? Welcome to the Borough. I must go. We never stop pursuing villains here, Mr Antrobus. We’ve got twenty-eight inspectors, and sixty-six sergeants, and it’s still all we can do to keep our villains under control.’

  Sergeant Maxwell, who had removed his bowler hat on entering the room, and who stood clutching it to his chest, ventured a remark in his stern, hectoring voice.

  ‘Any constables, sir?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes. We’ve five hundred and thirty six of them. They – er – help out, too. I must go. I know why you’ve come. You want to delve into a past crime, so I’ve found just the man to help you.’ He flung open the door, and they heard him shout down the corridor, ‘Where’s Sergeant Tanner? I told him to be here. Where is he?’ Someone at the far end of the corridor replied, and the inspector turned to them with a smile of triumph.

  ‘Sergeant Tanner had worked this patch for over thirty years. He’ll be able to tell you all you want to know. If you need to see old case notes and reports, he’ll take you to the Divisional Repository in Hooke Street. You’re from Staffordshire, I believe? Oh, Oxford? Are you staying in London? If so, he’ll— Is that the time? Good morning, Officers. I really must go, now.’

  Presently, Sergeant Tanner came into the office, and greeted them with a smile. He saluted Antrobus, who raised his hat in acknowledgement, and then shook hands with Maxwell.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I expect you’re hungry after your long journey. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to a place where you can have a good breakfast, while you and me confer. All Mr Neylan told me was that you’re looking into an old crime, and need some help.’

  Sergeant Tanner was a stout, cheerful man in his late fifties, a man content to allow the beginnings of a double chin to bulge over his tightly-buttoned uniform collar, which boasted the silver insignia of ‘M’ Division. They followed him out into a stable yard behind the building, passed through a wicket gate, and found themselves in a narrow street, glistening in the rain. They followed Sergeant Tanner into a little glass-fronted shop, which smelt invitingly of fried bacon and eggs, and coffee.

  ‘This is Pat Boyle’s café,’ said Tanner. ‘It’s not the Ritz, but you’ll get real food here. There’s Pat, behind the counter. I’ll ask him to serve us in his little back room, where we can be private.’

  *

  ‘Now, gentlemen,’ said Sergeant Tanner, when the three men had done full justice to Pat Boyle’s generous breakfast, ‘what do you want me to do for you? I’m very pleased to be showing you round this part of our patch, Mr Antrobus, because I was born in these parts, which is why Superintendent Neylan chose me to help you delve into the past. We’re on a sort of peninsula here, facing Wapping, and the Isle of Dogs to the north. Southwark’s very much its own place, if I can put it that way.’

  ‘Sergeant Maxwell and I are on a journey into the past, Sergeant Tanner,’ said Antrobus. ‘We have three photographs, a few names, and some letters, all connected with this area of London in the sixties and seventies. Oh, and one address – Dalcy Street.’

  ‘Dalcy Street? Yes, sir, I can certainly oblige you there. I expect you already know that a horrible murder was committed there, years ago? Have you brought those items – the photographs and so forth – with you?’

  The first picture was of the soot-blackened four storey house in Dalcy Street. Tanner removed a pair of wire-framed spectacles from a pocket in his uniform. He did not open them, but used them as a kind of hand lens. He examined the photograph in silence for some minutes, seemingly lost in recollection. Then he spoke.

  ‘I remember that house very well, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Number 4, Dalcy Street. It’s still there, and maybe we’ll pay it a visit if you think that will help you. It was a good, respectable boarding house, run by a lady called – now what was her name? She lived to a great age, and when she died they took her down on the railway to Brookwood Cemetery. Millington. Mrs Aurora Millington. She’d been a widow for years, but it was said that her husband had been a sea-captain.’

  Sergeant Tanner looked at the other two photographs. He tapped the picture of Anthony and Dora taken to celebrate their engagement in 1869.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ he said, ‘but I remember her. She was a nice girl, though a bit flighty – nothing wrong, though, you understand. She was very pretty, and knew it! She’d have been no more than seventeen when I first came across her. Dora Spencer. And here she is again, in this photograph. Dora and someone called Melanie. I don’t remember her. She may not have lived at Mrs Millington’s.’

  Antrobus took from his pocket the letter that ‘Melanie’ had written to Rachel Noble on 7 August, 1869, and handed it without comment to Sergeant Tanner. The sergeant, still using his glasses as a sort of magnifying glass, began to read. They heard his intake of breath, and saw how he sat up at the table with renewed alertness.

  ‘Strewth! Beg pardon, sir, but this is something that the police never knew about. This girl – it’s that Melanie again – says that little Dora Spencer witnessed the murder of – now, what was the old man’s name? I’ve forgotten. She says Dora saw him knocked to the floor, and then whoever it was stabbed him in the chest. And then she says that Dora recognized the murderer… The man terrified her into silence, but she wrote an account, to be opened after her death. Have you found that letter, sir?’

  ‘We have not, Sergeant, but I can now tell you that Dora Spencer – Mrs Dora Jardine, as she became, was murdered in Oxford on the thirteenth of this month.’

  Sergeant Tanner returned the letter to Antrobus. He was quiet for a moment, evidently considering a course of action.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘that letter describes the unsolved murder that took place in the house in Dalcy Street on – I can remember the date – 5 August, 1869, two days before this “Melanie” wrote that letter. I suggest that I take you now to Dalcy Street, so you can see the house, and ask some questions, and then we’ll visit the Divisional Repository in Hooke Street. They keep all our old records there. So if you’ve finished your breakfast, we’ll take a stroll down to Rotherhithe.’

  ‘I thought this was Rotherhithe,’ said Sergeant Maxwell. He sounded personally affronted.

  ‘Well, you see, Mr Maxwell,’ said Tanner, ‘it’s all a bit vague, and I suppose only Londoners will understand it all. You’re in the Borough now, which some will tell you is part of Southwark, and at the end of this road you’ll find yourself in a little stretch of streets that don’t rightly know what they are or where they are; and beyond that, you’ll find yourself in Rotherhithe.’

  Maxwell remained silent while he digested this piece of information. Antrobus thought of little Dora Spencer, terrified into silence, who was the same person as the late unfortunate Mrs Dora Jardine, of Culpepper Gardens, Oxford, recently found dead and murdered in a tramcar at Cowley tram terminus.

  *

  The rain had stopped, and the winter sun strove valiantly, and with some success, to penetrate the pall of black cloud hanging in the sky above Rotherhithe. To Inspector Antrobus and Sergeant Maxwell, the whole borough of Southwark seemed to consist of nothing but docks and basins, and the openings to canals, all bordered by gaunt warehouses interwoven with grimy, unplanned and huddled streets of workmen’s cottages.

  There was smoke everywhere, pouring from domestic chimneys, and from the smoke-stacks of the many ships moored in the Surrey Commercial Docks. Here and there they saw reaching into the air above the huddle of steam ships the tall masts and spars of sailing vessels. The air smelt of soot, to which was added the sickening stench emanating from a number of tanneries, for which, the aptly named Tanner informed them with proprietorial satisfaction, the area was renowned.

  Maxwell thought fondly of the green and gracious quadrangles of the Oxford colleges. Antrobus felt the first stirrings of protest a
gainst this atmosphere in his ravaged lungs. There was something else, too: a grasping, clasping pain under his ribs, in the region of his heart.

  They followed their mentor through a maze of narrow streets until they emerged into a cobbled square, in which a number of handcarts stood upended, and tied to rusting rails. Beyond them was a public drinking-fountain, with a stone bowl and a number of iron cups secured with chains.

  Two sides of the square showed them the backs of houses in adjacent streets, a prospect of dark yards, blank windows, and masses of chimney stacks belching the smoke of many coal fires up towards the dark clouds above. To their left they saw a row of shops, most of which were closed, and a grandiose ale-house with a fingerless clock rising from its eves.

  ‘This place is called Archer’s Pavement,’ said Sergeant Tanner, ‘on account of there being archery butts here at the time of the Civil War. They were all done away with in old King George’s time. And facing you, gents, is the row of houses called Dalcy Street.’

  They could both recognize the four-storeyed soot-stained house in which Dora Spencer had lodged in the sixties. Despite the general gloom and decay of the district the house looked well cared for, and the steps leading up to the front door had been whitened with holy-stone. A notice fixed into the wall told them that the house was John Kennett’s Boarding Establishment. Sergeant Tanner knocked on the door.

  *

  ‘This is a very respectable establishment, gentlemen,’ said John Kennett, ‘which I’ve had the pleasure of running for the last twelve years. I bought it in 1883, with the money I got from losing this leg in an accident at the Surrey Docks.’

  Mr Kennett was a very stout man, with thinning ginger hair, and shrewd dark eyes that surveyed his visitors from under bushy brows. He was quite well dressed in a brushed frock coat, worn with old-fashioned breeches; his artificial left leg was of the type usually associated with Long John Silver.

  An indeterminate kind of serving-woman had admitted them into the narrow hallway of the house, which smelt strongly of fried kippers. She had ushered them into a room to the right. Here, the pervading aroma was that of ardent spirits.

  ‘That murder you’re talking about took place in this very room, so I’m told,’ said Mr Kennett. ‘When I first came here, I found that nobody would live in it because they were afraid of the old man’s ghost coming to haunt them. So I took it as my own quarters.’ He laughed, revealing a mouthful of broken teeth. He spoke with a South London accent, and Antrobus could hear the familiar wheeze of someone afflicted in the lungs.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s anyone living here now who remembers those days,’ said Antrobus. ‘It’s getting on for thirty years ago.’

  ‘Most of my lodgers are merchant navy men,’ said Mr Kennett, ‘retired captains, bosuns, people like that. But there’s one old lady still living here who remembers those days. She’s a lively old soul, and I’m sure she’d like to talk to you about it. The murder, I mean. She finds it a bit of a struggle to make ends meet, so if you could leave something on her table before you go, she’d be very grateful.’

  ‘What’s this lady’s name?’ asked Antrobus.

  ‘Miss Mauleverer. It’s an uncommon name, and there’s some say that she’s related to titled folk somewhere up in Yorkshire. At any rate, she’s very refined in her ways.’ He laughed. ‘Considering that I’m a bit of a rough diamond, she and I get on famously. If you go upstairs to the first landing, and knock on the door marked Number 3, she’ll open up. As a matter of fact, she already knows that you’re here. I thought it as well to let her know.’

  As the police officers left the room, Mr Kennett detained Sergeant Maxwell by the simple expedient of pulling him back into the room.

  ‘That inspector of yours,’ he whispered, ‘he’s taken badly in the lungs, isn’t he? He looks deathly pale, and too gaunt for his own good. Keep an eye on him, Sergeant. I lost two brothers to consumption, and I’m that way inclined myself.’

  ‘He’s – he’s very ill, if the truth be told,’ said Maxwell. ‘I sometimes feel that I’ll lose him one day soon. But he fights back, does Mr Antrobus, and he’s risen more than once from what we thought was his death-bed. It’s very kind of you to be concerned, Mr Kennett, very kind indeed. But I’d better go upstairs now, or he’ll miss me.’

  Maxwell turned at the door, and the old lodging-house keeper saw the tears welling up in his eyes.

  ‘He’s coughed up blood twice this morning, Mr Kennett,’ said Maxwell, ‘and he’s been clutching at his heart from the last hour. The smoky atmosphere doesn’t agree with him, and all this walking’s wearing him down. We’re supposed to be here just for the day, but I don’t know…’

  *

  ‘So little Dora Spencer and Rachel Greenwood are dead,’ said Miss Mauleverer with a sigh. ‘I suppose it would be true to say that they have been dead to me for half a lifetime, but now you come here and tell me that they are dead indeed – murdered.’

  Miss Mauleverer was a little, faded woman who may have been in her early eighties, or even older. She sat very still in a large, overstuffed armchair beside the fireplace in her crowded sitting room. A sideboard held a large number of photographic portraits in tarnished frames; Antrobus felt that all the people posing stiffly in these pictures were long dead. There was a birdcage, but no bird. The room smelt of oil of peppermint, mingled with the aroma of fried kippers that pervaded the house.

  ‘My life these days, gentlemen,’ said Miss Mauleverer, ‘consists of a number of daily realities, and the contemplation of a host of shadows and echoes from the past. I am shocked to hear that those two girls have died violent deaths – shocked, but not entirely surprised. We live in dreadful times.’

  Sergeant Tanner had excused himself, and joined Mr Kennett downstairs, leaving the two detectives alone with the old lady. Sergeant Maxwell’s attention had been attracted to an engraved portrait of Queen Victoria in the company of another lady, which hung in a glazed frame on the wall. The Queen was wearing her customary black, and her dress was adorned with the sash and star of the Order of the Garter. The other lady was a woman in her thirties, dark-haired and handsome. Maxwell felt that he had seen her before, but could not recollect where. What connection had this old lady in Rotherhithe with the Queen and her court? Or was it just something that she’d seen in a gallery, fancied, and bought to fill that space on the wall?

  ‘I say that I’m not surprised,,’ said Miss Mauleverer, ‘because Dora and Rachel were friends of a sort, and if one got herself murdered, then the other followed suit. Two victims of a single crime, I mean. But Rachel was not connected with the terrible murder that took place in this house on 5 August, 1869.

  ‘In the room on the ground floor where Mr Kennett now lives, there dwelt an old gentleman called Mr Jacob Fischbein. He was a very wealthy man, having made a fortune in buying up old bills of sale at a discount – that’s what he told me, you understand: I’d no idea what it meant at the time, and still don’t; but it had made him very rich.’

  ‘Why was he content to live here in this God-forsaken— this out of the way district of London?’ asked Antrobus. ‘If he was rich, he could have taken a house in a fashionable part of the West End.’

  The old lady regarded Antrobus with what could be described as amused vexation.

  ‘He’d been brought here as a baby at the end of the last century, Mr Antrobus. They were Jewish immigrants of German descent, but coming from Russian Poland. They were very poor, he told me. His father got work in one of the tanneries, and then set up his own little chair-making business. They regarded themselves as Rotherhithe folk, and when young Jacob started his counting-house, he stayed where the family had started their lives in England. The other members of his family thought differently, and moved across the river to more salubrious areas. Jacob Fischbein was a nice old man, well into his seventies, and he liked to chat to me when th
e occasion offered.’

  ‘And he was murdered?’

  ‘Well, of course he was: you know that as well as I do. He’s one of the shadows, the echoes from the past. I’m by way of being one of those echoes myself. My father owned a fleet of coasters, sail first, and then steam. We had a grand house near Southwark Cathedral. Well, Papa’s a shadow, and so is our fortune. I’ve enough left to live here, which doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m a Rotherhithe person, too!’

  ‘Will you tell me about the day of the murder, ma’am? Who was in the house at the time, and what happened, as far as you were able to ascertain.’

  ‘I will. It happened about ten o’clock on the evening of 5 August, 1869, which was a Thursday. I was here, in this room, preparing to retire. I have a suite of rooms here, you’ll understand. I think Dora Spencer was here; she’d been out for the evening with that young man who fancied her – I can’t recall his name. He was a handsome fellow, with an eye for the ladies, but harmless enough, I expect. She may have been in her room by the time the murder took place. Who else was here? Mr Farmilee, a clerk in the Dock Offices, Mr Hulse, a vintner – he had a hare lip, poor man, but was very civil…’

  Miss Mauleverer mentioned another half-dozen names, and Antrobus thought: they’re all shadows, all dead, no doubt; there was not much to be learned here, in this obscure boarding house.

  ‘There was a sound of raised voices,’ the old lady continued, ‘the quavering tones of poor old Mr Fischbein, and the demented shouting of a younger man – you could tell he was younger by his voice. One or two of the men rushed downstairs and found Mr Fischbein dead, stabbed, and his desk rifled. They never found out who did it. He had a nephew, and it was he who paid for his uncle’s funeral. He was buried in St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery at Kensal Green.’

  ‘I thought you said he was a Jew?’ said Antrobus.