Sick of Shadows

by Beaton, M. C.

  Both had taken with them a considerable amount of money and valuables. The timely warning call from the police had also enabled them to transfer their accounts to a Swiss bank.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Cyril.

  That evening, they inquired at the reception desk for the whereabouts of a motor car salesrooms and got directions to a large one in Giffnock.

  The following morning, they set out. Pride of the salesroom display was a Rolls-Royce, and Berrow decided that it would be ideal. He paid cash, to the delight of the salesman, who then discovered that neither knew how to drive.

  Cyril was taken out on the road for a lesson. After two hours, he decided he knew how to start up and go forward. So long as he was not expected to reverse, he felt he could manage pretty well. They returned to the centre of the city and bought leather motoring coats, leather hats and goggles, and Berrow embellished his ensemble with a long white silk scarf.

  Not wanting to cope with the Glasgow traffic, they took a cab back to their hotel. They waited until the following morning and had to hire two of Glasgow’s new motorized taxi-cabs to take them and their luggage out to the salesroom.

  With Cyril at the wheel, scowling in concentration, they set out on the road. Berrow studied ordnance survey maps. The idea was to go by country roads to Stranraer and take the ferry to Ireland. They planned to hide out in Ireland for a time and then sail to France and make their way to Switzerland.

  The weather was fine, with feathery clouds decorating a pale blue sky. The fresh scents of the countryside blew into the open car. Cyril relaxed as he grew more confident.

  The trouble began when they motored through a village and a pretty girl stared at the car in open-mouthed admiration.

  When they were clear of the village and Berrow saw a long straight stretch of road ahead, he called, ‘Stop!’ Berrow had become jealous of Cyril at the wheel.

  Cyril pulled to a halt. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Let me take the wheel for a bit.’

  ‘You can’t drive.’

  ‘Show me. Just how to move it along.’

  ‘Oh, all right’ Cyril got out and they changed places. After several attempts and crashing gears, Berrow managed to get the car to move forward. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator. Although the speed limit was thirty miles an hour, the Rolls was capable of doing a hundred.

  Hedges hurtled past in a blur as Cyril screamed, ‘Ease off the accelerator!’

  ‘What?’ shouted Berrow. ‘This is fun.’

  As he hurtled down a bend in the road and straight at a hump-backed bridge, his scarf blew across his face. Panicking, Cyril grabbed the wheel. With a great crash, the car hit the parapet sideways on. The ancient stonework crumpled. Cyril was catapulted onto the river bank. He hit a stone with the full impact of his head and lay still.

  Berrow stared down at him in horror. ‘Are you all right?’ he called, but he was sure Cyril was dead.

  He felt the car lurch. He got out carefully and went and looked at the damage. The wheels were hanging over the edge where the parapet had once been.

  He struggled down the river bank to Cyril. He felt for a pulse but found none.

  Berrow climbed back to the car. He would need to walk back to that village for help. His hands were shaking. He stood at the back of the car, lit a cigarette with a vesta and tossed the lighted match on the ground, unaware of the lake of petrol that had formed.

  There was a terrific explosion as Berrow and the car went up in a fireball of flame.

  Harry was to escort Rose to a luncheon party and she prayed he would not cancel.

  They were accompanied by Daisy, Turner, the lady’s maid, and two footmen. Rose began to wonder if she would ever have a chance to speak to Harry in private.

  She was not seated next to him at table and so talked a little to the gentleman on her right – of the weather – and the gentleman on her left – on the state of the nation – picked at her food and thought the wretched meal with its eight courses would never end. How wonderful it would be, she thought, if I were to pick up the table-cloth and bundle all this food and take it down to the East End.

  At last the hostess signalled to the ladies to join her in the drawing-room and leave the gentlemen to their port.

  ‘Why are you looking so nervous?’ whispered Daisy.

  ‘Nothing.’ Rose wanted to tell Harry about her discovery first. A little twinge of guilt warned her that she should have confided in Daisy first, but Rose wanted to impress Harry, to show him she could detect as well.

  At last the gentlemen came in. Bridge tables were being set up and Daisy’s green eyes gleamed like a cat’s. She was a killing bridge player.

  Harry joined Rose. She whispered urgently, ‘I must talk to you in private.’

  ‘There’s a conservatory at the back of the house. Let’s walk there.’

  In the steamy warmth of the conservatory, they sat down on a bench in front of a marble statue of Niobe.

  Harry was the first to speak. Rose listened in amazement when he told her how Berrow and Banks had hired Finch and how his secretary had nearly been killed. ‘The police commissioner in York is going to arrest them. Don’t you see? You are safe now. They must have been the ones behind the murder of Dolly.’

  Rose’s splendid deduction was losing its glow, but she said, ‘I have discovered something as well. I am sure it was Jeremy Tremaine who hired Reg Bolton.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There is this Cockney who comes to the soup kitchen. He found God in prison. Don’t you see? Jeremy is a divinity student. He could have been visiting prisoners and found a useful one.’

  ‘I really do think we’ll find out it was Berrow and Banks.’

  Rose looked so disappointed that he said hurriedly, ‘To put your mind at rest, I can leave now and go to Wormwood Scrubs and check the book for visiting clerics.’

  ‘Take me with you. Please!’

  ‘Very well. Tell Daisy to take Turner home in a cab.’

  Normally Daisy would have been curious, but she was so addicted to cards that she only nodded.

  At the prison, the governor protested that he was too busy a man to keep dealing with Captain Cathcart’s requests.

  Rose gave him a blinding smile and the governor thawed. He not only produced the required books but suggested that he take Rose on a tour of the prison.

  Wormwood Scrubs proved to be even larger than Rose had imagined. It generally contained a thousand male and two hundred female convicts. They walked round the laundries where the women worked and then to the bakeries where the prisoners in their ugly uniforms were baking bread. There was also shoemaking and tailoring going on.

  What Rose found unnerving was that all the labour was done in complete silence. It was like being in a Trappist monastery.

  She was also taken to a room where the triangles were. Prisoners were strapped to these triangles and either birched or lashed with the cat-o’-nine-tails. The cat-o’-nine-tails was kept in a drawer. The governor lifted it out for Rose to examine. ‘Doesn’t look much, but it can inflict some damage.’

  Rose repressed a shudder and suggested they return to Harry.

  He was just closing the books when they entered the governor’s barrack-like office.

  As he and Rose got into the Rolls, he said, ‘Jeremy Tremaine visited the prison on six occasions in the months before his sister’s death. One of the prisoners he visited was Reg Bolton.’

  ‘I wonder what Jeremy will say when we ask him?’

  ‘We? I thought of going myself with Becket tomorrow.’

  ‘You must take me with you! It was my idea.’

  ‘I suppose your parents will agree if we take Becket and Daisy.’

  * * *

  Lady Polly was in a fury when they got back, demanding to know where they had gone, Rose without either her maid or companion. Rose took Harry’s arm and smiled up at him. ‘Only for a little drive,’ she said. ‘We wanted to be alone.’

  Harry’s heart ga
ve a lurch and then he realized that, of course, she was acting.

  Nonetheless, it took a great deal of persuading to get permission to go ‘for a little drive’ with Harry the following day with just Becket and Daisy as chaperones.

  But Lady Polly finally melted. She saw the way Rose smiled up at the captain and was sure her wayward daughter was in love at last.

  They all set out the following morning in high spirits that even the damp mist clouding the day could not dim.

  Daisy had won too much at cards to be angry with Rose for not having told her about Jeremy.

  When they turned down Oxford High, the mist was hiding the spires and pinnacles of the colleges, and even the top of Carfax Tower was lost to view.

  Daisy and Becket were told to stay in the car while Rose and Harry made their way up the shallow stone steps to Jeremy’s rooms.

  ‘We’re in luck,’ said Harry. ‘He’s not sporting his oak.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘These are double doors. If the outer door is closed, that’s called sporting the oak and it means you’re either out or do not want visitors.’

  Harry knocked and a faint voice called, ‘Enter.’

  Harry held open the door for Rose and followed her in. Jeremy was dressed in gown and mortar board.

  ‘What do you want?’ he demanded harshly. ‘I was just going out.’

  ‘You visited a certain Reg Bolton in Wormwood Scrubs on several occasions just before his release. He is the man who tried twice to kill Lady Rose.’

  ‘I visited him along with other prisoners. I was doing my duty, bringing Christian hope to the suffering.’

  ‘Nobody seems to think of bringing Christian hope to the victims,’ said Rose.

  ‘Don’t you think it odd’, pursued Harry, ‘that after your sister is murdered, a hired assassin called Reg Bolton tries to kill Lady Rose, a man you visited?’

  Jeremy’s face was wax-pale and his eyes burned with fury. ‘Get out of here,’ he shouted. ‘How dare you? You are accusing me of killing my own sister.’

  ‘You haven’t heard the end of this,’ said Harry. ‘I am sure the police will want to interview you. Come, Rose.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t expect to get a confession out of him,’ said Rose as they walked together across the quadrangle.

  ‘No, the purpose was to rattle him and see if he betrays himself in any way.’

  Daisy and Becket sat in the front seat in sulky silence. Becket had sprung the idea on Daisy that maybe they could one day save enough to buy a little pub in the country. Daisy could work behind the bar. Daisy had said furiously that she was not going to sink to be a barmaid. Becket had called her a snob and said she had acquired ideas above her station.

  Becket was driving, so Rose and Harry climbed into the back.

  They went to the Randolph Hotel for luncheon. Daisy and Becket sat at a separate table, staring angrily at each other in dead silence.

  ‘I think’, said Harry, ‘that I should go to Scotland Yard on our return and tell Kerridge about these visits.’

  ‘Good idea. I shall come with you.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a man’s world. There are people at Scotland Yard who view my visits with disfavour. They feel Kerridge should not be wasting time with amateurs. The presence of even a beautiful lady like yourself diminishes me.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’

  ‘As I have just pointed out to you, it’s a man’s world.’

  Now Rose was, like her companion, too furious to speak. Harry tried several times to talk about various things, but she sat glaring at him and refused to utter a word.

  It was a carload of silent and sulky people who returned to London.

  * * *

  Harry went straight to Scotland Yard. Kerridge was out on a case, so he waited patiently while the mist thickened on the River Thames outside the window.

  At last Kerridge returned and listened in surprise to Harry’s story about Jeremy’s prison visits.

  ‘I’ll pull him in for questioning.’

  ‘It won’t do any good at the moment. All he has to do is look outraged. No one else is going to believe he had a hand in his sister’s murder. I’d like to examine that house they rented for the Season.’

  ‘What do you expect to find? It’ll have been scrubbed from top to bottom.’

  ‘There might just be something.’

  ‘All right. I’ll come along with you.’

  ‘Are you sure the servants that were there at the time didn’t hear or see anything?’

  ‘With the exception of a temporary footman hired from an agency, the servants were all the country ones. I gather Apton Magna is a pretty poor place. They weren’t going to say anything that might mean they’d lose their jobs.’

  The thin house in Clarges Street that had been rented by the Tremaines was standing empty. They got the key from the factor and let themselves in, then searched high and low, Harry crawling along the floor-hoards, to see if one bloodstain might have been overlooked.

  ‘She might have been killed here,’ said Harry. ‘She certainly wasn’t killed in that boat or there would have been a lot more blood.’

  ‘The pathologist said that costume had been put on her after her death and the blood from the wound on her chest had seeped through the material.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘You’re not in the force and I have plenty of other cases taking up my time, which reminds me, if you’re finished here I’d like to get back to the Yard.’

  ‘I hate being passed over just because I’m a woman,’ raged Rose, walking up and down her sitting-room. ‘I’d like to show him I can detect better than he can. I’d like to go down to Apton Magna and get the parents’ reaction to the fact that their precious son was consorting with a criminal. But how are we to get out of the house without Turner and two footmen following us?’

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ said Daisy. ‘’Member that ladder we used to get over the garden wall? It’s at the side of the garden. If we left, say, about five in the morning, the staff would still be asleep. We could sneak out and get the early-morning train at Paddington.’

  ‘We’ll do it!’ said Rose.

  Harry set out to find the temporary footman who had worked for the Tremaines. His name was Will Hubbard and his address was number five Sweetwater Lane in the City.

  After the Great Fire, plans had been drawn up to build a modern City out of the ashes, with airy streets and wide boulevards. But there turned out to be so many claims from property owners who would demand heavy compensation if, say, a street ran through where their buildings used to be, that the new City, the commercial hub of London, rose again following the old medieval pattern of narrow winding lanes.

  Sweetwater Lane was just north of Ludgate Circus and consisted of two lines of black tenements. Number five had a great quantity of bell-pulls. Harry pulled several of them. The front door was opened by a lever on each landing. When the door opened, several voices asked him what he wanted.

  ‘Will Hubbard,’ he shouted. There was a sudden silence and then the sound of slamming doors.

  He made his way up, knocking on door after door, but nobody answered until, at the very top, an elderly lady opened the door a little. ‘I am Captain Cathcart,’ said Harry. ‘I am helping Scotland Yard with an investigation.’

  The door began to close. He put his foot in it, fished out a guinea and held it up. The door opened wide. She snatched the guinea in a claw-like hand.

  ‘Come in. What do you want?’

  The room was sparsely furnished with a table and two chairs and an iron bedstead in the corner. A linnet in a wicker cage sang at the window.

  ‘Do you know where I can find William Hubbard?’

  ‘In the cemetery.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘’Twere a good few months ago. I heard shouting and then a scream. That was during the night. But there’s often screaming
and shouting here. In the morning, I went out to buy milk. He lived in the room below this one. The door was standing open and he was lying there, all blood. He’d been stabbed.

  ‘I was ever so shook. I went out and saw a policeman and told him. More police came and then detectives. But nobody said anything. Well, most of them are villains, so they wouldn’t. Then his pore sister came. Such a taking she was in. I took her up to my room and made her tea.’

  ‘Do you know where she lives?’

  ‘She wrote it down on a slip of paper and told me if I remembered anything at all to contact her.’

  ‘Do you still have it?’

  She went over to the mantelpiece and extracted a piece of paper from behind a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary.

  ‘May I take this?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve no use for it. I couldn’t tell her any more than I’ve told you.’

  Outside, Harry looked at the paper. A Miss Emily Hubbard was lady’s maid to a Mrs Losse and there was an address in Launceston Place in Kensington.

  He drove to Launceston Place and rang the bell. When a butler answered, Harry handed him his card and said he wished to speak to Miss Hubbard.

  ‘Wait there,’ said the butler, letting him into a hall which was little more than a narrow passage.

  Harry waited. Then the butler came back downstairs, followed by a vision. This surely could not be the lady’s maid.

  ‘Captain Cathcart,’ she cooed in a husky voice with a slight accent. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet you. I am Mrs Losse. Please come into the parlour and tell me why you want to speak to Emily.’

  Mrs Losse had masses of glossy auburn hair piled up on her small head. Her excellent bosom and tiny waist were displayed to advantage in a green silk gown which matched her very large and sparkling green eyes.

  She listened while Harry told her of the murder of William Hubbard. ‘I feel it is connected to another case I am investigating.’

  ‘How thrilling. I read about you in the newspapers. So brave! All those people you rescued in that dreadful train crash.’ They were sitting together on a sofa. She put her hand on his arm and leaned towards him. She was wearing a heady perfume. Harry thought briefly of his chilly fiancée with a flash of dislike.