A Case of Doubtful Death

by Linda Stratmann

  Chas affected to consider the matter. ‘That is a useful sum and while we are not prepared to lend it to you, we might offer to make a purchase.’

  ‘That is very kind,’ said Darscot, in some surprise, ‘but I am not aware that I have anything that might be worth that sum to you. I am not yet in a position to sell an interest in the Life House, although we might come to some arrangement over that, but it would not come to fruition for some time and I am in need of the funds rather sooner.’

  ‘Do you not own any other properties?’ asked Barstie.

  ‘There are rumours that I do and I am sure I don’t know where such ideas come from, but I regret that I do not.’

  ‘Papers, then,’ said Chas. ‘I have heard that you may be the possessor of valuable documents.’

  ‘Am I?’ Darscot took a substantial swig from his brandy glass. ‘I wish I were.’

  ‘Let me be more specific,’ said Chas in a firmer tone. ‘A Dr Carmichael, who has until recently been lodging at the Piccadilly Club, claims that you have something which belongs to him and which he is most anxious to recover.’

  Darscot gave a snort of amusement. ‘Then you have been misled. I can assure you, gentlemen, I have nothing belonging to Dr Carmichael. If I did, I would be most happy for him to have it. Obviously, I would appreciate a small consideration for my trouble.’

  ‘Then if the item is not in your possession, it may be in the possession of an associate of yours,’ Barstie suggested.

  ‘I do not have any associates. And if this item even exists, I know nothing of it.’

  Chas and Barstie looked at each other. ‘Perhaps I might jog your memory,’ said Barstie. ‘The item, according to Dr Carmichael, takes the form of a journal composed by his late sister. He believes that it was stolen from him by a friend of yours, which is how it came into your possession. The journal, understandably, has very considerable sentimental value.’

  Darscot began to laugh heartily. ‘Oh, I know what all this is about now! I recall a conversation with Carmichael, but that was a year ago when he made his first visit to London. The gentleman is an unwise talker in his cups and he became very maudlin about this saintly sister of his – who in my opinion was no better than she should have been – and how she had been mistreated by Dr Mackenzie who, it seems, was her lover. He was angry that a man he regarded as a monstrous scoundrel was now a respected person in Bayswater and he wished there was some proof of this so that he could denounce him.’

  ‘But surely the journal was the proof,’ said Barstie.

  Darscot laughed again. ‘Oh, he would have liked there to have been a journal, but there was none.’

  ‘Dr Carmichael believes there is and he is very anxious to find it.’

  Darscot leaned back in his chair, his good humour unabated. ‘If you have had any dealings with him at all, you will know that the man is a fool. It was a joke, that was all, but he must have taken it seriously. After a few whiskies he said how sorry he was there were no papers to prove his suspicions and how he wished he could conjure them into existence. So I said that as it was a good cause, bringing a scoundrel to justice, he might consider doing just that.’

  ‘You mean forging what he needed?’ said Chas.

  ‘Yes – well as I have said, it was just a joke. He had a letter of his sister’s that he always carried about with him, so a clever forger could have copied the hand, and of course he knew details of the family and events, which he could have imparted to make the content convincing. Maybe he did approach someone, but it wasn’t me. I have no skills in that area and do not know anyone who does.’ He waggled the brandy bottle at them again, but they shook their heads. ‘So gentlemen, I wish I could oblige you, as I would find £100 a very useful sum of money to have in my possession at the moment, but if that is what you require, I am unable to help.’ He paused. ‘You don’t know a Mr Horton, do you? Used to be a member here before he was asked to leave, and then died in a drunken fall. I promised his sister I would help her look after his affairs, but she has been unable to discover where he lodged.’

  ‘I do not have that information,’ said Chas to Frances later as he described the meeting to her, ‘but even if I did I would be most reluctant to part with it, or indeed anything else to that fellow.’

  ‘Do you believe he was telling the truth about the journal?’ she asked.

  ‘It all comes down to money,’ said Chas, ‘as indeed, in this materialistic world we live in, everything always does. Suppose Darscot to be lying and the journal does exist. If Carmichael succeeds in obtaining the appointment he has been hoping for, then in the long term the journal might be worth a great deal more to Darscot than £100, however, it is very clear that in his current position he is in immediate need of funds. It is my belief that if he had had the papers to hand he would have parted with them.’

  ‘Of course, I am in no difficulty at all in determining which of Mr Darscot and Dr Carmichael have been lying,’ said Frances.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The answer is very simple,’ she said. ‘It is both of them.’

  When Chas and Barstie had gone, Frances asked Sarah to make a fresh pot of tea, and sat down to consider all the facts. She then sent a message to Dr Carmichael.

  That gentleman, who had just learned that his application for the London post had been unsuccessful, arrived that afternoon looking despondent and revealed that he would be leaving for Carlisle in a few days. ‘I am very unhappy that the journal has not been found,’ he said.

  ‘I believe,’ said Frances, ‘that there is nothing to be found.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that it never existed. Either as an original in your possession or as a forgery made for you.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘Yes?’

  He hesitated. The word ‘forgery’ was causing him some little concern. ‘But you thought it might have been used to blackmail Mackenzie.’

  ‘I believe that Mr Darscot blackmailed Mackenzie with something. There were four things in his favour. The first was Mackenzie’s own guilty conscience, which made him susceptible. The second was Mackenzie’s poor state of health, which may have impaired his judgement. The third was Darscot’s detailed knowledge of the people and events in Edinburgh connected with your sister’s death. The fourth was your sister’s letter which, while innocuous in itself, was undoubtedly in her handwriting and which may well have convinced Mackenzie that further material existed. Of course, the latter two Darscot could only have obtained from you. Mr Darscot, who always tries to sidestep any suggestion of involvement in wrongdoing, has said that he only mentioned the idea of forging the papers you needed to incriminate Mackenzie as a joke and that you had somehow deluded yourself into thinking that he had done so. I don’t believe him. I think the two of you conspired to forge the papers so that you could bring Mackenzie to justice. No doubt he extracted money from you for this service. But in reality he did not trouble himself to find a forger, which might have proved an expensive and risky business. Mr Darscot strikes me as a man who will always take the easiest way. Instead, armed with the letter that you had loaned him supposedly for the forger to practise his art, and also with a wealth of intimate information, he approached Dr Mackenzie and found that he could easily be milked of funds.

  ‘The reason that you have not been telling me the truth is that you did not wish to reveal that you had conspired to commit a felony. You were very anxious to recover the journal, which you imagined had been forged on your behalf, because it was evidence of your criminality. But there may well have been another reason. If Darscot could convince you that he was or could secure the services of a master forger, then perhaps he had also convinced you that he had created other material to your detriment.’

  ‘You really don’t expect me to confess to a crime, do you?’ asked Carmichael.

  ‘The crime is one of conspiracy which is impossible to prove since the forgery was never carried out, and Darscot has already stated before two
witnesses that the conversation was a joke. I think you are safe from prosecution,’ said Frances.

  Carmichael considered her words. ‘You promise you will not tell this to the police?’

  ‘I think there would be very little point and I am satisfied that your motive was not blackmail, but bringing a criminal to justice.’

  ‘Then why do you need me to tell you more?’

  Frances considered this. ‘That is a very good question. Perhaps I am anticipating the entertaining possibility that you might at long last be telling me the truth.’

  He sighed. ‘Very well. I admit that I did talk all too freely to Darscot about poor Madeleine and how aggrieved I was that the monster who had destroyed her was a respected man. Not only did he defile her, after promising marriage, but he then performed an operation to remove the evidence of his terrible sin, an operation from which she subsequently died in the most appalling agony. Who would not want to see such a creature in prison for his crime? Darscot did offer to help me, and he said that he had manufactured a journal and taken it to the police, who were making enquiries, but they had advised him that as the events took place in Scotland many years ago, it could take some months to achieve a result.’

  ‘Ah, a clever move on his part to extend the course of affairs as far as possible.’

  ‘Yes – I suppose I see that now. I had to go back to Carlisle and I heard nothing more, but then when I saw that there was another post in London I might apply for, I came back and met up with Darscot again, and he said the police were still making their enquiries. I was afraid to go to the police, as I didn’t want to be associated with a forgery.

  ‘Well, after Mackenzie died – or at least, was supposed to have died – I asked Darscot if it was possible to get the journal back, but he said that he didn’t think Mackenzie was dead at all, that he had only pretended to be dead so he could run away. He said the police were more certain than ever that Mackenzie was a villain and they were searching for him so they could arrest him. Well that was good news, of course, but still nothing happened.

  ‘I couldn’t approach anyone at the Life House as I thought they might have colluded with Mackenzie in his escape, but I was getting impatient and Darscot suggested that as the police had taken so long I might employ an enquiry agent to find Mackenzie. He said he could act as an intermediary to protect my reputation.’

  ‘For a price, of course,’ said Frances.

  ‘He would take nothing for his own assistance, but of course, I would have to pay for the agent’s work.’ Carmichael uttered a groan. ‘I suppose the agent was no more real than the forger. What a fool I was! But I was just considering this when I received a warning from a member of the Piccadilly Club who had seen me talking to Darscot. He said that Darscot was a swindler and I should not give him any money. So I told Darscot I had decided not to employ an agent and wanted to forget the whole affair, and asked him for the journal. Darscot told me he didn’t have it as the police had taken it to Scotland, where they were looking for Mackenzie. I asked him for the name of the police officer who was in charge of the search for Mackenzie and Darscot said it was a man whose name he had not been given as he was working in secret.

  ‘By now I hardly knew what to believe. I said I thought he was lying and he told me that if I reported him he had forged some papers, which he was keeping in a safe place, and if I accused him of anything he could have me sent to prison. I didn’t know who I could trust and then someone mentioned your name.’

  Carmichael left and Frances wondered why, when she should have nothing to do with such a creature, she continued to be swayed into helping him. The answer, she thought, was in her own curiosity, her need to find out the truth.

  ‘Well,’ said Tom with a big grin on his face, when he called on her soon afterwards, ‘you ‘ave been busy ‘an no mistake! If you get any more people put in prison there won’t be no folk left in Bayswater to be your customers, they’ll all be in pokey.’ He had managed to scrounge a heel of cheese from somewhere and was making short work of it with a bit of raw onion.

  ‘I think I have a little way to go before that result,’ said Frances, ‘and a good many of my clients are honest folk, although not, sadly, as many as I would wish. You, on the other hand, young man, have been carrying out all sorts of errands for the dreadful Mr Darscot. What do you have to say about that?’

  Tom grinned. ‘Well you can’t blame the postman for what’s in the letter, what it’d be against the law for ‘im to look into. So I’m in the clear. And the coppers pay a good whack for information so I’ve been paid twice for the same job, which is good work, says I.’

  ‘So Mr Darscot will be in even more trouble, now?’

  ‘Up to ‘is neck. The coppers just come to the Piccadilly an’ took ‘im away again, and ‘e weren’t ‘appy. Not one little bit!’ He finished the cheese. ‘Now then, guess what I’ve got ‘ere!’ He handed Frances an onion-scented scrap of paper.

  ‘An address,’ said Frances, ‘in Redan Place. Not Mr Horton’s?’

  ‘Mr Victor Albert, as he liked to call ‘imself, only yes, it’s Mr ‘orton, and the lodgin’s ain’t been let yet an’ the landlord says ‘e will give over the key to anyone what can pay the back rent.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Frances. ‘I will fetch Miss Horton and go there at once.’

  The landlord was a sullen, shabbily dressed person, whose manners brightened on the production of the requisite amount of coin. He seemed to be under the impression that Frances, Sarah and Miss Horton were potential tenants, and even showed them where the essential offices were, a lopsided wooden hut at the back of a dingy rubbish-strewn yard. They declined to inspect it. Mr Horton’s lodgings consisted of a single room at the top of two flights of stairs that smelt of rotting food and worse. The room was notable for a lack of any attempt to make it comfortable. The bedstead was rusty and Frances dared not touch the mattress. There was a wardrobe with one door missing that contained a very few items of clothing, a water jug, a cracked basin grey with the dirty dregs of soap scum, and the most basic of toiletries. Miss Horton looked on everything, and tears started in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. ‘I had not known he had come to this,’ she said. ‘We have little enough at home, but I could have brought him there and made him comfortable. I wonder what he ever had to eat.’

  ‘Miss Horton,’ said Frances. ‘Would you be so good as to look at the contents of this room, in particular any personal items, and let me know if there is anything here that did not belong to your brother?’

  ‘Why, he was not a thief, Miss Doughty!’

  ‘I am sure he was not, but he may have been given something by another person for safekeeping.’

  ‘I see, well of course I will take a look – not that there is a great deal here. These few poor clothes are his – I recall the hairbrush as it belonged to our late father. The police gave me his pocketbook and a few coins that he was carrying, but there was nothing there that could not have been his.’ Miss Horton made the search as requested, and found only some family photographs and letters and several pawn tickets, but concluded that there was nothing in the room that was not her brother’s property.

  Sarah was silent all this time, but at last she gave a grunt and rolled up her sleeves. In seconds the bed had been stripped of its ragged sheets and its hard pillow, and the mattress turned. Finally she took hold of the bedstead and pulled it away from the wall. It creaked horribly and Frances, who had feared that something alive and unpleasant might run out from the dark recesses that had been undisturbed for so long, was relieved that nothing that crawled or scampered was revealed. They saw a stained chamber-pot and one other item, something long, narrow and wrapped in newspaper, which Sarah retrieved and laid on the bed. Frances and Miss Horton peered at it as the papers were pulled back.

  ‘I think this did not belong to your brother,’ said Frances.

  ‘I have never seen it before,’ said Miss Horton. ‘Is this the thing he was looking after for a friend?’r />
  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes,’ said Frances, picking it up. ‘That is interesting. It is very much heavier than it appears to be.’

  ‘Solid metal right through the middle I don’t doubt,’ said Sarah.

  It was a gentleman’s walking cane, with a fox’s head device, and the silver top was crusted in blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘I think,’ said Frances, when the incriminating object had been handed to the police, ‘that Mr Darscot will find it very hard now to deny that he murdered Henry Palmer. Quite apart from the statement made by Dr Bonner, I believe the police will easily discover witnesses who have seen Mr Darscot with the stick, and of course his efforts to find Mr Horton’s lodgings now look very suspicious. There is also the fact that the silver fox’s head may prove to fit the wounds on Mr Palmer’s skull exactly. I believe that young man will shortly be making an appointment that he would much rather not keep.’

  ‘But what was Mr Horton doing with the stick?’ asked Sarah. ‘And do you think Mr Darscot killed him?’

  ‘As to the latter, I am not sure. Horton, as we know, had a habit of becoming obsessed with artefacts that reminded him of animals, some of which he saw as friendly but more often as a threat. I think he formed an obsession with the fox’s head stick and stole it from Darscot shortly after the murder of Mr Palmer, not realising that it was a murder weapon. Darscot was, of course, very anxious to get it back. It is possible that the two men fought and that Horton’s death was an accident. It would certainly not have been in Mr Darscot’s interests to murder Horton before he had found his stick.’