Death Makes No Distinction

by Lucienne Boyce

  “Imagine my feelings, Mr Foster, when I was shown into Miss Parmeter’s boudoir – and she was not there! She had entrusted Miss Dean with making a selection for her. Mother had instructed me, as usual, not to leave until a purchase had been made. You will be surprised how often we have left goods on approval, never to see them again, even at houses of the most respectable appearance.”

  Dan was not surprised, but let her continue.

  “I told Miss Dean that I would call for the hats on the morrow, and before leaving I slipped my poem into one of the boxes. Mother’s scolding was nothing to the suspenseful terrors I endured that night! In the morning, pale-visaged, trembling, I got into the cab. I was scarcely able to breathe by the time the driver pulled up in the square. I tottered to the door – was admitted – after a short wait I was shown to the drawing room. Miss Parmeter was sitting on a sofa, surrounded by the boxes. I durst not raise mine eyes to her face, but fixed my gaze on the floor as I curtseyed.”

  “And she told you she liked your verses?” Dan said, hoping to bring her tale to a close before the moon came up.

  She ignored his prompt. “‘So you are the milliner’s daughter who writes verse?’ said Miss Parmeter. ‘Madame,’ I answered, blushing at my temerity, ‘I am.’ ‘And what was your education?’ ‘My father was a clerk in a law firm, an honest if not an elevated calling. He taught me to read, tutored me as if I was a son. But he died, and for the rest I was left to myself, reading whenever I could steal an hour from my labours.’ ‘Have you read Shakespeare?’ ‘Oh, yes, madame, and the Bible, and poetry, and Eliza Hayward, and—’ ‘Have you read Dryden?’ At this I felt my heart sink within me. ‘No,’ I stammered, ‘I have not heard of Dryden.’

  “She was silent for so long a time I ventured to raise my eyes and look into that intelligent face on which Genius had left its unmistakable mark. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Bring me some more of your verses tomorrow at three.’ With that, she rose and rang the bell. ‘And I’ll take them all,’ she added, waving her hand at the boxes. ‘Yes, madame,’ I gasped, and, almost sinking, fled from the room.”

  She paused to draw breath. Dan seized the chance to bring her narrative to an end. “And so she became your patron and you came to live here. When was that?”

  “Eighteen months ago.” She sighed. “It is a year since my Poems on Several Occasions took their first tremulous steps into the world. Miss Parmeter found nearly five hundred subscribers – many of them peers of the realm – and arranged for her own publisher, Mr Johnson of St Paul’s Churchyard, to publish them in a handsome volume. They have been described as ‘works of native genius’, ‘full of noble sentiments’, possessed of a ‘fine imagination’, and exhibiting a ‘prodigious variety of poetic expression’. They ran into three editions. And the fountain of inspiration continues to flow, Mr Foster.”

  “Does it?” said Dan. “But it’s getting cold, Miss Taylor. You should go indoors.”

  He escorted her back into the house through a side door near the kitchen garden. They parted in the hall, she to climb wearily to her room. Their conversation had clarified one thing for him. The first suspect in a murder case was often the person who found the body. In this instance, there was no reason to suspect Agnes Taylor, who had nothing to gain by Miss Parmeter’s death. At one stroke, she had been deprived of patronage and place, was faced with the prospect of having to go back to a hard, obscure life. Why would she kill the woman who offered her a chance to rise in the world?

  The study door shot open.

  “Where the hell have you been, Foster?” John Townsend demanded. “I’m waiting for your report.”

  Dan followed him into the room. “There’s not much to say. None of the people the constables spoke to saw or heard anything. As for the servants, there’s not one of them who didn’t have a good word for their mistress. Not one who doesn’t have an alibi either. I did discover that she had her own key to the gate and would sometimes admit visitors who didn’t want to be seen, though no one can suggest anyone she may have been meeting this morning.”

  “Which means there was no one: no one ever kept a secret from their servants. And it doesn’t mean one of them couldn’t have slipped away to open the garden gate.”

  “They would have had to lift the key first. Miss Parmeter kept hers in a locked jewellery box in her bedroom.” Dan took the key from his pocket. “This is hers. Mr Parkes has the only other one.”

  Townsend brushed the key aside. “And it didn’t occur to you that anyone in the house could have found an opportunity to get hold of one of them and have another copy made? Damn me, Foster, you’ve got us nowhere. You might as well have spent the afternoon dozing in an armchair for all the good you’ve done here. That only leaves one option. We’ll have to search the servants’ quarters.”

  He pulled the bell cord by the fireplace.

  “But we’ve no evidence to suspect them. We’ve no warrant for a search either.”

  “Warrant? Pho! This is a matter that concerns the Prince of Wales. And I’d like to know when lacking a warrant ever stopped you doing your duty.” The door opened and Parkes came in. “We’re going to search the servants’ rooms, Mr Parkes,” Townsend said. “You will escort us, if you please.”

  “Search our rooms? Why? What for?”

  “Why, to catch a killer. If you please, Mr Parkes.”

  “But this is an outrage!” Parkes rounded on Dan. “I told you, none of us would have done anything to hurt Miss Parmeter. Why should we be treated like common criminals? We have worked for her well and faithfully for years. To be suspected of having something to do with her death—”

  Townsend rapped his cane on the floor. “Come along, Foster.”

  The butler’s protests accompanied them as they worked through the rooms at the top of the house. Townsend scattered clothes, upended beds and chairs, tipped over boxes. By the time they reached the last apartment, which the footmen shared, Parkes had run out of things to say. Townsend tore off the bedsheets, threw over the mattresses, rattled his cane under the bed and brought forth ringing sounds from the chamber pot. Finally, he swept brushes, razors and soap off the dressing table.

  “Are these all the rooms?”

  “There’s Pickering’s lodgings over the stables,” Parkes said.

  “Who’s Pickering?”

  “Head groom, and coachman when required. There are a couple of grooms under him, but they live out.”

  “You didn’t mention him,” Townsend said to Dan.

  “I didn’t question him.”

  Townsend tutted. “We’d better go and take a look.” He thrust his cane under his arm and stumped irritably out of the room.

  Dan picked his way over the mess and, with an apologetic shrug at Parkes, followed Townsend down the wooden staircase and through the servants’ door on to the carpeted second floor corridor. They went out through the study. Outside, Dan unlocked the garden gate and secured it again when they had passed through to the lane.

  They faced a row of workshops and houses of varying shapes and sizes. A chair mender worked in a dim clutter of discarded chairs, tables and cupboards which he had patched together for sale to those who had not much money to spare. Behind a barred gate, two or three dairy cows were tethered to feed troughs. A muck-spattered milkmaid leaned on the gate and amused herself by winking at Dan as he and Townsend passed. The wide double doors of a cavernous building stood open, revealing vats of steaming water where soaked laundrymaids struggled to paddle, lift and wring unwieldy tangles of sopping linen. All was noise, hurry and ripe smells.

  The stables were next to the laundry near the Mount Street end of the lane. The wide gates opened on to a well-swept yard with a muck heap in one corner, a water pump in the middle, and a sleeping dog which leapt up to bark at them. There was a coach house next to the stable block. A row of horses’ heads hung over the stall doors, benignly eyeing th
e visitors. Through the open harness room door Dan caught snatches of a mournful rendition of Over the Hills and Far Away.

  The melancholy notes stopped and a man in his shirtsleeves appeared in the doorway. He was taller than Dan, who put him at around six foot four. Dan, noticing the scarring on his knuckles, recognised a fellow pugilist. It was common for the wealthy to hire fighting men to take them about, for even the residents of Berkeley Square were not safe from footpads and highwaymen late at night.

  Townsend, straightening his shoulders and giving a jaunty swing of his cane, saw only a potential suspect.

  “You’re the Bow Street men, I take it,” Pickering said. “The lads and I have already spoken to your constables.”

  “Then you can speak to me, Snowball,” said Townsend, stepping uninvited into the harness room.

  Pickering acknowledged the insult with a twitch of his eyebrows and went in after him. He sat down at the table where he had been cleaning some metalwork, a mug of ale at his elbow. He made a show of working calmly at his polishing while Townsend made a show of searching the room.

  Townsend rattled the row of harnesses hanging neatly along the wall with his cane. “Where were you this morning?”

  “Like I told the constable, I was working here in the stables. There are plenty of stable hands who can vouch for me. Then I went to Lord Stanhope’s in Conduit Street to look over a pair of bays he wanted to sell. Miss Parmeter had a fancy for them.”

  Townsend scattered a pile of folded horse blankets. “What time did you go out?”

  “About half past eleven.”

  “And you have no idea who went into the house?”

  “How would I? I wasn’t here.”

  “Nor ever saw anybody hanging around?” Townsend asked, pulling a toolbox out from under the workbench and emptying its contents on top.

  “No.”

  Townsend abandoned his scrutiny of a bottle of linseed oil and said, “You can come with us. We’re going to have a look around your rooms.”

  “Why do you want to search my rooms?”

  “Hiding something, are you?”

  Pickering made no answer. He reached for the coat hanging on the back of his chair, but Townsend hustled him out. “Search his pockets,” he snapped at Dan.

  The coat yielded a comb, a pocket book, a handkerchief, a ring of keys, a nail from a horseshoe, and a handful of oats. Dan took it with him and went after the other two up the outside staircase to the living rooms which were over the stables. The coachman must have been as used to living with the smell of horses, straw and embrocation as Dan had been to the sweat, spirits and liniment when he was brought up in Noah’s gymnasium.

  “Find any keys, Foster?” Townsend asked when Dan got upstairs.

  “Yes.”

  “Hand ’em over.” Townsend thrust them at Pickering. “And where might these be for?”

  Pickering counted them off. “The stables, feed bins, medicine cupboard, these rooms.”

  “Key to the gate?”

  “No.”

  “What, and you just a few steps away from the shortest way into the house?”

  “I go in by the area steps.”

  Townsend indicated that he should return the keys to Dan. “Go and check.”

  Dan took the bunch, handed Pickering his jacket and went back down the wooden stairs. None of the keys matched the key in his possession. For good measure he tried the ones that most nearly resembled it in the garden gate. None fitted.

  When he got back to Pickering’s room, Townsend was emptying drawers and pulling furniture about. Two pairs of best-quality boots lay where he had thrown them, the high polish scuffed by the impact. Pickering leaned against the wall, his arms folded, outwardly unruffled though his eyes followed Townsend’s every move. The coachman had put his jacket on. It was a good fit; the dark blue fabric over the striped waistcoat and black top boots suited him.

  “Got a lot of fancy togs,” Townsend said, flinging them on to the rumpled bed.

  “Most of it is livery,” Pickering answered.

  “Odd, ain’t it, for a man like you to know about horses? Not the usual line of business for your kind.”

  “No, I suppose employers are afraid that we’ll roast and eat the horses. Or roast and eat the employers.”

  Townsend had his head in a cupboard and did not hear this. Dan hid his grin as Townsend emerged with a tin of rattling coin. He poured the contents on to the table. Pickering clenched and unclenched his fists, but said nothing. Dan guessed that staying silent was the only way he could keep his temper. The man had discipline as well as a fine form. Stood light on his feet too, with a good sense of balance.

  “Where’d you get all this?”

  “I saved it.”

  “What for? Trying to get passage back home?”

  “What, to Vauxhall?”

  Dan’s smile broke out in full, was curbed before Townsend saw it.

  “To Africa,” Townsend said.

  “Not me. Lambeth born and bred.”

  Townsend grunted. “Got a girl, though? Wanting to get married?”

  “More than one, and no plans to make any of ’em permanent.”

  Townsend turned away from the cupboard and stood in the middle of the room, looking about him. There was nowhere else left to rifle. He prodded Pickering in the chest with his cane.

  “I’m looking at you, Mungo. And I’m warning you not to go anywhere without telling me first. Got the constables here to keep an eye on you. So just you be careful.”

  Townsend jerked his head at Dan. The two officers went down to the yard. The sun was setting, the reddened sky grimy with chimney smoke. Clouds of soap-scented steam gusted from the laundry.

  “It’s mighty convenient that he was out of the way just as the murder was taking place,” Townsend said.

  “But we don’t know for certain what time the murder was committed,” Dan said. “It could have been at any time during the morning.”

  “Try and pay attention, Foster. I have already established that the killer was still in the study when Miss Taylor knocked on the door.”

  “That was just one possibility.”

  “That was my deduction based on the evidence.”

  “Even if the killer was disturbed before he could take all the jewels, it was not necessarily by Miss Taylor. He might have heard someone in the hall before that, panicked and been long gone by the time she arrived.”

  “You could go on making up ifs and buts for ever. I prefer to rely on the facts before me. The murder took place just before twelve, and Pickering made himself scarce at around the same time. He could have opened the garden gate before he went out.”

  “We didn’t find any key.”

  “Use your head, Foster. There are a thousand and one ways he could have got rid of it by now.”

  “And a thousand and one ways he could have run by now.”

  “And drawn attention to himself? No, he’s a cunning beggar, that one. On his own admission he was in and out of the main house. He’d have had a chance to get hold of the key. He could have given a copy to his accomplice beforehand just so we wouldn’t find it on him. No, we’re on to something here.” Townsend put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Drawings and description of the jewels. Tomorrow I want you to take them round the higher-class pawnbrokers and jewellers. A haul like this is likely to have caused a stir and someone might have heard something. And get copies into Bow Street for circulation further afield. I’m going to check the coachman’s story.”

  Townsend straightened his yellow waistcoat and fixed his cane under his arm before stepping around the corner into the square. He strutted along, head high, looking neither to the left nor the right. The crowd fell back and watched his impressive progress in awe. What could it all mean, they wondered, but that Principal
Officer John Townsend was on the verge of solving another baffling crime?

  Chapter Nine

  Walking home through busy streets brightened by street lamps, the light of shop displays, and the glow from tavern windows, Dan recalled Miss Taylor’s woeful face. Louise Parmeter’s death had come hard to her: the loss of a patron was no small thing. Her life had something in common with his own. They had both come from poor backgrounds: she from a hard and uncongenial business, he from running wild on the streets. For both of them there had been a scarce believable rise from the depths of misery and poverty.

  And then came the fall.

  The fear of it was always there, a beast creeping in the shadows. He had glimpses of it in the sight of a starving child slinking barefoot in a filth-filled court, the lurch of a cripple, the milky eyes of a blind man, the stagger of a drunk in rags swarming with lice. The people who were still where he had once been. Where he could be again.

  He passed the top of an alley, caught a blast of the foul stench from the dank darkness. A movement caught his eye. He peered into the gloom, saw the hunched shape of a rat snuffling in the rubbish. As he turned his head, he noticed a tall man in a long grey coat on the crowded pavement behind him. Before he was even sure the man was there, the figure darted into the alley, leaving behind only the impression of the tilt of a hat, the flick of a hem, the lift of a heel. A shadow skittering into the shadows.

  Dan came up to the queue outside the doors of the Panorama in Leicester Fields, pushed his way through. They were waiting for admission into the circular building where they would marvel at three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views of London, Brighton, or the fleet at the Nore. Dan had seen that one himself and been impressed: he had felt as if he was standing on the shore looking out across the crowded anchorage. He would have to bring Alex when he was old enough.

  In a few minutes he would be home with his family: his son, his wife, his mother-in-law. He was doing well, had earned a good reward on his last case, with any luck would do well out of this one. The Prince of Wales was not renowned for being close with his money. Dan could keep all of them fed, clothed and housed, and he was putting money by.