Death Makes No Distinction

by Lucienne Boyce

Pickering looked up from his work and nodded a greeting. The stall door was open, and though the animal was tethered, Dan kept a cautious distance from his restless hooves.

  “Fine beast, isn’t he?” Pickering said.

  “If you say so.”

  Pickering laughed, gave the glossy coat its last few brush strokes. “Hold these,” he said, handing Dan the brushes while he checked the horse’s hooves. Finally, he patted the animal and left the stall. He looked over the partition at the boy, who was raking the straw bedding.

  “Pile it higher against the wall,” Pickering said. He drew his keys out of his pocket and handed them to the boy. “Bring out the lamp and lock up when you’ve finished. Bring me the keys.” To Dan, he said, “Come on up.”

  They went outside. Dan gave him the brushes. “I didn’t know if you’d still be here. The other servants have gone. I was hoping to speak to Miss Dean.”

  “I’ve been asked to stay on to look after the horses until we’ve found a buyer for them.” Pickering broke off. “Jacko! Move that shovel! I’ve told you to keep the yard tidy.”

  The boy appeared at a run from the stables, hastily grabbed the offending tool and scuttled off with it. Pickering winked at him, softening the rebuke. He ducked into the tack room to put the brushes away, resumed his conversation with Dan when he came out.

  “Shouldn’t take long. They’re prime stock.”

  In his rooms, Pickering lit a lamp with a spill from the stove, set a kettle to boil, reached for a bowl, sugar and lemon from a shelf. Dan took off his hat and sat down while Pickering peeled the lemon into the bowl, poured in hot water, added a good measure of gin. He went to the door, called “Jacko!”, came back into the room and put three glasses on the table.

  “None for me,” Dan said.

  The boy raced up the stairs and burst into the room. Pickering handed him a steaming glass. “Take this to Mr Grimes.” He met Dan’s look of surprise with a grin. “We always have a tot of something around this time. It’s cold work for a man standing out all night. If you won’t drink gin, how about some coffee?”

  “That would be welcome. What will you do when the horses have gone?”

  “Thanks to Miss Parmeter, I’m going to set up on my own account.” Pickering took a swig of his drink. “Her will, Mr Foster. I’ll have enough to start my own livery stables.”

  “Miss Parmeter left you money?” As if Townsend hadn’t got reason enough to arrest Pickering, here was a nice fat legacy to make another one. “Did anyone else get anything?”

  “The bulk of the estate goes to her brother, but there was something for each of us. Mr Parkes has already found himself a grocery shop on Piccadilly and asked the first housemaid, Miss Evans, to marry him, which didn’t sit well with the housekeeper, I can tell you. Miss Dean is going off to her next job with a trunk full of Miss Parmeter’s shoes, hats and gowns, as well as a tidy little nest egg. Cook, footmen, housemaids…she left out no one. As I told you, she was a generous woman. There aren’t many like her.”

  “What about Miss Taylor? Was she mentioned?”

  “Only to say she’s to be paid the money Miss Parmeter had in safekeeping for her from the sale of her books.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder if she was expecting any more?”

  “None of us were expecting anything and we’d been with Miss Parmeter for years. I don’t see why she would. Besides, Miss Parmeter had already done a great deal for her. You don’t seem very pleased with our good fortune.”

  “I am, of course.”

  “You think one of us murdered her for the money.”

  “You can’t deny it does offer another possible motive to someone who’s looking for one.”

  Pickering slammed his glass on the table. “But it’s as I told you. No one had any idea she’d left us anything. You can ask her lawyer if you don’t believe me. And if you got on and found her killer instead of hanging around here, you wouldn’t be trying to put the blame on us. You’re all the same. You get one idea in your heads and you’ll make the facts fit and devil take the truth.”

  Dan pushed back his chair, placed his hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “Damn you, Pickering. You can come outside and say that.”

  For a moment the two men glared at one another, anger snapping between them. Then Pickering ducked his head and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked up at Dan and said, “I’m sorry. I spoke out of turn. It’s this damned murder hanging over us.”

  Dan settled back in his seat. “Apology accepted.”

  Pickering grinned, poured himself another drink. “It would have been a good bout between us though, don’t you think? I hear you’ve something of a reputation at fisticuffs.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Grimes told me.”

  “Did he, now? Well, if it’s a fight you want, why don’t you come to my dad’s gym in Cecil Street some time?”

  “You’re on.”

  “After the case is over.”

  “I hope that will be soon,” Pickering said. “Sarah is still in town,” he added.

  “Yes, Parkes gave me her address. I’ll have to look her up tomorrow. I’d better be getting home. I’ve been away since early morning.”

  Jacko’s arrival with the keys delayed Dan’s leave-taking.

  “I’ll wish you good evening, Mr Pickering,” Dan said, when the boy had gone to his pallet bed in the harness room.

  “I’ll come down with you. I’m off out to meet someone.”

  “I hope it’s a social engagement. No more housebreaking.”

  The coachman laughed. “Oh, she’s sociable enough.”

  He put on his hat and locked the door after them. In the lane, he called out, “Ready, Mr Grimes? Let the game commence!” To Dan, he said, “He’s really very good, you know. I haven’t yet succeeded in shaking him off.”

  From the shadows, Grimes spluttered into his glass. Dan grinned at the patrolman’s embarrassment. Serve him right for gossiping.

  Mrs Watson sat on a chair outside the laundry. A girl stood in front of her, holding up her skirt and testing the strength of her left ankle by pressing her weight on it.

  Pickering doffed his cap. “Good to see Miss Julia is up and about again.”

  Mrs Watson nodded at her daughter’s plump limb. “Good as new. And a good thing too.”

  Pickering, with the quick glance of a man used to judging the severity of equine strains and sprains, said, “I wouldn’t let her do too much to start with, Mrs Watson. It was a nasty accident.”

  “It was no accident!” Mrs Watson retorted. “He ought to be made to pay for my loss and inconvenience. The laundry basket knocked out of her hand, everything rolled in the mud and all to do over again, and what with one of the girls leaving and this one being laid up, we’ve had to work every night this last fortnight to keep on top of the orders. Then there’s the apothecary’s bill, and Lord knows doing business with them is a robbery in itself.” She shifted her grievance on to Dan. “You’re a law officer. Don’t you think there should be a law against it? There should be compensation, that’s what I say.”

  “Unless we catch the thief, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do,” Dan said.

  “It wasn’t a robbery,” Julia said. “He knocked me over and left me lying in the street.”

  “I’m sorry, but if you didn’t report the attack when it happened, there’s not much likelihood of catching the man now.”

  “Well, I like that,” Mrs Watson said. “A young girl can be knocked flying by a man just because he’s a gentleman and all the law’s got to say is, ‘On you go, sir, why don’t you come back and trample her while you’re at it?’”

  “The law hardly says that,” Dan said. “But if you want to report an assault, you’ve left it a bit late. Unle
ss you know who did it.”

  “I’d recognise him if I saw him again,” Julia said. “If he’d stood sideways you wouldn’t have known him from one of the area railings. I’d just turned into the square when he came rushing up behind me on his skinny shanks as if all the devils was after him.”

  “He ran out of the lane? When did this happen?” asked Dan.

  “The Friday morning before poor Miss Parmeter was killed, wasn’t it, Julia?” said Mrs Watson.

  “No, Ma, it was Saturday. It was trotters for supper.”

  “That’s right,” Mrs Watson said. “The Saturday.”

  Dan wondered how this had been missed when the constables made their enquiries. A moment’s reflection suggested an explanation. Julia Watson had been laid up in bed with a sprained ankle when the constables called. Besides, the men had been asking about the day Louise Parmeter died, the Monday.

  “Can you remember what he was wearing?”

  “A brown coat,” Julia said confidently, adding, “It could have been blue.” She tittered. “He looked like a mop someone had dressed in fine silks.”

  “Which direction did he take?”

  She flicked her lank hair. “I was too busy being knocked over.”

  She had already told him enough. An excessively thin gentleman had been seen rushing into the square from the direction of Louise Parmeter’s garden. Dan could think of one man who matched the description. Lord Beanpole: Bredon, Lord Hawkhurst’s friend and, according to the memoirs, one of Louise’s ex-lovers. Julia’s story might mean nothing, but if the man who knocked her over had been Bredon, it put him at the scene of the murder only two days before it happened. What had he been doing there and why had he left in such an agitated state?

  “Got to go,” Dan said. He broke into a run, leaving the three staring after him.

  “La!” Mrs Watson cried. “Aren’t they wunnerful? Off to catch the villain just like that!”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Dan stood by the railings outside Lord Hawkhurst’s house in Cavendish Square, avoiding the light cast on to the pavement by the lamps outside the front entrance. It was cold, winter still clutching at spring. He could see his breath on the air.

  He looked down into the area, where a door opened on to damp flagstones. There was a small barred window next to it. The sound of laughter and voices drifted up from the domestic regions. The servants were having a party. In a well-run household he would assume that meant the family had gone out. In Hawkhurst’s establishment that was not such an obvious conclusion. Still, if there was carousing below stairs, it was likely there was just as much above. Whoever was inside, master or servant, would be befuddled by drink. Even so, it was too risky to attempt breaking in through the basement door.

  There was no way of getting into the house from the street either. Because of the railings and the drop into the area, the sash windows at the front were inaccessible. Even if he had been able to swing over and get in at a window, he would be visible to any passer-by.

  He was about to set off for the rear of the building when he spotted a faint light bobbing in the window below. It grew brighter, steadied, and seconds later the basement door opened.

  “You should have known better, Dan Foster,” he muttered. In his days as a sneak looking for easy ways into a house, the first rule he had learned was that it was always worth trying a door before you assumed it was locked.

  Harry, the footman, appeared on the threshold. He was in his shirtsleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned. A tomcat shot past him into the night. He aimed a kick after it, clutched at the lintel as he missed and overbalanced.

  “And stay out.”

  A woman’s voice slurred behind him. “What are you doing, Harry?”

  “Bloody thing shat in the pantry.”

  “I’ll get the girl to clean it up.” She staggered up behind him, slid her hands around his waist. “Come on. We’ve just opened another bottle.”

  Harry turned, pulled her towards him, pushed the door shut as he covered her face with a slobbering kiss. Dan waited, but no key turned in the lock, no bolts slammed shut. He crept down the stairs, peered in through the window. The couple had finished pawing one another and were stumbling along the corridor arm in arm, Harry lighting their way with a lantern. They turned a corner and the light disappeared. Dan opened the door and slipped inside.

  Ahead of him a door opened on to the revelry. It snicked shut and the din faded. Dan passed the open door of the pantry where the tom had disgraced itself and turned the corner into a brighter section of the passageway. Candles guttered in sconces, and light also came from a line of uncurtained plain glass windows overlooking the corridor. He crept up to the last of these and peered into the servants’ hall. Slovenly men and dishevelled women sat around a long table making free with their master’s food, drink, and one another. Dan ducked beneath the windows and hurried by.

  Stone stairs brought him up into the hall, which was as muddy and untidy as last time he had seen it. The door to the room where he had fought Hawkhurst stood open. It was empty, the furniture disarranged, dirty glasses and empty bottles uncleared. No sound came from any of the other rooms. Dan opened the doors and looked inside: a drawing room where a fire burned; a cold but tidy library.

  Hawkhurst and his crew must have gone out on their nightly round of pestering actresses, night watchmen, waiters, whoever was unlucky enough to cross their path. Dan went up the broad staircase to the bedrooms. He looked into Hawkhurst’s room first. It was scattered with rumpled clothes and discarded shoes. A fire gasped its last in the grate. Next to it were an armchair and reading table. There was just enough light from the coals for Dan to make out that the open book on the table was in Latin. There were more classical books on the bedside table, along with a brandy bottle and glass.

  The neighbouring rooms were empty, smelt stale and damp, but the chamber two doors down was in use. Here there was evidence of the work of a conscientious valet: clothes put away, combs, razors and stoppered bottles neatly arranged on the dressing table, curtains closed, fire tended. Dan stepped inside, shut the door and lit a candle. He opened the dressing table drawers, sifted through pill boxes, jars, shaving brushes, buttons, buckles, handkerchiefs. He went through the wardrobe, hat and boot boxes, and a pistol case.

  A drawer in the desk yielded a stash of letters addressed to The Honourable Charles Bredon. With these were bundles of IOUs, some from him, others to him, some for wagers, some for wins and losses at cards. Dan read the half-written letter on top of the desk:

  I am sorry that I have been obliged to disappoint you respecting payment of the five hundred guineas. I extremely regret that I am not immediately able to command the money. However, I cannot help adverting to the circumstance which misled me into the expectation that you would allow me any reasonable time I might want for the payment. The circumstance is the total inebriety of myself when I made this preposterous bet.

  Dan wondered what he would do with five hundred guineas. Not waste it on a bet, that was for sure. Look for a bigger house, perhaps. He put the letter back, pulled out the drawer on the other side. To his surprise, it shot out and he had to move quickly to catch it before it crashed to the floor. A glance showed him that it was shallower than the aperture. He laid it down, knelt, and groped inside the cavity until he touched something wrapped in a cloth bag at the back. He pulled it out, untied it, tipped the contents on to the palm of his hand. A diamond necklace and one diamond earring, the match to the one he had seen in Louise Parmeter’s left ear.

  He sat back on his heels. “Got you.”

  Bredon was obviously a man who insisted on his comforts and it was likely that, drunk as he was, his valet would come in at some point to make up the fire. It was also possible that someone would attend to the fires in Hawkhurst’s bedroom and drawing room before his return. Dan decided it would be safer to wait in one of the empty bedroo
ms. He slipped the jewels into his pocket and went into the disused chamber next door. He carried a chair over to the door, opened it a few inches and sat down.

  The valet and one of the housemaids had been upstairs, noisily pleasured one another, and put Hawkhurst’s and Bredon’s rooms straight by the time the revellers banged on the front door. A nearby church clock struck two. Dan tiptoed on to the landing and looked over the banister. Harry ran into the hall carrying a branched candlestick in one hand, struggling to tuck in his shirt with the other.

  “About time, too, ye lazy dog!” Hawkhurst shoved him aside. “Bring some claret, if you haven’t drunk it all.” He took off his hat and threw it across the hall. It landed on the head of the bullet-pocked ancestral bust, the sureness of his aim exciting cries of admiration from his company.

  The footman veered back to the servants’ hall. Hawkhurst led his friends into the drawing room. Bredon stepped neatly behind him. Fotheringham, the erstwhile poet, zigzagged, his hands hanging at his sides. Ormond, the Irishman who had seconded Dan for his sparring match with Hawkhurst, picked his way with exaggerated care.

  Dan waited until Harry had served their wine and been dismissed with a kick and a stream of abuse from his master before he left his hiding place. Downstairs, he listened at the door for a moment, trying to get a sense of where the men were in the room.

  “And I swear yours was a man, Fotheringham!” Bredon’s voice, high and mocking.

  “No – upon my honour – I insist—” Fotheringham tried to make himself heard above the shrieks of laughter.

  “But what I want to know,” Bredon continued, “is why you stayed with him. Something you should tell us about? Better be careful not to turn your backs on him, you fellows!”

  “She was a girl and we went at it like – like rabbits!” Fotheringham protested. “I fucked her three times if I fucked her once.”

  “Aye, in her—”

  Dan had heard enough. He opened the door and stepped inside.

  For a moment, they stared at him. Then Fotheringham jumped up from the sofa and jerked his fists about.