by Granger, Ann
‘I won’t ever forget her,’ said Bessie with feeling. ‘She had me working from dawn till night in that kitchen. I never got a chance to sit down.’
The growler had slowed. We reached an area of open heath and stopped. The growler rocked as Wally’s substantial frame clambered from his perch. He appeared at the door.
‘It’s dry underfoot, ladies. I got a rug I can set down so you can make yourselves comfortable. Then,’ said Wally cheerfully, ‘we can have what they call a council of war.’
He handed me down ceremoniously from the cab, Bessie scrambling down unaided behind me and pausing to reach in and retrieve the basket of apples. Wally fetched an old but spotlessly clean travelling rug from the box and spread it out for us. We settled ourselves and Bessie handed out apples. Victor was tearing at the rough grass a few feet away. Bessie put one apple back in the basket.
‘That’s for the horse,’ she said, and Wally beamed his terrifying smile.
Anyone passing by would have taken the three of us for a slightly unusual but perfectly innocuous picnic party. But no one did pass by. I was pleased about that because in Putney people seemed to have a disconcerting way of popping up when least expected.
‘Well, that’s the house, then,’ said Bessie. ‘I couldn’t see if there was a weathervane on the roof.’
‘It’s up there, right enough,’ said Wally. ‘Running fox, brush held out straight behind him, like you said, Mrs Ross.’
Bessie gave a little cry of triumph and clapped her hands. It was all I could do not to follow her example. We had indeed found Fox House, down to the last detail. ‘So what did you learn in the taproom, Mr Slater?’ I asked him.
Wally gave a comfortable sigh and settled in for a long narrative. ‘They all know one another’s business around here,’ he began. ‘That suits our purpose very well, you might say.’
‘What did they say?’ interrupted Bessie, who also suspected we were in for a long address.
Wally turned a reproachful eye upon her. ‘I took my time and a lot of trouble to learn all this,’ he told her. ‘So you just pipe down and listen.’
Bessie bridled and opened her mouth but I signalled her to silence.
‘As I was saying,’ began the cabman again. ‘If you want to know anything about any of the big houses around here, you’ve only got to ask in that taproom – casual-like, of course. Fox House is well known because it’s one of the oldest houses. Everyone complains how many new houses have been built over the last few years but I told them, if you lived across the river, in London proper, you’d be pleased to get out of the crowds and the dirt and the smells. It’s like being in the country here. Fox House belonged to Mr Sheldon and he had made a mint of money in the coffee trade. Locals called him the “coffee king”. In later years, of course, he’d retired from the active side of his business and being very comfortably placed – from the money point of view – he was seeing out his days very nicely, with an orphaned niece to look after him. Miss Amelia Sheldon, she was, and now she’s Mrs Lamont.’
‘We’ve met her,’ burst out Bessie, then reddened and pressed her lips together, casting me a guilty look.
‘Old Mr Sheldon,’ continued Wally, ‘was a . . .’ Wally scowled and creased his brow in effort. ‘He was a phil - threpist.’
‘Philanthropist?’ I suggested.
‘That’s it!’ Wally nodded. ‘He gave away money to good causes; and he had plenty of money so good causes knew where to go and ask. He was over eighty and a bit chesty, but he took good care of himself and people were surprised to hear he’d died. He did that very sudden, although, as they all said in the taproom, at his age and with the weather being so changeable that year, it ought not to have been a surprise.’
Wally paused to crunch his apple, more for dramatic effect, I suspected, than because he felt peckish.
‘Well, now,’ he began, after a mighty swallow, ‘after the old gent died, it was all change at Fox House. The charitable causes soon learned to stop calling at that door for help. Miss Amelia, she inherited the lot, house, fortune, everything. But she didn’t inherit his generous ways! First off, she dismissed all the servants including the old fellow as had been Mr Sheldon’s valet. He was as old as his master, so that wasn’t so unexpected, and a young woman don’t need a valet. But Mr Sheldon, in his will, had left his valet an annuity, since they had been together, master and man, for over forty years. Mrs Sheldon, she tried to get the lawyers to say that clause of the will had not to stand. But the lawyers said, yes, it did, because Mr Sheldon had been of sound mind when he caused that bequest to be written in. So the old valet got his annuity and lived on very nicely on it for another ten years. But it wasn’t a very nice thing to do, so they reckon in the taproom, to try and stop him getting it. She’d have let him go to the workhouse, if she’d had her way. As it was, she didn’t get her way that time, and he lived to spend his bit of a pension in that very taproom where we were sitting talking about it all.’
‘Why, I wonder,’ I mused aloud, ‘did she dismiss all the servants?’
‘All but one!’ Wally held up a forefinger. ‘There was a maidservant, Rachel Sawyer, and Miss Sheldon kept her on. She needed someone to look after her, I suppose. Made her her housekeeper and companion. Miss Sawyer took on engaging all new staff, cook, maids, gardener, stableman, the lot.’
‘Amelia Sheldon meant to make it her own household,’ I mused, still aloud. ‘Perhaps she felt it easier that way. But it was a pity for a loyal staff, all to be dismissed without reason.’
I was married to a police detective and in my head I was thinking: Ben would say a reason existed. We just don’t yet know what it was. Leaning forward, and lowering his voice although there was no one around, Wally added, ‘They say, in the taproom, as Miss Sawyer is paid sixty pounds a year!’
That was too much for Bessie to bear in silence. ‘What? Pay a servant sixty pounds!’
‘Of course,’ warned Wally, ‘that might be a rumour, a bit of ’zaggeration. Then,’ went on Wally with something of the air of a magician producing the white rabbit from a hat, ‘to top it all, scarce a year later and hardly out of mourning, but Miss Sheldon ups and marries. She married a man called Lamont – and nobody likes him. They reckon him to be a regular fortune hunter. He’s not a local man but comes, some of them say, from one of those islands out in the English Channel that are nearly in France.’
‘The Channel Islands,’ I said. ‘Did anyone say which one? Jersey or Guernsey? Alderney or Sark?’
‘They didn’t say, ma’am.’ Wally shook his head. ‘But they do agree that he’s worse than his wife for being tight with money. It was her money, of course, when they wed. But it got to be his money afterwards because the old man hadn’t left it to his niece in any kind of a trust, but just outright.’
‘There is talk of the law being changed and a new act passed to protect married women and allow them control of their own property and fortune,’ I told him. ‘It cannot happen soon enough, in my opinion.’
‘Mrs Slater not having had any property when we got married, and me not having any now, other than the cab and Victor over there, it won’t make any difference to us,’ Wally said. ‘I mean to train up young Joey to be a cabman, like me, so that if I departs this mortal coil, Mrs Slater will inherit the cab and the horse, and she can engage Joey to drive it. That’s my plan.’
‘And a very good plan, Mr Slater. But unless there is a new act of parliament to protect women’s rights in this matter, then Mrs Slater will have to take care not to remarry. Not, of course, that she would!’ I added hastily.
‘I ain’t thinking of going yet,’ Wally retorted, a little testily. ‘But I’ll pass on your advice, as it was meant well.’
Bessie had no interest in Mrs Slater’s future, either as wife or widow. ‘Miss Sheldon, as she was when her uncle died, she would have got married to someone, sooner or later. I mean, she couldn’t go on living there all on her own, being young and nice-looking and rich. They’d be que
uing up at the door, hat in hand, to propose to her. If she hadn’t accepted one of them, it’d have looked very odd.’
And up to that door at Fox House had walked Mr Lamont, with his moustaches and walking stick, and presented his case so well he’d become its master.
Bessie had, in fact, hit the nail on the head. The former Miss Sheldon’s situation, as a rich young woman with no family to protect her, must have left her very vulnerable and in a strange social position. There would soon have been gossip, if she had not married. Invitations to other houses to dine or to balls would have been few, or difficult to accept, since she could hardly arrive all on her own without even an elderly aunt as duenna. Even Jane Stephens, later to become Mrs Canning, had had her Aunt Alice. Although much good Aunt Alice’s chaperonage had done to protect the poor girl.
But we had done very well that day in our investigations. I could hardly wait to tell Ben all about our discoveries that evening.
Chapter Seven
Inspector Ben Ross
LIZZIE WAS back at home already when I returned that evening. Bessie opened the door, her face scarlet with the effort of suppressing all the news. Lizzie, too, had a look of triumph on her face. I didn’t know if that was for the good or meant trouble.
Over supper, I learned all they’d been doing. At last, Lizzie fell silent and waited expectantly for my comments. Bessie, who had come in ostensibly to clear the dishes, lingered by the table with a vegetable bowl in her hands, face now so red she was almost purple.
I began my response with care. Treading on hot coals might have been less fraught with danger. ‘Well, you – and Bessie and Wally Slater – have certainly been busy. I didn’t anticipate you’d meet Mrs Lamont herself.’
‘The murderess!’ exclaimed Bessie dramatically, unable to keep silence any longer. ‘And she looked so normal, too.’
‘Generally, Bessie,’ I told her, ‘murderers look just like anyone else. That’s what makes my job so difficult. The wretched Mills, whose information started this hare, looked just like any middle-aged man of business, tough in his dealings with competitors and suppliers, perhaps – but capable of dreadful physical violence?’ I shook my head. ‘No. Nor, Bessie, should you refer to Mrs Lamont as a murderess. If you let that slip in front of the wrong person and it gets about, we are all of us in a lot of trouble!’
‘Yes, sir, sorry, sir,’ said Bessie, downcast.
I turned to Lizzie. ‘Nor do we know, for sure, that she is responsible for the late Mr Sheldon’s death. But one thing I am sure of, Lizzie dear, and that is you must not return to Putney.’
As expected, this earned me gasps of dismay and indignation on my wife’s part. Bessie uttered a series of suppressed yelps. When I’d calmed them both down, I explained. ‘They will be suspicious of you there now, whether or not they have anything to hide. You were lingering in the burial ground and taking a keen interest in that headstone. You’d earlier spoken to the parish clerk who will almost certainly tell Mrs Lamont about you. There is little doubt she will attend that church. Lamont himself – if it was Lamont you spotted walking back to Fox House – will remember the cab driving past. It’s a lonely, mostly disused road, so why should any hackney carriage be driving along it? Going to or coming from which address? Inquiry on their part will reveal that the mystery cab had no business in the area. The word will get round. Someone who was in the taproom of that public house may remember a cabman who stopped by to refresh himself, leaving horse and cab in the yard. They will recall with what interest Wally listened to gossip about Fox House, and tell Lamont all this. Innocent or guilty, the Lamonts will be suspicious and with good reason. Possibly they’ll fear the house is to be burgled.’
‘What?’ burst out Lizzie, ‘by us?’
‘So it is very important,’ I went on, ignoring her indignation and the fact that Bessie looked about to combust, ‘that you do not go back there – at least not immediately.’
‘I may, I suppose,’ said Lizzie with a glint in her eyes, ‘go back to Somerset House and see if the porter’s wife has remembered the name of the doctor?’
‘Well, yes, since you have already asked him. But don’t ask him to do anything else. I mean, don’t ask him to quiz his wife any further.’
‘So,’ declared Lizzie, ‘what are you going to do?’ Battle lines were clearly drawn up here. Bessie, still with the vegetable dish in her hands, had moved round to stand at my wife’s shoulder. ‘I have discovered several facts that point to Mills’s story being true,’ continued Lizzie. ‘Are you going to ignore it all?’
I wanted to tell Lizzie that she looked remarkably attractive. A strand of hair had escaped and dangled very fetchingly by her pink cheek. Her eyes still sparkled . . .
I became aware of Bessie’s gimlet gaze.
‘No, I shall go back to Superintendent Dunn in the morning, tell him what you’ve learned and suggest I send Morris to Somerset House for the certificate of death,’ I told them both.
‘He may have more luck at that than I had!’ said Lizzie grimly.
‘He will know the name of the deceased and the date. He should have no trouble. My concern is what Dunn is going to say when he learns you’ve been investigating.’ Although, I thought, he won’t be surprised.
‘Why, sir, do you think Miss Sheldon, as she was, dismissed all the servants?’ asked Bessie. ‘Once she come into her inheritance, that is. She just kept on the one. If she was the woman we saw with her, sir, you can take it from me, she didn’t like seeing us there in that churchyard!’
‘Yes, Rachel Sawyer. That is a strange business.’
‘That must have involved so much disruption and taken so much time,’ mused Lizzie. ‘Interviewing new staff . . . getting them settled in . . . It does make it odd that she did it all at once, only keeping Rachel Sawyer to run the household.’
‘It’s certainly very curious,’ I agreed. ‘But since we don’t know her reason, well, we can’t speculate. Or at least,’ I added, ‘not aloud – not to anyone outside of this house.’
That gained me stony looks from both of them.
‘Oh, bother,’ said Lizzie at last, with a sigh of frustration. She put up a hand to tuck the loose strand of hair back into place. It immediately fell down loose again and was joined by another chestnut curl.
‘Bessie!’ I said firmly to our one and only maidservant. ‘Haven’t you got some washing-up to do?’
When I returned to work the following morning, I found a message on my desk from my opposite number at Wapping. The woman, whose body had been taken from the river and about whom I’d inquired, had now been named as Maria Tompkins. She was a known prostitute, aged forty. Water in the lungs and airways indicated she had entered the river alive. Bruising to the face had probably been caused on forceful contact with the river surface. The marks on the torso were about a week older. The man with whom she lived, who controlled her and took her wretched earnings, was a known bully-boy. Currently, however, he was in prison charged with procuring for prostitution a girl under the age of twelve (the age of consent). Coroner’s verdict, therefore, was suicide. In the absence of a close relative or legal husband to claim the body, it had been sent to a school of anatomy.
It was a sad but not unfamiliar story. Maria had no longer been in her first youth and her looks had gone. Her man had been seeking younger flesh to peddle on the streets of London. Once he found it, he’d turn her out. She had no future but further and rapid decline into complete destitution. She had apparently leaped from the bridge at Southwark, an area she was known to frequent. A witness had now come forward to say Maria had been seen there the night before discovery of her body. The witness, who was a fellow lady of the night, stated that Maria had complained of business being slow. She had spoken of being ‘very tired’.
There had been no such luck in finding any witness who’d seen Jane Canning or her daughter. Of them there was no news. Canning appeared in my office a little after nine, Vandyke beard bristling with aggression as usual.<
br />
‘What, still no news? I am not surprised because you appear to have a very odd way of looking for my wife, Inspector Ross. I believe you have been at my house yesterday, where my wife clearly is not. I am at a loss to understand what took you there. You cannot have achieved anything by troubling my household and taking the nursemaid out walking! For what purpose, may I ask, must you promenade with Ellen?’
‘To establish the route she normally took with your wife and child,’ I said as mildly as I could.
I often have to deal with awkward customers, even outwardly respectable persons such as Canning, but I’d never yet come across one I would so dearly have liked to punch on the nose. Alas, I could not do that. I also had the ignoble and undignified urge to reach across and tug that ridiculous beard.
‘If this continues and you can bring me no evidence of progress,’ Canning declared, drawing himself up to his full height, and thereby only succeeding in drawing attention to how modest his stature was, ‘I shall be forced to engage a private detective.’
‘Do as you wish, sir,’ I told him curtly. ‘We shall continue to do our best to trace the lady and the little girl.’
He stormed out.
‘What are we to do, sir?’ asked Morris, casting a worried look after our visitor. ‘About the missing lady, I mean. He’s going to make our lives a misery, that’s my view. Not that anyone can blame the gentleman, since his wife and his daughter have vanished into thin air. But he’s what you might call a prickly customer, isn’t he?’
‘I share your view, Morris. What can we do, but what we’re doing already? Tell Wapping to keep us informed about any more female bodies recovered from the river. Send Biddle round the workhouses and hospitals again. She may have applied to one of them for help in the last twenty-four hours. In any case, whatever Mr Canning may think, he is not the only problem we have to tackle. I have to go and see Superintendent Dunn about the late Mr Mills’s story. I think we may have cause to look into it, after all.’