Asylum Lane: from the Victorian Carriage mystery series

by Alan M. Petrillo

  “Mr. Fletcher, you are under arrest. Please lay the shotgun on the floor.”

  Round Freddy saw Fletcher turn and begin to swing the long barrels of the 12 bore up and toward him. As the barrels came up and he saw the two huge openings facing him, looking like twin railway tunnel openings, he immediately thought his plan had a major flaw in it. Just as he screwed up his eyes and face, preparatory to being gunned down, he heard two shots, but felt no impact. He popped his eyes open and was startled to see Fletcher crumpling to the floor. The shotgun fell from his hands and he clutched his chest.

  As Fletcher fell, Round Freddy saw, through the blue, sweet-cordite smell of the gunpowder smoke, the figure of Sergeant Wills standing in the back doorway, feet planted wide apart, the Webley held at shoulder level, and a curl of smoke coming from its barrel.

  Round Freddy closed his eyes and heaved a sigh of relief as one of the two constables at his side moved forward and picked up the shogun. As Round Freddy bent over Fletcher, he could see the man was mortally wounded, as blood was pumping between his fingers clasped on his chest. Fletcher appeared like he was trying to say something and Round Freddy leaned down and put his ear close to Fletcher’s lips.

  “The reverend is what did it,” he heard Fletcher say, before the man exhaled sharply and died.

  •••••••

  Jane watched constable Phillips scowl as she passed him on her way into the walled garden. She had heard the sergeant dressing the constable down for allowing her to slip off Ashfield House’s grounds. Likely he wouldn’t forget the tongue lashing he received. She felt embarrassed that her actions caused the constable trouble, but was unsure how to address the issue. Stopping near the fountain tinkling softly in the center of the garden, she looked over her shoulder back at the house. The constable stood in a rigid pose alongside the doorway, looking away from her.

  Deciding quickly, she moved back toward the house and drew up beside the constable.

  “I think I owe you an explanation, constable.”

  The policeman turned toward her, but said nothing. His eyes didn’t betray his feelings.

  “I must apologize for my behavior in leaving the grounds. I know it was against the rules, but I could not help myself. I have been like a caged bird for so long. I only wanted to feel freedom again.”

  The constable’s face softened. “The rules, they were put in place for your protection. Surely you must know that.”

  Jane lowered her gaze. “I did know it, and I know it now. I simply did not realize what a dangerous position I put myself in, and in doing so, jeopardized you in your duties.” She hesitated. “I am truly sorry. It will not happen again.”

  The constable relaxed his position and flicked his hand as if brushing away a fly. “It is done now and we cannot undo it. No sense in dwelling on it.”

  “Then you are not in trouble with your sergeant?”

  Phillips smiled. “No more than I am usually.”

  Jane touched his arm. “Thank you. Thank you for understanding.”

  Phillips shook his head and laughed lightly. “Understanding females is not something I know about. But I keep trying.”

  Jane turned to move back toward the garden. But he is learning, she thought, smiling.

  •••••••

  Round Freddy looked up from the paper he was studying to see Lund standing in his office doorway. He motioned the banker to a seat in front of the desk.

  “Sergeant Hume, I have an important issue to discuss with you.”

  Round Freddy leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “This sounds as if it will be one of those tales with a sad ending.”

  Lund winced and the detective knew he was right. “Please tell me the problem.”

  “It is that damnable scoundrel, the Dealer,” Lund began. “Not only does he have my money, but now he has doubled the amount of the commission he seeks to extort from me.” Lund sat with a straight back and posed with a hand on his hip.

  Round Freddy could see nothing but the humor in the situation. He was about to tell off the banker, but changed his mind when he thought of how pitiful the man was in his situation.

  “Mr. Lund, I thought we had discussed how to handle the Dealer. Is there some reason why you chose to meet with him again?”

  Lund nodded, but did not answer.

  “And that reason would be what?”

  “I wanted him to reduce the commission.”

  Round Freddy threw his head back and laughed, rubbing his eyes with both hands. “Oh, the irony of the situation. You apparently do not share my view of it. Here you are, an embezzler who has been caught and is working to mitigate his guilt by helping us catch an even bigger criminal. But your greed is such that you can’t stomach the thought of being extorted for the commission money on your ill-gotten gains, so you attempt to lower the commission. The end result is that the other criminal doubles his take from you.” Round Freddy smiled at Lund. “You must see the irony of it.”

  “I – I – I was trying to spend less of the money I took from the trust.”

  Round Freddy shook his head again. Criminals were relatively stupid, he thought, which is why they usually ended up caught. “Mr. Lund, I will continue to allow you your liberty as long as you give me your word that you will not approach the Dealer again until I tell you to do so.”

  Lund stood up and pulled down on the bottom of his waistcoat. “All right. I shall do as you ask.”

  After the banker had left, Round Freddy wondered what he was doing, accepting the word of a common embezzler. Police work made strange partners, he thought.

  •••••••

  Goodwin crossed his legs and sank back into the soft leather of the armchair in the member’s room at the Lendal Club. A waiter brought him a glass of whiskey and set it on an oak table at the side of the chair.

  “Will you be having someone join you today, sir?” the waiter inquired.

  Goodwin picked up the week’s copy of the Hull Spectator. “I expect so. In a short while.”

  When the waiter left, Goodwin flipped open the newspaper and raised it to study the shares notices. He was deeply into the columns of figures when he heard the squeaking sound of leather being sat upon. He lowered the Spectator and stared into the wide smile of the Dealer sitting across from him.

  “How goes it, son? Do we continue to make money?”

  Goodwin picked up his whiskey and raised the glass to his father. “As ever. That five thousand quid from the vicar has grown already.”

  The Dealer attracted the attention of a waiter and ordered a double whiskey. “That is precisely the thing that I wanted to hear you say. This relationship between the vicar and Lund is practically incestuous. Why the two of them have nearly stripped every farthing from the poor young girl’s trust fund. But enough of that. Tell me about our shares and how they are faring.”

  Goodwin eyed the printed columns and murmured the shares prices, adding now and again information about whether the shares were up or down. He fell silent as the waiter brought the Dealer’s whiskey. When the man departed, Goodwin put the newspaper down.

  “We must be coming to the end of this trail of cash, don’t you think?”

  The Dealer took a long sip of the whiskey and then smacked his lips. “Gawd, don’t you simply love good whiskey,” he said. Then, looking directly at Goodwin, he took a larger swallow and continued. “There’s more to be gained from the banker than I first realized. I doubled the buggar’s commission on the investment yesterday. The man sputtered and sounded off, but agreed. Once we’ve wrung him out, we can turn to his position at the bank and convince him to allow us to tap its reserves.”

  Goodwin leaned forward in his chair, his eyes wide. “You mean take money from the bank, like common robbers?”

  The Dealer waved his hand in the air between them. “No, Goodwin. Of course not. I mean getting him to embezzle the money for us.” The Dealer raised his glass. “To crime. Long may it pay.”<
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  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Round Freddy stood at the iron-barred door of the jail cell, his head cocked, studying Reverend Elsworth sitting on a stool in the corner, his head bowed. The vicar was a pitiful example of a man of the cloth, he thought. Embezzled funds from his niece’s trust fund. Wrongly placed her in Bootham Park Insane Asylum, claiming she was a threat to her own life. Conspired with Fletcher to do away with the young woman.

  He heaved a sigh and turned the key in the heavy lock, sending a loud click throughout the close space.

  Reverend Elsworth looked up at him and then lowered his head.

  Two other individuals occupied the jail cell with the vicar. The first was a toothless vagrant who had been arrested for breaking into a carriage house and making his home there. The owners of the building objected to the vagrant’s unlawful possession of their property, as well as to his propensity for building a fire in the inside corner of the structure. They were lucky the Fire Brigade hadn’t had to be called out.

  The second prisoner was a long, lean man with a narrow oval face and a pointed skull. He had been arrested for stealing furniture out of a home on Harrow Place while the owners were away on holiday. A curious neighbor, looking over the back garden, had seen the man dragging heavy furniture to his ancient four-wheeled cart and called police. The constables had caught him red-handed. Thus far, he had refused to speak.

  Round Freddy motioned the vagrant and the burglar to the side of the cell and then locked the door behind him. He moved across the flagstone floor to the back of the cell and stood over the vicar.

  “Reverend, you have done some heinous things, to be sure, but it is not too late to admit your wrongdoings.”

  The vicar looked up at Round Freddy, his face expressionless. “You should be after the real criminals, instead of trying to fabricate crimes for upstanding citizens.”

  Round Freddy arched his neck, a smile on his face. “Are you serious, vicar? You call yourself an upstanding citizen?”

  “That I am.”

  “Please tell me, then, how you would explain embezzling your niece’s trust fund, colluding with the banker, Lund. There’s also the matter of arranging Miss Waddington’s incarceration and then abduction from Bootham Park. And finally, ordering her murder.”

  “I will agree that the young woman is dead, but there is nothing that I can do about it, nor was I involved.”

  “But Fletcher told me before he died that you were the one who ordered him to kill Jane.”

  “I shall deny I did so until I die.”

  Round Freddy chuckled. “As I thought,” he said. “The pious ones never admit anything.”

  He turned back toward the doorway to the jail’s outer rooms and called loudly, “All right sergeant. Bring her in here.”

  The sounds of heavy bolts being thrown on the other side of the oak door resounded in the close space. Presently, the door swung open and Jane Waddington stepped through the opening and walked up to the iron bars.

  “Uncle?”

  The vicar’s eyes rounded in surprise and he half raised off the stool. “Jane? It cannot be. You are dead.”

  “Ah, but that is where you are in error, vicar," Round Freddy said. "You had been assured by Mr. Fletcher that she had been killed. We even thought so ourselves for a while when we found the other woman’s body with her bag on it. But we quickly learned Jane was only in hiding in order to keep herself from further harm. And here she stands now.”

  Reverend Elsworth had stood up and was staring bug-eyed at Jane. He took two steps toward her, his arm extended, before he sputtered and coughed, and then clutched his chest. The vicar fell to the stone floor, cracking his skull as he did.

  Round Freddy quickly knelt next to the quaking man and loosened his neckpiece, but the vicar only sounded worse. He gargled a series of breaths and then sucked in a large gulp of air, only to not exhale at all.

  Round Freddy reached down and put his forefinger against the side of the man’s throat. There was no pulse. The vicar was dead.

  •••••••

  Lund locked the vault door and stuck the heavy key in his waistcoat pocket, its looped end peeking out of the pocket. The iron and steel vault door in the cellar of the Royal York Banking Society was the old-fashioned type that required a special key to lock and unlock it, yet Lund had full confidence in the reliability of the arrangement. Had not the vault served its customers for nearly thirty years. There was no need to renovate the premises and install one of the new vault doors that could only be opened at certain times of the day.

  Lund trudged up the stone staircase to the ground floor and emerged into the corridor leading to what the clerks jokingly called the “money room.” It was the place where citizens either came to deposit funds with the bank or remove money from their accounts. And it was the place Lund enjoyed being every day because it was the place that had made him rich.

  He stopped at the entrance to the money room and pressed his hands against his temples, thinking hard. He had to figure out how to withdraw a considerable amount of cash, enough to keep him flush for a couple of years at least, and then disappear. He had no intention of going back to the detective sergeant and presenting himself to a magistrate. He planned on grabbing as much cash as he could, and then disappearing into the countryside. Perhaps go to France. Or maybe Spain.

  Lund smoothed the sides of his slick hair to his head and then wiped his palms on his trouser legs. Then he stepped into the money room and was surprised to see Round Freddy standing in front of his desk, smiling at him.

  Lund quickly looked back over his shoulder at the way he had come, when the detective’s voice reached him. “I would not suggest that you make a run for it, Mr. Lund. Constable Andrews here is considerably younger than you and is sure to apprehend you before you get very far down that corridor.”

  Lund hesitated and began to step away, but stopped.

  Lund looked from Round Freddy to Andrews to the corridor and back to the detective again. Sighing heavily, he walked forward and raised his arms, presenting his wrists to the detective.

  “Snap the manacles on now, sir. I surely deserve what I shall get.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Round Freddy took the canvas satchel from Lund and dropped it on his desk with a loud thump.

  “Money is bleedin’ heavy, eh?”

  Lund gave him a fish-eyed stare. “I would much prefer that we not use the bank’s money to catch these thieves. Surely there must be another way.”

  Round Freddy smiled at Lund as if he were dealing with a backward child. “There is another way to do this, of course. It involves clapping you in prison right now and forgetting about this entire escapade.”

  Lund stepped back a pace. “Detective, there is no cause for you to toy with me.”

  Round Freddy stared at Lund for a long moment. “I am as serious as death, Mr. Lund. If you back out now and refuse to help us capture these two men in the act of extortion, then you certainly shall pay for it. You know they are the key to getting Miss Waddington’s funds returned to her.”

  Lund slumped into a chair and cupped his cheeks in his hands, causing his jowls to sag more. “It is not a matter of refusing to help. It is simply that – well – I am afraid of one of the men. Whenever I am with him I get the impression that he means to harm me.”

  “You mean beyond stealing your money from you?”

  Lund looked up at Round Freddy and sucked in the side of his cheek. “I mean physically. I worry that he might beat me.”

  “Well you should not have such a worry much longer because we intend to trap the Dealer and his partner Goodwin with this money transfer. You did send the message about meeting with him and also Goodwin, on behalf of the vicar?”

  Lund nodded. “It will be in the Hound and Hen. I am to give him the money there.”

  “And once you do, the two of them shall be ours. I shall be in the background with two constables in street clothes. We shall put the arm on them.”
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  Round Freddy pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket and squinted at it. “Time to go, I should think. Are you ready?”

  Lund stood. “As I shall ever be.”

  They arrived at the Hound and Hen fifteen minutes before the one o’clock meeting time and split up. Lund entered through the pub’s front door, followed a minute later by one of the constables, while Round Freddy and the other constable entered through the rear. Round Freddy pointed out a corner of the bar where the constable could drink a pint of ale and not be conspicuous, and yet keep watch on Lund, who had settled into one of three wooden chairs surrounding a low, small table against the far wall.

  Round Freddy got a pint for himself and moved into the shadow of a post that formed part of the entryway to the pub’s lounge. He leaned into the post and watched as Lund ordered from a heavy waitress whose bosom threatened to overflow the scoop-necked bodice she wore. Across the room, adjacent to the front door, the other constable had made himself comfortable on a three-legged stool, leaning back against the wall. They had the exits covered and once their quarry entered the pub, there was no escape.

  By the time he had finished half of his pint, Round Freddy glanced at the front door and caught sight of a rotund smallish man entering, followed by a taller, more distinguished man with a mane of silver hair. They stopped inside the doorway and scanned the room, and then moved along the wall to the table where Lund sat sipping his ale.

  Round Freddy tried to pull himself further behind the post to be less conspicuous, but his bulk prevented him. He glanced around the room and saw his two constables still looking as if they were part of the woodwork. Then he returned his attention to Lund and the two men.

  Lund was saying something to the silver-haired man, and he abruptly shut his mouth as the man responded to him. The chubby man was chuckling, so some kind of joke must have been made. But Lund was not smiling. They talked back and forth for a few minutes and then Lund raised the satchel from the floor and handed it under the table to the silver-haired man. The man took the satchel and snapped it open, seemingly examining the contents for a long time. Then he snapped the satchel shut and lay it on the floor at his feet.