The Sans Pareil Mystery (The Detective Lavender Mysteries Book 2)

by Karen Charlton

  ‘It’s suspicious, yes, but not in itself proof of a murder. No, no, no, Constable. You mustn’t jump to conclusions. There may be a dozen reasons for this woman’s untimely demise. But only an autopsia cadaverum will provide the true answer.’

  ‘We will leave you to your work, Sir Richard,’ Lavender said, ‘and call on you later to see if you have any news for us.’

  ‘Oh, a procedure like this won’t be finished until tomorrow – noon at the earliest. I must be thorough.’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon then,’ said Lavender, and he turned to go.

  ‘Before you go, Detective,’ said Sir Richard, slowly. ‘There are a couple of other things you might like to know.’

  Lavender stopped and glanced back at the smirking surgeon. There was a glint in the man’s eyes he didn’t like. He braced himself for either bad or irritating news. ‘Oh?’

  ‘It might help you in your investigation to know that this woman has no wedding band on her finger and has never borne a child.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Lavender said.

  ‘And her shoes don’t fit.’

  ‘Her shoes don’t fit?’ echoed Woods.

  ‘They’re a couple of sizes too large for her. And, judging by the shocking state of the soles of her feet, she hasn’t been wearing them. If she walked in that chamber in the hours prior to her death, she did it in her stockings.’

  ‘What about the rest of her clothing?’ Lavender breathed a sigh of relief. The surgeon’s pronouncements were not as bad as he had feared. ‘What have you been able to determine from that so far?’

  ‘Apart from the fact that the young woman liked bright colours and that she had urinated on her gown: nothing. They’re not particularly good quality but then again, they’re not the cheapest rags worn in London either. Your victim is no aristocrat, but she’s no pauper either.’

  ‘She wet herself?’ Woods voice rose in surprise.

  Lavender was thoughtful. ‘This is in keeping with the idea that she may have been held captive in that room for some time,’ he said. ‘Perhaps her gaolers left her alone too long before they gave her access to the privy.’

  ‘Or the poor gal pissed herself with fear.’ Woods shook his head sympathetically. ‘How long do you think she has been dead, sir?’

  ‘Rigor mortis has been and gone and bloating has just started to swell the corpse. I would say two or three days at the most. I suspect that death occurred sometime on Friday night or Saturday morning.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Richard,’ said Lavender. ‘This information will surely help us to identify the woman and uncover the events which led to her death.’

  A smile flitted around the edge of Sir Richard’s mouth. ‘Oh, you have no need to worry about her identity, Detective.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I already know who she is.’ The surgeon pulled himself up to his full height and grinned from ear to ear.

  Lavender was momentarily speechless. Woods had no such affliction. Bristling with indignation, he drew himself up to his full height. ‘Gawd’s teeth, man!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

  Sir Richard smirked. ‘You never asked, my good fellow.’

  Woods’ mouth fell open like a fish on a slab at Billingsgate Market.

  ‘Well, who the hell is she?’ Lavender snapped.

  ‘Her name is April Divine,’ Sir Richard said. ‘She’s an actress at the Sans Pareil Theatre. Despite the fact that she’s not looking too chipper at the moment, an avid theatregoer couldn’t fail to recognise Miss April Divine.’

  ‘Divine?’ Lavender queried.

  Sir Richard waved a dismissive hand in the air. ‘Oh, you know these actress types; they all work with a stage name. I take it that neither of you have ever seen her perform?’

  Lavender shook his head.

  ‘Lady Allison and I have had that pleasure several times,’ the surgeon continued. ‘Tut-tut, Detective. You’ve missed a treat – you really should go out into society more often.’

  ‘I swear – one of these days I will punch that cocksure sawbones,’ Woods exclaimed angrily as they walked out into the yard. ‘He’s a sly fellow and a fox.’

  Lavender leant back against the brick wall and inhaled the familiar smells of horses and coal smoke, desperate to remove the stench of the morgue from his nostrils. The aroma of a thousand meat suppers simmering over London’s cooking fires comforted him. It was already growing dark. One of the ostlers brought out lanterns and hung them on hooks on the side of the stable.

  ‘Allison has a point though, Ned,’ Lavender said. ‘This suspicious death may not be attributed to murder alone – it looks like a kidnapping which has gone badly wrong.’

  Woods wasn’t in the mood to accept that Sir Richard had any redeeming qualities. ‘And what was that nonsense about the shoes? Can you make head or tail of that?’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ Lavender said.

  ‘The man is more of a hindrance than a help,’ Woods declared hotly. ‘So what’s to do, now?’

  ‘Now? Now I shall visit the Sans Pareil Theatre and question the manager about April Divine. At the very least, he should be able to furnish us with an address for the woman and provide the name and whereabouts of her family. I’ll follow up any information I glean in the morning.’

  ‘The manager’s a she,’ said Woods. ‘There’s a gal called Jane Scott who runs the Sans Pareil. Her pa invented washin’ blue and magic lanterns, and made a fortune. He built the theatre for her. She writes most of the plays too.’

  ‘Good grief,’ Lavender said. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Woods asked.

  ‘You go home to your family tonight, Ned, and pay an early morning call on Mistress Higgin at the bakery. Oh, damn—’

  ‘What’s the matter?

  ‘I had promised to call on Magdalena tonight.’

  ‘You can still do that,’ Woods said. ‘Those theatres don’t come alive until late anyway. In fact, she might want to go with you. You could both stay and enjoy the show.’

  ‘That’s hardly appropriate, Ned,’ Lavender said. ‘I’m a detective, investigating the case of a young woman murdered in distressing and suspicious circumstances. I can’t sit down in the theatre where she worked and enjoy the show. Besides which, I’m not sure that a bawdy Covent Garden theatre is the place to take Doña Magdalena.’

  Woods shrugged. ‘Why not? Who’s to know if you watch the show? And even your favourite surgeon said you should be more sociable. It is my opinion that you should be more adventurous in your courtin’.’

  ‘You’re full of advice about the ladies again, I see.’ Lavender’s tone was ironic. ‘And as a matter of fact, Sir Richard is not my “favourite surgeon”.’

  ‘Well, you do need a prompt now and then.’ Woods was a man on a mission and no amount or irony or sarcasm would deter him. ‘Faint heart never won fair maid, sir. Besides which, Betsy said she’s a lively gal who stays in her lodgin’s most of the time and is weary of the boredom.’

  ‘Betsy?’ Lavender’s head turned sharply. ‘When did Betsy meet her?’

  ‘Your Spanish widow called around at our home last Monday and introduced herself. They had quite a chat, I understand – though Betsy did complain later that she had arrived, unannounced, in the middle of wash day.’

  ‘Good God.’ Lavender tried to imagine the gracious and aristocratic Magdalena seated at a kitchen table, sharing a cup of strong tea with his constable’s wife, surrounded by soapsuds and mountainous piles of dirty laundry. ‘What on earth did they talk about?’ He couldn’t understand what the two women could have in common.

  Woods paused for a moment and screwed up his broad face, trying to remember. Eventually, he said: ‘Us. I think.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The two men stared blankly at each other. Lavender decided that this didn’t bear thinking about. He’d known the diminutive and feisty Betsy Woods for as long as he’d know
n her loyal hulk of a husband. Betsy knew more about him than he cared to admit and he had a twinge of unease about what she might have told Magdalena.

  ‘Anyway, Betsy said you should bring her round for supper some time but remember to give her some warnin’. Apparently, Doña Magdalena can be forgiven for turnin’ up unannounced – but you won’t be.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘He’s here, the Señor Detective!’

  Magdalena Morales sighed. She had spent many hours over the winter teaching the English language to her maid, Teresa, but despite this Teresa’s grammar still left a lot to be desired. It always worsened when she was excited, and there was no doubt that Teresa found the visits from Detective Stephen Lavender very exciting. The girl had hovered by the large casement window that overlooked the street for the past half an hour.

  ‘I make the coffee for the Señor Detective! Strong, oscuro, like him.’ Teresa hung their battered copper kettle over the fire in the grate. She fussed with the coals and reached up to the shelf for their mismatched china cups and saucers.

  Magdalena moved across to the window. Stephen stood in the bustling street by the hansom cab. He glanced around and frowned.

  What was the matter? she wondered. When he smiled he was a very attractive man with genuine warmth in his brown eyes. Unfortunately, he didn’t smile often. Her eyes roamed over his smart burgundy coat. She noticed how well it fitted his tall, slender frame. His slenderness belied the strength in his muscular shoulders and arms. She remembered the thrill she had experienced a few weeks ago when he had held her close to comfort her. It had been nearly a year since she had last seen her late husband. A long time to be without a man, she thought, and forgave herself for the guilty attraction she felt for Stephen Lavender.

  Inevitably, Magdalena’s eyes were drawn back to Lavender’s figure. As usual, the cravat above his striped silk waistcoat was spotless and gleamed like cream in the soft lamplight. His boots shone with polish. He was smart and had exquisite taste. If only he would smile more often. But he was naturally serious, rather enigmatic and the responsibilities of his position as a principal officer with the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court often weighed heavily on his shoulders.

  Magdalena sighed. She had never paid much attention to men who worked for a living before: it wasn’t the social class she had been born into, or generally cared much about. But Stephen was different. She enjoyed his intelligent companionship and his dry humour, and appreciated his generosity. But most of all she loved it when his mouth curled up into a smile and he teased or flirted with her. He was also a wealthy man – or so Betsy Woods had intimated last week. Magdalena had been startled to hear that the principal officers were paid a guinea a day in expenses when they went out into the provinces to help the local magistrates and landowners solve difficult crimes. As his assistant on these trips, Constable Woods was also generously rewarded. But the thought of the work Stephen did made her shudder slightly. What unpleasant crimes had he been forced to deal with this week? She braced herself, smiled and resolved to make him laugh tonight.

  As Stephen disappeared into the ground floor of her building, she noticed that he had not let his hansom cab go. The driver remained outside in the street. Was something wrong?

  Teresa was still crashing around with the crockery so Magdalena glided across their spartan room and opened the door to greet Stephen. The dueñas amongst her friends and family would have been horrified at this loss of status, but Magdalena didn’t care any more. Her world had been turned upside down since she had fled her home in Spain and found refuge in these cramped lodgings in Spitalfields. She made her own rules now.

  The young son of her landlady answered Stephen’s knock at the main door downstairs. She heard movement, then the step of his boots on the flagstoned floor. Their voices drifted up on the chilly air towards her. Stephen’s was deep, calm and polite. Then she heard the thunder of feet as the boy raced down the gloomy hallway to his own family’s rooms. ‘Ma!’ he shouted. ‘That papist bitch ’as got a gentleman visitor!’

  Stephen’s face was dark with anger when he rounded the bend in the narrow stairwell and came into view. She smiled sympathetically and moved towards him. He ignored her proffered hand, grabbed her elbow and pushed her firmly her back into her room, slamming the door shut behind them. Teresa glanced up startled, with a rattle of saucers.

  ‘I hate you living here, Magdalena!’ he said as he yanked off his gloves. ‘It is deplorable that you should be subjected to that kind of insult.’

  She smiled again, amused at his protectiveness and the ferocity of his anger. ‘It is all I can afford, Stephen,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m a Spanish Catholic in Protestant London; there will always be some prejudice. I have got used to it – and you should too.’ She shrugged. ‘Besides which, these lodgings have a great blessing.’

  He eyed her quizzically. ‘Which is . . . ?’

  She led him over to the tall, bare window and pointed out into the heaving street below. Despite the falling darkness, it was still a hive of activity. Market traders stamped their feet and clutched themselves against the biting cold behind their stalls, stubbornly determined to sell the last of their produce. Their icy breath billowed from their open mouths as they called out their wares. An Italian organ grinder turned the crank of his ancient box as a tiny monkey bedecked in a little jacket trimmed with silver bells danced around to the delight of a group of street urchins. Beside the organ grinder an old woman turned hot chestnuts over in her brazier.

  ‘After years of being buried in the countryside at our estate in Asturias, I finally have a window to the world. I spend hours here every day, Stephen. I have never seen such life, such activity and vitality.’

  As intended, her enthusiasm distracted Lavender from his anger. The edge of his lips flickered with a smile. ‘I had assumed that you spent most of your life in Madrid,’ he said.

  ‘No, no. For the first few years of my marriage, yes – but once Sebastián was born it suited Antonio for me to remain quietly in the country with my child and his parents.’ She raised both her hands in a sharp, frustrated gesture. ‘After Sebastián was sent to school and my father died, I found it was dull and tiresome. But now? Now I see life again. It is – how do you say it? – mesmerising.’

  Magdalena saw one of Lavender’s eyebrows twitch with disbelief, so she gestured to him to sit in one of the two old chairs by the window. Once they were both seated she pointed through the grimy panes to a fat, greying man with huge sideburns who sold vegetables at a stall on the opposite side of the street.

  ‘He reminds me of Constable Woods,’ she said. ‘He has a friendly word for everyone – especially the children of this street. He’s also a shrewd businessman. There is a woman, a customer, who owes him money . . .’

  Lavender leant towards the window, his eyes searching for the woman Magdalena referred to. Magdalena caught the faint scent of his masculinity mixed with soap, as he moved closer to her.

  ‘Oh, she’s not there right now,’ Magdalena said. Lavender fell back, a little disappointed. ‘She shops in the morning and has many, many children whom she struggles to feed. I have seen the tension between her and the stallholder and assumed she owed him money. They have been eyeing each other awkwardly for weeks. She crosses over to the other side of the road, rather than risk being accosted by him for the debt. Then – last week – my suspicions were confirmed. I saw him cross the road to speak to her. At first she was alarmed but then the relief flooded across her face. I think he has written off her debt.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  Her lips curled up slowly into a smile. ‘Because I now see him overcharging her. I know his prices and I see what she pays. She can’t keep up with his addition. He overcharges her every time. Not a lot, just a penny here and a half-penny there.’

  ‘It is possible he overcharges all of his customers.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I have checked. I watch him every day.’

  ‘An hones
t trader,’ Lavender said, wryly. ‘He must be the only one in London.’

  ‘I think he’s clever. He’s slowly recouping his debt from the woman – and he still has the custom of one of the biggest families on the street.’

  Finally, Lavender smiled. He sat back in the chair and observed Magdalena closely. ‘He’s a smart tradesman, in that case. And you can see and hear all that from here, from this window?’

  ‘I listen and I watch the coins changing hands.’

  ‘You’re very vigilant.’

  ‘Oh, there is more, far, far more.’ Magdalena pointed to a young woman with wispy hair and a pale, thin face beneath a straw bonnet. The girl stood on the corner of the alley opposite. She seemed nervous and clutched her shawl tightly around her shoulders against the bitter night air.

  He frowned. ‘What is she?’ he asked.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ Magdalena smiled. ‘But she’s no woman of the night. She’s in love. Every evening she waits there for her sweetheart to finish work at the tannery and when he arrives her face lights up with joy. They link arms and walk home together for their supper.’

  ‘How do you know she hasn’t already eaten?’

  ‘Because she’s forever glancing at the hot chestnuts in the brazier and occasionally rubs her belly.’

  Lavender was grinning now, his dark eyes soft and warm. ‘What else do you see from your window to the world, Magdalena? Any crimes you would like me to solve?’

  ‘Not really, Stephen,’ she purred. ‘There is nothing to concern a senior officer like yourself. Yes, there have been a few incidents of theft and I once saw a pickpocket steal a man’s watch. But these are crimes for the constables – not for important detectives like you. Although, there is one mystery I can’t fathom . . .’

  ‘Oh?’

  She knew that the word ‘mystery’ would never fail to get his attention. Magdalena pointed across the street to a shifty individual lurking against the wall of the tavern. Above his scarves, the man’s face was ravaged with scars from the smallpox and haunted with an angry intensity. ‘That man there – I think he’s evil. He sells a greyish, white foodstuff, which I can’t determine. His customers are some of the most haggard and starving of the beggars. They clamour for his product when he visits the street. They surround him, mob him and then devour this produce like vultures as they walk away. I don’t know what it is.’