‘But you don’t think Caldwell’s guilty?’
She shrugged. ‘I know Caldwell. He wasn’t very nice but he had no reason to kill my sister. They say he did it because she was going to tell Caldwell’s wife about their goings-on, but that ain’t true. Caldwell was just another customer who paid her, or bought her pretty things. She didn’t have any reason to make threats. I know because she talked to me, told me everything.’
‘Who do you think killed her then?’
Kitty shrugged. ‘Dunno, do I. Pa, perhaps because she was planning to leave when she’d got enough money and he would have lost his bit of fun. But it wasn’t Caldwell she planned to go off with. It was another man. A real gent she called him, but she wouldn’t tell me who. Said it was better that I didn’t know.’
‘Did you tell Inspector Hardgrave all this?’ Riley asked.
Kitty shook her head. ‘He never asked me nothing, so how could I? He didn’t seem that interested, but you…well, I felt like I needed to tell someone and you seem to care. It wouldn’t be right if Caldwell hangs for something he didn’t do.’
‘We were told that your sister was walking out with a greengrocer’s boy.’
Kitty flapped the suggestion aside. ‘That’s what he wanted to think and it suited Maisie to have the story put about but there was never anything in it. She just used him as an excuse to get away and do…well, other things.’
‘Where does your father work, as a matter of interest?’
‘On the docks. A lot of people from around these parts do.’
‘And is he—’
She glanced over her shoulder, looked frightened by whatever she saw and Riley knew she wouldn’t say anything more.
‘I have to go before I’m missed,’ she said, melting into the early morning surge of people trudging dejectedly along the street at the start of another long day.
‘Well,’ Riley said as Stout managed to hail a cab and they climbed into it. ‘It looks as though I’m going to have to get involved with Hardgrave’s case as well as my own if I’m to stand any chance of finding Sir Robert’s killer.’
‘You’d like me to ask questions about Fuller, I suppose.’
‘You read my mind, Stout. Have the cab drop me at the Yard, then you can make a start.’
Chapter Ten
Riley shared the progress he had made on Barchester and Boland’s activities with his subordinates but kept what he knew about Maisie’s family to himself. The situation had become delicate, since it seemed increasingly obvious that Hardgrave had botched the investigation. When the briefing came to an end he set Harper and Soames to work on other outstanding cases and then closeted himself inside his office with Salter, to whom he did reveal all.
‘Blimey.’ Salter scratched his head. ‘Sounds to me like Inspector Hardgrave cut a few corners. He decided Caldwell was his man and didn’t bother to look any further. That ain’t like him. What are you going to do about Caldwell, then?’
‘Tread very carefully,’ Riley replied. ‘I’d like to think that Isaac Arnold would get the charges dismissed, but I can’t shake the feeling that Milton intends to stoop to underhand tactics in order to win the case and secure his own reputation, free and clear of Sir Robert.’ Riley sighed. ‘Never underestimate a man with ambition. There is little he will not do to get himself noticed.’
‘Produce surprise witnesses who will swear they saw Caldwell fighting with Maisie, you mean?’
‘I wouldn’t put anything past him. Anyway,’ Riley added with another weary sigh, ‘I’m going to send Peterson round to Gower Street with instructions to watch for Barchester’s departure. Then he will ask Mrs Barchester to come to the Yard and discuss a few outstanding matters with me. I want to talk to her again before I confront her husband.’
‘I’ll go and ask Barton if he can spare him.’
Salter did so and returned to say that Peterson was on his way. ‘So, what shall we do now?’
‘Wait for Mrs Barchester and go through our notes in the meantime. We’re missing something, Jack. Something obvious.’ Riley threw his pen aside with a frustrated sigh. ‘What have we not done?’
Salter shrugged. ‘I can’t think of anything. We’re being as methodical as always. It’s just that Sir Robert made a lot of enemies in his line of work, same as we do. That makes it harder for us to decide who had the most pressing reasons for wanting him dead.’ Salter’s harsh expression softened. ‘I know Sir Robert was your friend, so it stands to reason that you want to catch whoever did this, and we will. We almost always do.’
‘Almost always.’ Riley grimaced. ‘It’s the almost part that worries me.’
‘Unless it was one of the people that Sir Robert sent to gaol years ago, we’ll get him, sir. You’re worried about your nephew, I dare say, which has to be a distraction.’ Salter gave a cheeky half-smile. ‘Shame Mrs Cosgrove is away. She usually has a calming influence on you.’
Riley treated his sergeant to a droll glance.
‘Here, you don’t think Fuller lay in wait for Sir Robert, do you? Tried to convince him to continue with the prosecution, and when that failed anger got the better of him?’
‘It’s possible, but all indications support the theory that Sir Robert was taken completely by surprise. I’ve just read Maynard’s post mortem report, and he confirms what we had already deduced. There were no defensive wounds, and I can assure you that Sir Robert would have attempted to defend himself had he seen the attack coming.’
Slater sniffed, unconvinced. ‘It’s getting on for winter, sir, and colder than a witch’s tit. Sir Robert was wearing a thick coat and gloves. If he had tried to fight off his assailant there would be no sign of injury to his hands.’
‘True.’ Riley canted his head in acknowledgement of the observation. ‘But Maynard maintains that the injuries to his face prove that the stabbing caused him to fall forward and break his nose. There was no time for him to put his hands out to save himself. Think about it, Salter, if you saw someone coming at you with a damned great dagger, would you stand with your back to him and obligingly allow him to stick it in?’
‘Well no, I’d turn, try to fight him off. Put my arms up…’ Salter demonstrated the stance he would have taken.
‘And you would likely have a slice in the arm of your coat where the dagger penetrated the fabric. Something to show you’d resisted, winter clothing notwithstanding.’ Riley shook his head. ‘No, he was taken completely by surprise.’
‘Well, when you put in like that…’
‘Besides, he wouldn’t have conducted such a conversation with Fuller in the courtyard outside his chambers. He would either have invited him inside or sent him packing, not turned his back on an angry man. Sir Robert had been threatened too many times to let his guard down. Besides, how would Fuller have got his hands on that dagger?’ Riley slapped his fisted hand into his opposite palm. ‘Everything comes back to that damned dagger. I wish I knew—’
‘There’s a man by the name of Milton outside demanding to see you immediately, sir.’ Sergeant Barton put his head round Riley’s door to impart this not unexpected news. ‘He’s in a bit of a state, to put it mildly.’
‘Ah, I thought we might have the pleasure this morning,’ Riley replied, glad to have an individual upon whom he would gladly vent his frustration. ‘Show him into one of the interview rooms please, sergeant. I’ll be there in due course.’
‘This ought to be interesting,’ Salter said when, after leaving Milton to cool his heels for a full ten minutes, the two detectives sauntered towards the room into which he had been shown. The moment they walked through the door, Milton sprang to his feet, no longer the cool, controlled barrister but a very angry man. Angry or worried? Riley was unsure which, but a few probing questions might help him to reach an opinion.
‘I apologise for keeping you waiting, Mr Milton,’ Riley said, calmly taking a chair across from the still standing Milton and not sounding especially sincere.
He left Salter to prop up the wall with one shoulder. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘You can damned well stop bothering my wife with your intrusive questions,’ he replied, red in the face.
‘Your wife didn’t seem unduly bothered, as you put it, by our visit.’
‘She has a nervous disposition.’ Milton sat down and made an obvious effort to control himself. ‘She hides it, but she is not a well woman. Anyway, I cannot imagine why you would want to talk to her.’
Riley sent him a disbelieving look. ‘If that’s true it makes me wonder why Sir Robert spoke so highly of you. Surely a man in your line of work must realise that we would want to satisfy ourselves that those likely to benefit from Sir Robert’s death were where they told us they were at the time of his brutal murder.’
‘Me? Benefit?’ Milton’s previously red face was now chalk white, but for a few blotchy patches showing through his whiskers. ‘I have never heard such rot.’ Riley watched him calmly as he continued to rant. ‘Sir Robert was the magnet that drew clients to our chambers. The man who taught me almost everything I know about the practical side of conducting a trial. Without him we will struggle to survive.’
‘Yet you will be able to take control and do things your way. You lost no time in taking over the Caldwell case.’ Riley paused for emphasis. ‘A prosecution that Sir Robert was on the point of dropping.’
‘What? How the devil did you…’
Riley drilled the man with a look and remained silent.
‘The family wanted us to proceed. They were most insistent upon the point. My decision to take over reflects my duty to abide by their wishes and has nothing whatsoever to do with personal ambition.’ Milton spoke a little too quickly, as though the response had been rehearsed. ‘I hope I make myself clear on that point,’ he added pompously.
‘They came to you the moment they heard Sir Robert was dead and gave you their instructions?’
‘Of course not.’ But Milton glanced off to the left and found something in the dull paintwork covering the walls to engage his interest. ‘I sought them out. I had to reschedule Sir Robert’s cases, and—’
‘And couldn’t even wait a day to jump into his shoes,’ Salter said scathingly.
‘Keep a civil tongue in your head!’ Milton said sharply. ‘Have your sergeant remember to whom he is talking,’ he added, addressing the remark to Riley.
‘I’ll decide what my sergeant says or does not say,’ Riley replied in a cool tone, ‘not you. And in this case he has saved me from asking the same question myself.’
‘It’s all very well for you to adopt the moral high ground, Lord Riley.’ Milton gave a disgruntled sniff. ‘You can amuse yourself by playing at being a detective and I’m sure we’re all suitably grateful to you for lowering yourself to become a public servant. But the fact remains that some of us really do have to make a living.’
His reaction was not unexpected. Riley had already pegged him as a man who aspired to greater heights and resented those born into positions of privilege. It bore out his other assumption that he would be quick to anger. He frequently disagreed with Sir Robert over chambers policy, Riley had reason to know. His acquaintance with the deceased gave him an advantage, at least in that regard. If one of those disagreements had got out of hand, or if Sir Robert had overruled one of Milton’s proposals, Riley wouldn’t put anything past his friend’s ambitious junior partner in his quest for revenge. But he also knew that he mustn’t allow his mistrust and dislike of the man to cloud his judgement. There were other equally viable suspects to consider.
‘When you diligently sought out Fuller to take fresh instructions, did you also warn him that the evidence against Caldwell is flimsy, and that with Lord Isaac defending, Caldwell might well walk free?’
Milton looked away. ‘That is for a jury to decide.’
‘But you don’t give a damn,’ Salter growled, ‘just so long as you get a chance to strut in front of a jury in such a high profile case and show the world how brilliant you are.’
‘Don’t allow your man to speak to me in such a fashion, Inspector. I demand courtesy and respect.’
Riley leaned back in his chair. ‘In my experience respect is earned, not demanded.’
Milton’s face flushed. ‘Look, I’m just trying to carry on as usual. Sir Robert suggested to Fuller that he had doubts about Caldwell’s guilt but as far as I am aware he had not decided to drop the prosecution.’
‘He didn’t have a chance to make his position clear, seeing as how someone stabbed him in the back before he could,’ Salter pointed out with his usual straightforward logic. ‘Makes you wonder, so it does.’
‘I cannot believe you seriously imagine I would do any such thing,’ Milton repeated with less venom in his tone. ‘You would be better advised to take a close look at his worthless son. He was the bane of Sir Robert’s life, always in trouble, always short of money. Well, he won’t be anymore. Not once Sir Robert’s will is read.’
‘Your wife tells me she was not at home herself the night before Sir Robert died, so she cannot confirm that you left to catch your regular train.’
‘Then you will just have to take my word for it, Inspector. I am not in the habit of telling lies. Besides, I was at the clerks’ office at the Bailey that morning. There was a problem. They will likely remember me.’
‘Oh, they do. We’ve checked.’
‘Well then, I return to my reason for being here and repeat that I really don’t see why you needed to bother my wife.’
‘Our difficulty is that we cannot be precisely sure of the time that Sir Robert died.’
‘That’s simple. He always arrived first at just after eight in the morning. I was still on my train at that time, even though you will have to take my word for it.’
‘If you took an earlier train, you could have been there before Sir Robert, lying in wait for him. And you had access to the murder weapon.’
‘The murder weapon?’ Milton replied faintly.
‘Sir Robert’s Wolfhead dagger. Price had it in chambers, freshly repaired. After attacking Sir Robert you would have had sufficient time to make your way to the Bailey and cause a ruckus in the clerks’ office so that they would remember you being there.’ Riley leaned forward. ‘You can see how it looks, I’m sure, and I’ll wager you wouldn’t hesitate to prosecute such a case if that evidence was presented to you.’
‘But that’s just my point. You don’t actually have any evidence,’ Milton replied, having regained a modicum of hauteur, ‘since there is none to be had. All you have is suspicion. I did not kill my partner and there’s an end to it.’
‘And you have no actual evidence that Caldwell killed Maisie Fuller, but you are perfectly willing to press on with the prosecution.’
‘Caldwell engaged in an affair with her and she threatened to expose their activities to his wife,’ Milton replied, sounding sullen. ‘More than reason enough to kill her, as I am sure a jury will agree.’
‘And you get to be head of Sir Robert’s thriving law practise. More than reason enough…’
Riley allowed his words to trail off and watched as Milton swallowed uncomfortably.
‘You’re barking up the wrong tree,’ he blustered.
‘You were aware of Sir Robert’s dagger being in chambers?’
‘How could I not be?’ Milton gazed up at the ceiling, his expression exasperated. ‘Price made such a fuss about the workmanship. Everything Price did for Sir Robert had to be of the highest standard, no shoddiness tolerated, and he asked all of us if he thought it had been repaired properly.’
‘Did he indeed?’ Salter muttered, his words echoing Riley’s thoughts.
‘He was like that about any errand he performed for Sir Robert. He idolised the man and looked after him like a mother hen.’
‘Do you know if Sir Robert took the dagger home with him?’
Milton shook her head. ‘No, but I am sure he must have done, which m
eans someone in his household must have seized the opportunity.’ He fixed Riley with a significant look and they both knew he was thinking about Norman Glover. ‘You might also want to look into his whereabouts every Wednesday afternoon.’
‘Where did he go?’ Salter asked.
‘I haven’t the first idea, which makes it damned suspicious in my book. We shared our whereabouts with one another, or more to the point with Price, as a matter of course. It formed part of his duties to always know where we all were, just in case one of us was required unexpectedly. But Sir Robert fiercely guarded his few hours off at the end of every Wednesday and it had been that way for a good six months.’ Milton adjusted his position in the uncomfortable chair he occupied. ‘I suspect that he’d been having an affair.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps a disgruntled lover grew tired of sharing him. If she couldn’t have him all to herself then no one would.’ He flapped a negligent hand. ‘People have killed for less.’
‘Sir Robert wasn’t killed by a woman. Not unless she was taller than him.’
‘Well,’ Milton replied with another careless flip of one wrist, ‘I wasn’t suggesting that she committed the crime herself.’
‘If you did not kill your partner, and I accept for now that you did not,’ Riley said in a conciliatory tone, ‘you will of course be keen to help me discover who did.’
Milton sat forward, his relief palpable. ‘How can I help, Inspector?’
‘Tell me about your early association with Sir Robert. How did you come to be taken on by him?’
‘I can’t see why you imagine that has any bearing on the matter, but since you insist upon knowing, I had just finished my training and was looking to be taken on as a pupil in a decent chambers. I came up the hard way, Inspector, so I had no elite club memberships or influential backers to support my cause.’ A note of resentment again entered his voice. ‘However, I was walking out with the lady who later became my wife when I came to Sir Robert’s notice. Her father owns a string of warehouses. Drayton and Sons. I am sure you have heard of them. They were involved in a dispute with a client who owned them a large sum and refused to pay because he claimed his goods had been damaged. Sir Robert was not quite so well-known in those days and it was the type of case he took on. I saw an opportunity and offered to gather all the facts together for him.’ He shrugged and idly flipped at a speck on his cuff. ‘Sir Robert was impressed by my diligence and offered me a pupillage. That’s really all there is to tell.’
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