Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6)

by Myers, Amy

  Evelyn giggled.

  ‘It’s all very well for you young folks to laugh,’ Gladys continued indignantly, ‘but we – slightly older – people know what goes on. There’s money at stake.’

  ‘How?’ asked Harbottle, bewildered.

  ‘Adulterated food,’ said Gladys, and sat back smugly.

  ‘Is this so, Mr Didier?’ asked Thérèse solemnly. ‘Are we all at risk from poisoning?’

  ‘I think,’ said Auguste diplomatically, ‘that we need fear nothing from Mr Escoffier – or from Cranton’s.’ Despite Fancelli, he thought savagely to himself.

  ‘And it was not the reason Miss Watkins was murdered?’ Thérèse pressed sweetly.

  ‘I do not think—’ Auguste was again saved, by an exclamation from Dalmaine.

  ‘I say, look at that.’

  Their eyes followed him, gazing out into the dark December street, where a hopeful late-night newsboy still plied for custom. Through the glass they could not hear what he was crying, but the newspaper placards were clear enough: ‘Missing Bride Found in Chest. Murder of Lady Journalist.’

  ‘Oh Evelyn,’ said Ethel delightedly. ‘Look what that nasty newspaper has printed. And that nice young man said he just wanted to write about poor Miss Watkins’ job at Cranton’s.’

  Back at Scotland Yard, Egbert Rose too was putting in a long day. He had had a bad journey home from Norfolk. The LNER smoke still seemed to be in his eyes, his clothes were sooty, and the meal on the railway train was a distinct disappointment to one who had visited Sandringham. There he had received sandwiches and ale from the housekeeper, and in compensation had dinner on the railway train. To one who undulated between Edith’s cooking and Auguste’s, the railway train came somewhere towards the lower end, but then he did not have the same affectionate loyalty to the railway cook as he did to Edith. It had been a rum place, Sandringham, all those various shooting gentlemen wandering in and out. Just like Stockbery Towers. Far more danger of the Prince getting shot there in his own home than on Paddington railway station.

  Awaiting his arrival back was a memorandum from Twitch, who had no doubt repaired home long since, Rose thought savagely. In answer to his enquiries of five weeks ago, the Thames Police had a body they’d like him to look at.

  Chapter Six

  The blue lamp shone encouragingly in the early morning gloom as Rose and Auguste climbed the wooden steps from the muddy banks of the Thames up to the Wapping Wharf headquarters of the Thames Police. The police boats rocked gently behind them by their mooring posts, each with its boatman standing sentinel over it. The skipper of theirs, whose old man o’ war’s hat proclaimed a Navy veteran even had his eyes, with their air of searching faraway horizons, and his weather-beaten face not done so, had regaled their journey with tales of the loss of the Princess Alice in ’78. Auguste was appalled by the story, but it wasn’t new to Rose. He’d been on the Ratcliffe Highway beat then and been witness to the misery and heartbreak at the loss of life when the pleasure steamer went down.

  A thin swarthy man pushed past them as they entered the police station, eyes set on freedom, intent on disappearing into the warrens of Wapping as soon as he might, relieved and surprised at his release from the dock. Inspector Robbins, a short, worried man, was waiting for them impatiently. He’d been on duty all night, and the sooner he could get home to his kipper, the happier he’d be.

  Ten minutes later they were staring down at the very dead body of what had once been a young girl.

  ‘It’s not my men’s fault we didn’t find it sooner, Inspector,’ defending the honour of the Thames Police. ‘Weighted, you see, otherwise they’d have had her out in days.’ It was hardly necessary to point this out. The rope binding the body, with its cut ends, was evidence enough. ‘Only because he had a report of a suicide that he found it at all.’

  ‘Well, Auguste?’ Rose asked evenly. ‘Recognise her?’ Slight emphasis on the ‘her’. To Robbins it was a corpse, an ‘it’. To them it was a girl, with a life that had to be reconstructed, an identity revealed – and a motive for murder discovered.

  ‘Yes, Inspector.’ Auguste gulped. ‘Not the face.’ He made an effort to overcome nausea, swallowing hard. There was little left. ‘But that dress, oh yes, I recognise that.’ The dark brown print under the inadequate shawl, the red of the blood against it – he would not forget that.

  ‘As I told you, she’s been stabbed, sir,’ Inspector Robbins said.

  Rose nodded and Auguste relaxed, realising Egbert had not passed on this information at first in case it inclined him to make a false identification. He understood. Egbert after all was the professional through and through.

  ‘The body must have been hidden down in the cellars by the time we arrived on the scene,’ said Rose, considering. What yet remained unspoken between himself and Auguste could come later. ‘And then moved at night, probably the same night.’

  ‘Why as far as here?’ asked Auguste quietly.

  ‘I can tell you that, sir. My men are very vigilant round the Waterloo area, and Charing Cross. The Bridge of Sighs we call Waterloo because so many throw themselves off it. Always a policeman on watch there. Down here it’s different. There are plenty of men round here wouldn’t mind earning themselves a bit and no questions asked, helping to move a body. There’s more in this old river than you can see from your window at the Yard, sir. I could tell you tales. . .’

  Rose didn’t want to hear them. The sight before them was tale enough for the moment. By common assent he and Auguste took a hansom back.

  ‘You were right, and I was wrong, Auguste,’ Rose broke the long silence as they came into the purlieus of the City.

  ‘You could not know it was not the medicine,’ said Auguste, trying to be fair.

  ‘I could. I know you, after all. I remember enough of the effects of opium on the Ratcliffe Highway for all it was twenty-odd years ago. More opium dens than bakers, and still are. But it wasn’t opium in your case, and now we’ve got the body to prove it. We’ll look at that missing persons file again to see if anything new’s come in.’

  It hadn’t, not at least in respect of young girls missing for over a month. Rose closed the file and looked up at his ever-present, ever-eager sergeant, who had followed them up to his office as keenly as an insurance gentleman a fire engine.

  Rose sighed. ‘What does this suggest to you, Stitch?’

  ‘That the murderer was one of her own family,’ stated Sergeant Stitch brightly. There was no query in his voice.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Rose remarked, ‘you show positive signs of brilliance, Sergeant. I hadn’t thought of that. But I don’t reckon it’s so here. There’s usually neighbours keeping a helpful eye out in a case like that.’

  ‘From a Norphanage,’ offered Twitch, ignoring Auguste. No room for laymen. This was a case for professionals. ‘Or a Nome.’

  ‘Even more likely to report her missing.’

  ‘On the streets then.’ Twitch folded his arms complacently.

  ‘She was not wearing the dress of a streetwalker,’ said Auguste firmly. ‘It was a maid’s dress.’

  ‘A Nousemaid, did you say, Didier? Even more likely to be reported missing,’ Twitch sniggered. ‘Harder to get, nowadays, ’ousemaids are. No, the streets,’ Twitch informed them. ‘We’ll have to follow that up. It’s the obvious answer.’

  ‘There is one puzzling matter, Inspector,’ said Auguste thoughtfully, ‘about this crime. At one end we have this girl, clearly poor, and without access to matters of State importance. At the other end is the Prince of Wales himself. Somewhere there is a chain that connects the two – a binding of egg to make this cold fare into Soyer’s fritadella, but as yet the egg is missing.’

  ‘Unless we get a move on,’ remarked Rose sourly, ‘it’ll be on my face.’

  The calendar on the wall with Phiz’s Dickens scenes on it showed only two days left of the old century. And three days after that the Prince of Wales would be at Paddington railway station.

 
; The house looked much like its neighbours. Only a demure sign Home for the Protection of Young Females made its purpose clear – and its need of money obvious. The manageress, a dour-looking woman in her forties, led the way to her sanctum without surprise. Visits from the constabulary were frequent on one mission or another. Sometimes they brought new girls in, sometimes removed occupants for whom the home had unwittingly provided protection from arrest.

  ‘A missing girl?’ Her eyebrows arched. ‘Not one of ours, I can assure you.’

  ‘Girls never go missing? Run away? Go back to the streets?’

  She inclined her head. ‘Rarely, Inspector. What we have to offer is little, but it is better than what lies outside. We try to keep a central register for our homes, where up-to-date information is kept on the whereabouts of any of our girls who revert to their old ways, or who succumb after having left us to take remunerative and respectable employment. I fear that a housemaid’s wages are scarcely an attraction besides the lights of Piccadilly.’

  ‘Is that what happens to them? Housemaids? Nothing else?’

  ‘Of course, according to their abilities. Some can be trained as governesses, often to be sent abroad. Miss Rye runs an admirable home in Peckham for sending girls to Canada, and even Mrs Crosby’s training establishment in Battersea for the Continent.’

  ‘Governesses? Wasn’t that once a cover for white-slaving? Girls escorted across the Channel in groups by the owner of a so-called high-class agency for tutors and domestics?’

  She looked disapproving. ‘Once, Inspector, is the operative word. Now that the Criminal Law Amendment Act is working well, the National Vigilance Associations well-established and the harbours carefully watched, it could not happen again.’

  ‘The girl we’re trying to trace was wearing a brown print gown,’ said Auguste. ‘It seems hardly likely a girl on the streets would wear something of the sort.’

  She gave him a look of scorn. ‘I see you know little of the night life of London, sir, being a foreigner. Girls wear what they have. If this girl you are seeking had just left her home, or a housemaid’s position, she would wear the dress she possessed. Not every unfortunate wears silks and satins, you know. Here,’ she announced, ‘my girls are each given a serviceable brown linsey-woolsey frock. And,’ she informed them with pride, ‘a holland apron. I believe most homes have some such plain uniform.’

  ‘So all we know is that she is unlikely to have come from a shelter for unfortunate women, but was probably a housemaid at the murderer’s home. Yet, Egbert, there is something strange about that. Why was she not wearing black?’

  ‘Pardon, Auguste? I don’t follow.’

  ‘If you recall, at Stockbery Towers the housemaids wore their print dresses in the morning, but in the afternoon they changed into black. And this poor girl was killed in the afternoon.’

  ‘Out at Highbury we’re not so particular about that kind of thing,’ observed Rose drily.

  ‘So that suggests,’ Auguste continued, ‘that the girl was working in a not very aristocratic home. A maid of all work, perhaps. And who does that fit? The Harbottles? No, they came from abroad – or so they say. She could work for his parents, though. And Miss Guessings would have a maid of all work.’

  ‘It would take more than one maid to look after her,’ Rose commented.

  ‘You are right. But it is possible. Mr Bowman would employ a maid. The Baroness comes from abroad, and so does her companion.’

  ‘This girl could be French,’ Rose pointed out.

  Auguste shook his head decisively. ‘No, her whole look is English, and she had clearly been speaking in English when I arrived.’

  ‘Colonel Carruthers? His housemaid would hardly travel up from Dorset. Dalmaine – could be his, except that he’s come more or less straight from the boat. The Pembreys? Too aristocratic a household for this girl, and the de Castillons live in Paris.’

  ‘Perhaps we should check whether anybody is missing from the English households.’ He glanced at Rose, and they spoke together.

  ‘Twitch can do it.’

  Clouds of steam swirled, cleared and gathered again. Through it, like a Cheshire cat, Ma Bisley’s round grinning face appeared at intervals, sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

  ‘Waiter minute!’ bawled her stentorian voice. Then reappearing, waving a bar of Sunlight soap in one hand and a washing dolly in the other. ‘Oh it’s you. Can’t be too careful.’ She had her reputation to consider.

  Egbert Rose sat down amid carefully sorted and ticketed bundles of dirty washing, some in newspaper, some respectable bags, some open to full public scrutiny.

  ‘Takes all sorts,’ remarked Ma disparagingly, seeing him looking at the heaps and plumping her large body in the chair next to him.

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said guardedly. ‘Maybe not yet.’

  He knew better than to rush her.

  ‘See that? I always tells a man by his washing.’ She looked at one opened parcel dispassionately. ‘Look at this lot: good quality shirt, bought from Jermyn Street, cheap flannels – Gamages. No socks – maid washes ’em. Fine quality handkerchiefs, and this one,’ she picked up a pair of combinations disdainfully, ‘this here. What does that tell you?’ She paused impressively, and Rose knew not to answer her rhetorical question. ‘Worn out, that’s what they are. You look now. I’ll tell you what all this tells you. It tells you he ’as a job where his shirt’s going to be seen and his pocket handkerchief, and not just any job – where he’s got to keep his end up. Lives aht this way – wife does her shopping in the Lane – but ’e shops for his long johns. Too mean to buy ’em up West, but not going to buy ’em in the Lane like other folks round ’ere. So ’e don’t buy very many. Ho, yes, a man who ’as ideas above his station is Ticket No. 22.’

  ‘You’ll have my job next, Ma.’

  Gratified, she continued, ‘And that’s not all. Where does ’e buy ’is shirts? Not at Selfridges. Not at John Lewis. No, ’e buys ’em in Jermyn Street. Orl right, ’e’s hambitious, but any number of places would do for ’is shirts. Yet ’e goes to Jermyn Street. Must be ’andy for ’im. ’Andy. A shop assistant, you’ll say. Maybe in a shirt shop. Hoh no. Look at these dirty combis.’

  Rose eyed the offending articles with some disaste. ‘What about ’em, Ma?’

  ‘Baggy!’ she said triumphantly. ‘Baggy, sir.’

  ‘They do go baggy, Ma.’

  ‘But it’s where. Baggy bum, sir – begging your pardon. And baggy knees. All the same – look.’ She delved into the unfortunate No. 22’s pile. ‘This little man’s a sitter, sir. He sits. Now where does you sit?’

  ‘An office?’

  ‘Office? Come, sir, you aren’t trying. He’s on view, not just neat and tidy, but on view. I think what we have ’ere is a bank clerk with aspirations. I think if you was to drop into the banks of Piccadilly you’d find a Mr Edgar Prentice there all right.’

  ‘I see you’re an admirer of Sherlock Holmes, Ma.’

  ‘’Oo?’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes, the great detective whose adventures appear in the Strand Magazine.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Bisley lost interest. ‘Can’t read, sir. Know me numbers, that’s all, for the tickets.’

  ‘In that case, Ma, I reckon Sherlock knows you.’ He paused. ‘I brought you some clothes. Can you do the same for these?’ He carefully unwrapped the ragged remains of the clothes of the murdered girl.

  She gave him a sharp look and turned the dress over for a few minutes.

  ‘Poor lass. In the river, eh?’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Easy to see from the way the cotton’s gone. Besides, I seen one or two who’ve gone in over the years. This one, though.’ Her sharp eyes examined it closely. ‘You wouldn’t be interested in no suicide. This is murder, ain’t it? And one of our own, from round ’ere. Or was once.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘This dress – it’s old, nearly all the dye washed
out, but it’s been carefully looked after. Neat hem and seams. But it’s been taken up – see the old hemline inside? And taken in, I wouldn’t wonder. No stains, – but someone’s been careless with the acid. See that patch?’ She pointed to a filled in hole at the back of the dress. ‘These old fastenings – they don’t use ’em now – used to leave rust marks, and only acid would get rid of them. That shows its age. Nah, the red flannel petticoat, that’s not so old. Only a few years is my guess. But look at it! I ask you, that’s been rubbed and it’s shrunk. Might be the water, but more like it’s been left too near a fire. What does all this tell you?’ She looked sharply at her pupil.

  ‘Second-hand, Ma?’

  ‘Right.’ Ma was pleased. ‘Or an anmedahn.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘’And-me-down,’ she repeated impatiently. ‘Now, these drawers – and stays, what there is of them. Same thing. Old. No shape in these corsets. Wouldn’t hold a sparrow’s arse up. Poor little mite. Not much of a life, ’ad she?’

  ‘We’ll find ’im, Ma.’

  ‘That dress – ’ousemaid’s uniform, is it?’

  ‘Looks like it. Any ideas?’

  ‘I’ll put the word out. See if my lads can come back with anything. And on that other matter, sir. The matter of royalty. The lads say they ain’t heard nothing. Now that is peculiar. Very, very peculiar.’

  ‘Why?’ From his immediate sense of let-down, Rose realised how much he’d been banking on Ma Bisley’s runners coming back with something positive.

  ‘If there was anything to hear round ’ere, they’d have heard it. Unless,’ Ma heaved her bulk off her chair, ‘unless it were foreigners. Now I must get back to blue me nose-wipers. I’ve got a business to run.’

  Auguste pushed his way through Cranton’s door, an eager group of gentlemen of the press crowding after him. They were firmly discouraged by Wilkins the doorman. Auguste silently and fervently blessed Maisie for choosing a retired sergeant major from the Indian frontier for this role. How delightful it would be to be returning to Cranton’s if this were indeed his own hotel and if it had not been sullied by murder. He spoke a silent word of encouragement to the shade of Robert Adam, assuring him that the stain of murder would certainly be lifted soon from his handiwork.