The Daughters of Gentlemen: A Frances Doughty Mystery (The Frances Doughty Mysteries)

by Stratmann, Linda

  At nine o’clock on Thursday morning, Frances was at the school to take an arithmetic class. The work was not, when one compared it with the long hours serving in a shop or indeed trying to solve a murder, arduous and in the case of the cleverer pupils, quite satisfying. After the recent revelation of their organised mendacity the girls were subdued and obedient, although the chief culprit, Sophia Fiske, showed no signs of remorse.

  That morning Frances had received a letter from her uncle Cornelius approving her choice of profession and deploring the dreadful and thankfully false rumours he had heard that she had become a private detective. He invited her to dine with him at her earliest convenience. Frances felt sure that this was a ruse to question her but could hardly take offence, as she knew he was concerned for her welfare. She replied, accepting the invitation. Would it, she asked herself, be such a very bad thing if she abandoned her strange endeavours? She knew that she was supposed only to be teaching in a temporary capacity but Mrs Venn had been so kind as to intimate that she had great promise in that profession. No one had as yet been engaged to replace the teacher who had found that she preferred the married state to respectable work. It seemed quite possible that Mrs Venn might offer her a permanent engagement, and if she did, thought Frances, she might give the matter some very serious consideration.

  Frances had never visited a single gentleman in his apartments, but found that it was very little different from visiting a lady, except that Cedric was kinder and more welcoming than many ladies she knew. The rooms were furnished in impeccable taste, and since Cedric was exceptionally well travelled – indeed he often cited travelling as his only profession – there were many souvenirs of Italy, France, Germany, Greece and other countries.

  Cedric ordered Joseph to bring tea and thin-cut sandwiches for their refreshment. The manservant, who had never quite forgiven Frances for intruding herself into the home of his previous employer under the pretence of delivering a cake, treated her with cool dignity, although the effect was, to her mind, slightly diminished by the fact that he was wearing rouge.

  ‘Your manservant does not approve of me,’ said Frances.

  ‘He disapproves of everyone,’ Cedric assured her.

  ‘Except you, of course,’ said Frances.

  ‘Oh, most especially me. But he has a delightful sister who often calls and she adores me. I think she would like to be introduced to your associate Mr Williamson. They would make a fascinating couple.’

  ‘That gentleman is unlikely to be seen again in these parts,’ said Frances.

  ‘Such a pity. If you think he might ever reappear do let me know and I will offer him some friendly advice on the correct cut of a suit.’

  The refreshments arrived, giving sufficient pause for Frances to enquire about Freddie Matthews.

  Cedric carefully smoothed his silky blond hair and brushed a minute speck of dust from his sleeve before sipping tea from an elegant china cup. ‘Oh yes, I remember the family very well, and Freddie was a very particular friend of mine, a sweet boy and a great admirer of classical art, especially all things Greek. The parents took him travelling to broaden his education.’ He smiled fondly at the memory. ‘I think they succeeded.’

  ‘Did you see much of Mr Roderick Matthews and his wife?’ Frances helped herself to a sandwich made from hothouse cucumbers, which was quite a treat.

  ‘I saw little of Mr Matthews and cared to see even less. Freddie detested him. His father was constantly trying to make him into a market gardener – imagine!’ Cedric inspected his fingernails closely, as if the mere suggestion had contaminated them with soil.

  ‘I am told that Mrs Matthews was an invalid, and died there?’

  Cedric nodded. ‘Yes, she was very ill, consumption I believe. The family did not entertain visitors in the villa for that reason, apart from doctors, who seemed to be there almost every day. I saw her on a number of occasions when Freddie invited me there – well, smuggled me in, if you must know – for a secret tête a tête. A pale little woman, very thin and frail, forever lying on a chaise longue in the shade of the verandah. Her condition was such that a permanent daily nurse was required, to be followed soon after by an undertaker.’

  ‘Did Freddie ever mention a cousin of his called Caroline Clare?’

  ‘Oh dear, you are forever taxing a fellow’s memory,’ sighed Cedric, ‘I shall have to employ a private secretary to write down my every conversation. That would make very amusing reading and I could publish it afterwards for selected friends in a brown paper wrapper.’

  ‘And what would it say on the subject of Caroline Clare?’ persisted Frances.

  Cedric bit into a sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. ‘As I recall, when Freddie was first in Italy he was not well acquainted with her. I think he mentioned that his father had two wards whom he was educating in Bayswater. About a year after the family returned to England Freddie came back to live in Florence, where he established a business as a dealer in fine art and became quite the thing in society. He has very engaging manners. I did learn one morsel of scandal from a gentleman who knew the family, and of course I had to find out the whole thing from Freddie, but he was not very inclined to speak of it, and once I persuaded him I could tell why, as it turned out to be very sordid. A servant was killed on their estate by some brutes, and a mad woman who lived in the village told stories that so frightened one of the wards, who was, I think, the Miss Clare you mention – a charming girl but highly strung and very imaginative – that she ran away in a great bother and was never seen again.’

  Frances had been intending to ask Cedric for Freddie’s address so she might write to him, but now saw that this might not be required.

  ‘I assume you saw nothing of the other members of the family?’

  ‘Nothing at all. There were two younger boys away being educated somewhere fashionable and expensive, and, no doubt very depraved, and a sister at school in Bayswater. Freddie said she was a sharp-tongued little witch, born to make some unhappy man even unhappier. And there was another sister with a face to enthrall a thousand noblemen, who was away being finished somewhere like a gown. I heard a rumour that she had married a Viscomte who fell down a mountain and was dashed to pieces. No doubt his bliss was unendurable.’

  ‘And of course,’ said Frances, ‘the child that was born at that time.’

  He mused on this. ‘I did hear a child cry once, but I do not know whose it was. Freddie said he thought a relative of the maid had brought it in to be admired.’

  ‘No, I meant the youngest Matthews child. He has a son called Horace who was born in Italy.’

  Cedric shook his head. ‘I never saw any such child, nor was one mentioned. And Mrs Matthews was most assuredly not about to become a mother.’

  ‘How very strange,’ said Frances. ‘There is a child living with the family, a boy called Horace who Matthews has said is his youngest.’

  ‘I would not be surprised if he was the father,’ said Cedric, ‘but his wife could not have been the mother. A servant perhaps, or a mistress.’ He leaned forward as if about to impart a very great secret. ‘I believe it has been known.’

  There were, thought Frances, a thousand reasons for people to conceal truths or tell lies, and she wondered if the mystery about Horace’s birth had any significance. She recalled Lydia stating that Matilda had once said something rude about the boy. Could that be of importance? Perhaps she might try and see him for herself. ‘Do you recall the name of the maidservant in Italy?’ she asked.

  ‘Really, what would you think of me if I did? She was elderly, Italian and female, and that is all I can say, although now I think of it, she did have a very unattractive moustache.’

  ‘Do you still correspond with Freddie Matthews?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Has he ever mentioned his father marrying for a second time?’

  ‘No, only his pursuit of the Duchess, which everyone knew about although no one ever thought she would have him. But the lady is fifty and I understa
nd that that may do strange things.’

  Frances, not yet twenty, wondered if her life could be any stranger than it already was.

  That afternoon she met briefly with Mr Gillan, who called upon her and professed to admire the new apartments, although she always felt there was something calculating in the way he looked at everything, as if he had his own motives which were nothing at all to do with the empty words of polite conversation. He had the advantage in his profession, thought Frances, not only of being a man but more impertinent than she, and of having the power of the press behind him, not to mention his friends in the Paddington police, whom, of course, he was careful never to mention, so he had been successful as far as was possible in discovering where persons of interest were on the night of Matilda’s murder.

  Roderick Matthews had been at his club in the presence of about twenty witnesses. Mr Fiske, together with several of the most respectable gentleman in Bayswater, had been interviewing Mr Miggs as a candidate for his lodge, the Literati, while Paskall and son were working late at the office. Of the teachers Mrs Venn, Miss Baverstock and Miss Bell had been meeting over a light supper to discuss school matters. Both Mlle Girard and Mr Copley were at home in their respective apartments and neither had company. Selina Sandcourt had been visiting her sister, but was unable to say where her husband was that evening. Mr Sandcourt had claimed that he was out of the house on a business matter and declined to say more. Mr Gillan said he suspected that he had been visiting a mistress who was a married woman. He did not say if he had specific reasons for this suspicion or whether it was what he always expected a married man to be doing when away from home without a witness.

  Jem Springett had been having a glass of beer with some friends, and had been joined by Davey later that evening, while Mrs Springett was at home and noticed nothing unusual about either of the young men on their return. To this list of possible suspects Frances could have added Mrs Gribling, and Flora and Jonathan Quayle, but could not advise Gillan of this.

  That evening Sarah confessed to Frances, with some embarrassment, that ever since Constable Brown had shown them his late father’s collection of the Illustrated Police News she had become a regular and devoted reader, exchanging copies with friends. ‘It’s the pictures, you see,’ she admitted, proffering the most recent issue, ‘and I think you ought to see this.’

  Frances had no objections to this sensational but informative reading matter, but was alarmed to find that the main item on the front page was entitled ‘The Sagacious Dog and the Lady Detective – Horrible Discovery!’ The artist had executed three pictures, which took up the entire width of the page.

  The first showed Benjie discovering the body while two startled ladies peered over the fence. One portrait was a good likeness of Mrs Farrelly, presumably sketched from life, the other, for which the artist only had a verbal description, was thankfully sufficiently unlike Frances to allay any fears she might have had of being recognised in the street. The caption was ‘A Clever Dog Finds the Body’. There was nothing too remarkable about this, but another picture showed Frances clambering over the fence with more display of ankle and petticoat than she would have thought appropriate. The caption was ‘The Lady Detective Investigates’. A third picture showed two men carrying the body on its makeshift pallet, under the direction of the police, captioned ‘The Body of a Stranger’. There was a cameo insert of Benjie looking almost humanly intelligent, and another of the face of the body, which Frances thought to be in poor taste, although she appreciated that its object was not so much to shock the public as to assist in identifying the deceased. Not, she thought, that anyone would recognise the swollen features.

  The following morning brought a fresh bundle of letters. Many of the writers were intimate friends of the lady who had been so recently disappointed in her thieving son, but who had found herself impressed not only by Sarah’s discretion and rapid solution to the difficulty, but by the scrubbed spotlessness of her floors. The apprentice detective’s services had accordingly been highly recommended to the ladies of the carriage class and Frances realised that she would have to revise her thoughts about what might be an appropriate fee.

  One note, however, was from the Matthews’ housemaid.

  Dear Miss Doughty

  After your call here on Tuesday asking after an American business gentlemen I remembered something that might be of interest. A few weeks ago, there was a visitor asking for Master but he was an Englishman, although he did have a slight accent and I knew he was not from London. He said he was Master’s brother-in-law and wanted to see him on urgent family business. I said that Master had been called away unexpectedly to Havenhill and I could not say when he would return. The gentleman seemed very upset. He gave me his card and I said I would put it on Master’s desk so he would see it on his return, and the gentlemen said he would come again. As far as I know he did not come back. When Master returned the next day I told him about the gentleman and showed him the card.

  I spoke to the other servants in case any of them remembered the American gentleman you were asking for, and Mary, the parlourmaid, told me that she thought that the gentleman who said he was Master’s brother-in-law was from America. After he had called she was taking out the waste paper and saw his card in the basket in Master’s study, and it had an address in America. Unfortunately she can’t remember anything more about it.

  Respectfully yours

  Jane Parkinson

  Frances was not sure what to make of this. Was the visitor at the townhouse the same man who had died at Havenhill or another man entirely? Was the London visitor really a brother-in-law or could he have been lying to get an entry into Mr Matthews’ home? The man who had visited Havenhill had been young – the landlord of the Havenhill Arms had estimated about thirty. Frances examined her notebook, in which she had recorded the details on the plaque in Havenhill church. Mrs Agnes Matthews, had she lived, would have been forty-eight. It was not impossible that the visitor could be her brother, but unlikely. He might also be a brother-in-law if he was married to a sister of Matthews, but she was not even sure if Matthews had a sister, and if he did, she too might well be considerably older than the caller. If the caller’s story was a lie, she thought, then it was a very ill-judged one, which explained why the card had been disposed of.

  She decided that the best way of finding out more was an interview with Mr Matthews and sent him a note, receiving a reply to say that he could afford her ten minutes of his time at four o’clock.

  She found him in his study, with more paperwork about him than he obviously felt comfortable with.

  ‘I wished to ask you,’ she began, getting straight to the point, ‘whether you think the incident at Havenhill has anything to do with the business at the school?’

  ‘What a peculiar notion,’ he said. ‘It had not occurred to me as it seems very unlikely.’

  ‘I understand,’ Frances went on, ‘that shortly before the man at Havenhill met his death there was a caller here, who stated that he was your brother-in-law.’

  Matthews bridled. ‘Have you been questioning my servants?’ he demanded.

  Frances, finding herself in dubious territory, nevertheless decided to brazen out the situation. ‘I did, because I am a detective and that is what detectives do,’ she said. ‘I can assure you that they were very discreet.’

  ‘And what drew you to this mode of employment?’ Matthews asked rudely.

  Frances felt that this question did not require an answer. ‘Do you have a brother-in-law?’ she asked.

  ‘None living, which is why I knew the man was a fraud. Agnes, my late wife, had two brothers, both older than herself, and both are long deceased.’

  ‘You do not have a married sister?’

  ‘I have two sisters, both spinsters and I wish they would marry,’ he said testily.

  ‘Who do you think the caller was?’ asked Frances.

  He shrugged. ‘A salesman looking for business. They call all the time. I never see t
hem. The maid was quite right to send him on his way.’

  ‘Did he leave a card?’ asked Frances, who was not about to disclose that his parlourmaid examined the contents of his waste paper basket.

  ‘He did, but I threw it away. There was scarcely any reason to keep it.’

  ‘Did you look at it – do you have any recollection of the name printed on it? Or the man’s profession, or his address?’

  ‘No – it was such an obvious ploy that I didn’t trouble myself.’

  ‘And yet it is very possible that this is the same man who died at Havenhill. In which case his business was so pressing that instead of waiting for you to return to London he pursued you there.’

  ‘I cannot explain it, except to suggest that he may have been driven to desperation by some business reversal.’ He took out a pocket watch. ‘I believe that is all. And now I have other matters to attend to, my forthcoming wedding. Do not trouble yourself about purchasing a new bonnet, you are not invited.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  On the following day Frances called upon Mr Fiske to report her progress. She was unsure of what to say since she had effectively solved the mystery she had been engaged to undertake but not to her own satisfaction. She had found a copy of the pamphlet, and discovered the culprit, and could reassure the governors that the incident was not an attack on the school, but she was unwilling to show them the pamphlet or divulge the reason for its composition, and was quite unable to guarantee that a similar event would not occur in the future.

  Mr Fiske was in a state of very great distraction. He hesitated for a time about seeing Frances at all, even though they had an appointment, but eventually he consented.

  ‘It is really too bad, too bad!’ he exclaimed. ‘Tell me, Miss Doughty, have you had any communication with Mr Miggs? You recall that he is the young man who has been about to publish a book by Mrs Venn.’