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

by Stratmann, Linda

  Sharrock nodded. ‘But what about the attack on Mrs Quayle – she’s been hiding away for years – why try to kill her now?’

  ‘When the body in the ditch was identified as Harry Clare, and the police came to interview Matthews, he told Paskall about what had happened – in fact I may have witnessed that conversation outside the church on the day after your visit. Mr Paskall would have panicked in case the story of his fakery was exposed, after all, neither of them had realised until then that Harry Clare even knew about the sham wedding, and neither knew if he had told anyone else about it. Paskall probably confessed what he had done to his son, who saw the chances of his father getting into parliament vanish. And of course he very much wanted that for his father, as he would then have the sole charge of the business. With that and marriage to an heiress he would have been very well placed. He didn’t want to wait for Mr Sandcourt to die.’

  ‘Young Paskall might have murdered Sandcourt,’ observed Sharrock. ‘Then there would have been a fine uproar!’

  ‘As you say, the death of a wealthy man always comes under very great scrutiny,’ said Frances. ‘No, Mr Paskall junior was content to marry Wilhelmina. But Mrs Quayle had to be dealt with. He attended the inquest on Harry Clare, hoping she would be there. She was not, but he followed her mother, who called in on her daughter before she went home. That was how he found out where she lived. He took his chance and fortunately he did not succeed.’

  ‘And did Matthews murder Mr Clare? Might as well hang him for one as the other if you can prove it.’

  ‘I think,’ said Frances, ‘that Harry Clare did come to the manor house, and that he died there, and his body was put in the ditch. But it is quite possible that his death may have been an accident, perhaps the result of a struggle and a fall. I don’t think Matthews is a man who engages in violent combat. Even his shooting of Daniel Souter was not fatal and he was very shaken by it. When he found that Clare was dead, Matthews concealed the body with the help of Mary Ann Dunn.’

  ‘Hmmph!’ said Sharrock. ‘She has a lot to answer for but no court would convict her – she can always claim she was working under her master’s direction.’

  ‘It may have been the other way about,’ said Frances. ‘It was very striking that although nothing appeared to have been stolen from the body, such as the money or the watch, something that would have at once told the police that there had been some foul play, all the items on his person that showed he came from America such as his banknotes and invoices, were in his pocketbook and so were protected from the wet, while all the things that might have helped identify him such as his rail ticket and business cards, were loose in his pocket and soaked beyond recognition. That suggests to me that the items were deliberately arranged in that way. The loose items might even have been wetted before they were put in his pockets. The watch was not a distinctive one and quite unmarked. Neither Matthews nor Mary Ann realised its significance. There was one thing that did occur to me, however. I have observed that gentlemen who carry business cards about their person do not keep them loose in their pockets where they might become damaged. They have a little case. Maybe they even have the case engraved. But no such case was found on Harry Clare.’

  Sharrock made some notes, then he threw his pencil down on the desk and sat back. ‘I wonder,’ he said.

  ‘Ask and I may be able to enlighten you,’ said Frances with a smile.

  ‘Well what I am wondering is this – did Mrs Venn ever suspect that her husband was – er –more friendly than he should have been with one of the schoolgirls? I mean, a maidservant is one thing but the daughter of a gentleman is quite another, so I am told.’

  ‘I have never asked her that,’ said Frances. ‘She did consider him a possible danger, which was why she had him removed to a sanatorium.’

  ‘Where, after a few weeks, he demanded to be allowed to return to the school,’ said Sharrock.

  ‘Oh? I wasn’t aware of that.’

  ‘Yes, well you don’t know everything, do you? I have recently spoken to a nurse who had charge of Professor Venn during his stay. He was doing very well, I understand, until he died suddenly. Dr Montgomery certified death as due to a sudden paralysis of the heart, but the nurse was not so sure.’

  ‘You know, of course, the reason he was there,’ said Frances.

  ‘Oh yes, morphine addict. And on a small dose while in the sanatorium. Not enough to kill him. And I don’t think he died from disease of the heart.’

  ‘Then what do you believe the cause of death to be?’

  ‘That is what I am intending to ask Mrs Venn,’ said Sharrock. ‘She walked into the station this morning and confessed to murdering him.’

  Frances was permitted to speak to Mrs Venn, who maintained a perfect dignity even in her cell, sitting with a ramrod straightness that Miss Baverstock would have admired, a Bible open upon her lap.

  ‘Did I surprise you?’ she asked. ‘Only you seem to have devised the truth of everything else and I had hoped that I might have been able to keep just one secret.’

  ‘I was quite astounded,’ said Frances. ‘I never suspected you for a moment.’

  Mrs Venn almost laughed.

  ‘I think,’ Frances said, ‘that any jury will feel sympathetic towards you, and a judge also. What I mean is —’

  ‘You mean,’ said Mrs Venn calmly, ‘that you do not think I will hang. I have spoken to Mr Rawsthorne and he is also of that opinion. There will be a great many years in prison, which I am told will be very harsh to begin with, but in time I hope I may be allowed to assist with the education of the women there to better fit them for their release. I may, after all, do a great deal of good.’ There was nothing, she assured Frances, that she required, neither was there any service that could be performed for her. All her affairs were in order and Matilda’s £20, which she was unwilling to touch as the proceeds of blackmail, had been donated to a charity for the education of the poor.When Frances left, Mrs Venn was more content than she had ever known her.

  Frances later learned that Mary Ann Dunn, when questioned by the police, had nothing to say about Daniel Souter’s death, since she had, with her master’s permission, been absent from the house that night tending to a sick relative in Uxbridge. Matthews had later told her that he had not left the manor house and she had seen no reason not to believe him.

  On being apprised of further information, Mary Ann Dunn had asked for and been granted private interviews with both Daisy Trent and Freddie Matthews, after which she had wept a great deal. She had then made a lengthy statement to the police in which she revealed the full story of the sham wedding which had occurred as Frances had speculated, with the barely conscious Joshua Jenkins being carried to the church and propped up in a pew with cushions, and Bartholomew Paskall costumed as a clergyman. She also told of how Harry Clare had come to the manor house at the end of January demanding that Matthews give his sister freedom from the marriage. The two men had argued, but, said Mary Ann, there had been no struggle. With her own eyes she had seen Harry Clare walking away, saying that he was going to London to consult a solicitor. Roderick Matthews, she said, had seized a marble statuette and struck his visitor on the head, killing him instantly, and had then terrified her into helping him put the body where it would be assumed that death was due to a fall, arranging the contents of the pockets so the remains would not be identified, and thereafter maintaining her silence.

  Matthews, on being confronted with this statement, protested that he knew nothing of Harry Clare’s death and that the young man had never been to the manor house. Mary Ann, however, was able to give the police Clare’s business card case, which was engraved with his name. ‘Master told me to throw it away,’ she said, ‘but that poor young man – I couldn’t help thinking – he was somebody’s son. So I kept it by me, because I thought that one day his family would want to know who he was and what happened to him.’ Faced with this new evidence, Matthews was obliged to admit that he had lied, and that Harry Clare had
indeed arrived at the manor house and confronted him, but he now claimed that the death was an accident, resulting from a fall after a struggle in which Clare had been the aggressor, and that Mary Ann Dunn had witnessed it and could confirm that he was blameless. Mary Ann, with an implacable gleam in her eye, maintained her original story.

  As a warm spring finally blossomed into life, Frances was delighted to attend a wedding, where Jonathan Quayle and Caroline Flora Clare became husband and wife, and the happy bride confessed to her with some blushes that the lawful union had not taken place a moment too soon.

  A few weeks later Frances entertained a venerable old gentleman to tea.

  He regarded her sorrowfully, but she thought his eyes were very kind. ‘I must entreat you to abandon this life, which is neither proper nor wholesome for a female,’ he said. ‘You live upon the very brink of an even graver sin.’

  ‘I have neither beauty nor fortune and so I must make my own way in the world,’ said Frances. ‘And I am strong. I have looked evil in the face and it has not conquered me.’

  ‘Pardon an old man who thinks only of your welfare. I hope you pray every day for the guidance of God.’

  ‘I do,’ said Frances.

  ‘Then you may yet be saved from the abyss.’ He paused. ‘I profess myself astonished at the courage and insight you have shown in exposing the outrageous activities of Mr Paskall and his friends. I am quite confident that the Liberal victory in Marylebone owes something to your actions.’

  ‘Or perhaps even the result of the election?’ suggested Frances, not a little teasingly, since the Liberals had thoroughly trounced the Conservatives and would surely have done so without her assistance.

  He smiled. ‘I would not go so far as that.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Frances, ‘Would it be such a very bad thing if women were permitted to vote?’

  ‘Oh, depend upon it, my dear,’ he assured her, ‘it would.’

  ‘One thing I do urge you to consider,’ said Frances, boldly. ‘I am aware that if I were to marry, then any fortune in my possession, which I have earned by my own hard work and saved through frugal living, would at once become the property of my husband, who might choose to spend it on drunkenness or gambling or a mistress. Then if he died I would be left in far worse straits than I am now. I cannot think that is right.’

  Her visitor nodded, gravely. ‘I expect that similar representations will be made to me, and I promise to consider them.’ He rose to go, and after a moment’s thought, said, ‘It may be that in the future, matters of importance may arise which by their nature are best suited to a woman’s delicacy of touch. If they do, I will call upon you again, and until then, you may find that a small monthly honorarium will help to preserve the respectability of your endeavours.’

  ‘I am very grateful,’ said Frances.

  They shook hands solemnly.

  ‘Good afternoon Miss Doughty,’ said the venerable old gentleman. ‘My visit to you has brought me greater pleasure than you can possibly imagine.’

  She smiled. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Gladstone.’

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Bayswater Academy for the Education of Young Ladies and Doughtys’ chemist shop are fictional, but all street names and public buildings in London named in the book are or were real places.

  In 1880, entrepreneur William Whiteley owned a row of ten shops on Westbourne Grove and was busy converting eight houses on Queen’s Road (nowadays called the Queensway) into warehouses and shops.

  Salem Gardens used to run east-west from Salem Road, which was a cul-de-sac in 1880. It was demolished in the 1890s.

  Hyde Park is little different today from its appearance in the 1880s. The Serpentine is part of the improvements begun by Queen Caroline in 1730. The tradition of Speakers’ Corner dates from 1872. The Receiving House of the Royal Humane Society (RHS) was built in 1835 to receive the bodies of people who had been pulled from the Serpentine, and was manned by volunteer medical staff. One of the examining doctors was Dr Blackett. It was demolished in 1954. The RHS also had its own boathouse for rescuing bathers in difficulties. The bodies of the drowned were taken to the mortuary at Mount Street and the inquests held in the Board Room there before the coroner, Mr St Clare Bedford.

  Westbourne Hall was built in 1861 and was used for musical entertainment and plays as well as public meetings. The hall could hold 1,000 people. Today, the ornate frontage remains at number 26 Westbourne Grove. The riotous election meeting at Westbourne Hall on the 16th of March 1880 is described in the Bayswater Chronicle of 20th March 1880.

  The villages of Havenhill and East Hill are fictional, although Havenhill would be on the route of the Great Western Railway, not far from West Drayton.

  The 1880 General Election

  In 1880, parliaments lasted a maximum of seven years and the previous General Election had taken place in 1874. The Prime Minister was Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli), although by the start of 1880 prospective candidates for the next election had been selected; it was generally believed that the election would take place in the autumn. When the parliamentary session opened on the 5th of February, there was no hint of the Prime Minister’s intentions and the dissolution of parliament announced on the 8th of March took everyone by surprise, and telegraph offices were swamped. Bayswater was part of the constituency of Marylebone which put forward four candidates, two Liberal and two Conservative, for two seats. Recent Conservative by-election successes may have led to overconfidence on the part of the government. At the election the Liberals swept to victory and seventy-year-old Mr Gladstone accepted the office of Prime Minister. Daniel Grant, a former director of Grant & Co., a Farringdon printing firm, was elected Liberal MP for Marylebone.

  The Women’s Suffrage movement of the 1880s

  The National Society for Women’s Suffrage was formed in 1867.

  While the Bayswater Women’s Suffrage Society is an invention of the author, there were similar societies in the 1880s, which were holding well-attended public meetings and petitioning parliament to grant votes to women.

  Mr Jacob Bright MP (1821–1899), Mrs Fawcett (1847–1929) the former Millicent Garrett and sister of Elizabeth Garret Anderson MD, (1836–1917) were all supporters of women’s suffrage.

  Isabella Skinner Clarke (later Keer) (1842–1926) was the first woman to become a full member of the Pharmaceutical Society.

  In 1882, a new Married Women’s Property Act finally permitted women to retain ownership of their property after they were married.

  Reverend Benjamin Day (1850–1936) was a Paddington curate who looked after the parish of St Stephen’s.

  Mr James Flood (1828–1886) was the chairman of the Paddington Vestry (a precursor of the Paddington Borough Council).

  The Community Sisters of the Church is an order of Anglican nuns which, in 1880, was associated with the church of St Augustine, Kilburn.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Linda Stratmann is a former chemist’s dispenser and civil servant who now writes full-time. She lives in Walthamstow, London.

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion

  Cruel Deeds and Dreadful Calamities: The Illustrated Police News 1864–1938

  Essex Murders

  Gloucestershire Murders

  Greater London Murders: 33 True Stories of Revenge, Jealousy, Greed & Lust

  Kent Murders

  Middlesex Murders

  More Essex Murders

  Notorious Blasted Rascal: Colonel Charteris and the Servant Girl’s Revenge

  The Crooks Who Conned Millions: True Stories of Fraudsters and Charlatans

  The Poisonous Seed: A Frances Doughty Mystery

  Whiteley’s Folly: The Life and Death of a Salesman

  Copyright

  First published in 2012

  The Mystery Press, an imprint of The History Press

  The Mill, Brimscombe Port

  Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

  www.thehist
orypress.co.uk

  This ebook edition first published in 2012

  All rights reserved

  © Linda Stratmann, 2012

  The right of Linda Stratmann, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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