The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 3 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  Threads of Scarlet

  Claire Griffen

  Claire Griffen is an Australian writer, actress and dramatist who has a special fascination for stories set in medieval Italy, such as “Borgia by Blood” in Royal Whodunnits and “House of the Moon” in the previous Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits. Here, though, she looks closer to home and tells a tale of intrigue in Adelaide just over a hundred years ago. It’s closer to home than you might imagine. Claire reveals that it’s “based on a mysterious incident in my family history that has never been fully resolved”.

  In the high summer of 1875, the famous French equilibrist Charles Blondin gave a performance in the South Park Lands. It was attended by members of the George Dugald Fife household, whose residence on fashionable Le Fevre Terrace was about to become the most notorious establishment in Adelaide.

  The colony of South Australia had seen triumph and tragedy since the Buffalo dropped anchor in Holdfast Bay in 1836. The first encampment of mud, straw and calico windows was by 1875 a city of gaslight and architecture that had earned it the title of “The Athens of the South”. Tents, huts and roughly constructed barracks had yielded to civic buildings of classic style, cathedrals, colleges, hospitals, hotels and emporiums.

  In the outlying countryside lay the vineyards, sheep pastures, copper mines, railways and paddle boats on the Murray that gave the colony its prosperity.

  In 1867 there was a grim reminder that South Australia could still be the White Man’s Grave when a band playing “The Death March” accompanied Burke and Wills on their final journey. Explorers who had died of deprivation in what to the black inhabitants was a land of plenty.

  George Dugald Fife was first made aware that all was not well at home when he saw the gaggle of onlookers clustered at his front gate. He was further alerted by the distinctive peacock blue Garibaldi jacket, shako and white cotton gloves of the Metropolitan Foot Police and a plain-clothes man invading the premises.

  Inspector Toop was a wiry little man with ginger hair and moustache and a fondness for check waistcoats. He was affectionately named Toop the Snoop by his police colleagues, or sometimes Sniffer because of his uncanny ability to sniff out a miscreant. His freckled face and general scrawniness belied his twenty-seven years.

  Very few knew he had been a medical student at Edinburgh, forced to give up his studies through lack of funds. To Toop the case about to unfold before him was a boon. The detective branch had been implemented in 1867 mainly to investigate, in the anonymity of plain clothes, sly grog and prostitution misdemeanours. Progression had been made to murder, but usually those committed in drunken brawls. This promised something else.

  He approached the victoria as it drew up at the kerb, noting that there were five occupants, including a plump, middle-aged woman huddling with two children under the hood and a young woman with a parasol sitting on the driver’s seat beside Fife.

  “Mr Fife? Inspector Toop.” The detective touched the brim of his derby. “I wouldn’t bring the children in if I were you. There’s been a rather nasty accident.”

  A flicker of fear flashed like lightning across the retailer’s face as he took in the black ambulance drawn up in the drive. “What sort of accident?”

  “Is it the mistress?” demanded the short, plump woman. “I said she oughtn’t to be left alone.”

  “That will do, Mrs Blount. Take the children to Miss Vickers’s. Charlie will drive you.”

  “I can’t take another step ’til I find out what’s happened to the mistress.”

  “Nancy, you’ll have to go.” Fife turned to the young woman.

  Nancy closed her parasol with a snap. Toop appraised her. Although he guessed her to be a servant she was fashionably dressed in a gown with tiered skirt and drooping bustle, and an elaborate bodice embroidered in scarlet which matched the roses in her small, tipped-forward hat.

  “You haven’t answered my question, Inspector,” snapped Fife.

  Toop took him at a glance: grey curly hair, smooth handsome face, large blue eyes with silver lashes. Dressed for a warm Saturday in tropical helmet, lightweight cream suit and striped shirt.

  “Is it my wife? It must be my wife. She was the only one in the house. Has she harmed herself?”

  Toop narrowed his eyes, quizzically. “What makes you say that, sir?”

  “I don’t know why I said it. What’s happened to her?”

  “I think you should come inside, sir.” Toop stood back, respectfully, allowing Fife to enter by a door guarded by two foot police.

  “Which way?” Fife glanced through double doors into an ornately furnished drawing room.

  “Straight ahead to the kitchen if you please, sir.”

  The kitchen was a large, sunny room with scrubbed wooden table, a cupboard from floor to ceiling in lieu of a pantry and coconut matting on the floor. Lying between the table and stove was a body covered with a sheet. There was an acrid smell of singed flesh. A small, thin man somewhat overwhelmed by his luxuriant mutton chop whiskers rose from a chair.

  “What, Sandow, you here?” Fife seemed surprised.

  “Mrs Fife sent me a note earlier today to say she felt unwell. I arrived to find this.”

  “I’d like you to prepare yourself, sir.” Toop grasped the corner of the sheet. “She’s not a pretty sight.” Toop was master of the understatement.

  Ada Fife lay on her back, what had once been a morning dress of muslin black shreds on her darkly encrimsoned body. Her hair was singed off, her face a mass of blisters from which her eyes glared at them in stark accusation. Only her arms were untouched and lay pale and limp by her sides. The housekeeper gasped, then burst into tears. With an expression of distaste, Fife took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his lips.

  “Is this your wife, sir?”

  “Yes, this is Mrs Ada Fife. What happened?”

  “It seems she lit a fire in the drawing room, her dress caught fire and in her panic she ran into the kitchen where she collapsed and died, her flight having fanned the flames. Would you concur, doctor?”

  Sandow nodded ponderously as if weighed down by his whiskers.

  “I must go and pour myself a whiskey,” said Fife, abruptly. “I’ll be in the drawing room if you need me.”

  “It’s as well the coconut matting didn’t catch alight, there could have been quite a conflagration,” observed Toop. “Curious, though, don’t you think? That she fell on her back. Did you turn her over, doctor?”

  “No. I ascertained she was dead by checking the pulses in her neck and wrist. Otherwise, I did not touch her.”

  “One would have expected her to fall face down.”

  The doctor shrugged, non-committally.

  “What were you treating her for?”

  “She had a nervous affliction which affected her digestion and caused her hair to fall out.”

  “Was there anyone else in the house when you arrived?”

  “No, the front door was locked. I came around to the back door and let myself in. She was already dead. Even if I had found her alive she could not have long survived with burns of that magnitude.”

  “Why would she light a fire on such a hot day?”

  “I couldn’t say, Inspector. Maybe she was feeling poorly and looking for a little comfort.”

  “If she was in ill health why was she left alone?”

  “She was a highly strung yet introverted woman, who shunned society. Her disorder was more of the mind than the system. One often sees poor digestion and loss of hair in a highly nervous patient.”

  “How was her relationship with Mr Fife in the marital sense?”

  “That I cannot comment on,” replied Sandow, primly.

  Toop left the kitchen and went along the passage, turning up the gaslight to observe the track of cinders on the runner. When he entered the drawing room Fife was standing with a glass of whiskey in his hand, surveying the damage done to the Indian rug before the hearth.

  “Only laid this week,” he rema
rked, then glanced swiftly at Toop. “I don’t know why I said that. It must be the shock.”

  “Shock does funny things to people,” said Toop, soothingly. “Believe me, I’ve heard it all. Why don’t you sit down, sir?”

  Toop too examined the hearth, the still glowing embers, the soot and ashes scattered thickly about and one shoe print.

  “My wife must have lit the fire and then lost her balance and toppled into the flames. It was typical of her to be careless, I’m afraid.”

  Toop examined the room with its ornate furnishings, plush chairs with lace antimacassars, a mantlepiece crowded with ornaments and framed photographs, heavy velvet curtains, a whatnot supporting a jardiniere filled with dried flowers, and a sideboard with crystal decanters.

  He then turned his attention to the retailer. George Duguld Fife was in many ways typical of the new colonial gentry, either a wayward youth who had been paid off by his family to quit England and stay abroad or someone of lower class whose good looks, ambition, and acquired polish had allowed him to achieve a status he would never have attained in his native land, someone who had started small, worked hard, invested well and was now the owner of Fife & Robertson, a large emporium on Rundle Street.

  As Toop had implied, he had seen many and varied reactions to shock from hysteria to stern self-restraint, but Fife’s demeanour intrigued him. He saw no evidence of grief, he seemed rather to be – Toop searched for the word – inconvenienced.

  “May I ask where you were this afternoon, sir?”

  “I took the children to see Charles Blondin.”

  “The famous equilibrist?”

  “Yes, he was performing in the South Park Lands.”

  “Who accompanied you?”

  “A friend of my wife, Miss Emily Vickers and Mrs Blount, my housekeeper.”

  “And the maid?”

  “No, Nancy had an engagement of her own. We met by appointment in the city. To walk home she would have had to cross the Adelaide Bridge, where too many Larrikins congregate. It’s a pity the Commissioner doesn’t employ more foot police to control the Larrikin element. Still, what can one do when George Hamilton’s an ex-pastoralist and horse breeder and whose pride and joy are the Mounted Police.”

  Toop had similar views on that subject, but remained silent.

  “How many in your household?”

  “Two others. Charlie, the stable boy and Miss Ivy Amory. She was visiting her sister, who’s been taken ill.”

  “And no-one stayed at home with Mrs Fife?”

  “I urged her to accompany us, but she preferred to stay at home enjoying a solitary state. My wife had a fragile tolerance level, Inspector. People got on her nerves.”

  “Where does Miss Vickers reside?”

  “On Robe Terrace, Medindie within walking distance. She lives with her father and is a spinster lady devoted to the children. It’s she I’ve sent them to now.”

  Toop knew of Halliday Vickers, who had made his fortune in the East India Company and retired to South Australia to build an eccentric mansion of domes and minarets.

  “We’ll speak to Miss Vickers later.”

  The silver lashes fluttered. “Whatever for?”

  “To verify your whereabouts this afternoon.”

  “There’s no question my wife’s death was anything but an accident, is there?”

  “Just routine, sir. We need to get a clear picture of events and of your wife’s state of mind.”

  “You’re not suggesting she committed suicide! Would you choose that way?” Fife looked at the hearth and shuddered.

  “We’ll be taking the body away now, sir, to be examined by our own surgeon.”

  “Not to an hotel, I hope. I know it’s customary, but . . .”

  “No, the West Terrace Cemetery mortuary is operational now. We’ll advise you when her body can be released for burial.”

  Fife ran his hair distractedly through his silver curls. “I suppose I shall have to send a note to Canon Dove of St Andrew’s.”

  “Is that where you worship, sir?”

  “Yes, I have a box there.” He made it sound as important as having a box at the opera.

  “And the undertaker of your choice?”

  “I have my own establishment on Rundle Street East.”

  Toop digested this information as he returned to the kitchen. Kneeling beside the corpse, he lifted the untouched arms and examined the hands and fingernails, and the soles of her slippered feet.

  “Have the morgue attendant carry out Mrs Fife’s body,” he ordered the sergeant, tersely.

  Sandow rose. “How is Mr Fife?”

  “I’m sure he’d be happy for any assistance you might render him.” Toop was anxious to question the housekeeper alone.

  “The poor master.” Mrs Blount dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her pinafore. She had removed her hat and now that the impediment to the approach to the stove had been removed set about boiling the kettle. “First the loss of his good friend, Mr Robertson, now his good lady.”

  “Robertson – that would be Mr Fife’s partner.”

  “Yes, sir. He died quite recent. He was a bachelor, always in poor health, a bit consumptive like. He lived here in this house, had no family of his own, devoted to the children, a sad loss.”

  “Who inherited his share of the house and the retail store?”

  “Mr Fife naturally, but I’m sure he would rather have him alive, they were such good friends.”

  “What can you tell me about Miss Emily Vickers?”

  “The master met her at the Archery Club and introduced her to his wife. She was really madam’s friend. A kind lady, not handsome but kind.”

  “And a spinster. One would think that a wealthy heiress, even one who is not handsome, would have suitors.”

  “Any aspiring suitor would be chased away by her father. A regular old devil is Halliday Vickers. You know he kept the master out of the Hunt Club, said it was only for the elect, and with the master a member of the Adelaide Club, too!”

  “I understand your master has an interest in an undertaking establishment.”

  “Yes, he once managed a block of shops consisting of a chemist, imported glass and china, a milliner’s, a dressmaker’s, and Indian rugs and carpets. Ironic, isn’t it, he was at the undertaker’s this very day, collecting rent.”

  “He wasn’t with you at the Charles Blondin exhibition?”

  “No, he escorted us there, dropped us off, went off to collect his rents, and then came back to pick us up.”

  “Strange for a gentleman in his position to do that when he could employ someone to be his rent collector.”

  Mrs Blount smiled mysteriously and glanced along the passage before closing the door. “That was his excuse, but I suspect he had other business.” She paused obviously expecting the Inspector to bite and Toop obliged.

  “What sort of business?”

  “He’s a bit of a ladies’ man, if you know what I mean. And who can blame him with the mistress the way she was. Not that he’d patronize the Saddling Paddock at the Theatre Royal, but it’s my guess he had an assignation.” She hissed the last word as gleefully as a cat who’d caught sight of a mouse.

  “Would you know with whom?”

  “All the ladies dote on him, even those who shouldn’t.”

  “Like . . .” prompted Toop.

  “Like Nancy for one. She’s got an eye for the men, that one. Off she went today done up like the Queen of Sheba. You’re up to no good, my girl, I thought to myself.” She looked suddenly anxious. “The master didn’t say he’d gone to see Charles Blondin today, did he? Have I put me foot in it?”

  “Not at all. You’ve been most helpful.”

  “He’s so daring, so acrobatic.”

  “Mr Fife?”

  “Lawd luv you, sir. Mr Blondin. Even made an omelette on a spirit stove on his tightwire and passed it down for some of us to sample, good as I could make meself.”

  Toop found the master of the house in his s
tudy scrawling a letter, which he covered with a blotter when the Inspector entered.

  “One more word before I leave, sir. I understand you were not at the performance given by the magnificent Charles Blondin.”

  The large blue eyes took on a cold, shallow look. “Did I gave you that impression? I didn’t mean to.”

  “Where were you, sir, if I may be so impertinent?”

  “I do find you impertinent, sir. If I had been in the house I would have made every endeavour to save Ada’s life. Since she is dead you may presume I was not here and where I was is of no consequence.”

  “Collecting rents from your tenants, were you, sir?”

  A flash of irritation quivered over Fife’s features. “Damn that woman and her runaway tongue. She’ll lose her place if she’s not careful.”

  “Was your marriage with Mrs Fife happy?”

  “Do you mean am I involved with another woman? Yes, but not one I’d care to kill my wife for.”

  “That’s plain speaking, sir. Would she be willing to alibi you?”

  Fife’s irritation exploded into anger. “Do you think I’d be willing to betray her name and then expect to read it in the Midnight Rambler column? Any more of your insufferable snooping and I’ll complain to the Commissioner about you.”

  A low tap at the door interrupted them. At Fife’s brusque answer, the maid Nancy appeared. She had removed her hat, but was still wearing her elaborate dress and blonde ringlets. She was of the type commonly described as saucy, all dimples and blushes, though some of her colour owed more to the cosmetician than to nature. “Did you deliver the children safely to Miss Vickers?”