Elementary Murder

by AJ Wright

  ‘I’m sure. Well then, can you tell me where you come from?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Where were you born? Brought up?’

  She shook her head. ‘Is this an attempt at humour?’

  ‘No. I’d just like to know.’

  She held his gaze for a few seconds before replying. ‘Liverpool, actually.’

  He looked surprised. ‘Really? You don’t have the Liverpool twang, shall we say?’

  ‘That’s because I’ve taken pains to lose it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My work as a teacher means I have to try to train my pupils to articulate. A losing battle in Wigan, but I can’t even try to do that if my vowels and consonants deviate from the norm. Can I, Sergeant?’

  ‘Have you ever lived in the Lake District? Hawkshead?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s just that the death of Miss Gadsworth might well be linked to the drowning of a small child fifteen years ago. Tilly Pollard.’

  She looked away, towards the window. ‘The death of any child diminishes the world, Sergeant. Does it not?’

  He nodded slowly then reached forward, picked up the copybook and slid it into his pocket. ‘Well that’s all for the moment, Miss Rodley. If you hear anything of interest from the children – rumours, gossip, that sort of thing …’

  ‘I’ll be sure to let you know.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She left without another word, and Brennan sat there for a few moments, drumming his fingers on the desk and replaying the interview in his mind.

  Barely a minute later, Miss Alice Walsh was standing before him, looking down.

  ‘I much prefer to stand in front of my betters,’ she replied caustically to his offer of a seat. ‘Reminds me of my place.’

  Brennan sat back. Once more, the expression on her face was one of defiance.

  ‘I apologise for asking you to leave your pupils.’

  ‘I wasn’t asked.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s good of you to see me.’

  She set her lips, preventing another retort.

  ‘I’m just trying to find out a little bit more about the staff here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, it’s the way I work. Your background, for instance.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’m particularly interested in a time fifteen years ago. 1879 to be precise. Summer of 1879 to be even more precise.’

  ‘That’s a long time ago.’

  ‘You would have been what? Seventeen? Eighteen?’

  ‘Give or take,’ she said. She appeared to take the reference to her age as an insult.

  ‘Well then. Where were you living at that time?’

  She raised her eyes and looked through the headmaster’s window. ‘That would be the summer before I started my teacher training. So I would have been at home, still living with my parents.’

  ‘And where exactly was home?’

  ‘Preston.’

  He gave her his most disarming smile.

  ‘Can you tell me if you have ever been to Hawkshead in the Lake District?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To satisfy my idle curiosity.’

  She turned from the window. ‘In that case, absolutely not is the answer to your question.’

  ‘Miss Gadsworth’s death may be connected to the death of a young child back then.’

  She gave a frown. ‘That’s very sad. How did she die?’

  ‘The little girl drowned, Miss Walsh. Tilly Pollard was her name.’

  She bowed her head for a few seconds.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Walsh. You may now return to your pupils.’

  She turned on her heels and left the room. He stared at the closed door for several minutes before it reopened and Weston walked in.

  ‘I hope your time has been profitable, Sergeant?’ he asked as Brennan vacated the headmasterial chair.

  ‘Possibly, Mr Weston. Possibly.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was funny, Billy told himself. A rat had bit him and made his hand throb, but it was another rat – or it might be the same sly bugger as bit him for all he knew – that had showed him how to escape.

  He’d heard it slithering around the cellar. But it hadn’t come under the door, because he’d been lying there for ages shouting through the gap at the bottom for someone to open the bloody door. But nobody came. He’d been left here to rot away or be gobbled up by man-eating rats. He couldn’t climb up to the ceiling where the small narrow ledge was that led out onto the street: there was nothing in the place to climb on, for one thing. And even if he found something, what would be the use? The hole was far too narrow for him to squeeze himself through. And although he’d yelled and yelled and yelled, nobody from the street above had even stopped for a second to find out where all the noise had been coming from.

  But then the rat came.

  There was a bit of daylight that crept in from above, and that helped him. He heard at first that usual scratching sound, but at the very moment a shaft of sunlight shone through the opening he saw something move in the wall opposite the door.

  Along the bottom, a tiny bulge appeared as the rat – a huge bugger! – pushed its snout through and finally managed to force its body into the cellar. He watched it scurry around the floor a couple of times until it disappeared into the darker recesses of the place. Gingerly, he crept over to where the rat had entered and pressed his hand against the lower part of the wall. It was damp, and the plastering felt crumbly and soft. He shoved a finger into the wall and, instead of meeting hard brick beneath, it broke through. He felt plastering and damp bits of wood as he pushed his hand then his arm all the way through to meet fresh air.

  He could feel the wind blowing against his bare arm!

  His heart began to thump faster as he drew his arm back then plunged it hard into the section of the lower wall next to the hole he’d just made. Again, with a little effort, the plaster yielded and despite the splintering on his arm he managed to force that through, too. Soon he was tugging at the jagged edges of the wall, laughing as he heard it loosen and crack away from its mouldy base.

  He peered through and saw uneven flagstones, weeds sprouting at various intervals where the flags had buckled free from the others. He could also make out the bottom step of what seemed to be a set of steps curving round and upwards to street level. A swirl of wind drifted through the hole into the cellar, bringing with it louder noises from the street above. He could hear a band playing, and cymbals clashing.

  Invigorated by the new sounds and smells, he’d soon created a space large enough for him to heave his body through. He fell in a heap onto the cold, damp flagstones.

  Outside!

  Dust from the wall swirled around and sharp particles of grit stung his eyes. It was the dust, along with the glare of sunlight, that forced him to close his eyes then rub them roughly to take away the stinging sensation. When he opened them again, his sight was blurred and he felt strange, his head swimming as the fresh air filled his lungs.

  Through a red-rimmed haze, he found himself staring at a pair of slender shoes, well-polished and gleaming in the brightness of the afternoon sun. Beside them, a pair of equally well-polished boots, although both boots and shoes were flecked with tiny bits of dust making him think of stars in a night sky. The right boot was tapping impatiently on the flagstones, causing a clack-clack sound. The left shoe beside it turned inwards, and he heard the right boot say in a stern voice, ‘Folly is bound up in the heart of a child.’

  Then the left shoe, in a gentler voice, said, ‘Proverbs?’

  The right boot replied, ‘Proverbs indeed.’

  It was almost two in the afternoon when Nathaniel Edgar arrived at school. He was normally well presented, his suit a trifle shabby perhaps, but collar and tie were always in place and his waistcoat buttoned with his timepiece showing from his side pocket. Today, though, he had a rather dishevelled look. His tie was loose and a little askew, while
his waistcoat was only partly buttoned. There was no sign of the watch.

  He appeared to be having an animated discussion with Alice Walsh. When she saw the headmaster approach, she moved quickly along the corridor to where her own class were waiting for permission to enter their classroom.

  ‘What the blazes do you think you’re about?’ Weston hissed in his ear when he saw Standard 5 already filing into the classroom and appearing unprepared for work. There was some pushing and shoving, with the girls giving as good as they got from the boys.

  ‘Bringing the sheep from the fold and into the pen,’ came the hearty reply.

  Weston glared at him. There was a smell of carbolic about him, but something lurked beneath – another, quite different odour.

  ‘What was Miss Walsh doing here?’

  ‘Scolding me for my unprofessional appearance,’ Edgar said, buttoning his waistcoat.

  ‘Are you able to teach?’ he asked.

  Edgar placed a hand on his headmaster’s shoulder. His words were steady, unslurred. ‘I’m always ready to teach, Headmaster. Have no fear about that.’

  Without waiting for a response, he walked briskly into the classroom, bellowed an order for silence, and closed the door behind him.

  Weston looked through the upper half of the door, where the glass was dulled and almost opaque. He saw Edgar standing at the front and issuing further commands, the pupils responding with a miserable groan but obediently raising their desk lids and taking out their books. The time was fast approaching when he would have to speak with Nathaniel Edgar. They’d known each other a very long time, and it would be no easy task.

  He was about to turn away when he noticed the frame holding the glass squares of the door: the putty was chipped and missing in places, and he could see the edging of the glass with its narrow brown strip where the putty had been.

  ‘Falling apart,’ he muttered to himself as he walked away. ‘Falling apart.’

  ‘Until now, sir, we’ve been concentrating our efforts on the murder of Dorothea Gadsworth.’

  ‘Arsenic is a vile substance.’ Captain Bell frowned. ‘Took the stuff myself once.’

  Brennan raised an eyebrow, but before he could present his train of thought as to the murder of Henry Tollet, the man was in full flow.

  ‘I was bitten once, you see, by a viper in India. At one stage the medics feared for my leg, which was threatening to turn gangrenous. So they administered a Tanjore Pill. Arsenic, quicksilver and other such delicacies, all ground together and rubbed with wild cotton juice. After a few doses of that they stuck warm chicken livers on the wound. I stunk to high heaven but kept my leg, Sergeant.’

  As if to prove the limb’s sturdy survival, he slapped his right leg with some force.

  Then he sat back and stared at the ceiling. Brennan’s heart sank as he waited for an elaboration of the anecdote.

  Instead, the chief constable said, ‘Still, despite the heinous nature of arsenical poisoning, it’s to the murder of Mr Henry Tollet that you must turn your attention.’

  ‘Exactly, sir, as I was about to—’

  ‘I’ve just returned from a meeting of the watch committee in the Council Chamber.’

  ‘Oh?’ Brennan, irritated at the interruption, knew full well the power such an august body wielded. Captain Bell had even been heard to curse them in his less discreet moments.

  ‘Oh indeed. First of all they insisted that I follow the recommendations of the recent inspection report and arrange for those members of my force who failed the ambulance class to attend another. They tell me that first aid is an essential weapon in a policeman’s armoury. I would have thought a truncheon better fitted that description. So I am to coerce the police surgeon to set up another series of classes. Then, as if to rub salt in the wound and leave the worst till last, they wish to know if we have an epidemic on our hands. “We mean murder, Chief Constable,” they said, “not smallpox.” It hasn’t helped that one of the victims is a school inspector. The national newspapers have shown an interest. After last year’s coal strikes and the horrors that brought, this is the last thing the town needs. I’ve given them my assurances that you are well advanced in your pursuit of the guilty one. Well advanced.’

  This wasn’t the time to qualify such a judgement. Instead, Brennan said, ‘The murders are undoubtedly linked. But as to how they’re linked …’ He spread his hands palms upwards to show how empty they were.

  ‘Tell me what you have.’

  ‘Dorothea Gadsworth was given arsenic in the classroom at George Street. By whom, we don’t know yet. But we do know she was due to catch her train back to Bolton from Wallgate Station on Friday night, only she didn’t. For some reason she went instead to the school.’

  ‘Lured there?’

  ‘Presumably.’

  ‘Why go back to a place where you failed to gain an appointment?’

  Brennan thought for a moment before replying. He chose his words carefully. ‘As I have already mentioned in our earlier meeting, it’s my opinion she recognised someone at that school. Before she fainted she said something that sounded to the witness, Mr Nathaniel Edgar, like “Of course … let’s wait.”’

  Captain Bell, in order to show how carefully he listened to what his sergeant had told him, added, ‘And when you spoke to the grieving parents, they told you a sad tale from the time Miss Gadsworth was a small child, living in Hawkshead. Near a small lake called Esthwaite Water.’

  Brennan repeated the version of the tale told to him by the Gadsworths – the drowning of the little girl Tilly Pollard, the criminal lack of care shown by the fifteen-year-old Julia Reece, a dereliction made all the fouler by her lewdness in the church with the young man called David.

  ‘And you suspect Miss Gadsworth recognised this girl Julia, now grown into womanhood?’

  ‘Or the boy David, grown into manhood.’

  Captain Bell once more examined the ceiling. ‘So whoever she recognises knows he or she has been recognised.’

  ‘Presumably.’

  ‘And if she were to let it be known what this person had done …’

  ‘Scandal, certainly.’

  ‘It could be any of the teachers, you say?’

  ‘Or the vicar.’

  The captain’s eyes opened wide at that. ‘Good Lord, you’re not suggesting that Reverend Pearl … I mean, if he were the young man, David, then to be discovered having such a secret hidden deep in the past …’

  ‘It would make for an interesting sermon.’

  Bell frowned. The idea upset him, Brennan could see. The man had firm religious principles and expected others, especially men of the cloth, to uphold the virtues espoused by the Church. ‘For such a person,’ he mused, ‘even with the excuse of youth, to be found practising such foulness in a church …’

  ‘And a belfry at that,’ Brennan added.

  ‘What the blazes does it matter where he did it? A church is a church, whether he does it in a belfry or on top of the altar …’

  He stopped abruptly, and Brennan could see the poor fellow was appalled by the sacrilegious image his own words had created. He had actually turned white with rage and shame.

  ‘But to return to the matter of the school inspector,’ said Brennan gently, by way of rescuing the man from his own vision of hell. ‘It may well be that Miss Gadsworth felt compelled to speak with him, to tell him what she’d discovered. I’ve gone through the papers he left in the hotel room, but they reveal nothing.’

  Nevertheless, Captain Bell’s spirits were raised. It would, after all, be more likely to be a teacher she’d recognised if she were to share that information with a school inspector. ‘Let’s say she did speak with him. Did he believe her?’

  ‘Hard to say, sir. What would he do with such information if he did believe her?’

  ‘He would be duty-bound to report such a dark secret to the education authorities.’

  ‘Along with the other thing, of course.’

  Captain Bell frowned, worr
ied that some new horror was about to be unleashed.

  But Brennan merely said, ‘The deception. If it were a teacher, or even if it were the vicar, one thing is sure: he or she is working under a false name. None of the male teachers is called David, and the vicar is Charles. And none of the women has the Christian name Julia, nor the surname Reece.’

  ‘Here under false pretences then?’

  ‘It would appear so.’

  ‘So if Miss Gadsworth did recognise someone and told Henry Tollet, it would mean that both she and the inspector would need to be silenced.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But how did he or she manage to get the fellow to wander down to Poolstock and take a stroll by the bridge?’

  ‘Apparently, according to the Royal Hotel, a note was left for Mr Tollet at the reception desk.’

  ‘Who left it?’

  Brennan shrugged. ‘They saw no one. The note was just left there.’

  ‘That’s a gross dereliction of duty by whoever was manning the desk.’

  ‘The fact remains he did receive a note. Probably urging him to meet with whoever it was. Then when they do meet, he or she pushes him into the canal and makes sure he can’t climb to safety by stamping hard on his hands until he can climb no more.’

  Bell stood up and walked over to his favourite position overlooking King Street.

  ‘We’re dealing with a fiend, Sergeant.’

  ‘It may well be, sir. And there’s the missing child, too.’

  Captain Bell whirled round. ‘The one who goes to the school?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And what does he have to do with all this?’

  Brennan told him about the finding of the singed copybook, the comment overheard by young Parkinson that he was determined not to be hanged. ‘I think someone planted that thought in his head.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He may well have seen something on Friday night. The murderer with the victim, perhaps. He might not know its significance, but he would later on when he heard about Miss Gadsworth’s death.’

  ‘So you think the boy is dead?’