Dead Letters

by Joan Lock

  He peered over the basket rim at a flat meadow below and announced, ‘And here we have the perfect spot. Flat, empty and not too far from civilization.’

  ‘Won’t the farmer mind?’ asked Smith as Coxwell tugged the cord, causing a ripping noise which made Smith and Goodson look upward fearfully.

  He’d heard that some Essex farmers had become fed up with balloons that had drifted their way with the prevailing winds, landed on their fields, ruined crops and terrified livestock. Some had even posted up proclamations threatening trespassing aeronauts with dire penalties – and worse.

  ‘No,’ said Coxwell, keeping his eyes on the ground and hand on the valve cord as he spoke. ‘We can’t do much harm here – it’s just grass. Anyway, our landings aren’t so catastrophic these days – much less of the dangerous dragging for miles.’

  Smith was glad to hear it.

  ‘Especially when there’s not too much wind, as at present.’

  Suddenly the ground seemed much nearer, and the balloon was starting to deflate. Then, at about five hundred feet, they paused and almost hung there for a moment.

  ‘Bend your knees, hold the side of the car and stay in it till I tell you to leave,’ Coxwell commanded as he gave a stronger tug on the valve cord. The ground was now racing towards them and the balloon shrinking rapidly when the aeronaut stretched up and yanked down a red toggle. A terrifying ripping sound echoed over the meadow which made Smith and the artist jump with fright.

  ‘Stay put! Hang on!’ shouted Coxwell as the balloon settled on the ground and slowly deflated around them, sagging over to one side.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Coxwell commanded again, ‘until all the gas is spent. We need your weight.’

  As the car began tipping over slightly, the artist hung on to Smith’s manly form.

  Soon they were absolutely stationary. The grappling hooks were thrown out to hold them down and they stepped out into a meadow silent but for startled skylarks.

  It transpired that Felix, the black cat, had been nosing about the darker corners of the office, as was his wont, when he had emerged staggering from under a desk. He was soon convulsing violently and expired very shortly afterwards. He now lay rigid as a board at their feet with traces of white powder around his mouth and whiskers.

  ‘Those capsules he knocked on to the floor, we must have missed one when we picked them up.’

  ‘And Felix found it?’

  ‘It seems like.’ Billings shook his head sadly. ‘He was quite a pleasant cat. A bit wild and bad tempered sometimes, but a good mouser.’ He frowned. ‘It’s funny, with all of the peculiar titbits people give him here, you’d have thought his stomach would be strong enough to withstand a dose of indigestion powder.’

  ‘We think they may have contained cyanide,’ Best announced bluntly.

  Billings’ grizzled eyebrows shot up. ‘Good grief!’

  Dr Roper was leaning over the body, sniffing at the mouth. ‘No, I can smell nothing unusual.’

  ‘Dr Roper had some second thoughts about the cause of death so we came back to re-examine the woman,’ Best explained.

  ‘I thought I smelled something like burnt almonds from her mouth – that’s why Dr Roper’s sniffing at it. But apparently, not everyone can detect it.’

  ‘So we have a murder on our hands?’ asked the Chief Inspector incredulously.

  ‘Looks like it. Can’t see how it could be accidental if the cyanide was in the capsules.’

  ‘Suicide?’ Billings suggested hopefully. Suicide would be a nuisance but not half as much as a murder.

  Best shook his head. ‘Can’t see it. Possible – but there are lots of easier ways to kill yourself.’ He paused, deep in thought, ‘Unless, of course …’

  A firm rat-tat on the office door halted his flow. Outside was a short, skinny, middle-aged woman wearing a grey cotton dress and matching hat and breathing rather heavily. She had obviously been hurrying.

  ‘Hello,’ she panted, placing her fist on her chest and patting it as though to ease her breathing. ‘Is this the right place? I’m Miss Maud Forrest – they said our Alice was here.’

  Her accent was northern. The rising inflexion suggested Tyneside, or thereabouts, Best thought but he was no expert on such matters.

  Best pulled the door to behind him. ‘Alice?’ He paused, then enquired, ‘Is she your sister or … ?’

  ‘My maid – Alice Harper.’ The woman clasped her hand to her chest again. Best showed her to a chair. ‘Sit down, and take your time.’

  She glanced up at him anxiously. ‘She’s all right, isn’t she? Someone said she’d taken badly when she was on that merry-go-round. Why she wanted to go on the thing I don’t know!’ She stopped and smiled indulgently. ‘But she’s not seen one as grand as that before.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I expect she fainted with the excitement of it all.’ She dabbed at her reddened cheeks with a handkerchief. ‘It’s so hot, isn’t it?’

  At last she became aware of Best’s silence and the seriousness of his expression.

  ‘She is all right, is she not?’ Her glance shot to the closed office door, then up at him, dread dawning in her eyes. She began struggling to her feet. ‘She’s not just my maid, she’s my best friend and …’

  Best restrained her gently. ‘Tell me what Alice looks like and what she’s wearing?’ He didn’t really have any doubt but it was better to be sure.

  Maud whispered, ‘Well, she’s a little bit younger than me – about ten years – though she’d never say exactly. She’s on the short side, just like me, but she’s plumper.’ She touched her hair and patted it absently. ‘Alice’s hair is reddish – going a bit grey now though.’

  She paused, uncertainly. Best nodded for her to continue.

  ‘She’s wearing her grey and cream striped cotton dress today – the one with the fringes on the …’

  She registered Best’s increasingly compassionate expression.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she cried out. ‘Tell me what’s happened!’

  Best drew up a chair and sat down opposite her. ‘Miss Forrest,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m very sorry to have to tell you that your friend Alice is dead.’

  ‘Dead! What do you mean, man, dead?’ Her voice had risen almost to a shout as she strove to make the unthinkable untrue by denying it. ‘What’re you talkin’ about! She cannot be dead, man. She was fine, when I left her, waiting her turn on that roundabout. Right, fine! I only went for some ice cream …’

  Best reached for her hand and held it tightly. ‘She just collapsed.’ He shook his head. ‘We’re not sure why – yet. It could have been a heart attack.’ No point in complicating things by talk of poisoning at this stage. ‘There was nothing anyone could do.’

  ‘But there was nothing wrong with her heart! All she’s ever had was a bit of indigestion and she was under the doctor for that …’ Maud began to sob piteously. ‘She’s my friend,’ she wailed. ‘She’s all I’ve got in the world!’

  Grief affects people in different ways. After the initial shock some remain stunned and speechless, retreating into themselves. Others cry, sob and even scream and throw themselves about. Some become garrulous. Maud, Alice’s mistress, was one of the latter. Information came pouring out of her in a ceaseless torrent. A gabbling flow.

  It seemed that Maud and Alice had lived together at Wood Green, close to the eastern entrance to Alexandra Palace, but they had not been there long.

  They both hailed from a village near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Best had guessed the accent correctly.

  ‘We came south for my chest,’ Maud confided, bringing her right fist to her scrawny bosom again and banging it lightly up and down. ‘Always been weak. An’ it gets very cold up there in the winter. You wouldn’t believe the wind that blows up that Tyne Valley. Comes straight down from the Arctic, you know.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘This Maud woman – did she do it?’ asked Cheadle in his blunt fashion. He was being brought up to date in the police office where
he had insisted Best stay on the case.

  Best was startled by the idea. ‘Oh, no. The woman is distraught. Alice was all she had!’

  ‘Hmph.’ Cheadle gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘That right?’

  Well deserved, thought Best. I must be going soft in the head. He sat up straighter and became more businesslike.

  ‘I know there doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the picture so far,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s early days yet.’

  Cheadle gave the semblance of a rueful grin. ‘If she did, it would be a right turnabout. It’s usually the skivvies what do the dirty deed.’

  He was right there. Down the years, since the early days of the Detective Branch, there had been a steady trickle of murders of employers by their servants. Indeed, it was the alleged bungled handling of one such famous case, the murder of Lord William Russell by his valet, Courvoisier, which had been partly responsible for the founding of the department. Best suspected that it was a crime of which Cheadle didn’t totally disapprove.

  Recently there had been a veritable spate of servants arrested for murder or attempted murder, but the police had found great difficulty in proving them.

  Indeed, they were particularly difficult cases as the suspects usually had the advantage of plenty of time and opportunity to cover their tracks. Also, the accused tended to have a record for dishonesty so were practised at dissembling when confronted by the police. The murder of Madame Riel, eight years ago, had been an exception.

  No problem in solving that, since her French cook had fled back to Paris just before the lady, who was mistress to Lord Lucan, the general who had ordered the Charge of the Light Brigade, was found battered to death.

  Detectives tracked the cook down. She confessed and was sentenced to death. When evidence surfaced of her quixotic mistress’s uncertain temper, she was reprieved and sentenced to life imprisonment.

  Despite the repeal of the Master/Servant Act of 1867, which was meant to improve their lot, several more servants had come under suspicion.

  Housemaid Mary Donovan had been arrested in 1879 for the murder of Mrs Samuels in Bloomsbury. But the police failed to prove that the stains on her clothing were of Mrs Samuels’ blood or, indeed, whether they were human blood at all since there was no test to define this, and Mary had subsequently been released.

  Scarcely a month later, partial female remains were found in a box which was half-floating in the Thames off Barnes. These were eventually identified as those of Mrs Julia Thomas. Her servant, twenty-nine-year-old Katherine Webster, was charged with her murder, found guilty and hanged.

  Shortly after that, in May 1879, the remains of Miss Matilda Hacker were found at a house in Euston Square and servant Hannah Dobbs was arrested. However, despite declaring grave suspicions about her, the jury found the case had not been proved. Juries disliked bringing verdicts which resulted in a death sentence, particularly when the accused was a female.

  ‘It would be even harder to prove that a mistress had murdered her servant,’ declared Cheadle. He grinned. ‘But I bet plenty ’ave done.’

  The idea seemed to please him.

  ‘But what could be the motive in this case?’ asked Best. ‘It’s understandable with the servant who gets fed up with being put upon or wants to grab the loot.’

  ‘Insurance?’

  Best nodded. ‘Yes, that’s a possibility. I intend to ask Maud whether Alice was insured.’

  ‘Not yet,’ advised Cheadle. ‘She might scarper and we ain’t got no forwarding address, ’ave we?’

  ‘Even if she’s not insured, I suppose the strain of living in each other’s pockets might have led to murder.’ Best didn’t really think so. Despite his natural policeman’s cynicism, Maud’s grief seemed genuine to him.

  Cheadle wrinkled his nose and twisted a strand of his greying whiskers. ‘Mebbe. But them temper jobs is usually a bit more violent, ain’t they? Sudden rage and all that.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘When you are all boiled up you doesn’t sit about fiddling with capsules and filling ’em up with white powder.’ He laughed. ‘You’d spill too much.’

  Best thought that maybe simmering hatred might make him do just that – fill up capsules with deadly white powder to poison Cheadle.

  ‘What you do,’ Cheadle explained, ‘is ’it them with a hammer.’ He paused. ‘Lots of times.’

  He took a deep breath, then offered Best another of his priceless nuggets of wisdom. ‘No, I reckon we got to look elsewhere for this one. There’s more going on here than meets the eye – you’ll see.’

  Irritating though his pompous pronouncements tended to be, the man was so often right.

  Anyway, whatever it was would have to wait until tomorrow. The search for Quicksilver must continue or many more than one person might die. But while he remained at the palace he might as well talk to the eyewitnesses of Alice’s untimely death.

  He had completed his rounds. Helen and Littlechild were working on the quotes – some distraction might refresh his thinking.

  Not that any witnesses would be able to help much when it seemed the whole thing had not only been premeditated but prepared beforehand. All the murderer had to do was wait till Alice got an attack of indigestion and hope that she took one of the deadly capsules. The victim committed the deed herself, in fact. Very clever.

  He glanced over at Alice’s body. Why did he get the feeling she was trying to tell him something? Something he was missing. He looked her over again and saw only the same middle-aged, short, plump woman quite nicely dressed in quality but worn clothes – very likely her mistress’s cast-offs. Nothing unusual there. Perk of the job.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it! Just couldn’t believe it!’ exclaimed Mrs Tancred, the excitable little woman sitting opposite Best. He’d already had the beginnings of a headache from hunger, the heat and all the strain of Quicksilver. This drama queen wasn’t helping any. His head began thumping out its objections.

  On the face of it, there had been little point in interviewing those who had been present when Alice died, when all the pertinent actions appeared to have taken place beforehand.

  But bitter experience had taught the detectives that all was not always what it appeared to be. Hadn’t Best once treated a sudden death as the suicide it seemed to be and allowed the witness who had found the body to depart from the scene? Later, when the case had metamorphosed into a murder, the gentleman witness in question was nowhere to be found.

  In Alice’s death, they had, as yet, no concrete proof that the capsules contained cyanide – merely a grave suspicion. After all, at the outset, the doctor had not thought anything was amiss. He’d only been gifted with afterthought. So Alice might have died of a heart attack, or had a stroke and indeed have been chewing a cachou beforehand – as Best had assumed at the time.

  As for Felix, the cat may have partaken of some rat poison or the like. Easily come by in a place like this.

  ‘I believe you were sitting on the horse to the inside of the unfortunate woman?’

  ‘Yes. Mind you, I wasn’t surprised she seemed to be falling off. Not a bit. Those animals are just too big.’ She made them sound like living beasts. ‘A little person like me can’t get their legs around them.’ She gave the handsome inspector a coy and girlish glance, incongruous from a thirty-five-year-old married woman. Girlish glances were a trait sometimes encouraged in very small women.

  ‘I’m sure they must be, Mrs Tancred,’ Best murmured, trying to keep the irritation from his voice. If he didn’t get something to eat soon … ‘While you were struggling to keep on the mount, did you notice how Miss Harper looked – just before she fell?’

  ‘Terrible! Just terrible!’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Her face was grey, ashen.’

  Well, he knew that wasn’t true.

  ‘And she was clutching at her chest as if she couldn’t breathe.’

  ‘Did she cry out?’

  He knew as soon as he said it that it was a silly question. They’
d established that the noise level was too high to hear any cries for help.

  ‘If she did, I couldn’t hear her for the music – it was so loud,’ Mrs Tancred complained. ‘But she opened her mouth wide and contorted her face –’ she opened her little mouth wide and grimaced grotesquely in imitation – ‘as if she was screaming her head off.’

  She was painting a graphic picture of a ghastly death. A sad thought. Aware of the effectiveness of her performance, her voice rose as she went on: ‘Then she stretched her hand out towards me – like a drowning woman!’ Her right hand clawed the air in mock desperation. ‘But I could do nothing, nothing. It was terrible! Quite terrible!’

  Well, he had asked.

  ‘I’m sure it was, Mrs Tancred.’

  ‘Then she fainted and fell forward –’ she aped the falling – ‘until her head hit the platform.’ The voice was rising again: ‘And then it began banging up and down, up and down! Then …’

  Best sensed the opportunity for hysterics looming, which was more than he could take at the moment. Mrs Tancred had already agreed that she had not noticed Alice beforehand so was no help in saying whether anyone had been anywhere near her previously.

  Best leaned forward and patted the air in a calming and quietening manner. ‘I understand, it must have been dreadful for you.’ Then in a more businesslike voice: ‘Well, Mrs Tancred, you’ve been very helpful.’ He stood up and waited for her to follow suit.

  She did so slowly with a faint air of grievance.

  ‘We have your address and if we need any more assistance we’ll be in touch.’

  He began walking forward holding out his arms in a shepherding manner.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure …’

  ‘I am. You’ve been very helpful.’ Please go away you silly woman, he moaned to himself, and let me get a sandwich and a nice cup of tea.