Dead Letters

by Joan Lock

Best inclined his head in agreement. ‘Sad business. And with no friends down here to mourn her either.’

  Emmy paused in her measuring out of the drops. ‘No, excepting for that cabbie,’ she said. ‘Course you couldn’t say he was a friend, could you? But it was always the same fella she had waiting outside.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Best calmly accepting the paper bag of sweets. ‘He may be able to help us.’ He paused. ‘Could you describe him, do you think?’

  He wasn’t hopeful. Members of the public were hopeless at descriptions, even of their loved ones. Sometimes they even managed to get the colour of their eyes wrong.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Emmy, confidently, ‘he was that one-eyed bloke who stands over in Station Road. The one with the patches on the side of his cab.’

  Smith and Best exchanged wide-eyed glances.

  ‘Well done,’ Best nodded. ‘That could be quite helpful.’

  Smith leaned forward and said, ‘Thank you, Emmy.’ And she blushed again. ‘This is just between us for the moment. All right?’

  She nodded, transfixed by Smith’s blue eyes and beguiling smile.

  ‘I only noticed because I thought it was funny how she still had some of the stuff delivered when they could have taken it all back with them – if they was goin’ home then, that is.’

  How interesting, thought Best. Some of the stuff, and if they were going home. He couldn’t have put it better himself. Alice, it seemed, had a fella and had been on the fiddle. Matters were taking on a different hue – definitely a rosier one for them anyway.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A black eyepatch gives some men a rakish and jaunty air – but the one-eyed cabbie wasn’t one of them.

  Runt of the litter was more the phrase that came to Best’s mind as he spotted him, alongside the row of cabs waiting down the road from Wood Green Railway Station.

  If he was Alice’s paramour, she certainly hadn’t chosen him for his looks.

  As Best approached, the cabbie had a final puff on his clay pipe, tapped the dottle into the gutter and climbed nimbly up onto the seat of his growler.

  Clearly, a train was due. He must be hoping that there would be more trade than could be handled by the cabs licensed to stand directly outside the station. Also, that sufficient passengers would require the additional luggage space offered by even a shabby four-wheeler like his.

  When Best stopped before him and held up his hand, the one-eyed cabbie shook his head and said out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Sorry mate. Not my turn – be more than my life’s worth …’

  ‘Police,’ said Best showing his identification. ‘I want a word.’

  He looked indignant.

  ‘Why me?’ he exclaimed. ‘I ain’t done nothing!’ He frowned. ‘Oh, I know. It was that woman yesterday complaining. You can tell her she owes me! Miserable cow!’

  ‘Nobody’s complained,’ Best assured him. ‘I just need a word. Some information you can help me with – local knowledge.’

  The cabs ahead began to move forward. Obviously, the train had arrived. Drivers in the queue behind voiced their objections to be held up. Some starting pulling out to overtake. ‘Not just now, mate,’ he pleaded. ‘There’s work up there …’

  Best point off to the right in the direction of a plot of ornamental gardens. ‘Over there,’ he commanded in a brook-no-argument manner as he pulled himself on board, ‘into Avenue Gardens. Then stop on the left.’

  The cabbie watched sadly as his fellow cabmen began coming back down the road carrying passengers, but Best knew he wouldn’t dare refuse. The police controlled the cab trade whether the cabbies liked it or not, and they didn’t much. Being a Blucher (last on the field at the railway station, like the general of the same name was at Waterloo) he probably couldn’t afford any suspension of business.

  ‘You needn’t worry,’ Best assured him, as they halted by the low railings of the ornamental gardens typical of leafy, sedate Wood Green, ‘I only want to ask you about one of your customers. There’s been no complaint about your cab.’ His glance over the moth-eaten upholstery and grimy woodwork implied that there could be, if …

  ‘Didn’t think there could be.’ He shrugged as he climbed down from his box.

  Close up, he seemed taller. He was quite neat about the neck and the black bowler was almost new. When he took if off to wipe his brow, Best caught a pungent whiff of cedar-wood pomade from the man’s black, sleek wavy hair. A ladies’ man – despite his obvious drawback? Could be.

  A one-armed man had once revealed to Best that, far from being a disadvantage, his disability was a positive asset with the ladies. Firstly, it engaged their sympathies while at the same time putting them off their guard, allowing him to get nearer without frightening them off.

  Best ushered him to a garden bench and sat alongside him on his left – his good side.

  ‘First of all,’ said Best, ‘what’s your name?’

  ‘Arthur, Arthur Herring.’ He paused. ‘But there’s nothing fishy about me.’

  How often had he cracked that one? Best wondered. However, the detective inspector always believed in doing things the easy way, if at all possible, so he laughed, slapped his thigh and exclaimed, ‘I hope not, Arthur! I hope not!’

  ‘You ain’t going to keep me long, are you?’ Arthur pleaded. ‘I ’aven’t even made my hiring yet.’

  Ah, so even this shabby cab was not his own. He was a bailee, hiring the vehicle for so much a day. Best didn’t like making things any harder for a working man. On the other hand …

  ‘Quicker we get down to business …’ he reassured him. Then he added some pressure: ‘And the quicker you help me with some information, the sooner you’ll get back on the rank.’

  ‘Right,’ said Arthur, shifting uneasily in his seat. Closer, he was also wily, ferrety and quick-eyed. Even though he possessed only one of the latter, it seemed to be darting everywhere.

  He could be wrong, but Best got the impression that Arthur had no idea what this was all about.

  ‘What I want to ask you about is one of your regular customers. A lady.’

  ‘Regular?’ He was puzzled. ‘Don’t have many of those.’

  ‘This one’s called Alice.’

  Arthur scratched his head, sending waves of cedar wood Best’s way. ‘Alice …?’

  ‘Servant of Maud Forrest up at Chilton House. I’ve been told she used to hire you sometimes when she went shopping in Commerce Road …’

  Best left that hanging in the air. There was a long pause while Arthur’s eye continued darting about, before it eventually came to rest on the inspector.

  ‘Oh yes. Now I recalls.’ He spread his hands in explanatory style. ‘You carry so many, it gets a bit confusing.’

  ‘Alice,’ said Best again.

  ‘Right. Right. A little woman? That her?’

  Best nodded. ‘Maybe having only one eye makes it harder to get a good look at people?’ he said quietly.

  He sensed that Arthur was about to agree but then got the drift and stopped himself.

  ‘With driving as well.’ Best paused. ‘I mean, is it safe? You not being able to see on one side?’

  ‘Oh, yeh! Course it is!’

  Best sucked his teeth. ‘I mean,’ he said, applying the pressure a bit more, ‘especially the right eye. When you pull out from the rank you can’t see what’s coming, can you?’

  ‘Yes, I can! Yes, I can! I’ve never had no accident!’ He sounded desperate now. ‘I’m used to it, ain’t I? Been like this since I was a kid and been driving since I was ten.’

  The silence which Best had allowed to grow after his veiled threats began to bear fruit.

  ‘I’m remembering much more about the lady now,’ Arthur Herring confided. ‘As I said, she’s little … and skinny, speaks her mind, and has a funny accent.’

  ‘Tyneside,’ said Best.

  ‘Er, yeh,’ Arthur nodded, now eager to spill anything he knew.

  ‘First time I picked her up was a Monday afte
rnoon in Commerce Road. I was on the way back to Station Road to meet up with the four twenty-seven,’ he explained. ‘After that, if I was about on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons around quarter past four, I would pick her up and drive her ’ome.’

  ‘Isn’t Commerce Road a long way from Station Road?

  ‘Oh, yeh. I only goes to the station on days and days about. Take turns with the other Bluchers.’

  ‘So, what was Alice like?’

  ‘Like I said, little and had a funny accent. Tipped not bad for a woman.’

  Best said nothing. Nervous people always felt bound to fill silences.

  ‘Didn’t say much at first. She didn’t take to any soft talk, I’ll tell you that. But she got a bit more friendly when I h’understood ’er better.’

  ‘Ah, your winning southern ways didn’t go down well at first then?’

  He wasn’t sure how to take that but eventually grinned and admitted, ‘She said southerners was too “fussy” for her.’

  He paused. ‘It’s hard to chat natural-like to folk when you’re perched up there, you knows –’ he nodded at the driver’s box high above the forecarriage – ‘an’ they’re inside.’

  There was another short silence. Then Arthur slowly turned his head right around, giving Best a full view of the good eye and the eye patch. ‘What d’you mean,’ he said, ‘what was she like?’

  Detective Sergeant Smith just happened to be passing Chilton House in a hansom cab when the weary cleaning lady emerged, shopping list in hand.

  He stopped the cab a little way down the road, out of eyeshot of the villa.

  ‘Like a lift?’ he called down to her. ‘You look a bit tired.’

  The woman stopped and gazed up at him, quite startled that anyone should notice that she was tired, much less offer to save her feet.

  ‘Remember me?’ Smith continued cheerfully as he opened the knee flap to admit her. ‘We came to see Miss Forrest this morning.’

  His behaving as though her acceptance was a foregone conclusion, as Best had taught him to do, overcame her uncertainty. She climbed bemusedly aboard.

  ‘Big house to keep clean, all on your own, that one,’ he said.

  She nodded breathlessly.

  ‘You doing the shopping as well?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Well, I’m off to Commerce Road. Is that any good to you?’

  She nodded again. ‘Yes, save my poor old legs, that will.’

  ‘Save your legs more if they got the tradesmen to call, wouldn’t it?’

  She shook her head. ‘Miss Forrest won’t have them calling. Says she wants some black pudding and the butcher only brings it if it’s been ordered.’

  She paused, uncertain as to whether she ought to be sharing Miss Forrest’s shopping secrets with this young man. Then she shrugged. ‘Anyway, she doesn’t want to be bothered with any more callers just now. So, her being in mourning an all, I’m to take back what she needs.’

  ‘Oh, understandable, I suppose. Being in mourning and all.’

  ‘Yeh.’ She shrugged again before adding mischievously, ‘She don’t mind the jeweller coming calling though.’ She waved an envelope in the air.

  Well, well. Jeweller. Now why would that be?

  ‘Oh, I expect she needs a bit of jet for her mourning dress,’ Smith said.

  ‘Nah. She’s got that.’ The cleaning woman paused, then added with a curl of the lip, ‘Dunno why she’s bothering. Not going to be anybody there, ‘cept her and a couple that’s paid to be, is there?’

  ‘I suppose she wants to do the right thing.’ Smith paused. ‘You’re right though, it does seem to be an odd time to be buying jewellery. But maybe if it cheers her up – I know it would my wife and—’

  ‘Oh, she’s not buying,’ the woman exclaimed, ‘she’s selling.’

  ‘So,’ said Detective Inspector Best, as he inspected his pint at eye level, ‘it looks like our Miss Forrest might be in financial difficulties after all.’

  Smith nodded. ‘The cleaner says she saw her getting a whole pile of jewellery together.’

  ‘Hmm,’ mused Best. ‘Maybe her bosom friend Alice was rooking her of more than the odd leg of lamb.’

  Arthur had eventually admitted to some such chicanery, but swore it had gone no further than petty fraud. A pound of tea here, a dozen eggs there – which he then sold on and shared the profits with Alice.

  ‘Maud learned about it,’ Best went on, ‘and …’

  ‘Killed her? Why would she do that when she could just sack her or dock it off her wages?’ questioned Smith.

  ‘Right,’ nodded Best, ‘and why poison? I mean, if it was in anger?’

  ‘Well, some women think it’s the only way they can strike out – even against another woman.’

  None of it made any sense, Best thought. He contemplated the mutton pie advertised as the Alexandra Tavern’s best ‘ordinary’, and which looked just that.

  ‘There’s something here that we’re missing,’ he said.

  They’d been to the police station, where a telegram had confirmed the poison test as positive. ‘It’s time to show our hand.’

  ‘What we need to do,’ said Best firmly, ‘is to search that house thoroughly and examine Miss Forrest’s financial affairs minutely. Let’s go and get us a warrant.’ He paused and sighed. ‘But, of course, you know what would happen the minute we do that?’

  Smith nodded. ‘It’ll get out. Huge crowds will descend on Chilton House and Wood Green Police Station. Terrible rumours will fly. Witnesses will be forewarned … thinking there’s going to be a reward …’

  ‘And we won’t be able to move for gentlemen of the press breathing down our necks. Tell you what,’ Best said, taking a chance and biting into the pie, ‘let’s go and talk to Maud again, first. Friendly like.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Maud, who was pouring tea into rose-sprigged bone china cups, seemed more at ease this time. She looked better, too. The funeral outfitters’ sewing needles had clearly been flying, for her mourning dress now fitted snugly around her lean frame.

  She had even managed to soften her manner a little. Clearly, thought Best, she was getting over the initial shock of losing her sole companion and was now more herself; hence the tea, which Best readily accepted in the cause of smoothing the way.

  He had not, however, got around to breaking the news that the poison test had proved positive.

  ‘The shop assistants all speak well of Alice,’ he said kindly. ‘They say she was very straightforward to do business with.’ He paused and smiled. ‘They found her a bit hard to understand at first – the accent, of course. I expect she found them the same?’

  Maud nodded. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. She was only a simple lass from the country, you know.’ She drew herself up. ‘At least she was when I found her.’

  ‘Really?’ Best waited for more revelations but, when they were not forthcoming, he enquired, ‘Did she live with her parents?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Maud exclaimed. ‘Never even knew them, did she? She was brought up in the Wykham’s Children’s Home.’ She sniffed. ‘Dragged up, more like.’

  ‘How sad.’

  ‘Aye, it was horrible!’ she spat out suddenly. ‘They treated her like dirt, they did!’ She paused, a little embarrassed by her outburst, then added more quietly, ‘That’s why she was so happy with me, of course. She always said I was her family now.’

  ‘You must be pleased that you gave her some happiness.’

  Maud looked away as if surprised and embarrassed by the idea. She plucked uncertainly at the fingers of her lace gloves. ‘Oh, aye. I suppose.’

  ‘So, did she never meet her parents?’

  She shook her head. ‘They died of cholera when she was only just a bairn. That’s why she was in the home.’

  ‘No other relatives?’

  ‘No,’ she agreed firmly. ‘If there were any they kept well out of the way when they were needed.’

  Best frowned. ‘Whe
n was that?’

  ‘When she was growing up of course, man!’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  The woman clearly had a short fuse. But she had had a terrible shock. Or could it be that she was nervous due to fear and guilt?

  ‘Your sympathies do you credit, Miss Forrest,’ he murmured.

  She stared at him uncertainly. Did she wonder whether he was trying to catch her out – or think this was just more southern smarm?

  Eventually, she inclined her head in acknowledgement and offered him some more ginger parkin.

  ‘No more than my duty to a poor orphan, was it? Then, it was just for friendship.’ Tears sprang into her eyes and for a moment she really did look bereft.

  ‘Well, you were obviously the only friend she had,’ said Best. He then confided, ‘We’ve certainly not been able to track down any more.’

  She looked startled that they should have been trying to do so. ‘Why should she have any friends down here? We’ve only just arrived, haven’t we?’

  Was she relieved that they had not found anybody? Surely not. If she’d done the deed, as he suspected she might have, finding another suspect should be good news. But, he came back to the question yet again, why should she kill her only friend and helpmeet?

  ‘We did manage to speak to Arthur Herring. Didn’t we?’ Smith reminded him, on cue.

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot,’ Best lied. ‘Lovely parkin this, Miss Forrest.’

  Arthur Herring’s name hung in the air until at last Miss Forrest ventured, ‘Arthur …? She shook her head. ‘That name means nowt to me.’

  ‘A cab driver. He used to bring Alice back from her shopping trips.’

  ‘Oh,’ nodded Maud. ‘That would be why then. I’d have never seen him, would I? Well, only from a distance.’ She paused then rushed on: ‘She did love going down there, to them shops, you know.’ She sat straighter. ‘Not my cup of tea – all that fussing about.’

  A note of contempt almost crept into her voice but she clawed it back with an indulgent smile. It was curious, thought Best, that she didn’t want to know more about Arthur Herring.

  He allowed the ensuing silence to stretch before leaning forward in a confidential manner and saying carefully, ‘There’s only one other thing I’d like to know.’ He paused, ‘I don’t want to upset you, you understand …’