The Murderer's Apprentice

by The Murderer's Apprentice (retail) (epub)

  It had worried Dunn that Michael had left the body where it would be found immediately in the morning. But Michael had worried more that if he left it on the ground in a narrow back alley it would be found almost at once. To his mind he’d hidden it.

  ‘Thank you, Michael. If you go now with Mr Wilson, there is a constable in the further room who will write all of this down. You need only repeat to him what you’ve just told me. Then you will sign it. Can you write?’

  ‘Not well, sir,’ admitted Michael.

  ‘Do your best. If you cannot, then bring the paper back here and make your mark in front of me. I will sign to confirm that I witnessed it.’

  This was a subtlety beyond Michael’s grasp. He stared at me and remained where he was.

  Wilson left his position by the far wall and came to the desk. He tapped Michael on the shoulder, at which the giant rose obediently to his feet and shambled out.

  The butler, however, lingered and turned back to face me. ‘Sir?’ he said.

  I thought I detected some embarrassment in his voice, or something very like it. ‘Don’t concern yourself about Michael,’ I reassured him, ‘I am taking into account his disability.’

  ‘Yes, sir, it’s not quite that.’ Wilson paused again. ‘I feel there is something else I should tell you.’

  I sat back in my chair and indicated the seat opposite me. ‘Well, then, Mr Wilson, perhaps you’d like to take a seat and unburden yourself of what is on your mind.’

  Wilson, after more hesitation, took the seat indicated. Looking at him, pale-faced, cautious but obstinate, I was put in mind of a country vicar, determined to do his best by his flock, but mindful that his living depended on the squire up at the big house.

  Wilson cleared his throat. ‘It is like this, Inspector Ross. I have been in Lady Temple’s employment for fifteen years.’

  ‘That is a long time,’ I replied. ‘You were there in the lifetime of her husband?’

  ‘Yes, sir, but only briefly. I joined the household in the capacity of footman in 1855. The general was posted out to India at the time of the Mutiny in ’fifty-seven. Lady Temple did not accompany him because of the uncertainty of the situation there. The general had not been there very long when we received news of his death from a fever. It was a very great shock to us all.’ He paused. ‘It is necessary that someone in my position is at all times discreet. It would not do for me to gossip about the household, nor to allow the staff to chatter carelessly away from the house. They all understand that.’

  ‘Mr Wilson!’ I interrupted. ‘Am I to understand that you are about to tell me something you should possibly have told me before now?’

  Wilson flushed. ‘That is so, Inspector Ross. But I want you to understand my reasoning. I was not being obstructive, but I did not know it would be of any importance.’

  ‘Let me worry about the importance, if any. If it helps, I understand the delicate situation in which you may have found yourself. Please go on and, please, do not leave out anything.’

  ‘Yes, sir. It is an incident that took place some five weeks before Miss Devray met her sad end. That is why I have not mentioned it until now. I had been out to hear the preacher at Evensong at St Martin’s. It was cold, dark, and the fog gathering, but visibility was not completely obscured. I was returning home and as I began to walk down the street towards Lady Temple’s house, I saw a man walking ahead of me. I did not pay particular attention to him at first because there are always people about. He was a fairly tall fellow, narrow in build, and wore a long greatcoat, I fancy it was black, and a bowler hat, if I remember well. Not a top hat, anyway.’

  The butler paused again, so I prompted, ‘Would you say he was a gentleman, Mr Wilson, or a labouring man in his Sunday best?’

  ‘Well, neither of those, sir.’ Wilson shook his head and considered his next words. ‘He had not the bearing of a gentleman. But not a labouring man, either. He had a very steady way of walking. I thought he might be a clerk working in some professional capacity, a solicitor’s clerk, or a banker’s teller.’

  Wilson hesitated again and I urged him on once more. ‘Do go on, Mr Wilson!’

  Wilson leaned slightly forward in his seat. ‘If I had known what he would do next, I would have paid more attention. But he took me by surprise. He had been walking beside the wall of our garden. There is a door in it that is normally kept locked, particularly in winter when the gardener does not come. He stopped by the door and he knocked on it. I began to hurry my steps at once, meaning to ask what he was about.’ Wilson’s remembered shock echoed in his voice. ‘But before I could reach him, the door opened, he stepped through it into the garden and the door was shut again.’

  ‘Did you also knock, to see if it opened again?’

  ‘No, Inspector Ross, I ran down the basement steps to the kitchens. You see, I suspected one of the maids might have admitted an admirer. I was very surprised, because they know it would be strictly forbidden. Besides, none of them is young and flighty. Most of them have been employed in the household for some years. But you never know, do you?’ Wilson’s formal tone and manner briefly lapsed.

  ‘Er, no,’ I agreed.

  ‘I went straight to my pantry, where the garden keys are kept on a hook, and sure enough, they’d gone. So then I went up the basement stairs to the ground floor and took a look through the window of the back parlour. It gives a good view of the garden. I did not make a light of any kind. I did not need one. I know the house like the back of my hand! Sure enough there, in the garden, was the man I’d seen and a woman. I could not see her well, but I thought she might be quite young, on account of her slight build. My first thought was one of relief that it could not be a housemaid. They are all somewhat, well, sturdy. My next thought was that it might be Miss Devray. I was very surprised as I had always found her a very proper young person.’

  ‘Did you go out and face them?’

  ‘No!’ said Wilson firmly. ‘If I’d been sure it was a housemaid, I should have done so at once. But Miss Devray’s position in the household was not that of a servant, you understand. She sat at table with the family. She was not answerable to me.’

  ‘What about Mr George Temple? Was he in the house? You could have told him and he could have investigated.’

  ‘Mr George had gone out to meet friends. He would not be back until later. Then, as I watched the pair in the garden, the man took something from an inside pocket of his coat and handed it to the woman. I could not see what it was but it looked like a package of papers. That was another thing that made me think there might be some legal connection. He gave the package to the young woman and she took it; and appeared to be expressing thanks. Then they stood there chatting—’

  ‘In the cold and mist?’ I interrupted.

  Wilson looked embarrassed. ‘After a few minutes they went into the little shed. She unlocked the door. I think they lit the little lamp in there. It was very— a very awkward situation, Inspector Ross. Rather a delicate one, if you follow my meaning.’

  ‘And so what did you do?’

  ‘In the end, I went back down to my pantry. Whoever the female was, she would need to return the keys. I did not sit in the dark. That would be undignified. I lit a small paraffin lamp and turned the flame down very low, and I waited.’

  Wilson looked briefly embarrassed. ‘I put my prayer book on the table, so that if anyone else looked in, I would be thought to have been reading it.’

  ‘Was it long before the woman came back with the keys?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Wilson carefully, ‘it might have been between twenty minutes and half an hour. The pantry door opened and Miss Devray walked in. She was very surprised to see me! But she covered it well. “I have been outside for some fresh air, Wilson,” she said. Then she reached up to replace the keys, said “goodnight” as cool as a cucumber, and walked out. One thing I did notice: she no longer had the package of paper, if that is what it was. She had either returned it to the visitor, or she had taken i
t up to her room before coming to the pantry.’

  ‘And you never asked her about it, at a later time?’

  ‘No, sir,’ admitted Wilson. ‘She was so… so self-possessed! I did not feel it was my place to quiz her and she never offered any explanation. I did not want to trouble Lady Temple. I decided, on reflection, it might be best not to tell Mr George. I fancy he had a few doubts about Miss Devray and I did not want to…’

  Wilson’s voice tailed away.

  ‘To give him any ammunition against her?’ I suggested.

  ‘Quite, sir. I would not have wanted to be the cause of her losing her position. Nor did I want to distress Lady Temple unnecessarily. She was very fond of Miss Devray.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me all this, Mr Wilson,’ I told him. ‘You have acted quite properly.’

  Wilson looked relieved.

  * * *

  ‘Well,’ said Dunn when I had told him all this. ‘What do you make of that? A solicitor’s clerk? Is there one in the case?’

  ‘You might say there are three solicitors involved in the matter of Emily Devray,’ I said, ‘although I’ve only met two of them. One is Pelham. He acts for Lady Temple. George Temple told me that Pelham keeps an eye on him on behalf of Lady Temple. “He has his spies”, is what George told me. Pelham may have had his own concerns about a stranger arriving in the household, and acquiring influence over his client. Perhaps he sent a clerk to sound out Emily, to seek to trap her in some indiscretion, that might result in an excuse to send her away?’

  Dunn nodded. ‘Possible, I suppose.’

  ‘Second,’ I continued, ‘there is that fellow Carroway down in Salisbury. He’s a devious sort. Perhaps the situation was troubling him? He might have sent someone to make sure Emily was safe and well? Not because he cared tuppence about her happiness, you understand! But he does care a lot about his own reputation; and that has suffered following Emily’s departure from Salisbury; and the murky business of the old lady changing her will. He might have wanted to be able to rebuff any further criticism.’

  ‘So,’ asked Dunn. ‘Who is the third?’

  ‘The third legal person, unknown, could be someone acting on behalf of Anderson, the rejected suitor up in Yorkshire. Anderson told me himself he meant to wait until Emily had had time to think about her new situation before making another approach to her about marriage. He could have sent down someone to test out the ground.’

  ‘And which of them would it be in your opinion, Ross?’ asked Dunn, squinting at me.

  ‘In my mind, it was someone from Salisbury,’ I told him promptly. ‘Because I can guess the nature of the “packet of papers” Wilson fancied he saw in the poor light. Not papers, but a newspaper, folded to fit into a pocket. The Salisbury newspaper, in other words, I found in Emily’s room.’

  Dunn rubbed his hands over his face; and from behind them uttered a growl. ‘For my part I am not so quick to dismiss George Temple as a suspect. He’s run through his own money and depends on his godmother. Money makes for a powerful motive for murder, Ross! Setting aside Wilson’s story of a tall dark man tapping at the garden door, at least for the moment, and thinking of the footman’s story. What Michael had to say confirms Temple’s account of the evening the girl died, I suppose.’ He took his hands away and stared at me.

  ‘I never thought it would do anything else!’ I muttered.

  ‘Dashed nuisance,’ said Dunn. ‘If, of course, we accept Michael is not being influenced.’

  ‘He struck me as telling the truth, sir. To lie takes a certain agility of mind and he doesn’t have that.’

  ‘He could be taught a story and repeat it?’

  ‘He could. But to make it believable would also require a talent of sorts.’

  ‘Someone’s clever,’ said Dunn after a moment’s reflection.

  Someone is very clever, I thought, as I walked back to my office.

  * * *

  The fog had evaporated later that evening when I walked home; and London was busy again. All the activity slowed or brought to a halt by the smothering might of a London Particular was suddenly released and it was as if everything and everyone wanted to make up for lost time. Newspaper-sellers cried out their wares on street corners. Cabs, carts, omnibuses, the occasional gentleman’s carriage, all clattered past throwing up thick sprays of mud, water and filth. Housewives, muffled in shawls, scurried about making last-minute purchases. Petty thieves and pickpockets had emerged, too, about their business. When the citizen stays indoors, they have no target. I saw one or two familiar faces in that line of occupation. They saw me and vanished at once into the hurly-burly of the crowd.

  I reached the great bridge across the Thames and the steam from the engines in the railway terminus on the other side rose into the air ahead of me, leaving tracks of dirty white clouds against a night sky tinged with mauve.

  I stopped halfway across the bridge and leaned my forearms on the parapet, gazing down at the river. That, also, was alive again now the fog had lifted and craft of all kind passed beneath my feet. I took little notice of them. I was thinking about Emily Devray and my quest to know her story. I had learned something of her life in Salisbury and the circumstances of her coming to London. I had learned about her death. Tonight I had listened to Wilson’s story. But of Emily herself, I still felt I knew nothing at all. Yet, as I had explained to Lizzie and to Bessie, I needed to know all about her, for her to be a person and not just a corpse.

  With the little I had discovered, it would be easy to draw the wrong conclusions. Miss Eldon, knowing only what she’d observed from her window, had drawn some erroneous conclusions about Rose Bernard. Yet, on the other hand, she had not been entirely wrong. What picture of Emily could I put together?

  Three voices echoed in my brain. The first was that of Mrs Bates, the cook, who had known Emily so well. ‘An angel,’ she’d called her. Then I heard George Temple’s angry tones. ‘Everyone thought she was Miss Prim and Proper!’ And also, ‘she knew how to butter up my godmother’. Finally, there was the Emily who received a mysterious visitor under cover of night after stealthily purloining the keys to the garden door. She must have been startled to find the butler sitting waiting in the pantry when she returned there with the keys. But she had ‘covered it well’, said Wilson, and not lost her poise or shown any embarrassment. ‘Cool as a cucumber’ was his description. Did that mean Emily was no novice when it came to small deceptions? At any rate, I was left with more than one view of the same girl; and I had no way of knowing which was nearer the truth.

  Was Emily the innocent that Mrs Waterfield had feared would fall into the hands of an unscrupulous suitor, if she were left with a large sum of money? Had there ever been such a suitor, a flesh-and-blood reason behind Mrs Waterfield’s fears?

  Was Emily the unrealistic dreamer with ‘her head always in a book’ that Frederick Anderson remembered with resentment, the girl who had turned down his proposal of marriage?

  Or was she the cuckoo in the nest that George had thought her, scheming, worming her way into Lady Temple’s affection, causing Wilson concern? I didn’t know. Perhaps I would never know because I could never now meet Emily in person.

  ‘Hullo, there, gentleman! Lonely, are you, tonight? Want a bit of nice company to cheer you up?’

  A waft of strong, cheap perfume filled my nostrils. I turned and saw a mop of henna-scarlet hair under a ridiculous hat with silk flowers on it, quite unsuitable for the season. It perched atop a familiar face, though one I hadn’t seen in a while.

  She recognised me, too, at once. ‘Blimey,’ she said, ‘it’s Mr Ross!’

  ‘Daisy Smith!’ I exclaimed. ‘I am glad to see you well. But I am sorry to see you are still plying your old trade.’

  ‘A girl’s got to live!’ retorted Daisy. ‘I know you was always keen for me to go and learn to be a housemaid or some such. But I didn’t fancy that then and still don’t fancy it now!’ She put up a hand to straighten the nonsense of a hat. ‘Anyway, I’ve
got a new feller. He looks out for me.’

  ‘Have you, indeed? Well, when he starts knocking you about, let me know and I’ll have a word with him.’

  Daisy stared at me at first in horror; then burst into laughter. ‘What, and everyone thinking I’ve got a Scotland Yard man looking after me interests? You don’t want to make people think that, Mr Ross! It wouldn’t do your reputation no good, would it, now?’

  She patted my cheek and then, still giggling, marched away across the bridge.

  I had first met Daisy on Waterloo Bridge. She had come running into me as she fled a horror she only knew by reputation and legend. But that experience had not been enough to turn her away from life on the streets. There had been no persuading her. There had been no persuading Emily, either.

  I walked on homewards. Emily Devray had refused to accept Anderson because it would have meant selling herself, as she had seen it, for a comfortable home. She might have come one day to rue that decision. As Daisy had said, a girl has to live. A penniless and homeless young woman might well have ended up selling herself for far less than a large house and wealthy husband. Had Anderson attempted to explain that to her? Or had he just been angry that she couldn’t see it for herself? Had Mrs Waterfield attempted to warn Emily? Or had Mrs Waterfield, old and ailing, been angered that Emily had refused what her benefactress had considered an excellent and practical solution, marriage to a middle-aged widower, and simply washed her hands of her wilful protégée?

  Did the answer to all this lie in Lady Temple’s household? Or on the moors outside Harrogate? Or must I retrace my steps to Salisbury and start my inquiries all over again there?

  Chapter Seventeen

  I lay awake during the night, turning the problem over and over. By the morning, I was sure I had to return to Salisbury. ‘That’s where the answer lies!’ I told Lizzie over the breakfast table.

  Lizzie looked less convinced. ‘I’m more inclined to think Anderson might have sent someone to spy on Emily. Perhaps you ought to go up to Yorkshire and speak to him again?’