Lefebre arrived within the hour and greeted me cordially, his silk hat in his hand. He looked much as I remembered, very much a gentleman and a fashionable one, but with a keen eye. He was, as it happened, exceptionally well turned out in a dark tailcoat and blindingly white linen. He still wore the neatly trimmed dark beard and moustache I remembered. True, there were a few flecks of grey in the beard that I didn’t recall from our previous encounter. But I’d found a grey hair or two of late in my own thatch, though Lizzie had been kind enough not to mention them. In addition to his normal fashionable appearance, I saw that he wore diamond studs in his starched shirtfront. I guessed he had some social engagement that evening and thanked him profusely for coming.
‘It is a pleasure to see you again, Inspector! If I can be of any service, I am happy to be here. I remember the case at Shore House very well,’ he added. ‘It concerned a young married lady in the family. I remember also a companion, a Miss Martin.’
‘Miss Martin, as she was then, is now Mrs Ross,’ I told him.
Lefebre raised his eyebrows. ‘Then you are indeed to be congratulated, Inspector Ross! You will, I hope, pass on my regards to her?’
I promised I would do so, while Colby fidgeted beside me.
Lefebre was aware of his impatience. ‘Well, now,’ he continued. ‘Let us take a look at this prisoner you believe to be mad.’
‘How long will it take you, Doctor?’ asked Colby.
‘At least an hour,’ Lefebre told him sternly, ‘as a first examination. You must understand that, in matters of the mind, one should never jump to facile conclusions.’
Colby flushed and looked discomfited for an instant. He rallied. ‘I must insist on an officer sitting in with you. Jennings has already attacked both his employer and Inspector Ross here.’
Lefebre was implacable in tone and manner. ‘The officer can sit outside the door,’ he said.
Colby clearly wasn’t happy with this arrangement; and I can’t say I was. If anything were to go wrong, we should be blamed. But Lefebre insisted things must be done his way.
‘You called me in,’ he reminded us, ‘because I am an expert. I do not tell you how to do your job, gentlemen. Please do not tell me how to do mine.’
So we had to agree.
‘At the least sound of any disturbance, you go straight into that room!’ Colby ordered the officer designated to sit outside the door.
When all this had been set up, Colby turned to me. ‘I suggest I send out for coffee and something to eat. Lefebre says he’s going to be at least an hour. I haven’t eaten since this morning.’
‘Nor I,’ I said. I thought wistfully of the fruit buns I’d purchased before taking the train in London. They were but a distant memory.
It took a while for the coffee to arrive, together with two mutton pies. I had travelled about the country by train and by dogcart. I’d been soaked to the skin in a rainstorm, attacked by the frantic Jennings and rendered temporarily unconscious. I suspected that in the morning I would ache from top to toe. If anyone needed that mutton pie and hot coffee, I was that man.
We had only just finished our impromptu repast when the constable who had been acting as watchdog outside the door of the interview room came to say Dr Lefebre had finished his examination of the patient.
‘Did Jennings give any trouble?’ asked Colby.
‘No, sir. At least I couldn’t hear any disturbance through the door. He and the doctor seemed to be chatting quite friendly, like.’
‘Well?’ demanded Colby impatiently, when we saw Lefebre again. ‘Is he mad?’
‘In my professional opinion, he is not insane, if that is what you mean,’ returned Lefebre. ‘I agree at the moment he’s making little sense. But, come to that, a good many people talk a lot of nonsense without being thought insane. People use the term “mad” very loosely, often quite inaccurately. The subject shows symptoms of delusion. He is also extremely distressed and depressed. It is a case with several interesting aspects to it. But, given time and care, I see no reason why he should not regain his full senses.’
Colby was outraged and moved to protest. ‘What about this business of bringing the girl back from the dead, by way of a ceremony of some sort, at Stonehenge?’
‘Ah, yes, that is particularly interesting,’ Lefebre told us. He leaned back and steepled his fingers, as though he sat in his own comfortable consulting rooms, not on a plain wooden chair in Colby’s small office. ‘He does believe he could have done that. But that is part of his delusion.
‘À propos of Stonehenge,’ Lefebre went on, ‘it is a fascinating place and feeds the imagination. As you may be aware, there have been several committees set up over many years to discuss what to do about the stones; whether to restore them upright or not, for example. I understand the hero of the Napoleonic wars, Lord Nelson, was very interested in them. I hope you will not suggest he was mad?’ Lefebre turned a mildly questioning gaze on Colby.
‘Admiral Nelson, as far as I’ve ever heard it said, never conducted pagan ceremonies at the site, or believed he could conjure up a spirit from the Underworld there!’ Colby defended himself. ‘I’m not talking about committees of learned scholars and distinguished gentlemen amateurs. I’m talking of a man I have in custody who has exhibited extreme violence on at least two occasions. His former employer lies in the infirmary as a result. And Inspector Ross here…’ Colby indicated me. ‘He was knocked unconscious.’
Lefebre cast me a professional look. ‘Got a headache, Ross? Feel queasy, unsteady? Double vision? You appear to have retained a good memory of the event.’
‘Excellent, thank you!’ I retorted. ‘I am not concussed.’
‘Well, if you start showing any symptoms, consult your medical man. To return to the ancient stones. We know very little about them, almost nothing. When we, mere mortals, do not know something, we are tempted to invent. It may be because we are genuinely curious. It may be because we have a romantic streak in our natures. It may be because we fear what we don’t understand and we are anxious to grasp at any explanation! We wish to be comforted, however outlandish the form of comfort. The thing is, we should be wary of dismissing what others consider to be explanations.’
Lefebre smiled briefly. ‘Many people believe those stones to have special significance; and not all of them are by any means mad. I have been told there are some very respectable people, of standing in the community, who go there and conduct ceremonies of their own invention.’
Lefebre made a vague but elegant gesture of one well-manicured hand. ‘They dress up in robes of their own design, and progress around the stones, and so on. They often don’t like to talk about it to – outsiders. Doubtless they fear mockery. I do not suggest this unfortunate fellow you have in custody is connected with them. But, like them, he is defensive as regards his ritual. He is an Englishman with liberties of which, as a nation, we are justly proud. His beliefs, however eccentric, seem to me to be his own business. They do not make him a madman.’
‘Look here, he carried out a murderous assault on his employer and left him for dead,’ argued Colby. ‘He also attacked Inspector Ross. That makes it police business!’
‘Indeed, it does,’ agreed the doctor. ‘But, if I may remind you, you did not call me here to talk about criminal matters. You asked me here to comment on his state of mind; and his attempt to carry out some ritual or other at Stonehenge. I repeat, I do not consider him to be insane, only extremely confused and deluded.’
Colby simmered in silence.
Lefebre withdrew a handsome gold half-hunter from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. ‘I will send my opinion in writing in the morning. Now, I am engaged to dine with friends and have already had to send a note warning I would be delayed. I should not like that delay to be extended any further. A pleasure to meet you again, Inspector Ross, and my most sincere regards to Mrs Ross.’
‘All right, then,’ said Colby to me when Dr Lefebre had left in a private carriage. ‘Jennings is sane.
It doesn’t mean we can get any sense out of him.’
Nor could we, for Jennings, having explained himself at length to the doctor, had now fallen into a prolonged sulk and refused to speak to anyone.
‘Well, Colby, perhaps you can come up with another idea?’ I asked the local man.
Colby thought and then snapped his fingers. ‘Worth a try!’ he said.
‘What is?’ I asked suspiciously and a little alarmed.
Colby’s new idea was to send for the chief elder of the fundamentalist chapel Ezra was known to attend from time to time. I wasn’t at all sure about this, as I have encountered a few tub-thumpers in my time, and have found them difficult to stop, once started. But I went along with it.
The elder turned out to be a very small, very energetic man, with a high-pitched but commanding voice. Listening to him address a congregation must be an interesting experience.
His arrival did rouse Ezra from his gloomy silence. He again admitted he’d attacked his employer, Tobias Fitchett. The quarrel had been over the wooden lasts. Yes, he had taken the lasts to Stonehenge in an attempt to lure Emily’s spirit back to the land of the living. The elder grew agitated himself at this point, and had to be prevented from roaring condemnation and hellfire on his congregation member for performing pagan ceremonies. Colby thanked him for his help and sent him about his business. Jennings at last put his signature to a confession of attacking Tobias Fitchett.
This was enough for Colby. He had a perpetrator for the attack at Fitchett’s shop. The death of Emily in London was my investigation.
‘Do you think he did it?’ asked Colby. ‘I know old Fitchett said Jennings found the girl in London. But how did he get close enough to carry out any attack?’
‘Every instinct I have tells me he killed her,’ I muttered.
‘You will need more than your instinct, Ross!’
‘I believe I do have more. You remember Ezra at Emily’s funeral, in his black coat and bowler hat?’
‘I remember him,’ said Colby, scowling. ‘I thought he looked like one of the undertaker’s men.’
‘But in a different situation, not on the way to a funeral?’ I demanded. ‘If you had seen him walking down a city street in poor light, tall, slender, black-clad? You might suppose him some kind of clerk, mightn’t you? A solicitor’s clerk, perhaps?’
‘I might,’ agreed Colby. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘The butler of the house where Emily was employed observed such a person visiting Emily secretly in the garden. Fitchett told us Jennings went to London and found Emily there. It was Jennings, I feel sure, the butler observed.’
‘Well, he’s a dangerous fellow, sane or crazy,’ replied Colby.
I sent a telegram to Scotland Yard, asking for it to be delivered at once to Superintendent Dunn, who by now would have gone home for the day. Everyone else’s supper had been disturbed; there was no reason Dunn’s should be the exception. I explained I was staying overnight at a hotel in Salisbury and requested Sergeant Morris to be sent down the next day to assist me in escorting a suspect, possibly violent, back to London.
So that is what happened. Morris arrived at noon the next day, saying the superintendent was very worried about the costs involved, but cheered to hear we had a suspect in custody. Jennings gave us no trouble at all. He appeared to enjoy the train ride back to London.
Chapter Nineteen
I’ve met quite a few killers since I joined the force. If they have anything in common, it is that they believe themselves to be very clever fellows. They are also capable of adopting all manner of behaviour: polite, sullen, angry, charming, anything that suits their present situation. No shape-shifting monster of ancient legend can outdo their gift for metamorphosis.
Thus, when I sat down in London to question Ezra Jennings about the death of Emily Devray, I was not surprised to find he no longer appeared the crazed figure that had felled me to the ground at Stonehenge, nor the weeping creature blaming us for the loss of his beloved. He looked almost exactly as he had when I’d first set eyes on him in Fitchett’s shop. His pale face was bland, his manner composed, but for a faint, mocking gleam in his eye. He sat on the other side of the table between us, with his hands neatly folded one upon the other; and raised his eyebrows slightly, as if awaiting my order for new boots.
Morris stood over by the wall and Biddle sat with his notebook ready to record any confession.
I began with a question Ezra was not expecting. ‘You brought a local newspaper from Salisbury to London, to give to Emily Devray. Did you think it would interest her?’
‘Yes!’ said Ezra indignantly, before he could stop to consider the implication of his reply.
‘So, then, you tracked her down to her address here in London. You have already admitted as much to Tobias Fitchett, so I know of it. How did you manage that? It must have been difficult.’
‘Oh, no,’ returned Jennings serenely, ‘it was easy.’
‘How did you do it?’
Ezra leaned forward confidingly and with a faint glow of triumph in his expression. That is another thing about murderers I’d noted in the past. It is not enough they believe themselves clever; they want the listener to agree. Jennings wanted my admiration.
‘I knew she would be leaving the house in Salisbury where she’d lived with Mrs Waterfield. The cook there, Mrs Bates, she’s a member of the congregation at our chapel. She would know the date of Emily’s departure, so I got in the way of falling into conversation with Bates after the services on Sunday. I’d ask if the future of the house was decided, and whether she’d be able to keep her place. She told me when it had been sold. She said she would be staying on, as the new owners required a cook. She was very pleased about that. But Miss Devray would be leaving on the Tuesday that coming week.
‘I made an excuse to Mr Fitchett about going to see the dentist on account of an aching tooth. I loitered about near the house, keeping an eye open for the carrier’s cart come to fetch away Emily’s boxes. Sure enough, I saw the fellow carry them out and I followed his cart. He took them to the railway station and they were stacked up on the platform, awaiting the London train, to be put in the goods van. They had big labels on them. I just strolled over and read the address. It was all quite straightforward.’ Jennings opened his hands and spread them, as if to assure me of the innocence of his actions.
It sounded devious to me, but it was clever. Fitchett had said his apprentice was sharp. Biddle, in the corner with his notebook, was scribbling furiously. Jennings did not appear to notice him, or care if he had.
‘You had struck up an acquaintance with Miss Devray in Salisbury?’
Jennings gave me a look of reproof. ‘Certainly not! She was a respectable young lady. I had seen her about the town, of course, and noticed her. But she’d been nicely brought up. I couldn’t approach her in the street and begin to chat. She had a quiet, decent way about her, and of course, she was pretty. I never thought I’d ever see her closer. Not even in church, you know, because she and Mrs Waterfield attended the cathedral services. I’m a chapel man. I don’t hold with processions with crosses and choirboys in lacy shirts.’
He paused in reflection. ‘Then she came to the shop with Mrs Waterfield. That changed things.’ A faint smile touched his lips at the memory. ‘They ordered the boots and Mr Fitchett drew out the pattern on paper, from her stockinged feet.’ Jennings’s gaze misted. ‘They were beautiful. She had perfect feet. You never saw anything so lovely. I helped Mr Fitchett create those boots, you know,’ he added proudly. ‘I made the heels. Mr Fitchett said I did a very good job.’
Jennings’s look of satisfaction faded and was replaced by a more familiar, accusatory expression. ‘What have you done with those boots?’
‘They are with the rest of her things: evidence, like the wooden lasts.’
‘I still want those back, you know.’
I was not going to be drawn into that argument again. ‘After that, did you try to strike up acquaintance
with Miss Devray? I understand you didn’t try before. But now she’d been in the shop.’
Ezra hesitated, fidgeted, and seemed torn between refusing any further information and a desire to impress me. The desire to show off won.
‘Well, I wouldn’t have spoken to her before she came to the shop, as I said. But that was like an introduction, wasn’t it? Now she’d know who I was. So, yes, I did see her one Saturday afternoon on the cathedral green.’
‘You had been waiting outside her house and followed her?’ I guessed.
Ezra gave me a sour look. ‘In a manner of speaking. Well, anyway, she was walking on the green and I went up and spoke to her very civil, took off my hat. I apologised for the intrusion but reminded her I worked for Mr Fitchett and I was wondering if she was satisfied with the boots. She was wearing them!’ added Ezra proudly.
‘She said yes, thank you, very satisfied. I said I would tell Mr Fitchett.’ A dusky pink appeared on his pale cheeks. ‘I told her I had made the heels.’
‘Was she impressed?’ I asked cunningly.
Ezra smiled. ‘Yes, I think she was. She ought to have been. I made them very well. Mr Fitchett had said so. Anyway, she asked me how long I had been working for Mr Fitchett. So I told her. She asked me to give him her regards and then, well, she walked on.’
‘Did you tell Mr Fitchett about this encounter?’
Jennings gave a testy sigh. ‘Of course I didn’t. I’d never have heard the last of it!’
‘Did you get another chance to speak to her?’
He shook his head. ‘Not in Salisbury, no. Well, the old lady died, of course. And the house was all in mourning and Miss Devray didn’t go out much.’
‘Now, tell me what happened after the house was sold and Miss Devray left Salisbury. Did you just go up to London and seek her out? Knock on Lady Temple’s door?’
‘Of course not!’ Jennings’s shocked expression indicated he now thought me totally ignorant of polite behaviour. ‘I saw in the local paper that the new owners had moved into Mrs Waterfield’s old house. They were a reverend gentleman and his sister, name of Bastable. Mrs Bates, at chapel, was all smiles about it. I thought Emily would like to know all about it, too, so I wrote to her and told her I would be coming to London on a Sunday, and I would call on her, if she permitted.’
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