Murder at Madame Tussauds

by Jim Eldridge

  He’d decided yesterday, after quizzing Bruin and Patterson, that the men had had no involvement in the killings of Dudgeon and Bagshot. They’d also been open in telling him the whole story of how they ended up on the barge on the River Lee Navigation canal, the part that their debt to Gerald Carr had played in it, and their rescue from having their fingers chopped off, by the intervention of this Michaels bloke, the same one who was now dead on a mortuary table. Jarrett was certain they’d had nothing to do with bumping off Michaels and dumping his body in Piccadilly Circus, because last night they’d both been at their job at Tussauds, keeping watch on the museum, as verified by Tussaud himself, the cleaners, and the local beat copper who’d stopped to chat to them through an open window.

  * * *

  Daniel left Abigail to sort through her notes on her previous trips to Egypt to prepare for her lunch meeting with Doyle and returned to the offices of The Telegraph in the hope of catching Joe Dalton. He was lucky, Joe was there, but just about to leave.

  ‘A dead body’s been dumped at the base of Eros in Piccadilly Circus,’ Dalton told him. ‘I’m on my way to see Inspector Jarrett at Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Is this to do with the bank robberies?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Dalton. ‘If the gossip I hear is right, it’s more likely to be this bloke you were talking about who’s involved in the Tussauds business. This Michaels character.’

  ‘Michaels!’ exclaimed Daniel. ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘Only as far as the front door of the Yard.’ Dalton smiled. ‘I’m told you’re barred.’

  ‘I am, but I need to talk to you, so we can talk on the way. And, after you’ve seen Jarrett, maybe I can buy you a coffee?’

  ‘Okay, but not at Freddy’s,’ said Dalton. ‘It won’t do my reputation at the Yard any good to be seen associating with you.’ As he headed for the exit with Daniel following, he asked, ‘What did you do to upset Superintendent Armstrong so deeply that he bars you from the Yard? I remember it wasn’t that long ago you saved his life.’

  ‘Armstrong sees me and Abigail as competition. Not helped by you and your colleagues in the press praising us and comparing us favourably with Armstrong and Scotland Yard.’

  ‘The purpose of the press is to hold the establishment to account,’ said Dalton.

  ‘I thought it was to report news,’ said Daniel.

  ‘There’s that as well,’ agreed Dalton. ‘I shouldn’t worry, Daniel. You’ve been here before with Armstrong. He gets upset and then it blows over. So, what did you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘We went to see Caroline Dixon yesterday.’

  ‘Ah! Great woman.’

  ‘So you said, but she threw us out and told us not to come bothering her again.’

  ‘You must have said something to upset her.’

  ‘We did when we asked if she could throw any light on who might have been involved in what happened at Tussauds.’

  ‘You asked her that?’

  ‘We’ve been asking everyone involved in the wax business – or wax artistry, which is the preference of Maurice Greville – to try to make sense of what happened.’

  ‘She wouldn’t like that,’ said Dalton.

  ‘She didn’t. As I said, she asked us to leave.’

  ‘It’s because that life is behind her now. In the past, and she doesn’t like to be reminded of it.’

  ‘That’s what Abigail said.’

  ‘And Abigail is right. You have to understand that Mrs Dixon has re-invented herself. She’s no longer a menial worker in wax, but someone who is bringing about a revolution in health standards in this country with her support for the Nightingale Fund. And not just in this country; the Nightingale Fund is training nurses across the world.’

  ‘Tell me about the fund,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I assume you already know about Florence Nightingale’s work.’

  ‘I know about what she did in Crimea,’ said Daniel. ‘The Lady with the Lamp. Saving the lives of soldiers.’

  ‘The really important stuff came later as a result of her experiences in Crimea,’ said Dalton. ‘Especially her emphasis on hygiene and nutrition. Did you know that the improvements Nightingale made in the military hospitals in the Crimea reduced the death rate from forty-two per cent to just two per cent?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Daniel.

  ‘Nightingale identified the cause of most deaths to be the result of poor or non-existent hygiene, bad nutrition, stale air, and the overworking of soldiers. During her first winter at Scutari in Turkey, four thousand soldiers died there, and ten times more died from illnesses such as typhus, cholera and dysentery than from battle wounds. She was so appalled by the conditions at the military hospitals that she persuaded the British government to get none other than the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself to design a prefabricated hospital that could be built in Britain and transported to the war zone. That first hospital at Renkioi had a death rate of less than one tenth of the death rate at Scutari.’

  ‘Impressive!’ said Daniel.

  ‘The key to her work was having properly trained nurses who were aware that hygiene and nutrition were the keys to recovery of patients. When she first went to the Crimea in 1854 she took with her thirty-eight women volunteer nurses that she’d trained herself. It was those nurses that kept people alive, and Nightingale reasoned that if this could be done in times of war it could also achieve the same result in times of peace. As result, the Nightingale Fund was set up to train nurses, and when people realised the importance of the work she was doing, money poured in. In 1860 the fund had raised enough money – £45,000 – to set up the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas’ Hospital, and those first trained nurses went out across the nation to establish her nursing principles in hospitals, including: Cumberland, Liverpool, Edinburgh. Trained nurses went abroad to spread the word. America’s first nurse, Linda Richards, was trained by Nightingale and went on to develop nursing schools across the United States.’

  ‘I’ve never heard you so eloquent,’ said Daniel. ‘You sound like one of those religious converts you see on soapboxes at Hyde Park Corner.’

  Dalton glared at Daniel.

  ‘I am proud to spread the word of what Nightingale has done,’ he said sharply. ‘Not just for soldiers but for the whole population. Her emphasis on hygiene forced the government to introduce mains drainage, which saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. Millions, in fact, when these same issues were addressed across the world. It’s that which will be her legacy, not just being known as the Lady with the Lamp.’

  ‘I’ve offended you,’ said Daniel. ‘For which I apologise. I meant no disrespect, Joe.’

  Dalton nodded. ‘I’m sorry if I seemed sharp with you, but I believe in what she’s doing, and those who are supporting her, like Caroline Dixon.’

  Feather, accompanied by Sergeant Cribbens, returned to Billings Bank to find it very busy with customers, all of whom seemed happy to queue and wait for one of the counter positions to be free. There seemed to be no sense of impatience to be served; instead there appeared to be quite a lot of intense whispered gossip going on in the queues.

  ‘Any bets that most people are here just so they can say to their neighbours and friends they went to the bank that had been robbed,’ Feather muttered to Cribbens.

  ‘Rubberneckers.’ Cribbens scowled in disapproval. ‘You get the same when there’s been a fatal accident, everyone turns up to gawp at where it happened.’

  They made their way through the crowd to the manager’s office and knocked at the glass in the door. There was a pause before the door opened, during which time they heard the sound of keys being turned in locks and bolts being slid into place.

  ‘Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted,’ murmured Feather.

  The door opened and the anxious face of Septimus Morris peered out, the anxiety gave way to relief when he saw who his visitors were.

  ‘Inspector
,’ he said. ‘Please, come in.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. This is my sergeant, Sergeant Cribbens, who’ll be working with me on the investigation into the events that took place here.’

  Morris nodded a brief greeting to the sergeant, then concentrated his attention on Feather. ‘Do you have any news, Inspector?’

  ‘Not yet, sir, but we are following definite lines of enquiry.’

  ‘What lines?’

  ‘At this moment, it’s too early to say. But I’d like to talk to Mr Crum again, if I may, to clarify one of two things.’

  Morris’s face showed unhappiness as he said, ‘I’m afraid Mr Crum is no longer available.’

  Feather regarded him, puzzled.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘Has he left the bank?’

  Morris shook his head, then lowered his voice to almost a whisper as he said, ‘Mr Crum drowned last night. He was found in the Regent’s Canal. Reports suggest he was …intoxicated.’

  ‘Drunk?’

  ‘If you prefer, yes. I don’t understand it; when he applied for employment here he stressed that he was a teetotaller to impress us with his personal responsibility.’

  ‘Which police station dealt with the incident?’

  ‘Camden Town in Parkway. They were the ones who called to advise us of the tragedy. Everyone here is terribly upset, especially in view of …what happened.’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ said Feather sympathetically. ‘Do you have his address? I’d quite like to talk to his family.’

  ‘He lived with his widowed sister, a Mrs Pugh,’ said Morris. ‘I believe the police from Camden Town have already advised her of his tragic demise.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Feather as Morris opened a drawer for Crum’s details and wrote down his sister’s address. ‘Did Mr Crum show any signs of disturbance since the – er – event here yesterday? Was there any sign that he might try to take his own life?’

  ‘No, absolutely not,’ said Morris. ‘He was upset by what had happened, but we all were.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Morris,’ said Feather, taking the address from him. ‘I’ll report back to you when we have any information.’

  As he and Cribbens left the bank, Feather said, ‘Well, Sergeant, what do you make of that?’

  ‘You said he was on edge when you talked to him,’ said Cribbens.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And defensive.’

  ‘He was.’ Feather nodded.

  ‘Sounds like guilt to me, sir. What do you think? He topped himself?’

  ‘Or someone helped him on his way,’ said Feather. ‘Let’s see what Camden Town nick have got on it, and then we’ll see what his sister has to say.’

  Daniel was sitting in an Italian coffee house a short distance from Scotland Yard – one further away from the building than Freddy’s and not so frequented by the local police, when Joe Dalton joined him.

  ‘It’s Michaels, sure enough,’ confirmed Dalton, sitting down. He turned and gestured to the woman behind the bar, who smiled and nodded as she set to work preparing a coffee for him, her easy manner proving to Daniel that this was an establishment at which Dalton was a regular.

  ‘Why are you here, covering this, instead of Robert Peake?’ asked Daniel. ‘I thought he was doing the Tussauds story and you were writing about the bank robberies.’

  ‘I’m doing both at the moment,’ said Dalton. ‘Peake’s ill with a bad cold. He wanted to come in, but I told my editor we couldn’t have him in or the whole office could catch it. That’s one of the things I learnt from writing about Nightingale. Hygiene and prevention.’

  ‘So what did Jarrett tell you?’

  ‘It seems that Michaels was killed by someone pouring plaster of Paris down his throat and letting him choke to death.’

  ‘Plaster of Paris?’ echoed Daniel, bewildered. ‘That’s a new one for me. I’ve never heard of anyone being killed that way before.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Dalton.

  ‘Did Jarrett have any information on Michaels? There’s some confusion as to if that was his name. I met someone who did business with him who told me he said his name was Stafford.’

  Dalton shook his head. ‘What else have you got on this Michaels character? Or Stafford?’

  ‘I believe he was tied up with a local crook called Gerald Carr.’

  ‘Gerald Carr?’ said Dalton with a shudder.

  ‘You’ve heard of him?’

  ‘Everyone’s heard of him,’ said Dalton.

  ‘But I’ve never seen anything about him in the pages of the newspapers.’

  ‘That’s because they value their fingers too much.’

  ‘Ah, you’ve heard about that,’ said Daniel. ‘Have you ever met him?’

  ‘No, and I’ve no wish to. You?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘When I worked at Scotland Yard. Abberline pulled him in on suspicion of murder. We had to let him go. He had an alibi with plenty of witnesses, plus someone else turned up who said they did it.’

  ‘A fall guy?’

  ‘Definitely. We were fairly sure that Carr threatened his wife and family to make him come in and confess.’

  ‘What happened to the man? Was he convicted?’

  ‘No, he was killed in prison while he was on remand awaiting trial.’

  ‘Carr?’

  ‘That’s what we all suspected, but we couldn’t prove anything.’

  ‘He sounds like the sort of character who eliminates people who could land him in trouble if they opened their mouths.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ said Daniel.

  ‘D’you think he’s the one who did Michaels? And the two watchmen at Tussauds?’

  ‘Michaels, possibly, if Carr thought he was cheating him. But why the two watchmen?’

  ‘Because they knew too much.’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘It doesn’t make sense, Joe. The two watchmen were involved in something with Michaels, some criminal undertaking, but whatever they were up to never came to fruition. It was unfinished business, by all accounts. So why kill them before it was all done and dusted?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Daniel sat in the office of Isobel Morton, owner of Morton’s of London Wax Museum and gave her an apologetic smile.

  ‘I’m very sorry to trouble you again, Mrs Morton,’ he said, ‘but I’m intrigued by this business of young Thomas Tandry.’

  Isobel Morton, a tall, statuesque woman in her sixties with coiffured hair dyed a shade of purple, looked back at him, her expression equally concerned. ‘I’ve been worried about him ever since he vanished,’ she said. ‘I’ve reported his disappearance to the police, but they don’t seem unduly concerned. They say they’ll look into it, but they also tell me that many young boys of his age vanish, as if that explains it. I’ve told them that he wasn’t that kind of boy. He’d never done anything like that before.’

  ‘How long has he been with you?’

  ‘Four years,’ said Morton. ‘We took him on when he was nine, and that’s why I can’t believe he disappeared of his own accord. He had less than a year to do to complete his apprenticeship, and I’d already told him he had a job here with us at Morton’s. There was no reason for him to vanish.’

  ‘Had here been any disagreements between him and any other members of your staff lately?’

  ‘No, absolutely not. If there had been I’d have known about it. We are very close here, almost like a family. He’s grown up with us. Yes, Thomas was ambitious, but to the best of my knowledge no one at any other establishment that works in wax had approached him about working for them. And if they had, I’d have known about it. The world of wax is a very small world, Mr Wilson.’

  Inspector Feather and Sergeant Cribbens stood at the reception desk just inside the door of Camden police station and listened to the duty sergeant as he related the events of the previous night.

  ‘Eight o’clock it was when the local beat copper was alerted to the fact that there was a man floating in the canal. He pulled
the man out with the help of passer-by, but the bloke was a goner. Luckily he had a wallet in his pocket with his name and address in it, so we were able to find out who he was. Most time when bodies are pulled out of the canal there’s no knowing who they are. And if they’ve been there for a day or two it’s even harder to identify them. The head swells up and they get bloated—’

  ‘Yes,’ interrupted Feather with a genial smile. ‘I’ve seen a few in my time. Not pleasant.’

  ‘Arthur Crum, his name was. But you know that already.’

  ‘Yes, the bank told us,’ said Feather. ‘They also said he was drunk.’

  ‘Indeed he was. I don’t know how much he’d put away, but he reeked of it.’

  ‘What did his sister say when she was told? Did she give any idea of why he might have wanted to do away with himself?’

  ‘No. I didn’t see her myself, but the copper who did told me she was in a state of shock when he told her. She couldn’t believe it. Insisted he was a teetotaller, never drank alcohol of any sort.’

  ‘Never drank alcohol of any sort,’ mused Feather as they walked away from the station.

  ‘They all say that,’ said Cribbens. ‘My neighbour says he signed the pledge and he never touches a drop, but at least once a month I find him lying drunk outside his front door. “It’s the devil,” he said to me once as I picked him up. “It gets inside a bottle and calls to me.”’

  Arthur Crum’s sister, Mrs Esmerelda Pugh, lived at Chalk Farm, a brisk stroll from Camden Town police station, and she was still in a state of shock and distress when Feather and Cribbens arrived at her house in a small terrace in one of the back streets.

  ‘I don’t understand it!’ she said, and she dabbed at her tears with her handkerchief. ‘What was Arthur doing by the canal? He hated the canal. Said it smelt bad and had all sorts of things in it. He was very fastidious, was Arthur. Very particular about things like that. Cleanliness.’

  ‘And you say he was a teetotaller?’