A Better Quality of Murder: (Inspector Ben Ross 3) Read online

  ‘Think what you like. If I say I’m Daisy Smith, you show me proof I’m not.’

  ‘Well, Daisy Smith,’ I replied, ‘tell me what has scared you so.’

  ‘You did!’ she retorted at once. ‘Grabbing hold of a girl like that. You gave me a very nasty fright.’

  ‘Perhaps I did, but someone else had already given you a nastier one.’

  Another silence ensued. In it, a foghorn echoed mournfully across the river. There was a creak of wood beneath our feet and a man’s voice shouting a warning. Someone was foolish enough to try navigating the river in these conditions.

  ‘It was him,’ she said suddenly in such a quiet voice I almost missed it.

  Just as softly I returned, ‘Then tell me who he is, Daisy. I can protect you from him.’

  She gave an odd forced little laugh. ‘Ain’t no one can do that! He’s beyond your grip, Inspector Benjamin Ross. Beyond yours and mine!’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  Another waft of beer breath and of flowery scent so strong that it made my nose itch. She had placed her lips close to my ear.

  ‘Because he’s dead already, ain’t he? It was the River Wraith. He crawls out of the Thames on foggy nights and prowls about the streets. He’s wrapped in his burial shroud and hides in doorways and alleys.You never see him nor hear him until you feel the touch of his hand and you smell him. Like the grave itself he smells, of dead things and blood. That’s what got a hold of me, back there. His cold hands came out of the fog and grabbed me by the throat. But I got away from him.’

  ‘How?’ I asked sceptically. Although the girls spin all kinds of tales when they’re arrested, this was a new one on me.

  In a voice suddenly briskly practical she said, ‘I shoved me fingers up his nostrils!’

  Ah, yes, a girl plying her trade on the streets has to learn all those tricks. But she had supplied my next line of argument.

  ‘Daisy,’ I said, ‘he’s no ghost or wraith or whatever you care to call him. Not if he can feel pain. Whoever had hold of you, he’s flesh and blood.’

  ‘So why does he only come out in the fog?’ she demanded.

  ‘It hides him,’ I said simply. ‘And he wants to be hidden. So do most criminals or people with bad intentions.’

  ‘They don’t all walk round wearing their shrouds,’ countered Daisy.

  I was determined to persuade her to abandon this fanciful version of her attacker and challenged, ‘You saw him in this shroud?’

  That did make her hesitate but then she came back as confidently as before with, ‘I haven’t. But others have. A friend of mine, she saw him clear. She was waiting about for custom but, the night being so bad, she hadn’t found any and she was afraid to go home without any money.’

  This had the ring of truth to it. I know there is usually some lout who takes the girl’s money. The same ‘man friend’ is also quick with his fists if she comes back with nothing to show for her efforts. I wondered if this girl, Daisy, also had a ‘protector’ or had managed to survive without falling into such unsavoury hands.

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Well, she heard footsteps and thought maybe, here’s one! So she stepped out in front of him. The fog parted sudden, like it sometimes does, and there he stood right in front of her. She told me all about it, the shroud, everything. All white, it is. It covers him all over, his head as well except for his eyes. Only he doesn’t have any eyes. Only big black empty sockets where eyes ought to be. So there!’ she finished triumphantly.

  I didn’t believe in shrouded ghouls in any weather. But there was a mystery here and I wanted to get to the bottom of it, preferably in more comfortable surroundings. I was getting chilled standing there and my companion, in her light gown, must be nearly frozen.

  ‘Let’s go back across the bridge to the Strand side,’ I suggested. ‘We can find a coffee house. You could do with a hot drink and you can tell me all about it.’

  She squirmed in my grip. She had changed her mind about accompanying me. Perhaps she was confident she had shaken off her pursuer or thought my presence had frightened him away.

  ‘I ain’t going anywhere with a policeman, not even an inspector! It’s no coffee house we’ll go to. I’ll end up down the police station and find meself up in front of the magistrates in the morning!’

  ‘I’m not arresting you, Daisy. I want to help! Listen to me. Have you been attacked by this so-called wraith before? When did he first appear?’

  ‘Perhaps as long ago as six months,’ she said vaguely, adding with more spirit: ‘You can ask the other girls. More than one of them’s been lucky to escape him. I’m not making it all up.You can ask any of them that works near the river, Waterloo side or Strand side.’

  ‘And you say these other girls have actually been attacked, some of them as long ago as six months?’

  ‘Yes, they have! But only on nights like this, when the fog comes down and you can’t see him. But he can see you, just like it was a clear sunny day! That’s why he’s no human being like you and me. Here I am standing right by you. Yet you don’t know what I look like; nor do I know what you look like. I can’t see clear in the fog. You can’t, neither. But the River Wraith, he can!’

  With that she suddenly twisted like an eel, her arm escaped my grasp and before I could grab it again she was off, running full pelt again to the Strand side of the bridge.

  ‘River Wraith!’ I muttered furiously. ‘The girl’s brain is addled.’

  But someone had attacked her. Someone or thing had frightened her into headlong, blind flight.

  I resumed my walk across the bridge. I could smell the massive locomotives distinctly now and hear them growling and clanking as they negotiated the tracks in and out of Waterloo Station. The engine drivers were taking it slowly and wouldn’t pick up speed until they had cleared central London and visibility improved. That meant I was nearly home. I’d just about reached the other side when I again heard a footfall coming towards me, but this time a measured tread, a man’s boot. This pedestrian was making prudent progress. He had no cane. I would have heard it tap on the ground or against the balustrade. Perhaps, as I had done, he felt his way by hand.

  Another silhouette loomed up: male, on the short side, wearing a long dark coat and carrying some kind of bag. I guessed he was a traveller, just arrived and come from the railway station.

  ‘A poor evening, sir!’ I called out sociably to him.

  A grunt was the only reply. He quickened his step and hurried past. I was able to make out that he held his handkerchief to his face against the bad air and was obviously not inclined to remove it to return my greeting.

  Or perhaps, with the best will in the world, I couldn’t help sounding like a policeman.

  But if he realised I was a policeman, he also knew I was walking in the opposite direction to his. With every step the distance between us lengthened. Perhaps a little thing like that settled his mind.

  It’s something to be making for your own front door and my step quickened and lightened and I quite forgot about my encounters on the bridge for the moment until, would you believe it, it happened again!

  A second figure cannoned into me and again a female voice let out a cry of surprise and then, from the fog, came a familiar voice.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you!’ it gasped.

  The speaker scuttled to one side to get round me but I reached out and caught her arm.

  ‘Lizzie? Is that you?’

  ‘Oh, Ben,’ gasped my wife. ‘It’s you! What an awful evening!’

  Chapter Two

  Elizabeth Martin Ross

  BEN’S FIRST question, when he realised the identity of his catch in the fog, was to demand what on earth I was doing out and about.

  I told him I was looking for Bessie.

  ‘What’s Bessie doing out in this murk?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ I told him, ‘it has to do with apples.’

  I heard Ben give a gusty sigh which
turned into a cough as fog seeped into his throat.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said. ‘You won’t find her in these conditions and she may have made her own way home by now.’

  I wasn’t sorry at the prospect, so home we stumbled, holding on to one another like a pair of blind people.

  When we married we invested what money we had in our little red-brick terrace house not far from Waterloo Station. We were able to do this because the previous owner was my former employer, my godfather’s widow, ‘Aunt’ Parry. It had been among the many properties she owned and one of the best of them, built only twenty years before. (Other buildings she owned were frankly slums and no one would choose to live in them, but the rents kept Aunt Parry in comfort!) However, she generously allowed us to purchase our new home at a very good price.

  Having laid out our capital for the house, however, there was no question of us being able to furnish it down to the last saucepan and also pay servants of the better sort. (Although Ben is in receipt of a very respectable salary with prospects of it being increased.) Anyway, the house wasn’t large enough to warrant ‘staff’. But if I were to be spared the rough work, I would need help. In Dorset Square, where I had been living with Aunt Parry, Bessie had been the lowliest staff member, the kitchen maid. She was more than willing to escape the eagle eye of the Parry cook, Mrs Simms, and come to be our maid of all work. So we moved into the house, all three together.

  I had always thought, when I was at Dorset Square, that Mrs Simms was unduly strict with Bessie. But then, I had never had charge of a fifteen-year-old girl; and after a very short time I began to have some sympathy with Mrs Simms.

  Bessie was hardworking and loyal and I knew her to be intelligent and quick-witted. But she also possessed an independent mind and was certainly not shy of giving her opinion. In addition she proved unexpectedly artful. The problem had been exacerbated, not long after we set up house, by Bessie discovering temperance.

  My first knowledge of this came when Bessie, after we had been only a month in the house, meekly asked if she might have permission to go to a regular prayer meeting at five p.m. on a Sunday.

  I hadn’t expected Bessie to develop an enthusiasm for religion but it seemed a reasonable request, even laudable. Nevertheless, I asked one or two questions. One of Mrs Simms’s recommendations, when she handed Bessie over to my charge, was a darkly whispered, ‘You want to watch out for followers, Mrs Ross!’

  I must admit Bessie isn’t the prettiest girl. She has a scrawny but wiry frame and, given that the poor child has been employed to scour pots and scrub floors since the age of twelve, her hands are roughened and red enough to belong to a forty-year-old. Add in frizzy mouse-coloured hair and crooked teeth, and ‘followers’ wasn’t the word that first sprang to my mind when she begged her permission. But I did ask what kind of prayer meeting it was, where it was held and who conducted it.

  I learned it was run by a Reverend Mr Fawcett in a nearby hall and was an offshoot of the temperance movement. I consulted Ben.

  ‘I’ve seen enough violence and crime originating in drunkenness,’ said Ben, ‘if Bessie wants to “sign the pledge” it’s fine with me.’

  It would have been acceptable to me, too, but Bessie’s new-found interest extended to a desire to ‘spread the word’. In a nutshell, Ben and I were expected to shun the Demon Drink, too. It wasn’t that we did drink very much. Ben had an occasional glass of porter with his supper. During his time in London he had come to like this strong dark ale, very popular with the porters at London’s meat and fish markets. A bottle of porter on the table is unsightly, so on the rare occasions we had guests I removed the porter and substituted a bottle of inexpensive hock.You can see, we hardly kept a cellar! Porter or hock, it had to be drunk with Bessie looming in the background like a Greek chorus. She didn’t wring her hands, but she had mastered the sorrowful shake of the head and the reproachful look.

  ‘Ignore her,’ said Ben, who was amused by the pantomime, ‘she’ll soon get tired of it.’

  So Bessie got away with that and moved on to a more openly expressed criticism.

  I found her in the kitchen, standing over the washing-up, gazing at a pair of wine glasses, and shaking her head dolefully.

  ‘I can’t do it, missus,’ she said as soon as I approached. I did wish she wouldn’t call me ‘missus’ and had suggested various alternatives, but Bessie had decided in her own mind what my title should be. Ben was always referred to as ‘the inspector’ and addressed as such.

  ‘You can’t wash up, Bessie, why not?’ I asked.

  ‘I can wash the pots and dishes,’ said Bessie, ‘but not them glasses as have had strong drink in them. If I do, I’m encouraging you and the inspector in what I know is wrong.’

  My instinct was to shout, ‘Rubbish! Get on with the dishes!’ But for once I managed not to say the first thing to come into my head. I had a better idea how to deal with this.

  ‘Oh, I see, Bessie. Well, yes, I have been thinking it might be better if you left the glassware to one side and I’ll wash that. The glasses were a wedding present from my Aunt Parry and I shouldn’t like them broken.’

  Bessie turned to me, her face a picture. She opened her mouth but, for once, no retort came out. I picked up the offending glasses and put them to one side. Bessie washed up the dishes with much clattering and clanging of the pots but otherwise in a mutinous silence. For some time after that I was repeatedly asked, ‘Are you sure you want me to wash this plate, missus? I might break it.’

  She would gaze at me innocently when she put the question, but I had won that round and she knew it.

  On that day, the day of the fog, we were to have pork chops for supper and I discovered, when I went into the kitchen to prepare the meal, that we had no apples for the accompanying sauce.

  ‘There were two apples in the bowl, Bessie. What happened to them?’

  ‘The inspector put them in his pocket, missus, when he went off this morning.’

  ‘But they were cooking apples, sour.’

  ‘I did tell him,’ was the serene reply. ‘But he took ’em just the same. He’ll have a horrible ache in the guts. Do you want me to run to the greengrocer and get some more?’

  ‘Stomach, Bessie, not “guts”,’ I corrected automatically and hesitated. The fog, gathering fast all afternoon, was now a real pea-souper.

  ‘It ain’t far,’ said Bessie. ‘I know the way. I’ll keep close to the wall.’

  Against my better judgement, I agreed. In normal weather it would have taken her fifteen minutes at the most. The shop was only just round the corner. Even adding on time for the fog, she should have been back easily in half an hour. But when there was still no sign of her three-quarters of an hour later, I threw a shawl round my shoulders and went out to look for her. Instead I’d found Ben.

  We hurried back to the house as fast as we could. As soon as we were through the front door I was listening for Bessie, in the kitchen, but there was no sound. I made sure the kitchen was empty and came back to Ben.

  ‘No luck?’ he asked, ‘I’ll go and look for her.’

  As he turned back to the door I detained him.

  ‘There’s no chance of finding her in this, Ben.You’ve only just arrived home. Sit down and warm yourself by the fire and if she’s not back in another twenty minutes, perhaps, well, I don’t know what we can do.’

  Ben looked unhappy. ‘She would choose tonight of all nights!’

  ‘Why? What’s so special about tonight?’

  Ben hesitated but eventually told me about his encounter with the girl on the bridge. ‘It doesn’t mean any harm has come to Bessie, but I don’t like her being out so long.’

  ‘That sounds terrifying,’ I said, worried. ‘But is it true? Do you believe the girl? About the shrouded figure, I mean?’

  Ben hesitated before answering. ‘I know it sounds fanciful, but she swears the other girls working in the area know about him and one of them, she says, actually saw his face.’ He gave
a hiss of frustration. ‘I wish I could find that girl and get a description, any detail would help. First, though, I have to find Daisy Smith, if that’s her real name, and ask her the name of the girl who got a glimpse of the Wraith’s face. But I know nothing about Daisy, other than she’s a street-walker and wears a hat with feathers on the top of it.’

  The gaslight gleamed on something stuck to the lapel of Ben’s overcoat. I stretched out my hand and gently detached it, holding it up. It quivered in the draught, a single thread of a colour almost scarlet in its intensity.

  ‘We know one thing,’ I said. ‘She has bright red hair.’

  Ben uttered an exclamation and took the hair. He hurried into the parlour to the desk where we kept writing materials and, taking a fresh sheet of clean letter paper, carefully folded the hair inside it in a little packet. On this he wrote, ‘Daisy Smith’ and the date.