A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) Read online

  ‘Mrs Jameson and Jenny must both come to us tonight!’ Lizzie said at once. She turned to the landlady. ‘They will soon take Mr Tapley away. There will be things to be done here by the police. You won’t want to be here at that time. The missing key – it may have been taken by the intruder. Please come to us.’

  Mrs Jameson looked up at me. ‘Will it be in order for me to go up and pack a small bag, Inspector?’

  I admit I hesitated. We had not yet conducted a thorough search of the house. We had no idea if the murder weapon was still here. Normally I’d intervene to prevent any article leaving the house, especially if possibly concealed in a bag. Suspicion, unfortunately, must fall on this respectable widow lady and her maid, as it falls on all unlucky enough to find themselves involved in a murder inquiry. But, I told myself, if Mrs Jameson had wanted time to hide some small object (in this case the fatal ‘blunt instrument’), then she’d already had the opportunity to do so after sending Jenny to fetch me. She’d had at least fifteen minutes alone in the house to wash blood off and dispose of it. She wouldn’t have waited until I arrived.

  In the same way she could have taken Tapley’s key in an attempt to muddy the water of the investigation. She had but to return it to her own ring of keys.

  Jenny, likewise, could have disposed of incriminating material before falling through our back door into Bessie’s arms, bawling her eyes out. The girl had appeared demented with terror when she arrived at our house, but she might also be a clever little actress.

  I thought guiltily that there’d already been enough time for the villain to get halfway across the country, let alone slip out of the house, and toss the murder weapon into the Thames, only a step away.

  ‘Of course,’ I told Mrs Jameson. ‘Pack whatever you’ll need for a few nights, but only that, if you please.’

  When she’d left us, I asked Lizzie what else she had learned from the lady and was given a precise account of the conversation.

  ‘Lizzie,’ I asked, ‘would you say Mrs Jameson was a foolish, naive or gullible woman?’

  My wife shook her head decidedly. ‘No, I’d say she was a practical one, very capable and intelligent.’

  ‘Then our Mr Tapley,’ I replied, ‘was also a very clever fellow, it seems to me. He talked his way into this house and into renting the two rooms upstairs, without a single written reference of any significance. I don’t count the letter from his previous landlady who probably knew as little about him as this one does. He persuaded Mrs Jameson to let him have a key to the house, and gave no information about himself or his history while he was here, nor where he went during the day. He received no visitors that we know of before today.’

  ‘You think he let his murderer in?’ Lizzie asked quietly.

  ‘We have to consider it. However, it does appear he was attacked while reading. He wasn’t sitting and talking to someone. I’m inclined to believe the killer slipped in through the kitchen.

  ‘But it’s possible Tapley may have sneaked in a visitor or two on prior occasions. He has been in contact with someone outside of this house, Lizzie, and I’ll have to find out who that person is! Otherwise, supposing this not the work of a thief so incompetent he overlooked a gold watch, we are looking for a total stranger. A man who, for no obvious reason, walked into an unknown house and there killed a man he’d never seen before.’ I shook my head. ‘I find that difficult to accept.’

  There was another rumble and clatter of wheels and hooves on the cobbles outside. I got up and glanced from the window. A sombre, windowless van had drawn up. Two men were unloading a plain deal coffin.

  ‘Lizzie, would you go up to Mrs Jameson and ask her to stay in her room for the next half an hour? Keep her company and the door shut. The van is here to take the victim to the mortuary and it’s not a sight either of you would wish to see.’

  Lizzie hurried away up the stairs while I opened the door to the mortuary workers. So much activity so late at night had occasioned a lot of interest up and down the street. Curtains were twitching at bedroom windows. Faces showed as pale ovals against the panes, caught by the gaslight in the street lamps. By morning few would be in ignorance of what had happened here. I showed the men up to the room where Tapley lay and watched them lift his battered body into the coffin. Their faces were expressionless and their movements brisk and capable. They did not speak, even to each other. To them it was merely another death. They had done the job before.

  Tapley was carried downstairs and loaded up. The van clattered away. Curtains at upper windows fell back into place.

  I went back and climbed the stairs to the first floor. I had forgotten Jenny, but she was seated on the topmost step of the spiral stairway down to her kitchen, a bundle in her arms. Biddle stood over her. It looked as if he had supervised her packing, if rolling her nightgown and hairbrush into a shawl could be called that. His attitude looked custodial. It was not that which bothered Jenny.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to scrub that carpet,’ she said resentfully.

  ‘But not tomorrow,’ I told her. ‘There will be police officers in the room tomorrow.’ I could hear the voices of the two women in Mrs Jameson’s room and rapped on the door panels. ‘You can come down now.’

  Lizzie opened the door. Behind her I could see Mrs Jameson, a small portmanteau held in one hand and her Bible gripped in the other.

  ‘We are ready to leave.’

  I asked Mrs Jameson if she wouldn’t mind first accompanying me around the house to find out if anything was obviously missing or disturbed other than in Tapley’s room. The police would search the premises later, I explained. But if there were any sign of theft, we would have our motive.

  ‘You want me to come, too, ma’am?’ asked Jenny.

  ‘Let her come too,’ I said. ‘She may notice something.’

  So Biddle found himself carrying both the portmanteau and Jenny’s bundle downstairs. Lizzie followed him.

  Both women declined to enter the murder room itself but we looked everywhere else. They assured me nothing appeared to be missing or to have been moved. The sad signs of an evening so dramatically interrupted were seen in the dining room, where the table was set for the meal never taken. The kitchen smelled of the roast pork congealing in its pan; but it had mysteriously disappeared from sight.

  ‘I put the joint in the meat safe in your larder, missus,’ announced Bessie to Mrs Jameson. ‘If you was to leave it here on the table overnight, rats would get it.’

  ‘If I might have the house key, ma’am,’ I asked. ‘So that we can secure the premises when we’ve finished. You shall have it back in the morning.’

  ‘Of course,’ she murmured.

  When all four women had left the house, Biddle and I conducted a quick second search but turned up nothing helpful. In particular, we didn’t find the missing house key. It looked as if the killer had taken it. If so, it could only mean he intended to return. Why? Had he, too, been disturbed and had no time to search for something? Not the gold half-hunter. Although a prize, it would not be worth risking his neck to return for that alone. We couldn’t yet rule out a burglar – Harper’s use of the word ‘jemmy’ worried me – but I felt strongly that this was premeditated murder. We’d have to work hard to discover what motive lay behind it.

  ‘Right, Constable!’ I said to him. ‘What about that girl, Jenny? What did she have to say? Did you ask her if anyone at all called here during this past week? Any hawkers, peddlers, tradesmen or delivery boys? Beggars?’

  ‘The baker’s roundsman came yesterday,’ Biddle said, taking out his notebook and consulting it ostentatiously. ‘That’s his regular call, sir. The same man has been doing the round as long as Jenny’s worked here. That’s nearly two years, sir,’ added Biddle. ‘That’s how long Jenny has had a place here, I mean. She’s not London-born. She comes from Chatham where her pa and brothers work in the dockyard. But she’s got an auntie in service with a Quaker family in Clapham and that’s how she comes to be working for Mrs James
on. Her auntie found her the place. She isn’t a Quaker herself, Jenny, but she likes working in a Quaker house because it’s a good recommendation if she wanted to seek another place later. No drinking nor gambling nor bad language and so on . . . and everything kept as clean as a new pin.’

  I begged Biddle to cut short Jenny’s personal history and future prospects and get on with the events leading up to the fatal day. It came down to no one calling at the house except the bread roundsman at the kitchen door that day, and a pair of Quaker ladies who’d come to take tea with Mrs Jameson the previous afternoon. The milkman’s cart came down the street both days. Jenny had gone out with a jug to fetch milk from him. He did not come round to the back of the house. Mr Tapley had received no visitor that Jenny saw, but she agreed he might have let someone in himself and taken that person upstairs unbeknown either to her or her mistress. Had she ever suspected he’d done that? No, not that Jenny had ever discovered. But she didn’t think Mr Tapley was the sort of man with anything to act furtive about. He didn’t know anyone to come calling; that was her opinion. She had not seen him on the day of the murder. She supposed he’d gone to a coffee house in the morning as usual, because he’d left his rooms when she went up to make the bed and dust. Everything had looked normal.

  ‘Just his books everywhere,’ Jenny had said. ‘All them words, thousands of them. Wonderful, really.’

  Biddle had been inclined to agree.

  Jenny could read and write and had once looked into some of Tapley’s books. But the print had been too small, the words too long and unfamiliar, and the subject matter dull.

  ‘He was a quaint old gentleman,’ Biddle had written verbatim in his notes, ‘and very old fashioned in his clothes and ways. He always spoke of taking a “dish” of tea. But he was always very polite.’

  The mystery – why anyone should deliberately set out to murder such a man – deepened. My policeman’s suspicious mind had already decided there must have been more to Thomas Tapley than had met the eye. But would we be able to find out what it was?

  Biddle had established one last point and it was an important one. The back door, in the kitchen, was not secured during the day because Jenny was ‘in and out’ all the time. The woodpile to keep the kitchen range going, the coalhouse from which to feed the parlour fire, and the pump supplying the household’s water needs, were all in the yard. Mrs Jameson also kept a few chickens in a shed in the back yard. Jenny fed them and collected their eggs.

  At this news I asked if the chickens were let out to roam free during the day. Biddle said there was a moveable wire cage where the birds spent the daylight hours before being locked inside again at night. Jenny had taken Biddle outside to show him.

  ‘It means Jenny can move the chickens around from spot to spot and they clear out all the beetles and such on the ground. But they were all back in their shed by five. I asked her to take me outside and show me,’ added Biddle, ‘because the other one, your maid Bessie, kept interrupting and I wanted to get Jenny on her own.’

  I could imagine the scene and thought Biddle shrewd to have got Jenny away.

  ‘It’s pity it didn’t rain earlier today,’ I grumbled. ‘We might have had some good footprints in the yard.’ I thought about the chickens. ‘Might they have squawked if disturbed by a stranger coming through the yard?’ I wondered aloud.

  But Biddle thought otherwise. ‘They wouldn’t raise the alarm, sir, begging your pardon. It’s geese what cackle when strangers come near them. Not chickens, silly things they are. Geese are as good as a watchdog. My grandpa keeps them. He’s got a pig, too, in his backyard and it’ll eat all your rubbish. A pig’s very useful.’

  I deferred to Biddle’s superior knowledge of animal husbandry, and praised the lad for having done a good job interviewing the servant girl and checking the yard. I told him to write it all out nicely so that it would go on record. Biddle blushed red to the tips of his rather prominent ears and began to thank me fulsomely until I ordered him to stop.

  Oh, and Jenny didn’t have a follower, Biddle threw this fact into the pot. Mrs Jameson wouldn’t allow it. ‘Though she’s quite pretty, that Jenny,’ opined Biddle.

  I told him to go home now and to concentrate on the report he was to write in the morning; and not start getting unprofessional thoughts about witnesses.

  Biddle now turned even redder and I feared his head would burst into flames in the only case I’d ever seen or was likely to see of spontaneous combustion.

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  DAWN WAS breaking before I made my own way home. I like this time of day and even tired as I was, and worried about this new case, I breathed in deeply of the morning air that was still relatively fresh and unpolluted. The first workers were on their way to their places of labour, picking their way round the puddles that dotted the cobbled street and had gathered in the gutters. Chimneys puffed out the first smoke of the day as housewives or sleepy servant girls got the range lit. I could easily guess the topic of conversation over the breakfast would be all about the comings and goings at the Jameson house the previous night.

  No one was yet rattling about in our kitchen and the parlour fire had long gone out. But the room was still warm and I settled down in the chair before the ashes and fell asleep.

  I was awoken later by movement and voices and opened my eyes to see Lizzie standing over me with a cup of tea in her hand. I glanced up at our clock and saw I’d been sleeping for about an hour and a half. From the kitchen came the sounds of breakfast being prepared by Bessie with Jenny’s help.

  ‘Mrs Jameson will be down shortly,’ Lizzie informed me. ‘I hope the poor woman was able to get some sleep. I slept like a log,’ she added frankly. ‘I’ll tell one of the girls to take a jug of hot water upstairs so you can shave.’

  Later when I came down, shaved and wearing a clean shirt, Mrs Jameson and Lizzie were at the breakfast table. I asked our guest how she’d slept.

  ‘Not well, Inspector, though the bed was most comfortable and I’m very grateful to you and Mrs Ross for your kindness. But I won’t impose on you for a second night. I keep worrying about the locksmith. I do know of one. I think he will come at once. I must get back to my house immediately. I don’t like it to stand empty. Only think, if someone has the key he may have returned and left with everything of value he could find.’

  ‘Constable Butcher was keeping an eye on the house,’ I assured her, but she looked unconvinced.

  Before she and Jenny left us, I sat them down in our parlour and interviewed them again. I began with Jenny, as I hadn’t spoken to her at length myself and she had found the body. I was worried she might start rolling about and roaring again but under her mistress’s eye she behaved quite sensibly. Biddle had thought her pretty; I was inclined to agree. She had a pink and white complexion of the sort traditionally associated with milkmaids, round blue eyes and copper-coloured hair. I wondered again about followers. Surely such a pretty girl must have a sweetheart? Perhaps he lived back in her hometown of Chatham. Or perhaps he had crept up the back stairs and struck down Thomas Tapley, dead on the carpet.

  ‘Your mistress sent you to see what kept Mr Tapley from coming down to supper. Tell me exactly what you did, anything you noticed or heard.’

  ‘I only knocked on the door, sir, and called his name. I didn’t see nor hear nothing strange before that. Honest, sir, I never let no one into the house that day. Someone might’ve come in through the kitchen when I wasn’t in it, and gone out that way, but he took an awful risk, sir, because either me or Mrs Jameson could’ve walked in at any time. He was pretty clever at getting in and out of folk’s houses, if he did.’ Her round blue gaze stared at me guilelessly.

  I have met such a gaze more than once and from a hardened criminal, so that, in itself, didn’t impress me. But, to be fair, she seemed a girl who wore her emotions on her sleeve and not a natural deceiver. Nor did I wish to frighten her. Honest or guilty, if they think you believe them, they relax and a
re less guarded in their speech.

  ‘Yes, yes, Jenny. Go on from when you knocked on the lodger’s door.’

  ‘He didn’t answer, sir, so I thought perhaps he’d dozed off in his chair, him being an elderly gent. He’d done that once or twice before. So I opened the door and looked in, thinking I’d wake him. Ohmigawd . . .’ Jenny broke off and gave her employer a furtive look. ‘Sorry, madam, it sort of slipped out. I meant to say, oh my goodness . . .’

  Even Mrs Jameson looked a little amused at this hasty correction.

  Jenny carried on, ‘He was lying on the carpet all bashed about and bleeding. I never saw such a sight in my life. Not never. My pa works in the docks at Chatham and they have accidents there sometimes and men gets mangled but I bet they don’t see sights worse than that one I saw. I hopes never to see such a horrible thing again, no, not for the rest of my days!’

  When I’d been a young boy, working down in the mines of my native Derbyshire, I’d seen mangled bodies, too. It had still shocked me to see one in a private house and Jenny’s terrified display the previous day was to be excused.

  Jenny then returned to insisting no one had visited or called at the door during the day. The kitchen door had not been locked because her duties took her into the yard at frequent intervals; but she couldn’t understand that anyone had slipped in past her.

  ‘He was a wicked sneak thief, sir, that’s what he was. Poor Mr Tapley disturbed him and the horrid creature beat the poor old gent’s brains out.’

  Jenny might be right, at that, but I still didn’t think so. The way Tapley lay sprawled suggested to me the murderer had disturbed him, and not the other way round. But I left it there for the moment and told her she could go back to Bessie in our kitchen while I spoke with her mistress.

  Jenny got up, still protesting vigorously that it wasn’t her fault if anyone had got in. Her day was a busy one. She couldn’t be expected to have eyes in the back of her head. I set aside my theory – never a strongly held one – that some admirer of Jenny’s had been responsible for the savage deed. The girl might be possessed of a vivid imagination and she might be inclined to panic – I would not easily forget her roaring on our kitchen floor – but she was shrewd enough for all that.