A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) Page 7

  As I’d already guessed, Jenny would soon be seeking a new place, Quaker references in hand.

  ‘If you leave here during the next few weeks, you must leave us the address of your new place of employment,’ I told her. ‘In case we need you.’

  ‘Whaffor?’ asked Jenny indignantly.

  ‘It’s procedure,’ I assured her.

  ‘If I get a new place, the lady there won’t want the police coming round the minute I start working there!’ Jenny declared truthfully, if impolitely.

  ‘Then I advise you to stay here for the meantime, until we’ve finished our enquiries.’

  Jenny rolled her eyes at me. At that moment her mistress called her and she hurried away without further argument.

  ‘She’ll stay, at least for the next few weeks,’ said Morris, who’d been listening. ‘She won’t have any choice. Everyone will know she’s been working in a house where the police are making enquiries. It’ll cast a shadow over her, as it were. She won’t get offered a new place soon. She’ll have to wait for it all to quieten down.’

  Now we had the house to ourselves and went upstairs to search Tapley’s rooms thoroughly.

  ‘The letter, Morris, from the landlady in Southampton, that must be somewhere. The superintendent is right in believing Tapley would have kept it. We are also looking for the missing house key. The murderer, if he has it, can’t now use it. But if he took it, I want to know.’

  We looked under the carpets. We pulled out drawers and checked to see if anything was taped to the back of one. In the end we found the letter in the place where Tapley would most obviously have hidden it: in the bookcase. We had to take out every single book and open each at every page, but we found the former landlady’s letter tucked neatly into a volume of Cowper’s poetry. The volume was bound in green cloth and I made a mental note to wash my hands carefully before I ate. Arsenic is less used now to produce the colour green, since the danger of absorbing the poison through the skin is known. But it is still to be found in older books.

  The earlier landlady’s name was Mrs Holland and she lived in St Michael’s Alley, Southampton. Mr Thomas Tapley had lodged with her from February in the previous year until the end of July. He had then moved out. He had been an excellent lodger, caused no disturbance of any kind, paid on time and had been unfailingly courteous and helpful. She was sorry to see him leave.

  ‘Well,’ I said to Morris, ‘this is what we expected. It tallies with what Mrs Jameson remembers of it. It tells us nothing new about the man. But I’ll telegraph my opposite number in Southampton. I’ll ask him to speak to Mrs Holland and find out if she knows where Tapley lived before he arrived on her doorstep with that air of trustworthiness that so impressed both landladies. Mrs Jameson says he never tried to borrow money from her; but Mrs Holland’s experience may have been otherwise.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like it from that letter,’ observed Morris, staring gloomily at the sheet of paper in my hand.

  ‘I agree, it doesn’t. But I need her to confirm it. For one thing, if she does, it confirms he had a regular source of income. I want to know what that was.’

  We didn’t, however, find the missing house key despite our thoroughness. The murderer, if he had it, would find it useless now; but it did suggest he’d meant to come back. What had he been seeking, and why had we found no private papers of any kind?

  We returned to Scotland Yard. I sent a telegraphed message to Southampton, requesting any information about Thomas Tapley who had resided briefly the previous year in St Michael’s Alley – and asking that someone go and interview the landlady.

  Biddle returned in the late afternoon, footsore and perspiring, having trudged round every coffee house south of the river in the vicinity of Waterloo Bridge rail station. He had also crossed the bridge and asked questions in the many coffee houses and cigar divans of The Strand and the immediate streets around it, on the north side. Two days earlier, Lizzie had met Tapley near Waterloo Bridge heading for the busy area beyond. Returning, quite some time later, she’d seen him again, ahead of her on the bridge this time, making for the south bank and home. I wanted to know where he’d been in the meantime.

  But Biddle’s search had been curiously unproductive. Several waiters thought they remembered a small gent in a shabby coat who came in occasionally, but he had not been a regular. Of that all the waiters were certain. They knew their regulars. Moreover, their establishments saw a fair number of small shabby men who drifted through, spending little cash and making the most of a warm room and a free newspaper. They could not be sure the man Biddle was asking about was any one of them.

  Those who thought they remembered Tapley at all, as an individual, agreed he had not been talkative. ‘Not a chatty gentleman,’ said one of them, ‘other than to remark on the weather, like most of ’em do, especially if it’s raining. They always come in from the rain talking about it – as if it never rained in London.’ Tapley? He had read the newspapers, drunk his coffee – or smoked his cigar as the case might be – and left. They didn’t recall him greeting or being greeted by anyone else as an acquaintance. But then, they couldn’t swear that the customer had been Tapley at all.

  Emerging from this collective vagueness of memory, the only thing they were certain of was that, whoever he was, he’d not been one to leave the small change for the waiter. They remembered generous tippers.

  ‘Kept moving lodgings and kept changing coffee houses,’ I said sourly to Superintendent Dunn when I went to report on my lack of progress at the end of the day. ‘He’d not wanted to attract attention or invite questions, if you ask me.’

  Dunn leaned back in his chair and rubbed the palm of his hand over his stubble of grey hair. ‘Why?’ he asked simply.

  ‘Well,’ I told him, ‘either Thomas Tapley did not want to give an account of himself to anyone or . . . or he was anxious not to leave a trail that could be followed.’

  ‘Hiding from someone?’ Dunn mused. ‘Yes, yes, just as I said earlier, on the run.’

  ‘It’s possible, sir. However you look at it,’ I declared, ‘that man had a secret.’

  ‘Then find out what it was, Ross,’ said Dunn with the serene confidence of the man who doesn’t have to do the job himself.

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  Elizabeth Martin Ross

  I HAD waited up for Ben to return the previous night for as long as I could. At last, as I kept nodding off in my chair, I went to bed. I found my husband sleeping in the same chair, before a cold fire, in the early morning. After such a disturbed night, it wasn’t surprising Bessie and I lacked enthusiasm for our usual morning tasks. I watched Ben leave, escorting Mrs Jameson and Jenny home. I wondered how he would manage the opening of what might prove to be a difficult investigation when he’d spent most of the night awake.

  Bessie, yawning, was despatched to the butcher to ask if there were any mutton chops to be had. I warned her not to linger gossiping about the events of the previous night, and to come straight home again. I set off myself to visit a lacemaker to view the progress of a commission I’d given her, to make collar and cuffs that I hoped would brighten a plain gown. My route took me by the great rail terminus of Waterloo. Here it was always crowded and I knew to watch out for my purse. It was because I was keeping this sharp lookout that, on my return from the lacemaker, I noticed Coalhouse Joey.

  It was purest chance. Joey did not want to attract attention. Attention, as far as he was concerned, generally meant trouble. Vagrancy was an offence. But my eye caught the flicker of movement and there he was, scurrying along the street, keeping to the walls, just as any of the rats or stray cats might have done. His small, skinny frame stooped almost double to avoid being spotted by shopkeepers and any forces of the law that might be about. On impulse, I called out his name. I thought he might bolt into the nearest alley and vanish into the maze of courts and lanes beyond, but he hesitated, eyeing me warily.

  ‘It’s Mrs Ross. You know me, Joey!’ I called aga
in, and beckoned to him.

  Bessie would not have approved. ‘You want to keep away from that boy, missus,’ she had told me on numerous occasions. ‘You’ll very likely catch something if you go anywhere near him. He’s got lice and nits and ringworm, and he smells something awful.’

  She was right, at least about the smell. I caught a strong whiff of it as Joey sidled towards me. I doubt he’d even been bathed as a baby or troubled to wash himself since; and the resulting layer of grey-brown served as a varnish on his skin. It was hard to imagine how he had survived infancy, or what wretched girl had given him birth. He was a child in both years and in stature; and an old man in experience. His scrawny body was wrapped in a motley collection of filthy rags. His teeth were pointed like an animal’s and a few had been lost. When I’d first become aware that he lived in our neighbourhood, I’d asked Ben if something couldn’t be done for him.

  ‘Like what?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Perhaps he could be apprenticed to a trade.’

  ‘No tradesman would take him on,’ said Ben. ‘Though he’s the right build for going up a chimney.’

  At that I held forth at length on the wrongs done to climbing boys. Ben had responded by reminding me he had begun his working life as a trapper in the Derbyshire mines. ‘Crouching for hours in the dark and cold, terrified of rats and of being forgotten at the end of a shift, left down there for ever. But for your father’s generosity, I’d still be down there, digging out the coal.’

  ‘Then you should be sympathetic to Joey,’ I’d argued. ‘I am sympathetic,’ said Ben. ‘I’ve twice caught him creeping out of our coalhouse and not run him in for breaking and entering. London is full of child vagrants, Lizzie. You can’t adopt them all.’

  That is how Joey had acquired his nickname of ‘coalhouse’. It was his habit on cold wet nights to crawl into people’s outhouses, or even into their cellars, his small frame squeezing through narrow gaps or tiny windows. It was a wonder house thieves had not sought to exploit this talent of his. Joey would leave at daybreak and the only sign of his presence might be the smudged print of a child’s hand or of a small foot in the coal dust. He didn’t steal from the properties he visited clandestinely; householders and servant girls would shrug and say, ‘It’s only Coalhouse Joey.’ Perhaps, in time, he would become a figure of folklore, like Will o’ the Wisp, or gain a more sinister reputation as he grew older, like Springheeled Jack. (Ben has told me that from time to time the police still receive reports of a claimed sighting of that strange being!)

  I had bought some apples my way back. I took one from my basket and held it out to him. Joey sidled up, with a gleam in his eyes. But, like a feral animal, he wouldn’t take it from my hand. So I set it down on the pavement. Joey darted forward to seize it, then retreated, gripping it tightly. He stared at me from beneath the matted fringe of hair that grew right down to his large dark eyes and muttered his thanks.

  ‘I haven’t seen you for some days, Joey,’ I said.

  ‘Old Butcher is after me.’ I was quite surprised to hear him speak up clearly.

  ‘Constable Butcher?’

  ‘Yus, but he don’t catch me. He can’t run. He’s too fat.’

  ‘Well, he might catch you one day, Joey. Why don’t you present yourself at the workhouse? They’ll take you in.’

  ‘I ain’t going in no work’us.’

  ‘You’d be fed.’

  ‘I gets food.’ He held up the apple. ‘Like this. People give me bits of bread sometimes. I goes round the kitchen door of the chophouses and some of the cooks know me. They give me the stuff what comes back from the dining room on the plates, what’s not eaten, you know.’ Joey’s brow creased in wonderment. ‘Folk do send it back, not eaten. A whole potato sometimes, fat off the meat, with the gravy on it . . .’ Joey looked wistful at the memory of these treats. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘I don’t need no work’us.’

  He squinted at me. ‘There’s been a murder done in your street,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Oh, you’ve heard about that, have you, then?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘O’course I have. I know everything what goes on around here. It was the little old fellow what got croaked, as I heard it.’ He looked at me expectantly.

  I realised that some sort of trade was in progress. I’d given him an apple. He wanted to show his gratitude – or ensure future small gifts of food – by offering me something in return.

  ‘That’s right. His name is, or was, Mr Tapley. Thomas Tapley.’

  ‘Didn’t know his name,’ said Joey. ‘Only that he went out walking every day, even when it rained. He’d got an old umbrella. He didn’t half look funny with it.’

  ‘Sadly you won’t see Mr Tapley again, Joey.’

  ‘Suppose not,’ said Joey carelessly. He tilted his head on one side. ‘I saw his visitor, though.’

  I was startled and tried not to show it. But I fancy Joey knew he’d surprised me because he gave a little grin of satisfaction. He had hoped to offer me some information I didn’t already have, in return for the apple, and he’d been successful.

  ‘When was this, Joey?’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t know different days. They’re all the same to me, excepting Sundays when the bells all ring. It was about three or four days, maybe a week, before he got croaked.’

  ‘Did this visitor come to the house?’

  Joey nodded. ‘But it was on the quiet. The lady what owns the house, she’d gone out.’ He paused to reflect on what he knew of the address. ‘It’s no good asking her maid for anything to eat. Some of the maids will give me a bit of bread when the missus is out of the way. But not yours, mind you!’ Joey fixed me with a resentful eye. ‘She’s a real bad-tempered one, your maid. The maid in the murder house, that one with the red hair, she’s the same, wouldn’t give me nothing, so I don’t bother to go round to the kitchen and ask. When I saw the lady leave, I stayed where I was, sitting just inside the side alley across the road.’

  ‘And?’ I prompted him impatiently.

  ‘Then I saw a young fellow come along the street. Not very big, he wasn’t. He had a black coat, with one of them high collars, and a hat pulled down over his ears, so you couldn’t see his face much. But I reckoned he was really young by the style of him and the way he walked, not plodding along like ole Butcher but light as a fevver.’

  ‘Fevver? Oh, feather . . .’

  ‘That’s wot I said.’ Joey was annoyed by my interruption. ‘You want to know or not? He crossed over to my side – I mean to where my alley was. So I squeezed m’self back in a bit more, into the shadow, and didn’t make no noise. ’Cos I reckoned he was up to something, see? He’d stopped, standing right there just a bit in front of me. I could’ve reached out and touched him. He didn’t know I was there. He just stood looking up at the front of the house. Then ole Mr Tapley, as you call him, he came to the window upstairs and looked out. He saw the young fellow, looking up at him, so he opens the window and leans out. He didn’t call out nothing. He just pointed down at the street door, and put his finger to his lips, like this.’ Joey put a grimy forefinger to his mouth in the traditional sign for silence. ‘So the young fellow crosses back over and stands by the street door. Then it opens and I can see old Tapley himself has opened it – not that red-haired maid. The visitor nips inside and Tapley closes the door real quick and quiet. He was sneaking him in, that’s what. On the quiet, you know? He didn’t want anyone knowing about him.’

  It certainly appeared so. Ben would want to hear about this.

  ‘How long did the visitor stay there, Joey?’

  ‘Not long. Well, perhaps half an hour. Then Tapley lets him out again and the young chap sets off down the street, real quick.’ Joey gave me a fleeting grin. ‘And I followed him, ’cos I wanted to know where he was going.’

  ‘And where did he go?’

  Now there was no disguising the look of triumph on Joey’s face. ‘That’s the best bit. He marches off, round the corner and down the road towards th
e river. Then I see a carriage, a closed one and a real smart affair, with a beautiful pair of horses. I like horses,’ added Joey. ‘These was the tops, a matched pair, golden chestnuts with pale yellow manes and tails. Cor, they must have cost a fortune, them horses.’

  ‘So we’re talking of a private carriage,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘No cabbie ever drove a matched pair like that, nor any old carriage for hire. This carriage was painted all shiny and polished up. The coachmen had a smart coat and a top hat, and all. The young fellow, the one that had visited old Tapley, he jumps up into the carriage and off they go down the street, heading towards the bridge.’

  This was a curious and secretive affair, indeed. ‘The visitor never came back, Joey?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not as I saw him ever. I never saw that carriage again, neither. I looked out for it because I wanted to see them yellow horses again.’

  ‘Joey,’ I said earnestly, ‘my husband will want to know about this. It’s a murder investigation and information is very important. Will you come to my house tonight and tell Inspector Ross what you’ve told me?’

  But this was asking more than the apple was worth. ‘I don’t speak to no peelers,’ said Joey firmly. ‘Not even the plain-clothes sort like your old man.’

  And in a blur of rags, he was gone, slipping away among the crowds like an eel among rocks, and out of sight.

  I hurried back to our street and to Mrs Jameson’s house. The locksmith had been and completed his task, as I could see from the scored wood of the door around a new lock. But although I beat the brass knocker loudly several times, I couldn’t summon either Ben or Morris; yet Ben had told me he had intended to take Morris there to help him search poor Tapley’s rooms. I even went down the passage leading into the back yard but the only living things there were Mrs Jameson’s hens, pecking away in their coop. The kitchen door was fastened and peering through the windows rewarded me with nothing more than a view of the kitchen range. Probably the two men had just left, and I’d missed them by minutes.