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

  I looked around the yard. It wouldn’t be difficult for someone to slip into it, as I had done, wait until Jenny had left her kitchen and enter the house on his way to murder. But Tapley’s earlier visitor had not come that way. He’d clearly made an arrangement with Tapley to come as soon as Mrs Jameson had left the house. He’d waited across the street, Tapley had looked out of his window for him and let him in by the front door. Why had this visitor taken the bold way in and not the surreptitious way from the rear of the house, as the murderer appeared to have done? Because, I reasoned, the mystery visitor had arrived in the vicinity by private carriage. This was someone who would no more dream of entering a house by the servants’ and tradesmen’s route than he would take a public cab to get there. Tapley’s youthful visitor had been a young gentleman of means.

  I put aside my speculations, remembering that Ben would want to hear Joey’s story before he came home that night. There was nothing for it but to take a cab and go to Scotland Yard myself.

  It seemed sensible to run to the rank at the nearby railway station, so I hurried there. I was looking for a growler, being alone and knowing that only women of dubious virtue rode around unescorted in a hansom cab. Sure enough, there was one free and waiting for hire. As I approached it the driver, who had been chatting with others of his trade nearby, spotted the approaching fare, detached himself from the group and came towards me. We recognised one another at the same moment.

  ‘Why, Mr Slater!’ I exclaimed. There was no mistaking his battered ex-prizefighter’s features.

  ‘Hullo!’ returned the cabbie. His mouth formed a wide grin revealing his broken teeth. ‘It’s Miss Martin, as I stand here. What are you doing running around railway stations? Not looking out for dead bodies, I hope?’ This was, to him, a joke recalling our original meeting at the time of my first arrival in London. He chuckled hoarsely.

  ‘Well, yes, as it happens, Mr Slater. There has been another murder and I’m anxious to get to Scotland Yard. Oh, and I’m Mrs Ross now and my husband is an inspector in the plain-clothes division of the Yard.’

  He bent a stern eye on me. ‘Is he, now? Well, I congratulates you on your marriage, and hopes you’ll be as content as Mrs Slater and yours truly. Though married to a plain-clothes jack out of the Yard, eh?’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Not that I’m surprised to learn it, mind you. You always had a funny sort of interest in corpses. Ladies do have hobbies, I know that. Only generally it’s painting flowers or bothering the poor with their good works. But your pa was a sawbones, I recollect you telling me. So I suppose it runs in the fam’ly. You certainly have a particular eye for a murder.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mr Slater, if you want to put it like that. But will you take me to Scotland Yard, as quickly as possible, please?’ There was no persuading him I wasn’t of a particularly ghoulish turn of mind.

  ‘Course I will,’ he said. ‘Jump up in the cab. I washed it out yesterday inside, all clean. I must’ve known you would come along.’

  We did make good speed. Before we parted, he wished me good luck with my investigations and hoped he’d see me again. ‘Like as not whenever a body turns up!’

  I hurried inside the building.

  ‘Hullo, Mrs Ross,’ said the young constable who greeted me. ‘The inspector’s with Superintendent Dunn. You sit down there and wait and I’ll go up and tell him you’re here, the minute he’s back in his office.’

  ‘Lizzie?’ said Ben, a few minutes later, his face registering his surprise. His voice sharpened. ‘What’s happened now?’

  I told him about Joey and the mysterious visitor to Tapley.

  ‘I shall have to find that boy,’ he said. Then he made an impatient ‘tsk’ noise. ‘Morris and I were certainly at the house this morning to search Tapley’s room and I wish I’d still been there when you came. We could have gone at once to the area where you saw Joey, and searched for him, all three of us. I shall ask that Constable Butcher or any other officer who patrols that beat keep an eye open for the boy.’

  ‘They won’t catch Joey,’ I told him. ‘He keeps both eyes well open to spot a policeman in uniform. But I’ll ask Bessie to ask among the other maids in the street to tell her if Joey comes to their kitchen door begging food scraps. He doesn’t come to ours, unfortunately, because Bessie chases him away if I’m not there. Mrs Jameson’s Jenny shoos him away, too. If I am at home and see him about, I usually give him something to eat. I really wish we could do something for him. He is very fond of horses, Ben. He could make a stable boy.’

  ‘He could hang around the mews and hope the ostlers would give him a penny or two to help out, but as to any one actually letting him take care of a valuable beast, I doubt that.’ Ben’s black brows furrowed in thought. ‘But the “yellow” horses, as you say he called them. They should be easily spotted if we knew which part of London to look in, certainly a wealthy part. I’ll send word out round the districts, to tell their men to watch out for a matched carriage pair like that, and send word to the Yard immediately.’

  Ben stretched his arms above his head and sighed. He looked tired and still had the rest of a long day ahead of him. ‘Let’s hope I hear from Southampton tomorrow or that news of the murder in the evening papers may stir up some interest. Our Quaker widow’s lodger is an intriguing case, Lizzie, but we’ll ferret out his secret yet!’

  At that moment a heavy footstep sounded in the doorway and Superintendent Dunn’s burly form appeared.

  ‘Well, well, Mrs Ross!’ he exclaimed. ‘A pleasure to see you, ma’am.’

  And what are you doing here? was the unspoken query, signalled by his bushy eyebrows rising up to his hairline.

  Ben hastily explained about my encounter with Coalhouse Joey.

  ‘What should we do without you, Mrs Ross?’ rumbled Dunn. ‘Yet again you bring us valuable information. It is a great pity we cannot employ ladies to be detectives. They seem most adept at turning up clues and witnesses.’

  How much I preferred Wally Slater’s honest opinion that I was a strange sort of female with odd interests; but that it was to be accepted. Anything rather than Dunn’s patronising smile.

  ‘Yes!’ I said briskly. ‘It is a great pity you do not employ women here at the Yard. But I sincerely hope the day will come when you do.’

  I don’t know which of the two men looked the more horrified. I beamed at them and left them to contemplate the Awful Female Future. Good. And if Superintendent Dunn wanted further proof that Scotland Yard would benefit from employing women, then I’d do my very best to see that he got it.

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  Inspector Benjamin Ross

  IT WAS frustrating to think that Lizzie had just missed me at the Jameson house. I certainly wanted to talk to that boy, Joey. If we could find him, I could still quiz him. But in the short term I didn’t have much hope of it. Joey would realise that I’d be looking for him, and he’d be keeping out of the way. Even so, he couldn’t hide for ever. The area around Waterloo Bridge Station was his hunting ground. By his own admission it was here he foraged around the kitchen doors of households and chophouses. Here they knew him and he knew where those well disposed towards him were to be found. Joey wouldn’t starve where there was a regular handout of scraps to be had. He would lie low for a while, but he would come back. Hunger would speak louder than caution.

  After Lizzie’s meeting with Dunn, she’d bounced out, skirts a-quiver, in a way that led me to fancy she had taken offence at something Dunn had said. That was a pity, because I knew Dunn admired her sharp wits. But women, or so I’ve been given to understand, are sometimes touchy in the oddest sort of ways. A simple remark on the pork chops being a little dry is immediately interpreted as the whole meal being spoiled, it all the fault of the cook. An intended compliment on always having liked to see the lady in a particular gown draws a cross remark about always having to wear the same thing. Compliment too much and that’s suspicious. Say nothing at all and you risk accusations of being
unobservant or uncaring. Of course I don’t refer to Lizzie. She is too sensible and intelligent and I hope we understand one another too well for silly squabbles of that sort. I am talking generally, based on the lamentations of my married colleagues. Mrs Morris is particularly sensitive, I gather, on the subject of her culinary skills.

  In the meantime my best hope, the following morning, was the report of the murder in the previous day’s evening newspapers. There were missing people a-plenty in London and those anxious to find them. With luck, the latter would soon be beating a path to Scotland Yard.

  By early afternoon I had had three eager visitors, all in response to the press report of the murder, all convinced that the dead man was the missing person they’d been seeking. Unfortunately, in none of these cases did the details of their missing man remotely correspond with those of our corpse.

  The callers were unwilling to be told this. They all insisted the dead man must be their absconded husband, defaulting tenant, or the man who had persuaded them to invest in a certain scheme to make money on the stock exchange. In two of these cases there was no cause for optimism at all. I did send the man whose tenant had done a moonlight flit down to the mortuary, with Biddle as escort. But it was always an outside chance. Biddle came back to say that the gentleman had not recognised the corpse and departed in high dudgeon, declaring that Scotland Yard had wasted his valuable time.

  It was just gone two in the afternoon, and, not having lunched, I was beginning to be distracted by the pangs of hunger. I was wondering whether to send Biddle out for a veal pie, when the lad himself appeared. He announced breathlessly that a Mr Jonathan Tapley presented his compliments, and his card, and wished to speak to me. He held out the visiting card, his hand trembling with excitement.

  Tapley! My heart leaped. ‘Send him in!’ I ordered Biddle, and got up to greet the visitor. I should have taken a second to read the little white card Biddle held out. I’d have been fore-warned. But, anxious to see anyone by the name of Tapley, I didn’t. I deposited it carelessly on my desk and waited with excitement equal (though hopefully better concealed) to Biddle’s.

  I suppose, having seen Thomas Tapley occasionally in the neighbourhood (and his dead body rather closer to hand), I expected to meet someone very like him in appearance, perhaps even a double. At any rate, I was ready for someone rather short and perhaps shabby. So I was taken aback when into my office strode a very tall, lean and stately gentleman, radiating authority. He wore a frock coat that was a miracle of tailoring and carried an ivory-headed malacca cane. He sat down, uninvited, and placed his spotless silk hat on my desk. His black curling hair was silvering at the temples. He was a handsome man, no denying.

  ‘You are Inspector Ross?’ he enquired. His voice didn’t exactly boom, but it resonated impressively, filling the little cubbyhole the Yard has allotted me. His manner suggested I had inconveniently called on him.

  This was all the wrong way round. I was supposed to be in charge here. I hastened to correct the situation.

  ‘I’m Inspector Ross,’ I agreed, ‘and you . . .’ I glanced ostentatiously at his card and, to my dismay, now read there, ‘J. G. Tapley Q.C. Barrister at Law’.

  Of course I had heard of him and of the highly respected and long-established law chambers of which he was a member. But he specialised in arguing or defending the legal causes of the wealthy. He had not made his reputation in the criminal courts. It followed I’d never seen him face to face in action in any trial in which I’d had an interest. I certainly hadn’t expected, when Biddle announced him, that my visitor would be that Jonathan Tapley. Whatever had brought a famous barrister to the Yard, in person, the mystery of how Thomas Tapley had come to be Mrs Jameson’s first-floor front lodger could only deepen. Supposing, of course, that the two men were connected. It would seem that my visitor, at least, had reason to suppose they were. Yet, our poor battered corpse and this distinguished gentleman sitting in my modest office? It was enough to make any head spin.

  Caught off-balance, I did my best. ‘You are well known to me by name, Mr Tapley. I am honoured to make your acquaintance, sir. In what may I be of assistance?’ So far, so good. But then I couldn’t help blurting, ‘You have some information for us, perhaps?’

  Tapley parried this effortlessly. ‘You have some information for me, I hope, Inspector.’

  He folded his kid-gloved hands over the ivory pommel of the cane and sat there, looking at me expectantly. There was something of my old headmaster about the direct stare of his dark eyes. To my further discomfiture I felt myself regress to twelve years of age, standing accused once again of fighting with my schoolfellows. I sat down hastily. ‘Perhaps you’d care to tell me what brings you, Mr Tapley.’

  Wrong, Ross, wretched boy! Remember that an act of charity brought you here. If you are not to disgrace the good name of this ancient and respected school, and grieve your generous benefactor, at least keep your wits about you.

  My visitor didn’t say it but his look expressed similar sentiments.

  ‘You cannot be unaware, Inspector, of the reports in yesterday evening’s press of the discovery of a murdered man in lodgings near to Waterloo Bridge Station. You are possibly even the origin of that news item.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I confessed. ‘The body was discovered the day before yesterday, in the evening. I made sure the news was in the press the next day. We cannot be sure of the deceased’s identity. His landlady knew very little about him. He did not speak to her of any family. We therefore have no knowledge of next of kin, and no one close to him has yet come forward and identified him. The landlady herself had only known him for about six months and he told her almost nothing of his circumstances. He may have given her a false name. Without confirmation of identity, we’re hampered in our investigations.’

  Jonathan Tapley raised a kid-gloved hand to interrupt me. ‘I should like to see the body. There is no problem about that?’

  ‘No, sir, none. But may I ask what interest—’

  He cut me short again. ‘The report did not say how he died. But since it was reported as murder, it was obviously not due to natural causes.’

  ‘He was battered about the head, Mr Tapley.’

  ‘Is the face damaged?’ The fellow sounded dashed cool if our corpse was a relative of some sort.

  ‘No, Mr Tapley. The back of the head took the force of the blows.’

  ‘Then,’ said my visitor, rising to his feet and taking up his silk hat, ‘perhaps you’d be so good as to conduct me to the place where the corpse is presently to be found.’

  I was more than eager to do so. Perhaps, on the way there, he’d deign to reveal what his interest was. But he was playing his cards close to his chest, as they say. If the body was nothing to him, he could depart having told me nothing. But some well-concealed secret fear had brought him to me. I wondered if, when he saw the body, his composure would be shaken. But it wasn’t, at least not outwardly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said briefly, his eyes fixed on the waxen face.

  ‘Sir?’ I prompted.

  ‘What?’ He looked at me, momentarily startled, as if his mind had wandered from the sad sight that lay before him. He rallied at once with a brisk, ‘Yes, I can identify him. The late gentleman is my cousin, Thomas Tapley.’

  He looked back at the corpse. ‘Is that the name he had been using? His own is the name he gave his landlady?’

  ‘Yes, now that you have confirmed it is indeed his.’ Jonathan Tapley paused for a last look at his cousin’s body. Then he turned away. ‘Curious,’ he remarked.

  Outside the mortuary, he set his hat squarely on his head. ‘I have now to carry the sad news to the rest of the family, Inspector. You will understand that is my primary duty. Perhaps you’d care to call on me later, in my chambers in the Gray’s Inn Road. Shall we say five o’clock?’

  ‘Well,’ I objected, ‘if you could spare time for even a brief talk now, it might give us a lead . . .’

  ‘I doubt I can give you a lead, a
s you call it, Inspector. I hadn’t seen my cousin or been in direct contact with him for some time. I didn’t know he was in London. But I am as anxious as you are to know what has happened here. You’ll appreciate that, I hope?’

  ‘Yes, sir, of course.’ The questions were leaping to my lips but piled up there unasked. There was no use pressing him. He would speak when ready and I had to accept it. The problem for me was that he – and other family members – would have had time to correlate their statements.

  He raised his cane, grasped by the neck, straight up in a farewell salute. I noticed that the ivory pommel was carved in the form of a skull. It looked a solid bit of work.

  Jonathan Tapley was experienced at reading a witness’s reactions. His lips curled slightly in a mirthless grimace. ‘Yes, Inspector, it is a fine piece of carving. The cane is Malay craftsmanship. I always carry it. But I did not use it to beat my cousin’s head in. Good day, Inspector. Until five o’clock.’

  He strode off and I saw him raise the cane again, this time to hail a cab.

  I made good use of the just over two hours I had before I kept my appointment with Jonathan Tapley. I tried to find out as much as I could about both him and other Tapley family members. I sent Sergeant Morris to Somerset House and took myself to the nearest reference library. We combined what we’d found out shortly before I set out for Tapley’s chambers.

  The barrister was easy enough to track down in books of reference. He was the son of a colonel of the Foot Guards. He had been born in 1816, so was at present, in this spring of 1868, fifty-two years of age. I speculated, digressing, that his soldier father had returned from playing his part in scotching the ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo to set his own ambition at establishing himself in peacetime as a married man with family.