I appreciated his honesty. Dunn might have said he was clever. It was better to confess to no sorrow than to feign sorrow and be detected as, at best, a humbug – and at worst, a liar.
‘I have to ask you, sir, where you were earlier today,’ I said.
Benedict raised his eyebrows and gave a bark of laughter. ‘So now I am a suspect? Well, I was here, Inspector Ross. The servants will tell you so and in case you doubt their testimony, this -’ he waved a hand at the still life – ‘this was delivered here this morning. I was expecting it and took care to be here in order to inspect its condition on arrival. There is always a risk when transporting works of art that they will be damaged. I signed a receipt for it.You may check with the carrier’s man.’
‘Thank you,’ I said awkwardly.
Benedict fixed me with a steady gaze. ‘Nor, Inspector, did I kill my wife. You have not asked me that, but I know you and your superiors will have discussed the possibility. You will say, I had cause. But until I spoke with you, after her death, I had trusted her. Trusted her implicitly!’
He threw up his hands in a gesture that was un-English and had perhaps been acquired in Italy.
‘Had it not been for Marchwood’s furtive manner and obvious hiding of some unpalatable truth, I would have continued to trust her.You, too, Ross, helped plant the seeds of suspicion in my mind, as I said. But let me tell you something.’ He leaned forward again. ‘If I had learned that my wife was deceiving me, before her death, I would have confronted her with the fact. If she had been willing to show penitence, break off the sorry affair, return to being my loyal wife, I would have forgiven her, taken her back. I loved my wife, Inspector.’
Perhaps he believed it himself. It was love as he understood it. I thought that perhaps his willingness to take Allegra back would rather have been the act of a man from whom a precious object had temporarily been stolen, gratefully accepting its return to his possession. But we know little of other people’s hearts. We have enough trouble understanding our own.
‘May I ask,’ I turned to a practical subject, ‘if you know who Miss Marchwood’s next of kin would be? Someone we should contact regarding her death?’
‘I have no idea.’ He shook his head and looked at me as if I had suggested something socially unacceptable. ‘I never discussed personal matters with her. She was an employee. However, I can give you the name and address of the agency from which she came. They may have some record.’
‘Thank you.’ As Benedict scribbled the address on a slip of paper, I added, ‘I have one more request to make of you. I am sorry to have to do it, but I would like you to return to London with me and make formal identification of the body.’
He gasped, looked up at me and blanched. ‘You want me to return – to that place where I saw Allegra . . .You want me to go there again and gaze on another woman’s body?’
‘She was in your employ for nine years, sir, and you knew her well. You cannot give us another name, a relative’s. She was, I believe, friendly in a minor way with a widow lady she saw at the temperance meetings she attended. But I hesitate to ask a woman . . .’
‘Yes, yes!’ he said testily. ‘I am obliged to do it. You leave me no choice and it is my duty. I’ll come with you now. Just give me a few minutes to get ready. Perhaps you’d wait downstairs?’
‘I’ll wait for you outside,’ I offered. ‘By the gates.’
The gardener was still working where I’d seen him on my arrival. I strolled over to him and asked him if he had seen Miss Marchwood leave that morning. He gave me a curious look, puzzled by my question, but agreed he had seen her, though only in a cursory way. He had said good morning to her. She had returned the greeting. There had been no further conversation. She had drawn the veil down over her bonnet and he couldn’t see her face well. He thought she had walked off down the hill towards Egham. He had not seen anyone follow her.
‘I was busy, sir. I didn’t pay any attention. But she’s that sort of lady, sir, if you’ll forgive me, a very quiet lady. You don’t notice her or pay much attention to what she does. Then, not long after she left, the carrier came with a package for Mr Benedict. I went up to the house to help him carry it in and upstairs to Mr Benedict’s study. It looked like another of those paintings.’
The arrival of the carrier’s cart had occasioned a welcome diversion in the gardener’s day. But not the coming or going of the companion. Why should it? No one had ever paid any attention to Isabella Marchwood, a quiet, self-effacing but tormented soul. She would not be missed.
The carrier’s cart may have saved Miss Marchwood from being attacked on her way down the hill, I thought. It must have been on the road at the time.
Benedict and I made the return journey to Waterloo in silence. While he stared blankly from the train window, I turned it all over in my mind. Surreptitiously I took my watch from my waistcoat pocket and timed the journey between the stops. Where had she died? On the stretch before Clapham or after it? Had her murderer got off the train at Clapham, Vauxhall or at Waterloo? I peered out when we stopped at those stations as if I might spot some evidence from the train. At both Clapham and Richmond I saw uniformed Railway Police officers on the platform, questioning people. Burns was doing his bit.
Benedict appeared to be paying no attention at all. He, too, was lost in his own thoughts; perhaps steeling himself for the gruesome task ahead of him.
I was reminded, as we drew out of that station, that Mrs Scott lived at Clapham. Possibly Fawcett did too, since Lizzie had told me he left the meetings with Mrs Scott in her carriage. Now that might mean something or it might mean nothing, just like everything else.
Theories! I thought with a sigh as we pulled into Waterloo and I put away my pocket watch. All I have is theories to account for two brutal murders of respectable ladies. I still thought of Allegra as such. Fawcett’s tawdry seduction of a vulnerable woman, if that was what had taken place, did not destroy her image for me as it had done for her husband.
Benedict stood up well to the ordeal. This time he did not faint away or mutter incoherently. He looked resolutely at the uncovered face of the sheeted body and said, ‘Yes, that is Isabella Marchwood, who was companion to my late wife. Do you need me any more?’
‘Not today, sir,’ I said.
‘Then I’ll return home.’ He began to walk towards the door, not waiting for me, but paused before leaving. ‘I hope you will not be requesting me to come a third time to identify the victim of a murderer you appear unable to catch.’
From the corner of my eye, I saw Scully grin. But when I turned towards him the smirk had gone.
‘The gentleman appears to be bearing up, sir,’ he said blandly.
‘He can do nothing else,’ I retorted.
There was the sound of voices in the corridor outside. Dr Carmichael walked in. Scully, as usual, ran forward to help him off with his street coat and on with his dissecting one.
‘Good day to you, there, Ross,’ Carmichael greeted me. ‘I understand the gentleman has identified the deceased. I met him on the way out.’
‘Isabella Marchwood,’ I said. ‘As we already knew, of course.’
‘Hum!’ said Carmichael. He walked to the marble table and turned back the sheet, which had reached to the corpse’s chin. ‘You may wish to see this, Ross.’
A little queasily, I went to look. I never get used to it. The familiar red line scored her throat.
‘I took the liberty of removing the cord,’ Carmichael said, ‘as you had already seen it in place round her throat, in the railway carriage. There is something rather interesting about it.’ He produced a folded piece of paper and opened it out flat. Two lengths of cord, identical in type to that round Allegra Benedict’s neck, lay side by side. Carmichael looked at me and raised his bushy eyebrows, waiting for me to make an observation.
‘They are not knotted together,’ I said, ‘as the other cords still were, after you cut them from the victim’s neck.’
‘Indeed they are not. I did snip the cord to take it from her neck. But it fell apart quite easily; I found myself with two separate lengths, as you see here. It had not been tied in a double knot as on the previous occasion. I suggested to you, at that time, the murderer had wished to make sure the noose did not slip and release the victim. But this time he either did not bother, or perhaps, as I understand the murder occurred in the course of a railway journey, he did not have time. He tied it once, pulled it tight, was satisfied she was dead and left his victim in a hurry.’
‘Yes,’ I said slowly, staring down at the two short lengths of cord. ‘To murder in the park, unseen in the fog, was one thing. But in broad daylight, in a railway carriage when someone might have got in at the next stop . . . that must have been a rushed affair.’
Or a desperate one. And yet . . . I stretched out my hand and touched one of the cords with my fingertip. ‘I like patterns,’ I heard myself say aloud to Carmichael. ‘And there is no pattern in this business, only a number of events and people who touch at some point but then spin away on a different path.’
Carmichael gave a short, unexpected chuckle. He was not usually given to humour so I was surprised and looked at him.
‘Have you never seen Scottish country dancing, Inspector? The couples join hands, part, turn, go in, go out, exchange places, move up to the head of the queue to replace another pair . . . for anyone who has never tried it, and finds himself caught up in it for the first time, it is bewildering. But there is a pattern to it, oh yes, and once the novice has worked out the pattern, then he is away, spinning merrily around with the rest.’
‘We should have found him before now,’ said Morris sadly. ‘Then the poor little lady would still be alive.’
He was only saying something I had said to myself a dozen times since seeing Isabella Marchwood’s body slumped in that railway carriage. But there was no point in my giving way to despondency.
‘Come, Sergeant!’ I admonished him. ‘We will find the wretch.’
‘I can’t even find that butler, Seymour,’ growled Morris. ‘He seems to have vanished. I’ve been round all the central London employment agencies for domestic staff. I think I must know the whereabouts of nearly every butler in the country except Mortimer Seymour.’
‘Ah, there perhaps I can help,’ I was able to say. I handed him the piece of paper on which Benedict had written the name and address of the agency where he’d originally found Miss Marchwood. ‘This one, as you see, is a little out of town in Northwood. If he contacted them regarding a companion, he may have done so because previously they’d supplied his butler, and he was well satisfied with Seymour. So satisfied that he was angry when the butler left his household! So try them. At the same time, find out if they have any next of kin on record for Isabella Marchwood. They must keep files on all the people who pass through the establishment.’
Morris took the paper and sighed. ‘Like as not a wild goose chase, like all the others I’ve been on this week,’ he said.
After Morris’s gloomy appraisal of our situation, it was a relief that Lizzie and Bessie bore the news well when I broke it to them that night. Bessie, I’m sorry to say, even displayed a certain relish, reminding me of those in the crowd at Waterloo.
‘What an awful thing! Poor Miss Marchwood. In a train carriage, too? Just imagine. Cor . . .’ Her eyes shone with excitement.
Lizzie turned a little pale and said very quietly, ‘It is dreadful news. I was so afraid for her.’ She hesitated. ‘I wonder . . .’
‘Yes?’ I encouraged.
‘I was worried for her safety on Sunday evening, because she was intending to walk quite alone to the station from the Temperance Hall, after nightfall. Of course London streets are well lit, but on a Sunday there are fewer people around. Yet it puzzles me that, if there is any connection with the hall in all this, she wasn’t followed from there and attacked on her way to Waterloo. Especially if it is the Wr—’ Lizzie broke off with a glance at Bessie. ‘But she wasn’t,’ she resumed. ‘Doesn’t that seem to rule out anyone who was at the hall that evening?’
‘She was also talking to you for a few minutes outside the hall,’ I pointed out. ‘If anyone there had noticed that, they could have been put off. They would have to have waited until you and Bessie were out of sight before they set off in pursuit. Miss Marchwood would have been well ahead of them by then. There are always people and traffic around stations. It might not have been so simple.’
Lizzie looked unconvinced. ‘I do wish I knew what she and Fawcett had to discuss privately.’
‘I think I can guess at that. But I need to be sure.’ I also glanced at the listening Bessie.
Fawcett and Miss Marchwood had probably been discussing the money Allegra Benedict had been giving the man. He wouldn’t want that known. He would have elicited Miss Marchwood’s promise not to tell anyone. She had kept her word. Her killer had made sure of it.
‘I’m also thinking,’ said my wife slowly, ‘what a very great shock this will be to Mrs Scott. She and Miss Marchwood were very much involved together in the running of the temperance meetings. I wouldn’t like her to read of it in the newspapers, unprepared. I could call on her first thing in the morning, before she has a chance to see the papers, and break the news. It would be the kind thing to do.’
