Chapter Seventeen
Inspector Benjamin Ross
I HAVE met murderers of all kinds. Some have been arrogant, some sinister, others defiant, a few remorseful. Some confess, others deny it even to the scaffold. Some, occasionally, seem bewildered at how they had got to such a sorry state. But this murderer was one of the strangest of the lot: an insignificant little man with hair plastered to his scalp with lard, a nervous tic at the side of his mouth, rolling eyes and twitching hands. By turns boastful and self-pitying, he was above all convinced of the rightness of his dreadful actions.
This was indeed our murderer: Owen Pritchard, butcher by trade. I had been wrong in dismissing the possibility that the Wraith and the killer of Allegra Benedict could be one and the same. I reflected that I had learned a lesson. Until you know your man and how his mind works, you can make no facile assumptions.
We had now searched the rooms in which he lived, above his Clapham shop, and there we had found a ball of thin cord of the type used to strangle Clarissa Brady, Allegra Benedict and Isabella Marchwood. It might have been used to strangle my wife if he had had it with him at the Temperance Hall that Sunday afternoon, but he did not. He had brought his Wraith’s shroud and mask with him because, as he admitted, he had intended later that evening to seek out the street girls on his way back to Clapham, as he had made his habit. But he had not brought the cord and that had made all the difference.
It could all have been so dreadfully different. My blood ran cold at the picture my mind insisted on serving up to me: Pritchard in his Wraith’s disguise, creeping up behind Lizzie with a length of twine at the ready.
But it had not happened like that. Lizzie had turned her head fractionally in time, and Pritchard had been obliged to try and use his bare hands. He had not killed with his hands before. He had not practised this as he had practised on poor little Clarrie Brady with his length of cord before he killed Allegra. Lizzie had put up a vigorous defence . . . and Bessie and Daisy had come on the scene in time.
All this I know, and repeatedly tell myself, but the image has never left me. Sometimes I still dream that it’s happening. In my nightmare I am standing by, a horrified spectator of the scene, but unable to prevent it. I want to shout a warning, but my voice sticks in my throat and I can only whisper. I want to run towards them, seize Pritchard and save Lizzie. But my feet are apparently glued to the floor. That’s when I wake up sweat-drenched and panicking. Then Lizzie wakens too, and asks me what is wrong. I tell her it was just a dream and blame the porter I drank with my supper.
A ball of cord, such as we had found in his Clapham rooms, may be found in any household and no court would have considered that evidence of his guilt. But what we had also found, hidden beneath a floorboard in his bedroom, was Allegra’s pink suede purse, still containing the money Tedeschi had paid her for the brooch.
It was this that would hang him. Benedict had identified it as his wife’s and the jeweller, too, remembered it. The widower had been brought up to London by a telegraphed message in order to make the identification. Dunn had calculated this was less expensive than letting me once again board a train for Egham.
Benedict had been visibly moved at the sight of the purse but his voice had been bitter when he said, ‘Yes, that belonged to my wife.’
As he left the office, he paused by me to say, ‘So you found him, then, Ross.’ He couldn’t quite keep the note of relief from his voice. He knew that until we had our man, he, too, remained a suspect.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
He gave me a look in which I saw clearly he was thinking of our previous meeting when I had seen him picking up a prostitute. It was one more piece of knowledge I had about him for which he would always hate me. I wondered if he would say something more. But he only nodded and walked out. It would be the most I or Scotland Yard would ever get from him by way of thanks.
Dunn now showed the little suede purse to Pritchard in the room set aside for the interview.
‘You stole this from your victim, Mrs Allegra Benedict,’ declared the superintendent. ‘She carried it with her when she went into Green Park and we have been looking for it since.’
Pritchard stopped twitching and declared with surprising force, ‘I am not a thief! How dare you say I am a thief? I stole nothing!’
‘Then how did you come by this?’ thundered Dunn.
Pritchard subsided and became sullen. ‘It was bad luck. It was not my intention, no, never! She must have dropped it. My foot kicked against it as I was leaving. I picked it up without thinking. My only wish was to get away. I put it in my pocket. When I got home, I found I still had the wretched thing. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I hid it. I meant to get rid of it later, you see. I would have got rid of it eventually if you hadn’t interfered and gone looking around my home
without
my permission, mind! I never meant to keep it.’ A note of defiance returned but it rang unconvincingly. ‘Count the money. It is all there, all of it!’
‘We had a search warrant,’ I told him. ‘We did not need your permission to search your premises, either your shop or above, where you live.’
‘I am a respectable citizen,’ Pritchard insisted, the tic at the side of his mouth working feverishly. ‘Everyone will tell you. Ask anyone in Clapham. They all know Pritchard the butcher. I have never sold poor quality meat. My shop is spotlessly clean. There is no smell and no flies.’
‘We are not interested in your trade as a butcher!’ exploded Dunn. ‘You are here charged with a most serious matter, murder. Three counts of murder, may I remind you! Let’s deal with the first murder to come to our attention. You were in Green Park, as you admit, in the fog, and there you met and killed Allegra Benedict. Had you followed her there or was it by chance you met her?
Why
did you kill her?’
Pritchard looked up, his dark eyes gleaming. ‘But it had to be done, didn’t it? She was an adulteress! A scarlet woman. She had led the minister astray, with her beauty and her foreign wiles. She would have been the ruin of him. She had to be stopped!’
‘Stop calling him “the minister”!’ I ordered. ‘He has no theological qualifications.’
‘What has that to do with it?’ demanded Pritchard. ‘He’s a wonderful preacher.’
‘Let us begin at the beginning,’ I suggested, refusing to be further drawn into argument about Fawcett. That gentleman would soon be breaking stones on Dartmoor and his silver tongue would avail him nothing there.
I suppose, since he had attacked my wife, I ought not to have been present in that room with Pritchard and Dunn, and Biddle scribbling furiously in his corner. But this man had occupied my days and haunted my nights. It had been my investigation from the start and I held all the pieces in my hand. Now, at last, I would be able to put them together.
‘You dressed up as a wraith or ghoul in order to frighten the women who worked as prostitutes near the river,’ I said. ‘Is that right?’
‘Harlots!’ spat Pritchard. ‘They would not turn aside from their evil ways. They might be frightened out of it!’
‘And one of them you killed, Clarissa Brady, known as Clarrie.’
‘I knew none of their names,’ he said pettishly.
‘But you strangled one of them with a length of cord and pushed her body into the river?’
He gave me a cunning look. ‘I had been searching for that one and I found her. It wasn’t difficult to put the cord round her neck. She hardly made any resistance, you know. Only stood there, sobbing. Well she might lament her sins!’
‘She was petrified by fear!’ I snapped.
‘She deserved what she got,’ mumbled Pritchard.
‘The murder of Clarissa Brady allowed you to try out the skill as a strangler you wished to use on Allegra Benedict, did it not? How exactly did that come about?’
‘I waited, and when she came, I killed her,’ he said simply.
‘You knew she would come to that oak tree in the park? Did you send her a message, perhaps pretending it was from Fawcett?’
He shook his head. ‘No, no, I had nothing to do with that. My part was only to be there and be ready for her.’ He frowned. ‘We could not have expected the fog. That was sent to help us. Sent from above!’ He nodded in satisfaction and pointed skyward.
‘Us?’ I asked quickly. ‘Who are “we”? Who wrote the note or sent the message asking that Mrs Benedict come to the park that afternoon?’
He was shaking his head furiously. ‘Nobody wrote a message. Miss Marchwood told her that Mr Fawcett would be there, would be waiting for her. That was what she usually did, you know, take a message by word of mouth. She was guilty too, Isabella Marchwood. She aided and abetted the woman Benedict in her seduction of the minister.’
‘Isabella Marchwood was a party to it?’ Dunn exclaimed in dismay. ‘To the murder of her employer?’
Again Pritchard was shaking his head crossly. ‘No, no, of course not. She only thought we meant to talk to the Benedict woman, persuade her she must cease troubling the minister and leave him in peace.’
‘So,’ I burst out impatiently, ‘you and Miss Marchwood were in this together? She passed on a false message. You waited by the oak tree and Mrs Benedict found you instead of Fawcett, as she had expected. But you had decided, unknown to your fellow conspirator, that you would kill Mrs Benedict. The murder was your idea?’
‘No,’ he said regretfully, ‘it was not mine. It was hers.’
‘You make no sense, man!’ growled Dunn.
But it was beginning to make sense to me. ‘It was not originally
your
idea to kill the lady, nor did
Miss Marchwood
have any idea, poor soul, that you meant to do it. There is a third person in all this.You and
another
hatched that devilish plan. The unfortunate Miss Marchwood was your pawn.You were directed to kill Mrs Benedict, weren’t you, and later you were directed to kill Miss Marchwood for fear she would tell the police the truth?’
‘That’s it,’ agreed Pritchard, nodding, ‘I carried out my orders.’ He smiled proudly.
‘But,’ roared Dunn, ‘who gave you these orders?’
Pritchard stared at him in surprise. ‘Why, she did, Mrs Scott.’ He brightened. ‘Mrs Scott is a very fine lady. She has very high principles.’ He paused for thought. ‘And had always been a very good customer.’
He had succeeded in silencing both Dunn and myself. Biddle sat with his mouth agape. Then he dropped his pencil. The clatter as it landed on the floor, and Biddle’s mumbled apology to us as he retrieved it, broke the spell.
‘What happened next?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Pritchard. ‘I went back to my shop.’
‘And Mrs Scott, what did she do during your attack on your victim? What did she do afterwards?’
‘Mrs Scott was not there,’ he said. ‘I was alone.’
‘But you reported what had happened to Mrs Scott?’ Dunn asked. ‘Surely you didn’t leave her to find out from the press whether you had been successful or not?’
‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ Pritchard agreed, nodding. ‘I went that very evening to her house and told her.’
‘And she said . . . ?’ Dunn and I chimed together.
‘I think she was satisfied,’ Pritchard told us, looking mightily satisfied himself. ‘She told me to go back to my business and say nothing to anyone.’
Dunn and I exchanged glances. So Mrs Scott had not been surprised. She had known Pritchard waited to kill Allegra Benedict.
‘Tell us about the next murder, that of Isabella Marchwood,’ Dunn invited our prisoner.
Pritchard’s smugness evaporated. ‘I was very sorry about that, indeed I was. She was a good religious woman. But she had strayed from the narrow path of virtue. She had carried messages between the Benedict woman and the minister. Then she was overcome with remorse and knowledge of her wrongdoing! Mrs Scott feared she would speak, perhaps even to the police, but more likely to Mr Benedict. Miss Marchwood was still living in his house, you see. The Cedars, it’s called, and a very fine house it is, too. Well, the husband was there, and she was weighed down by her guilt. So it was likely, wasn’t it? That she would speak to him about it?’
‘Tell us what led up to it,’ I invited.
Pritchard was more than willing to do so. ‘Well, now, you see . . . I take the train home from Waterloo to Clapham after every meeting at the Temperance Hall and that Sunday was no different. I saw, as I was about to leave the hall, that Miss Marchwood was talking to Mrs Ross outside . . .’ Pritchard looked at me severely. ‘A very interfering sort of person, your wife, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
I did mind but before I could say it, Dunn urged the prisoner, ‘Get on with it!’
‘So I went back inside and waited until Mrs Ross and the girl, Bessie Newman, were out of sight because I didn’t want Mrs Ross asking me questions. I thought she might. I didn’t know what went on in her head, you see, your wife’s . . .’ Again that severe look at me. ‘But then I hurried off to Waterloo, anxious to be home.’
