A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) (22 page)
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Authors: Ann Granger
I also needed to take a look into her room. She got up and I followed her out of the shop into the street and up the staircase. We squeezed past the constable on guard, Miss Poole giving him a fearful look, and arrived on the top floor. Before going into her room I glanced up at the ceiling of the
top landing. It had a small hatch in it. There was an attic, but the hatch showed no sign of having been disturbed, nor was there any way a person could reach it without a ladder.
The milliner’s room was more comfortable than Jenkins’s, but gave an impression of hard-working poverty. There was a threadbare carpet on the floor. The tools of her trade, in the form of a motley collection of scraps of fabric, ribbons, false flowers, cotton reels and so on, lay spread across a worktable. The oil lamp also burned there, giving the glow we had noticed from the street. On a low cupboard, in pride of place, stood a silver-plated container with a tap, fixed above a spirit stove. Having seen similar things before in immigrant homes, I recognised it as a samovar. I wondered from where Miss Poole had it. Perhaps she had bought it from a street stall or taken it in payment of a debt. A teapot stood beside it and, on a shelf above, a collection of cups.
As in Jenkins’s room, a corner was curtained for privacy. Miss Poole slept up here.
I invited her to sit down and she did so, folding her hands in her lap. She answered my questions in a docile manner, giving no sign of concealing anything. From time to time she removed her spectacles to mop at her eyes.
She had known Mr Jenkins since he had moved in below this room. That was nearly a year ago. Yes, there was an arrangement that he would rap on his ceiling – her floor – when he wanted tea for a client. Otherwise she had no way of knowing who called on him. She might notice someone come to the street door, from her window, but she had to concentrate on her work. She didn’t have time to sit staring down into the street. She had not seen anyone that day. Jenkins had been a
good neighbour, very kind and helpful. How helpful? Well, he had put up a shelf for her, that one over there with the cups on it. He had carried up water in a bucket, from the pump in the yard. She could get water from Mr Baggins, who had a sink and a tap, but she didn’t like to disturb Mr Baggins too much. Truth to tell, his room full of dead creatures gave her the creeps. The taxidermist himself also made her uneasy. What can you make of a man who spent his entire life messing around the dead things, skinning them, curing the skins and mounting them on frames? He sold the skinned carcasses to the dog meat trade, or so he said. It was her opinion that cat carcasses were trimmed and secretly sold to unscrupulous butchers, who in turn sold them as rabbit to unsuspecting purchasers. It was all horrid, in Miss Poole’s view. She, personally, did not work with fur for her millinery, although Mr Baggins had once offered to cure a skin for her. But she left that to the professional furriers. It had been nice to have Mr Jenkins live below because he had been a professional gentleman. His had been clean work.
Some might have questioned that.
I asked her what had brought her downstairs when Lizzie and I were there. With much blushing and hesitation she whispered that she had been on to her way to the privy in the backyard. She then began to weep again.
My ear caught movement below; the officers from the Yard had arrived. I thanked her and left the poor soul to her grief.
Elizabeth Martin Ross
ON ARRIVING at the Yard with my news and message from Ben, I had been subjected to a brief but pithy lecture from Superintendent Dunn.
‘You see, Mrs Ross? This could well be the result of your keeping information to yourself; information you should have brought immediately here. Someone would have been sent to interview Jenkins yesterday. If he’d had anything to tell, we’d have learned it. He might have led us to his client. He might be alive now. I am not blaming you for the actions of a murderer. But it might all have been different!’
‘If’ is a wonderful word, my father used to say. I did not repeat this to Dunn. I managed to listen in silence to his homily and nod.
‘And now,’ he announced, ‘you will stay away from further investigation into this matter. Leave it to the professionals.’
Considering the professionals would not have known about Jenkins, his clown disguise, his being hired by a French lady to find Tapley and all the rest of it I was tempted to point out
that my contribution had been very valuable. But this would not have been well received. I had to admit to myself, if not to him, the superintendent did have a point. Delay might have cost poor Jenkins his life.
‘But I have to return to Camden,’ I said, ‘with Sergeant Morris.’
Dunn’s eyes bulged.
‘There is a lady witness, a Miss Poole,’ I went on hurriedly. ‘She is very distressed, on the verge of fainting away. Of course the police will take a statement from her. But if I sat with her she would be reassured by a woman’s presence . . . and she might talk more freely to me.’
I thought Dunn would burst out angrily, denying me permission to approach a witness. But I was underestimating him. After surveying me thoughtfully for a moment, he folded his hands on his desk and leaned towards me.
‘You are a shrewd woman, Mrs Ross. I do not approve of your interference in police matters or condone it in any way. I have been quite clear about this; and I don’t want you to imagine I can be ignored. However, I confess I sometimes wish some of my officers had half your quick mind. I will agree to your return to Camden with Morris, and to your sitting with Miss Poole and comforting her. You will not talk to any other witness. You will not quiz her. You will not put any leading questions to her. You will not put ideas into her head. But should she, of her own free will and unprompted, confide in you about anything at all, no matter how trivial, you will tell either your husband or another officer
at once
.’
‘Of course, Superintendent!’ I promised.
Ben was surprised to see me back again and not pleased. ‘There is nothing you can do here, Lizzie! I have spoken to Miss Poole. She has nothing of interest to say.’
‘Superintendent Dunn thinks it a good idea.’
This silenced Ben completely for a full thirty seconds. ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually, ‘how you managed to twist Dunn round your finger. But whatever trick Dunn has up his sleeve, or whatever permission he has given you, this remains my investigation. He has put me in charge of running it and in that capacity I – not Dunn – agree to your speaking to Miss Poole. Go ahead and comfort her. But I want a complete report back to me detailing every time she mops her eyes or blows her nose.’
‘You shall have it,’ I promised.
Miss Poole seemed unsurprised to see me and raised no objection to my making tea for us both. She watched me inspect the samovar and light its little spirit stove.
‘It was a gift . . .’ she said almost inaudibly.
‘The samovar? It’s very pretty.’
‘It came from my former employer, with whom I trained in millinery. She was obliged to retire when her sight failed. I started up on my own here. She wished me well and gave me the tea urn. Yes, she called it a samovar. She had brought it with her when she left her original home, in Russia, I think.’ Miss Poole’s voice has gained in volume and confidence as she spoke of this domestic object. ‘She always put a lump of sugar in the teapot with the tea leaves and poured the hot water over it. She never drank milk with her tea in the English fashion. She sometimes took a slice of lemon. I’m afraid I
have neither . . .’ Her voice faltered and she began to sound distressed. ‘I was not expecting to entertain . . .’
I brought the teacup to her. ‘Dear Miss Poole, don’t worry about that. I seldom take milk with my tea. I prefer it without.’
She took off her spectacles and blinked at me myopically. I thought sympathetically that so much close work, often in poor light, had affected her eyesight as it had affected her former employer’s. If Miss Poole were obliged to retire, what would she do? Had she managed to save a little money? How long would it last, if she had? Had she family to whom she could turn? I put her age at about forty-five or -six.
I couldn’t but think, as I looked around me, how easily I might be living in a room like this, above a shop, doing whatever I could to earn a living. Aunt Parry, with all her faults, had rescued me from that.
‘My husband tells me that Mr Jenkins would carry water up here for you.’
‘Oh, yes, he was always so helpful. That is why I was always happy to make tea for his visitors.’
‘Did you carry the tea down to his office?’
‘Yes, but I never went in. I just knocked at his door and he would come and take the tray from me. I didn’t meet his visitors. He explained to me that his work was very private. Often his clients, as he called them, were very shy.’
They probably often had good reason, I thought. ‘You didn’t see the French lady who called to see him?’
She hesitated. ‘He seldom had lady visitors. I cannot imagine a lady wanting to consult a private detective! There was an occasion when a lady and a gentleman came together to see
him. It was a few weeks ago. I only saw them from the doorway, you understand, when I took the tray down. So I didn’t see their faces. They appeared well dressed.’ Miss Poole’s voice gained a professional enthusiasm. ‘The lady’s hat took my eye. Her hair was a deep chestnut red and quite elaborately dressed. Atop it sat a small round hat, with a lace edging at the brim and lavender silk rosebuds applied all round it. The top was decorated with dark green silk ruffles. A pair of lavender satin ribbons kept it in place, passing behind her ears and tied in a bow at the nape of her neck in a most becoming way. I should like to have seen the hat from the front, but she didn’t turn her head. I thought it a very fashionable item and very much a spring design, just as you might see in a ladies’ magazine. It would not have done in winter. Rain would have ruined it.’
‘Silk rosebuds and ruffles? Yes, bad weather would have destroyed it. You didn’t hear either the man or the woman speak?’
Miss Poole had not. ‘I thought I might copy the hat, for example as a wedding item if a customer wanted such a thing. Not with lavender rosebuds, of course, unless the wearer were in half-mourning. Pink, perhaps.’
She fell silent and I guessed, from the way the animation drained from her features, that the memory of the hat had been replaced by a sadder memory. ‘His room was in such disorder earlier, when I came upon you and your husband there. Did you do that?’
‘Turn it all out? No, his killer almost certainly did.’
‘But why?’ She turned her gaze back to me, blinking back fresh tears. ‘Wasn’t it enough to kill him? Why do such an awful deed, anyway?’
I picked my words carefully, mindful of Superintendent Dunn’s warning that I should not put ideas into her head. ‘The two things were probably connected.’
‘He disturbed a burglar, you mean?’
‘Not an ordinary burglar, perhaps. Rather someone who was looking for something particular, something the murderer believed Jenkins had hidden.’
‘Oh . . .’ said Miss Poole thoughtfully.
I should never get anywhere if I followed Dunn’s instructions to the letter. ‘Miss Poole . . .’ I put my hand on her arm. ‘Did Mr Jenkins ever ask you to keep some small item of his up here in your room? To hide it for him, I mean. He knew you were a friend.’
I knew at once I had hit the mark. She turned a furious shade of red. ‘Well, I . . . I suppose now that he is dead, I should give it to the police.’
‘Indeed you should,’ I urged her, ‘anything at all. I could accompany you downstairs now and you could hand over the item to my husband.’
‘Yes, yes, what a good thing you are here, Mrs Ross. I should be so nervous of going downstairs to the police alone. I’ll fetch it.’
She rose and went behind the curtain hung across her sleeping area. After a moment she returned holding an envelope. ‘This is it. It’s nothing much. He asked if I wouldn’t mind just keeping it for a little, lest he lose it.’
I longed to rip open the envelope and see what it contained, but I must let Ben do that. I hurried Miss Poole back downstairs where she handed over the envelope to Ben, with trembling hand.
Ben opened it at once and took out a piece of card. I could see that it was a photograph, but annoyingly I couldn’t make out the subject.
‘Thank you, Miss Poole,’ said Ben to her. He pushed the photograph back in the envelope and put it in his pocket.
I could have screamed in frustration. Miss Poole was looking mournfully round the room, avoiding the spot where the body lay, concealed from view now by the velvet curtain that had been torn down from the sleeping alcove.
‘I shall not easily come to terms with this,’ she said. ‘The memory of it will haunt me. I – I shall miss his friendship. Sometimes, when he had nothing else to do, he would come up to my workshop and just sit, drinking tea and chatting to me. He told me of his adventures in America. I always liked to hear about those. It seemed so cosy, sitting there with him. I did allow myself to wonder if . . .’
She did not go on. The tragedy was complete. Miss Poole had had hopes of Mr Jenkins.
Inspector Benjamin Ross
Lizzie conducted Miss Poole back to her workroom but, as I expected, she was down again almost at once.
‘What is it?’ she demanded eagerly as I opened the envelope again.
‘It is a photograph,’ I replied.
‘Yes, yes, I can see that! But of whom?’ She answered her own question at once. ‘It is the photograph the French lady gave Jenkins, so that he would recognise Mr Tapley.’
‘It might be . . . all right! Yes, it is. But don’t speak of that to anyone.’ I pocketed the photograph.
Lizzie was looking around the ransacked room. ‘Clearly she wanted it back. Why did she not take it back when she paid Jenkins? That would have been the obvious time. She gave him his money. He should have returned the photograph.’
‘But he didn’t,’ I said. ‘Jenkins was a cautious person. He knew the sitter in this picture,’ I tapped my pocket. ‘The sitter was a man he had himself tracked down, a man who had just been murdered. This photograph was the equivalent of Jenkins’s penny insurance. It is proof she had been in touch with him about Tapley. I don’t know what excuse he gave her for not returning it. Perhaps he just said he had lost it. She would have been angry, but there would not have been much she could do.’
‘You think this a woman’s crime?’ Lizzie was horrified.
‘Oh, no, she had help. I don’t believe a woman crept into Mrs Jameson’s house and bludgeoned Tapley. Such a brutal attack is the work of a man. Nor do I see a woman knifing Jenkins. Whoever killed Jenkins had used a knife before. We are looking for someone you might call a professional.’
‘She hired a killer?’ Lizzie goggled at me.
‘I’m not saying that. Rather that she had a male accomplice.’ I could see Morris giving me an old-fashioned look. He thought I should not be chatting so easily to my wife about the case. But Lizzie, too, was looking unhappy.
She glanced at Morris who took the hint and removed himself to the staircase out of earshot.
‘Ben,’ said my wife, ‘I have been stupidly vain, really, quite intolerably so.’
‘I find this hard to imagine,’ I said encouragingly. There
was
something else, and she had not told me. From vanity? Surely Lizzie would not have been swayed by such a silly thing. But she had turned a furious pink.
‘There was a man . . .’ She recounted her observation of the man in a tweed suit of knickerbockers (I had heard about such an outfit all too recently, too). ‘He was watching this building when I arrived, wasn’t he? Picking over the fruit and spinning out the time. He wanted to see if Jenkins had a visitor and when Bessie and I came, he was rewarded. He probably crept upstairs to make sure we had called on Jenkins, or perhaps he saw us through the window. At any rate, he followed us afterwards. I should have realised.’
That is our man, I thought with a mix of triumph and frustration. That was Hector Guillaume, for want of any other name. Where the devil is he now?
‘Did Miss Poole have anything else of interest to say?’ I asked.
Lizzie stopped looking disconsolate and gave me a rapid account of her conversation in the workroom, like the precise witness she normally was.
‘Thank you,’ I told her. ‘That’s very helpful. You really must go home now. Take a cab. Ask the local constable downstairs to go with you to make sure you find one.’
‘To make sure I go home, you mean!’ said my wife crossly. ‘Don’t worry, I shall do that. What will you do with that photograph?’
‘It will form part of the evidence.’ I sounded very policeman-like. My wife gave me a look that spoke volumes, but she did march out, head high.
‘Sergeant,’ I called out to Morris. ‘I shall leave you in charge here now. I am going straight away back to the Yard to see Superintendent Dunn.’
‘Very well, sir,’ said Morris stolidly. ‘The police surgeon will likely be here shortly. Not that he’ll be able to tell us much more than we can see for ourselves.’
I looked for Lizzie in the street outside but there was no sign of her. However, the constable I’d ordered to go with her was plodding towards me.
‘I put Mrs Ross in a cab, sir,’ he announced. ‘It was a growler not a hansom, all decent. I did hesitate to put your wife in it at first on account of the look of the cabbie. He was a big old fellow with a squashed nose, touch of the prizefighter about him. But he seemed to know Mrs Ross and she him, so I thought it all right. She hopped up into the cab quite happy.’
That could only mean her old acquaintance, Wally Slater. It was a bit of luck. He would make sure Lizzie got home. That is, if she didn’t persuade him to drive her off somewhere on another detecting foray.
‘Thank you,’ I told the constable. ‘I’m glad you found a growler. I think I know the cabbie.’
I next hastened to make my own way back to the Yard. As I entered, the sergeant on the desk hailed me at once. ‘Mr Dunn is asking for you, sir. He said for you to go straight up to his office when you got here.’
Was this about Lizzie? I braced myself for another lecture and hurried up to Dunn’s office. I tapped on his door and opened it, to be stopped in my tracks frozen in the doorway, very likely with my mouth open.
Dunn was not alone. A woman was sitting in a chair by his desk. She turned her head to look at me. She was a fine-looking female, not young perhaps, but with remnants of former beauty still in her face. She was smartly dressed. I have learned, since being married, that women expect a fellow to notice what they are wearing in some detail, as if a man didn’t have enough on his mind. So I noted now that the visitor wore a pale grey skirt and a jacket that, to my mind, looked rather military. It had rows of frogging and brass buttons. She had a pile of black hair, intricately coiled, and I did wonder if it were all her own. Atop it was perched, tilted forward . . .
Ah, there was something in this taking note of a woman’s dress, after all. I fancied I already knew the lady’s hat, having had it described to me just under an hour before by Lizzie, courtesy of Miss Poole. The little hat was round with lavender flower buds on it and a lot of crunched-up green ribbons on the top. It was held in place by a couple of ribbons tied in place at the nape of her neck.
Dunn’s face had been inscrutable as he watched me study the visitor. ‘I am pleased to see you return so soon, Ross,’ he said now in a voice just as devoid of expression. ‘I wanted you to meet this lady and asked her if she wouldn’t mind waiting a little. May I introduce Mrs Thomas Tapley?’
