A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) (5 page)
Read A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) Online
Authors: Ann Granger
Harper allowed himself a small, professional smile. ‘My dear Inspector Ross, you know as well as I do that such a thing is very difficult to judge. But in this case we are, if the
expression doesn’t seem unfortunate, in luck. Despite faint early signs of it, rigor is barely setting in. Even the jaw and neck muscles can still be manipulated to some degree and they, as you know, are among the first to set.’
‘So he has not been dead long,’ I said.
‘No, Inspector. It will be some hours before rigor has advanced enough to render all the muscles completely stiff. I would venture to say the unfortunate man had not long died when you paid your first visit to his house and saw him. What time was that?’
‘A little after seven thirty.’ My mind was racing with possibilities, all of them unwelcome, and I knew my voice sounded dull.
Harper took out his pocket watch and consulted it. ‘Well, it is now nearly half past nine. So, some time between five and when you found him, shall we say? Or rather, when the maidservant found him at about a quarter past seven.’
I hoped Biddle was making a thorough job of the interview with the maid. Someone had entered this house during that recent period of time, killed Tapley, and slipped out without being seen. He might still, I realised with dismay, have been hidden in the house when I entered this room. He’d escaped while I was here – in this room viewing his handiwork! Mrs Jameson and Lizzie had been downstairs in the parlour. Jenny had still been at our house with Bessie. The murderer could have left without any hindrance, certainly not from me. I should have searched the place! I might have been too late already; but I might have confronted him and, even if he’d knocked me down, and then fled, I’d have laid my eyes on the wretch and known what he looked like.
Harper was watching me quizzically. I dare say he knew exactly what was in my mind.
‘You’ll want to be on your way, Doctor,’ I said to him. ‘Thank you for your promptness in coming tonight.’
He nodded. ‘I will arrange for the mortuary van to come and take the body.’
We went downstairs together. I shook hands with Dr Harper and he left. In the parlour I found Lizzie and Mrs Jameson engaged in conversation. The moment would come when the house owner realised that the murderer might still have been on the premises when she sent Jenny running to fetch me. But it could wait. I asked her if there had been any visitors at all that day and particularly during the afternoon. She shook her head and insisted it had been a quiet day and no one had called. The kitchen, then, was increasingly looking like the murderer’s way in. But I had to make sure.
‘Your lodger lived in the two front rooms upstairs,’ I said. ‘If he had been watching from one of his windows and had seen a potential visitor to himself approach, could he have gone downstairs and opened the front door to that person? Taken him upstairs, without your knowledge or the knowledge of your maid?’
She admitted it was possible. Her day was a busy one. The devil made work for idle hands. She did her sewing, mending and letter-writing in the small back sitting room. Jenny lit the parlour fire at five o’clock in the winter months and of a cool evening, such as today.
I couldn’t help but mention the lack of a fire in the lodger’s rooms.
She was anxious to explain. The upstairs parlour for his use
had had no fire lit in it for the past three weeks now, since the onset of milder weather. But, she assured me, it had been Tapley’s own request to discontinue the fire in the grate.
‘I several times asked him not to suffer cold unnecessarily,’ she told me. ‘I had the impression, you see, that he was used to making economies of that sort, and that was why he didn’t ask for one to be lit now the winter is past. I assured him he was welcome to enjoy this parlour fire from five onwards. But the cooler evenings didn’t seem to trouble him and, as Jenny has more than enough to do, I admit I didn’t press him. Jenny has this hearth to tend and the supper to help me cook. Then she must serve the supper to both Mr Tapley and me, clear the table and wash the dishes. After that she must make the dining room ready for my breakfast. She’s a willing girl, but it would be unfair to expect her to run up and down the stairs tending a second fire in the evening, and clearing a second grate of its ashes in the morning, if the lodger didn’t want it. It was a different matter in the middle of winter, of course. He didn’t refuse a fire then. I should have insisted, even if he had.’
Her voice trailed away and she looked distressed.
Lizzie caught my eye and said, with an apologetic glance at Mrs Jameson, ‘Mr Tapley had a key to the house, a street-door key.’
This was important. I hurried back upstairs. Tapley’s frock coat hung in the wardrobe and I searched its pockets first. I then knelt by the body and slipped my fingers into the pockets of the clothes he wore. My search turned up a gold half-hunter watch, which was interesting, and not only because a robber wouldn’t have missed it. Tapley had not been reduced to
selling or pawning it. At some time in the past he’d been well off enough to buy it in the first place. I opened the case hoping for an inscription but there was none. I closed the case again and contemplated it. The watch was dented and a little rubbed, suggesting it had resided in his pocket for years, but it was an expensive item.
However, there was nothing like a street-door key. A further search in all drawers and any other likely spot failed to turn up any key whatsoever.
I went back downstairs. ‘Mrs Jameson,’ I told her, ‘I strongly advise you to send for a locksmith in the morning. Have him change the lock on the front door. Tapley’s key may be upstairs but I haven’t found it. So we have a possibility that his killer took it and if there is something in Tapley’s rooms that the killer wants, but may not yet have found, he could return.’
‘Mrs Jameson and Jenny must both come to us tonight!’ Lizzie said at once. She turned to the landlady. ‘They will soon take Mr Tapley away. There will be things to be done here by the police. You won’t want to be here at that time. The missing key – it may have been taken by the intruder. Please come to us.’
Mrs Jameson looked up at me. ‘Will it be in order for me to go up and pack a small bag, Inspector?’
I admit I hesitated. We had not yet conducted a thorough search of the house. We had no idea if the murder weapon was still here. Normally I’d intervene to prevent any article leaving the house, especially if possibly concealed in a bag. Suspicion, unfortunately, must fall on this respectable widow lady and her maid, as it falls on all unlucky enough to find
themselves involved in a murder inquiry. But, I told myself, if Mrs Jameson had wanted time to hide some small object (in this case the fatal ‘blunt instrument’), then she’d already had the opportunity to do so after sending Jenny to fetch me. She’d had at least fifteen minutes alone in the house to wash blood off and dispose of it. She wouldn’t have waited until I arrived.
In the same way she could have taken Tapley’s key in an attempt to muddy the water of the investigation. She had but to return it to her own ring of keys.
Jenny, likewise, could have disposed of incriminating material before falling through our back door into Bessie’s arms, bawling her eyes out. The girl had appeared demented with terror when she arrived at our house, but she might also be a clever little actress.
I thought guiltily that there’d already been enough time for the villain to get halfway across the country, let alone slip out of the house, and toss the murder weapon into the Thames, only a step away.
‘Of course,’ I told Mrs Jameson. ‘Pack whatever you’ll need for a few nights, but only that, if you please.’
When she’d left us, I asked Lizzie what else she had learned from the lady and was given a precise account of the conversation.
‘Lizzie,’ I asked, ‘would you say Mrs Jameson was a foolish, naive or gullible woman?’
My wife shook her head decidedly. ‘No, I’d say she was a practical one, very capable and intelligent.’
‘Then our Mr Tapley,’ I replied, ‘was also a very clever fellow, it seems to me. He talked his way into this house and
into renting the two rooms upstairs, without a single written reference of any significance. I don’t count the letter from his previous landlady who probably knew as little about him as this one does. He persuaded Mrs Jameson to let him have a key to the house, and gave no information about himself or his history while he was here, nor where he went during the day. He received no visitors that we know of before today.’
‘You think he let his murderer in?’ Lizzie asked quietly.
‘We have to consider it. However, it does appear he was attacked while reading. He wasn’t sitting and talking to someone. I’m inclined to believe the killer slipped in through the kitchen.
‘But it’s possible Tapley may have sneaked in a visitor or two on prior occasions. He has been in contact with someone outside of this house, Lizzie, and I’ll have to find out who that person is! Otherwise, supposing this not the work of a thief so incompetent he overlooked a gold watch, we are looking for a total stranger. A man who, for no obvious reason, walked into an unknown house and there killed a man he’d never seen before.’ I shook my head. ‘I find that difficult to accept.’
There was another rumble and clatter of wheels and hooves on the cobbles outside. I got up and glanced from the window. A sombre, windowless van had drawn up. Two men were unloading a plain deal coffin.
‘Lizzie, would you go up to Mrs Jameson and ask her to stay in her room for the next half an hour? Keep her company and the door shut. The van is here to take the victim to the mortuary and it’s not a sight either of you would wish to see.’
Lizzie hurried away up the stairs while I opened the door to the mortuary workers. So much activity so late at night had
occasioned a lot of interest up and down the street. Curtains were twitching at bedroom windows. Faces showed as pale ovals against the panes, caught by the gaslight in the street lamps. By morning few would be in ignorance of what had happened here. I showed the men up to the room where Tapley lay and watched them lift his battered body into the coffin. Their faces were expressionless and their movements brisk and capable. They did not speak, even to each other. To them it was merely another death. They had done the job before.
Tapley was carried downstairs and loaded up. The van clattered away. Curtains at upper windows fell back into place.
I went back and climbed the stairs to the first floor. I had forgotten Jenny, but she was seated on the topmost step of the spiral stairway down to her kitchen, a bundle in her arms. Biddle stood over her. It looked as if he had supervised her packing, if rolling her nightgown and hairbrush into a shawl could be called that. His attitude looked custodial. It was not that which bothered Jenny.
‘I suppose I’ll have to scrub that carpet,’ she said resentfully.
‘But not tomorrow,’ I told her. ‘There will be police officers in the room tomorrow.’ I could hear the voices of the two women in Mrs Jameson’s room and rapped on the door panels. ‘You can come down now.’
Lizzie opened the door. Behind her I could see Mrs Jameson, a small portmanteau held in one hand and her Bible gripped in the other.
‘We are ready to leave.’
I asked Mrs Jameson if she wouldn’t mind first accompanying me around the house to find out if anything was obviously
missing or disturbed other than in Tapley’s room. The police would search the premises later, I explained. But if there were any sign of theft, we would have our motive.
‘You want me to come, too, ma’am?’ asked Jenny.
‘Let her come too,’ I said. ‘She may notice something.’
So Biddle found himself carrying both the portmanteau and Jenny’s bundle downstairs. Lizzie followed him.
Both women declined to enter the murder room itself but we looked everywhere else. They assured me nothing appeared to be missing or to have been moved. The sad signs of an evening so dramatically interrupted were seen in the dining room, where the table was set for the meal never taken. The kitchen smelled of the roast pork congealing in its pan; but it had mysteriously disappeared from sight.
‘I put the joint in the meat safe in your larder, missus,’ announced Bessie to Mrs Jameson. ‘If you was to leave it here on the table overnight, rats would get it.’
‘If I might have the house key, ma’am,’ I asked. ‘So that we can secure the premises when we’ve finished. You shall have it back in the morning.’
‘Of course,’ she murmured.
When all four women had left the house, Biddle and I conducted a quick second search but turned up nothing helpful. In particular, we didn’t find the missing house key. It looked as if the killer had taken it. If so, it could only mean he intended to return. Why? Had he, too, been disturbed and had no time to search for something? Not the gold half-hunter. Although a prize, it would not be worth risking his neck to return for that alone. We couldn’t yet rule out a burglar – Harper’s use of the word ‘jemmy’ worried me – but I felt
strongly that this was premeditated murder. We’d have to work hard to discover what motive lay behind it.
‘Right, Constable!’ I said to him. ‘What about that girl, Jenny? What did she have to say? Did you ask her if anyone at all called here during this past week? Any hawkers, peddlers, tradesmen or delivery boys? Beggars?’
‘The baker’s roundsman came yesterday,’ Biddle said, taking out his notebook and consulting it ostentatiously. ‘That’s his regular call, sir. The same man has been doing the round as long as Jenny’s worked here. That’s nearly two years, sir,’ added Biddle. ‘That’s how long Jenny has had a place here, I mean. She’s not London-born. She comes from Chatham where her pa and brothers work in the dockyard. But she’s got an auntie in service with a Quaker family in Clapham and that’s how she comes to be working for Mrs Jameson. Her auntie found her the place. She isn’t a Quaker herself, Jenny, but she likes working in a Quaker house because it’s a good recommendation if she wanted to seek another place later. No drinking nor gambling nor bad language and so on . . . and everything kept as clean as a new pin.’
