An Appetite for Murder (40 page)

‘Miss Doughty, you may not be aware that the burglar entered the building and opened the safe with company keys,’ protested Elliott. ‘I did not have a set, Sweetman did.’

‘We only have Mr Whibley’s word that he had his keys on his person that night,’ said Frances. ‘How simple just to lend them to you. The next morning he was first in the office and found Mr Gibson. Mr Whibley was not by nature a violent man. He was very shocked by what he saw and did his best to help an injured colleague. But he had the presence of mind to take Mr Gibson’s pocket book. He went to see Mr Sweetman the next day at his home, ostensibly for a private conversation about the crime, but actually to leave the pocket book there.’

‘These are just words, Inspector,’ said Elliott, ‘the unsubstantiated accusations of an hysterical female. I do not believe there is one fragment of actual proof.’

‘The expert gentlemen who have examined the books of J. Finn Insurance have uncovered evidence of tampering,’ said Frances. ‘They have not as yet identified the hand that made the changes to the figures, except they are sure that it was neither Mr Sweetman nor Mr Finn senior, but if they were to be supplied with examples of suspects’ handwriting they could do so.’

The expression of alarm on Elliott’s face told Frances all that she needed to know.

‘I believe they will find that while the financial acumen behind the scheme was in all probability Mr Whibley’s, the beautifully neat, almost imperceptible amendments were carried out by the skilled hand of Mr Elliott. It is also my belief that the attempt to recover and presumably destroy the old books of J. Finn Insurance was made either by Mr Elliott or his confederates, prompted by my asking questions.’

At that moment, Sarah appeared at the door of the office, and gave Elliott a look that might have shrivelled a man with a less hardened carapace. ‘Doctor says she’ll live, but it wasn’t a moment too soon,’ she said. ‘The lady has started to talk and she has an interesting story to tell.’ She handed Sharrock a letter.

‘My wife is extremely ill and easily confused,’ said Elliott. ‘Her mind wanders and she imagines things. It is a sad case.’

Sharrock said nothing and read the letter. ‘I have here a report from the doctor who currently has her under his care. A reliable man in his profession, and not I think prone to strange imaginings.’

Elliott darted forward and made to snatch the letter, but Sharrock held it out of his reach.

‘I have a right to see it!’ exclaimed Elliott.

‘You will, all in good time,’ said Sharrock. He rose, went to the door, and summoned a constable. ‘Miss Doughty,’ he said, ‘you have made some very interesting allegations against Mr Elliott, with regard to the burglaries and the fraud, but as matters currently stand we have no real proof that what you say is true.’

‘There you are! What did I say?’ said Elliott triumphantly.

‘That situation may of course change as we make our enquiries. In the meantime, James Elliott I am placing you under arrest on suspicion of the attempted murder of your wife.’

Elliott gasped. ‘This is outrageous! I demand to see my solicitor at once.’

‘Take him away,’ said Sharrock.

Once Mr Elliott, protesting loudly, had been removed to the cells and a constable had been dispatched to examine the supposed sickroom, Sharrock sat down and faced Frances, Sarah and Agnes. ‘You may well be right, Miss Doughty, and he strikes me as a very nasty piece of work, but I’m sorry to say we have a very poor case,’ he said. ‘I doubt we’ll make the burglary charge stick, and even his handwriting on the books may not be enough. He can always claim he was acting under the instructions of another more knowledgeable man and didn’t know the nature of what he was asked to do. We can interview Mr Minster, of course, but will he confess to aiding and abetting? I don’t think so. As to that business with the wife, he’ll claim she doesn’t know what she’s saying and bring any number of experts to agree with him. He could well wriggle out of that one as well.’

Frances thought to mention the forged will, but decided not to, as strictly it was only evidence against Mrs and not Mr Minster. She wondered how much Mrs Minster knew, and recalled Mr Wheelock’s revelation that the lady had once been considered a beauty and had been in an intimate association with one of the conspirators. Had she been Elliott’s and not Whibley’s paramour? It was hard to tell how old Mrs Minster was, but it was very possible that at the time of the robbery she had been about twenty. Could she have been the woman who had gone to Mrs Sweetman claiming to be her husband’s mistress, spinning her a false tale of infidelity and a planned flight, with the object of dissuading her from supporting her husband with an alibi?

‘Now then, young lady,’ said Sharrock to Agnes. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

Agnes dabbed her eyes. ‘I only did what I was told to do,’ she said.

‘Of course you did, and who shall blame you for obeying your master?’ said Sharrock, robustly.

‘And the room was kept dark, so I never really saw how bad she was. Master always said that what he was doing was for the best. He said she shouldn’t have too much food as it made her ill and upset her. In the last day she never had any water either.’

‘And no medicine of any kind?’

‘No. Only the chloroform.’

‘Chloroform?’ exclaimed Sharrock.

‘Yes, he got me to buy it for him. The chemist wasn’t sure if he should sell it to me, but I said it was to get grease spots off clothes, so he let me have an ounce.’

‘And did Mr Elliott actually use it on her or did you?’

‘I never saw him use it, and I know I didn’t. He said it was just there in case she got agitated. Maybe he changed his mind and threw it away, because the next time I looked the bottle had gone.’

Sharrock pulled open a drawer of his desk and after a quick rummage, removed the chloroform bottle that Frances had delivered to him after the attack and placed it on the desk. ‘Was this it?’

Agnes blinked in surprise, as if he had been a conjuror producing a dove from a hat. She peered at the bottle. ‘I can’t be sure, but it does look very like it.’

‘Would you be able to show me the shop where it was purchased and the assistant who sold it to you?’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘Because the chloroform in this very bottle was used in a serious attack on Miss Doughty and Miss Smith. We traced it to a chemists shop. It was an unusual purchase and the assistant remembers it was sold to a young woman.’

‘I didn’t know what he wanted it for, I swear it!’ said Agnes, looking as if she was about to cry again.

‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Sharrock, with what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

‘Have you found the man who ran away?’ asked Frances.

‘Oh yes, his friend gave him up, and we have them both in the cells now, but neither of them seem able to identify who hired them.’

‘They might be more forthcoming if they see that Mr Elliott has been arrested,’ said Frances. ‘He may have hired the same two desperate characters to burgle the offices of J. Finn Insurance. It is only a shame that we have no firm evidence against him for the murders he has undoubtedly committed.’

‘Murders?’ gasped Agnes.

‘That’s a new one on me,’ said Sharrock.

‘I believe, although I cannot prove it, that Mr Elliott killed Mr Walsh of Anderson, Walsh and Whibley about eight years ago. It was a death that seemed only to benefit Mr Whibley, who thereby inherited all the business, but now I know that he and Elliott were working in association, I can see that the legacy gave the pair of them free access to some rich opportunities. And if Mr Elliott is guilty of the burglary committed in 1866, then he is also guilty of the murder of the clerk Mr Gibson, who died of his injuries less than a year after the crime. He may even have strangled Mrs Sweetman to keep her quiet.’

‘But why would he want to murder own his wife, where’s the motive for that?’ asked Sharrock.

‘To supplant her with another,’ said Frances. ‘A newly widowed and wealthy lady advanced in years. A lady very susceptible to the flattery of a younger man. A lady whose death soon after the wedding would not arouse suspicion in view of her age.’

‘And that lady would be?’

‘Mrs Outram. Her husband, who was a dedicated vegetarian and man of property, died very recently aged ninety-two. I think Mr Whibley also had his eye on that prize, but whether she had her eye on him may be another matter. He did reveal not long before his death that he was considering marriage. And Mr Whibley would never have married for youth and beauty. Youth and beauty were things he could buy. I think he connived with Mrs Outram to conceal the fact that her husband had recently made a new will leaving a substantial part of his fortune to the cause of vegetarianism, and hoped that the lady would be grateful enough to marry him.’

‘Mr Whibley seems to have had his fingers in a great many underhand things,’ said Sharrock. ‘Once you put it all together, it’s surprising he didn’t leave a bigger fortune. He couldn’t have spent it all on good living.’

‘He was a shrewd man, thinking he would enjoy a longer life than he did,’ said Frances. ‘Somewhere there is a private bank account that only he could draw upon, in the name of a charity, perhaps, a phantom establishment.’ She thought for a moment. ‘He was said to have been establishing a new scheme, a hospital for the aged poor. If that can be found then the money will go to the genuine charity that was his residuary legatee.’

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-S
EVEN

F
rances later learned that the two would-be kidnappers, on being told that Elliott was behind bars and likely to remain so, miraculously regained their memory of the fact that it was he who had hired them to carry out the chloroform attack, and burgle the offices of J. Finn Insurance.

Monday, 14 February brought something that made Sarah laugh, although Frances was unable to see the humour in it: a new edition of the Miss Dauntless stories,
A Mystery for Miss Dauntless
. It appeared that the intrepid lady detective had been faced with a puzzle she was unable to solve, the identity of an admirer who had sent her a greetings card on St Valentine’s Day.

That afternoon, Inspector Sharrock sent for Frances. Although he did not reveal the purpose of the request, she complied at once, not without some apprehension that this might be a clumsy attempt at matchmaking. This worry was not relieved when she found a young gentleman sitting in Sharrock’s office, who looked about as pleased to see her as she was to see him. ‘Allow me to introduce you,’ said the Inspector with a grin, ‘Miss Frances Doughty, the bane of the criminal classes of Bayswater, and Mr Jacob Pennyforth, former valet to the late Mr Whibley.’

Mr Pennyforth, who was clutching a hat rather more tightly than seemed advisable, jumped to his feet and made an awkward little bow. ‘Miss Doughty, I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, and must apologise to you most humbly for my failure to respond to your many enquiries. I can assure you that I had the best of reasons, but all the same it must have seemed terribly impolite.’

‘Well, since you are here now, I am content to put that difficulty behind us,’ said Frances.

‘Mr Pennyforth came to see me this morning with a very interesting tale,’ said Sharrock.

‘And I owe it to you to tell you all,’ said the valet, perching on his chair once more. Pennyforth told Frances that he recalled very well the last occasion on which Mr Elliott had spoken to Mr Whibley; it was on the afternoon of Tuesday, 11 January. Mr Whibley had departed for the office as usual that morning but had unexpectedly returned early. He had not looked ill, but was clearly very anxious and sent a note to Mr Elliott saying he wanted to see him at once. Elliott had arrived soon afterwards. Since Pennyforth was not in the room to hear it, he knew nothing of the subject of their meeting, but he was sure from the tone of the voices that had filtered through the door that it could not have been an amicable discussion on the subject of finding a suitable property for a deserving charity. The exchange had become heated on both sides, and after Elliott left, Whibley had been visibly distraught.

Later that day, Whibley called Pennyforth into his study and a most unusual conversation had ensued. Whibley confessed to Pennyforth that he had not been a good man all of his life, but there were some things that he would not countenance, and now he found that those very things had been done by another man for his advantage, and that for some years he had, without knowing it, been living on money tainted by blood. Whibley gave Pennyforth a key to a drawer in his desk, saying that in the event of his death, Pennyforth was to unlock the drawer in which he would find a packet. He should remove the packet and deliver it unopened to the person whose name was written on it. On no account and on no pretext should he return to the house or have anything to do with Mr Elliott, who was a very dangerous man.

Immediately after Whibley’s death, Pennyforth had opened the safe as directed, and found the packet, which bore the name Hubert Sweetman. He did not have Mr Sweetman’s address, but took the packet into his charge, determining to make enquiries. He had then left the house and gone to live with his sister, who was the landlady of an inn outside London. The terrible weather that had descended shortly afterwards, cutting off London from outlying towns had prevented Pennyforth from making any enquiries, and by the time it was possible for him to carry out Mr Whibley’s instructions, he learned that Mr Sweetman had been arrested for the murder of his wife. Under the circumstances, he had thought it prudent to wait and see how that situation was resolved. He had recently read in the newspapers that Mr Sweetman had been released, but still did not know where he was residing, or indeed whether he was in danger of re-arrest. Unsure of what to do, he had eventually decided to approach the police. He had, he said, only dared to come forward because he had learned that Mr Elliott was under arrest.

That morning, Mr Sweetman and Mr Pennyforth had met at the home of Mr Curtis in the presence of Inspector Sharrock, and the packet was delivered and opened. It was found to contain banknotes to the value of two thousand pounds and a letter.