Authors: The Companion
Ann Granger (7 page)
‘Poor little lady,’ said Morris, looking shocked.
‘First things first!’ I said briskly to him. This was not the time to become maudlin. ‘Perhaps her skirt has pockets in it. You try that side and I’ll try this.’
I felt along the seam and sure enough, there was a pocket. I thought at first it was empty but when I pushed my fingers into it they encountered something. I pulled out a small white handkerchief, unused, neatly folded and pressed flat. ‘Here we are, Sergeant. Let’s have a look at this. Why, I do believe we’re in luck!’
I spread out the tiny cambric square. It was embroidered in blue silk thread with the initials M.H.
‘Well, Miss M. H.,’ I said. ‘You have spoken to us from beyond!’
Carmichael gave a disapproving cough. He was of Presbyterian persuasion and took exception to any lightness of reference to religious matters.
Morris had been scowling at the handkerchief. ‘See here, Inspector sir,’ he said suddenly. ‘Why not lure her to somewhere near the river and then tip the body in? More than likely it would have gone down as a suicide. In that house, he should have known she’d be found.’
‘It’s a good question, Sergeant, and I suspect the answer is that the site in Agar Town was handy for him. He may not have thought men would go into the house before it was demolished. The houses had already been cleared. Perhaps he expected a ball and chain to be swung against the whole lot and everything brought down, like Samson brought down the temple on his tormentors.’
(I put that in to tease Carmichael. Unworthy of me but there it is.)
‘He expected the body to be thoroughly crushed and when the fabric of the place was loaded up to be carted away, why yes, she’d be found, but in such a state that it would not be possible to say how she died.’
I stepped back and Morris, looking his relief, edged towards the door.
‘We’ll leave you to it, Doctor,’ I said to Carmichael.
There was a movement behind me and a young man with a waxy complexion and lank dark hair wearing what looked much like a butcher’s apron joined us. I’d seen Carmichael’s assistant before. I had not liked him then and I didn’t like him now. There was a glow in the fellow’s eyes as their gaze rested on the dead woman which sent a tremor up my spine. But it wasn’t a job, I supposed, for which there were many volunteers.
It was an hour and a half later in my office where, divested of my coat and my shirtsleeves rolled up, I had my head over a bowl of water, sluicing away the dust and the smell of that morning’s work, when I received Carmichael’s preliminary report. I raised my dripping face and mopped at it with a towel before taking the note a constable proffered me.
Carmichael’s opinion as to cause of death had not changed. He was puzzled that although the body was that of a woman who had been generally well nourished, yet the stomach and digestive tract were completely empty of food in any stage of digestion. She had not eaten for some forty-eight hours before her death. But a far more significant discovery he had kept for the last sentence of his report. It might well indicate a motive for her murder.
Elizabeth Martin
NOT SURPRISINGLY after a long and busy day I slept soundly. I didn’t hear Frank return. However, I’ve always been an early riser and found myself awake at six as usual.
My instinct was to jump out of bed and it was a strange feeling to know that I hadn’t to be about household duties as someone else would be taking care of those. I turned over and tried to go back to sleep but it was no good at all. Not only habit urged me to get up but through the window, which I had left a little open at the bottom, I could hear the sounds of a great city a-stir. Carts rolled noisily over the cobbles and workers on their way to their employment exchanged greetings. No one, it seemed, spoke quietly. Then I heard a cry of ‘Milk-o! Fresh from the cow-o!’ To my astonishment this was followed by a plaintive low. A cow, here in the middle of fashionable London? I scrambled out of the sheets, ran to the window and, flinging up the sash as far as it would go, leaned out.
Sure enough, there below was the cow and a boy holding it by a headstall. It was a dispirited beast with a dull coat and ribs like a toast rack. As I watched, a girl in an overlarge mob cap and apron came scurrying up the basement steps from this house carrying a pot-bellied pitcher. She spoke to a woman who stood by the cow, holding in her hand a small three-legged milking
stool. The woman set down the stool, settled herself on it and began milking the cow into a metal pot which looked like some kind of measure. When it was full she stood up and poured the contents into the pitcher the kitchen maid held out. A coin changed hands. The maid carried the pitcher carefully back down to the basement and the cow and its attendants moved on. After some minutes, the cry of ‘Milk-o!’ was audible from the next street followed by the lugubrious lowing of the poor brute which was required to plod around in this way.
stool. The woman set down the stool, settled herself on it and began milking the cow into a metal pot which looked like some kind of measure. When it was full she stood up and poured the contents into the pitcher the kitchen maid held out. A coin changed hands. The maid carried the pitcher carefully back down to the basement and the cow and its attendants moved on. After some minutes, the cry of ‘Milk-o!’ was audible from the next street followed by the lugubrious lowing of the poor brute which was required to plod around in this way.
I turned from the window and looked round the room. There was a wash stand in one corner and I expected hot water would be brought up, but when, I had no idea. To return to bed now was out of the question. I decided I could at least go down and explore the house. I dressed hurriedly and let myself out into the passageway.
There was no one about upstairs or, as far as I could see, on the ground floor. The servants must all be down in the basement from which I’d seen the girl with the pitcher issue. They were probably having their breakfast. Drawing room and dining room were empty. Another smallish room at the rear of the building suggested breakfast might be served there later. Meat salvers, stands for hot dishes and a bain-marie basin stood on a long oak sideboard. The remaining ground-floor room was on the right immediately one entered the house through the front door and I had not been inside it. I turned the handle and pushed.
Two instantly recognisable odours assailed my nose: book leather and stale cigar smoke. This must be the library to which Dr Tibbett and Frank had retired after dinner. It was in darkness, so I made free to draw back the heavy curtains and let the morning sunlight flood in. It was a small room with bookcases on all sides and a big leather-topped desk in the middle with a chair before it. A pair of more comfortable leather-covered winged chairs stood either side of the fireplace. I longed to take a close look at the books and imagined myself happily settled in a wing
chair to read, if ever Mrs Parry released me for long enough.
chair to read, if ever Mrs Parry released me for long enough.
Above the hearth hung a portrait of a handsome man with thick dark hair and an air of prosperity. There was something familiar about his face and I dragged from memory a visitor to our house when I had been very young, perhaps only six or so.
I knew that a visitor was coming long before he arrived because of the amount of cooking going on in Mary Newling’s kitchen. Pots of soup were reboiled up daily to prevent them going ‘off’. There was a wonderful cake, a monster of its kind, packed with dried fruits and decorated with toasted nuts which I was not allowed to pick at, under threat of not being allowed a single slice later when it should be cut. Flies buzzed before the meat safe in which a large pink leg of pork sat in a pool of its own pale blood awaiting the great day of the newcomer’s arrival when it would be sent down to the baker’s to be put in his oven when the bread-baking was over. It was like Christmas, even though that festival wouldn’t be for weeks yet.
I was confined to my nursery during his arrival and all I saw of him was the top of his hat as he alighted from the pony-trap sent to meet him. Molly Darby, my nurse, leaning out of the window beside me, saw no more than I did much to her great disappointment. But later I was called down to our cramped drawing room to meet him. Molly straightened my skirts, smoothed my hair and instructed me, ‘Do behave like a lady, miss!’
This was good advice but impossible to follow as I hadn’t the slightest notion how to behave in company, never having been taught.
I jumped down the wooden staircase making a great racket and burst into the room, eaten up by curiosity. But I stopped short on being confronted by a tall man with a sad face, dressed all in black. For a moment I was in confusion. But his eyes twinkled at me kindly and I lost my brief and sudden bashfulness.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘so you are Miss Martin. I am honoured to make your acquaintance.’
‘I am Miss Martin,’ I informed him, taking the hand he held out and shaking it firmly. ‘But mostly I am called Lizzie, you know. When I am older I shall be Miss Martin and I shall wear a bonnet with cherries on it to church.’
My father, seated by the hearth, uttered a small groan but the visitor chuckled.
‘You must forgive her and me, Josh,’ said my father. ‘She is a wild little thing and a complete ignoramus, but it is my fault.’
I saw that there was a cut-glass decanter, with glasses, on a small table. I knew it to contain some sort of expensive wine and only to be produced on very special occasions. I thought my father’s complexion rather rosier than usual but perhaps that was because he was sat by the fire.
‘What is there to forgive? She seems a bright child to me and certainly favours Charlotte in looks.’
‘Yes,’ said my father curtly. I thought that even if he agreed with the visitor’s remark he had rather it had not been made. I saw a flicker of pain cross his face and I understood that he grieved for my dead mother. I went to him and took his hand and he kissed the top of my head.
I wondered now at the visitor’s words because my own opinion, as I have written, taken from my mother’s likeness upstairs in my bedroom, was that I didn’t favour her much. But then, I had not known her and the visitor presumably had.
He must have been my godfather, Josiah Parry, here immortalised in oils. I suppose I was told his name at the time but I hadn’t remembered it. What I did remember was that, on leaving, he presented me with a shilling, whispering, ‘Put it safely by, Lizzie, and save up for the cherry bonnet!’
I thought the shilling a small fortune. Sadly it was spent not saved and I have never owned a bonnet with cherries on it. I frowned now before his portrait. Mrs Parry had remarked that her husband had not visited us in Derbyshire. But he had certainly done so at least once. Had she forgotten this or not known of it?
There was a small ebony and ormolu clock on the mantelshelf and a box of safety matches. At home Mary Newling had always bought the old-style lucifers and I had continued to do so when it had fallen to me to make this purchase. They were a little cheaper.
Without warning, I heard a click of the door behind me and a gasp. I turned and saw a surprised housemaid with a pan and brush.
‘Sorry, miss,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to see anyone yet.’
‘I’m about to go,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I only came down because I thought I might see someone to ask if I might have some hot water in my room.’
‘Yes, miss, I’ll see it’s sent up directly.’ She was still looking at me in a perplexed way.
‘I am Miss Martin, Mrs Parry’s new companion,’ I told her.
‘Yes, miss, I guessed as you must be.’
On impulse I asked, ‘Were you employed here when Miss Hexham was Mrs Parry’s companion?’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘You must all have been very surprised when she left so suddenly.’
‘Yes, miss. But Mrs Parry gave us her clothes what she left behind her.’
By ‘us’ I assumed she meant all the servants. The picture of them dividing up the belongings of my predecessor was not a pretty one.
‘Shall I get on then?’ The maid held up her dustpan and brush.
I should not have asked the girl questions. She would certainly report my interest below stairs. Besides, I was holding her up. So I simply asked her what her name was. She told me it was Wilkins. I thanked her and left her to her work, taking myself back to my room. People wandering around under the servants’ feet first thing in the day were obviously a nuisance. I should have to learn to get up later.
Wilkins did not forget my request, however. I had not been
back in my room above ten minutes when a knock at the door heralded the kitchen girl in the mob cap I’d seen earlier, this time staggering under a can of hot water. Seen close at hand, the girl looked no more than twelve years of age but might have been thirteen. She was of scrawny build with the pinched look of children who have grown up ill-nourished and probably born to mothers themselves half-starved. To tell the age of such a child is difficult.
back in my room above ten minutes when a knock at the door heralded the kitchen girl in the mob cap I’d seen earlier, this time staggering under a can of hot water. Seen close at hand, the girl looked no more than twelve years of age but might have been thirteen. She was of scrawny build with the pinched look of children who have grown up ill-nourished and probably born to mothers themselves half-starved. To tell the age of such a child is difficult.
‘Why, what is your name?’ I asked.
‘Bessie, miss,’ she replied, pushing up the mob cap which had worked its way down over her eyes.
‘Oh,’ I said, taking the can from her before she spilled it. It was very heavy and difficult to imagine how her thin little arms had managed to haul it up three flights of stairs from the basement. ‘So you are called Elizabeth, as I am.’
At this I got a similar perplexed look to the one I’d had from Wilkins earlier. Bessie frowned and said she didn’t think she’d ever been called Elizabeth. As far as she knew, her name had always been Bessie. They’d called her that at the orphanage.
So, a charity child. At least the institution had kept her from the streets and trained her well enough to go into service.
‘I saw you earlier,’ I said, ‘from my window. You were buying milk.’
Bessie sniffed. ‘I don’t reckon much to that milk. Mrs Simms, she will buy it because, she says, if you see it come from the cow you know it hasn’t been watered. There is a feller comes round with a cart and milk churns, but Mrs Simms, she don’t trust him.’
‘Why don’t you, er, reckon to the cow’s milk, Bessie?’
‘It stinks,’ said Bessie. ‘It’s what they feeds them poor animals on, cabbage stalks and rubbish from the markets mostly. I don’t never drink milk.’
I managed not to laugh as I didn’t want to offend her. She seemed such a sturdily independent little soul, for all her waif-like appearance.
‘Do you remember your parents, Bessie? Before you went to the orphanage?’
‘No,’ said Bessie briefly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told her.
Bessie brightened. ‘I was left in a church, in a box with
Newman’s Pork Pies
written on it. So they give me the name Newman because I didn’t have no other and I don’t know why they called me Bessie. Still, could’ve been worse, couldn’t it?’
Newman’s Pork Pies
written on it. So they give me the name Newman because I didn’t have no other and I don’t know why they called me Bessie. Still, could’ve been worse, couldn’t it?’
On that philosophical note she vanished through the door.
When I finally found my way downstairs for the second time it was gone eight o’clock. Breakfast was set out in the smaller dining room as I had guessed it would be. Frank Carterton was already there, eating heartily and apparently none the worse for his night on the tiles. Indeed his mood seemed markedly improved since we had parted company the previous evening, his fit of the sulks quite forgotten.
‘Good morning!’ he greeted me cheerfully. ‘You’re an early bird. You won’t see Aunt Julia downstairs before midday, believe me.’ He gestured at the meat salvers now laden with a couple of cold joints. ‘I’m afraid I’ve finished the best of the beef and you’ll find what’s left rather scrappy. But there is plenty of boiled ham on the bone there. Or I recommend Mrs Simms’ excellent omelettes.’
‘The ham will be enough,’ I told him.
‘I’ll cut you some,’ he offered, leaping to his feet, grabbing the carving knife and beginning to hack copious amounts of meat from the bone until I begged him to stop.
‘I am beginning to learn something about the running of the household,’ I told him, when we were both seated and he began to eat again. ‘So the Simmses, husband and wife, hold the position of butler and cook—’
‘Mrs Simms is cook-housekeeper,’ said Frank indistinctly. ‘She’s a stickler for being called that. She runs the place and she runs poor old Simms. Veritable dragon, our Mrs Simms.’
The thought of the impassive and hugely dignified butler being organised by a virago of a wife amused me. I was curious to meet Mrs Simms and wondered if she ever left her kitchen lair.
‘There are also a couple of housemaids,’ said Frank vaguely, ‘couldn’t tell you their names.’
‘I have met one called Wilkins.’
‘Then you have discovered more than I have. Wilkins, is it? I’ll wager a pound to a penny the other one is called Perkins. Those are housemaids’ names, in my experience.’
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