Ann Granger (34 page)

As for Potter, he made as if he hadn’t heard Roche’s outburst. He increased his pace and widened the distance between us even more. We were lucky enough to find a growler, a closed four-wheeled cab, before too long and hailed it.

‘Who do I give the baby to?’ asked Dotty.

‘Here, Morris!’ I ordered. ‘You’re a family man, I believe.’

Morris obligingly held out his arms and number twenty-seven was placed in them.

‘Are you taking that little ’un in my cab?’ demanded the driver. ‘I don’t want it being sick or worse on my cushions.’

‘You’ll be paid for the inconvenience,’ Charles Roche said loudly.

The cabbie, like Mrs Dawson, recognised a well-to-do citizen. ‘Right you are, sir.’

‘I’ve a suggestion, gentlemen,’ said Morris as we set off, our conveyance rumbling across the cobblestones. ‘I was thinking that it would be better if the little lady, Mrs Craven, were to see her baby for the first time looking a bit tidier than she does now. If we could drive first to my house, my wife will bath the little one and find her a nice clean gown. I know she’s got baby clothes laid by. Both our girls are married now and Mrs Morris is just waiting for one of ’em to produce!’

*   *   *

So that is what we did. Mrs Morris and her sister expressed vociferous dismay at the plight of the child. Snatching her away from the good sergeant, the two women whisked her off to be returned to us some short time later, washed and in a crisp white lawn gown, quite transformed although it would be a good while before some liveliness entered those blue eyes.

Back to Chelsea we carried her. When the maid opened the front door of the Roche house, my own dear Lizzie came running out into the hall, crying out, ‘Have you got her? Oh, please God, do say you’ve got her!’

‘We have her,’ I said.

Lizzie burst into tears, something I’d never seen her do however extreme the circumstances. I cleared my throat loudly and spent some moments staring down the empty street. It would never do if an inspector of the Metropolitan Police engaged in the performance of his duty were to give way to emotion.

*   *   *

Later, of course, it was a different matter. ‘I swear to you, Lizzie,’ I said fervently when we stood alone on the front doorstep of the Chelsea house and I took my leave of her for the time being. ‘When I saw that baby alive and well – or as well as the poor mite could be in the care of Mrs Dawson – I felt like shouting out “Hallelujah”!’

‘I am so happy for Lucy,’ Lizzie said. ‘Although, Ben, to be honest, what will become of her now? She’ll stay here, I suppose, at her Uncle Charles’s home. Yet she’s so inexperienced and there’s no one to help her. They’ll hire a nurse, I dare say. But Lucy needs someone at her side to look after her.’

‘Not
you,
though, Lizzie,’ I said gently.

‘I understand it can’t be me. It would only end in some disagreeable scene. I mean between Charles Roche and me. I couldn’t keep silent indefinitely.’ She sighed.

‘Her Uncle Charles has a great deal on his conscience,’ I told her, ‘and will no doubt seek to do what he can—’

But here we were interrupted. Nearby a throat was cleared and a male voice asked diffidently, ‘Excuse me. May I ask if you know whether Mr Charles Roche is at home?’

We both turned to see the speaker, a thin, pale, rather dishevelled young man. He stood on the pavement at the foot of the scrubbed stone steps to the front door, his hat in his hand.

‘Who wants him?’ I asked, before Lizzie could answer.

He flushed. ‘My name is Craven,’ he said. ‘I recently arrived from China. I took a fever on board ship and I have been lying sick at a rooming house in Bristol for the past week or more. I – I am married to Mr Roche’s niece and seeking to know her whereabouts.’

I turned back to Lizzie and raised my eyebrows. ‘Shall I take him inside, Lizzie?’

‘No,’ she replied firmly, ‘I’d like to do that, if you don’t mind. Come along, Mr Craven, you’ve arrived at a very good moment.’

Chapter Twenty-two

Elizabeth Martin

‘THOSE TWO women shouldn’t have been locked in together,’ grumbled Ben. ‘If I’d been there, I’d have prevented it. If I’d known they were together upstairs when I arrived, I’d have sent Morris up immediately to separate them. But by the time I did find out, and we did separate them, they’d had plenty of time to concoct a story.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said for the umpteenth time, ‘I really am. I did not foresee that.’

‘Why should you? No, no, it’s not your fault, Lizzie. Don’t think I mean that. You don’t deal with criminals every day. I do. I know their tricks and ability to invent an alibi out of thin air.’

He referred, of course, to that precious half-hour when Christina Roche and Higgins the maid had been locked in the bedroom at Shore House and the rest of us had been arguing downstairs. I should have suspected Higgins’s eagerness to be shut away with her mistress, and not been surprised that the two had used the time profitably to frustrate the law.

The fact was that Miss Roche was never charged with the murder of Jethro Brennan. We should have realised, from the fuss made by Charles Roche right at the beginning when he realised his sister had been arrested, and the excuses he at once began to concoct for her, that it might well turn out so. Miss Roche vehemently denied murder when questioned by Ben. Nothing she had said before his arrival on the scene, suggesting she admitted it, had been said before an officer of the law. Now it was agreed she had been confused by the horrific events and ‘didn’t know what she had been saying’. Dr Lefebre had obligingly confirmed that derangement of mind occasionally led sufferers to make false statements, sometimes of an incriminating nature. With such an authority to back up the story, I ought to have expected this version of events would be generally accepted.

I wasn’t one of those happy to go along with this whitewash. But who listens to a companion? Ben listened, of course, but pointed out I was a lone dissenter and, on my own, I couldn’t persuade a jury there was a case against the lady.

‘There is no charge against her that will stand up in a court of law, Lizzie,’ Ben had declared ruefully.

Nor would it. No witness had seen her kill Brennan. My arguments were circumstantial. As for the destruction of the gown, up stepped the loyal Higgins to swear that she was responsible for destroying the article, after it had been spoiled by an over-hot smoothing iron. Miss Roche had told her to dispose of it, and that was what she’d done. This was the story no doubt so cleverly thought up during that half-hour the women spent together.

So the death of Brennan was put down to an unknown quarrel with some unknown fellow ruffian. He was, after all, only a rat-catcher.

Christina had organised the kidnapping of the baby, that couldn’t be denied. But the child had been found and returned. No one was now anxious to press charges. All agreed Miss Roche had acted wrongly; but her judgement had been influenced by her state of mind. A highly strung lady, the worry about her niece had deeply affected her. The ‘Providence’ she had spoken of to me as placing Mrs Brennan and her dead infant in her path that day on the heath, she now called ‘a higher power’ which had directed her. It was decided that she was insane and directed she take up residence for some suitable period in Dr Lefebre’s private establishment for the mentally ill.

Incidentally, it turned out little Louisa Craven had not been the first baby Brennan had carried, for a fee, to the workhouse. It had been quite a profitable sideline of his.

Now even the young parents, under pressure, fell into line with the rest of the family. There is truly, as I observed to Ben, no limit to the measures the respectable classes will take to protect their precious reputations.

‘I could have told you that,’ was his grim reply. ‘But I shan’t forget. The murder of Brennan lies unsolved on our files. Who knows, perhaps one day in the future Higgins may change her testimony. She certainly has a hold over the family they’ll already be regretting. There may be a falling-out. We’ll see. Higgins may be loyal, but I’m sure she can also be vindictive.’

It would have been nice to believe that Lucy and James Craven might settle down and establish themselves as a model family. Her Uncle Charles, it seemed, was now prepared to relinquish some of the grip he had on her fortune until her twenty-first birthday. The couple and their child would be comfortably established. I did wonder if this change of heart was due in any part to an agreement that they, in return, would ‘forget’ the abominable behaviour of Christina Roche. I hoped James wouldn’t gamble or drink away Lucy’s money. Perhaps his experiences in China had taught him a lesson.

So I tried to be optimistic. But my experience of Lucy was that she was so volatile, her reactions to anything could never be judged. James appeared equally unpredictable in his actions. Between the pair of them, there was no knowing what they might do.

As for me, there was nothing more I could contribute. I found myself back in Dorset Square with Aunt Parry. This was strictly on a temporary basis, it was understood, until a suitable new situation might arise for me.

Charles Roche had offered me a new position, that of companion to his sister Phoebe. As his other sister Christina was ‘for the present elsewhere’, as he put it, and Phoebe was unused to being without female companionship, perhaps I would consider…? I declined his offer. It was made, I suspected, in order to have me under his eye. I knew the truth of what had happened at Shore House. He was afraid I’d gossip. I don’t gossip, but it would do Charles Roche no harm to worry that I might.

Aunt Parry was a little embarrassed at having suggested the post at Shore House in the first place. I fancy she felt some obligation to me. Also she hadn’t managed to find a replacement companion during my absence, so I was more or less welcomed back.

I hadn’t, however, seen the last of Dr Lefebre. One afternoon he called on me unexpectedly in Dorset Square.

‘I feel I owe you some explanation, Miss Martin,’ he said.

He sat on a chair in Aunt Parry’s drawing room, just as neat and debonair as ever. Aunt Parry wasn’t present; she’d gone to a whist party with some friends. It was just as well. I was sure Lefebre was precisely the sort of man to make a great impression on her.

‘You owe me none whatsoever, Doctor,’ I replied.

‘But I see you disapprove of me and my actions.’ He said this with a slight smile.

I was annoyed to feel my cheeks burn. ‘I don’t think you’ve behaved entirely well, Doctor. But my views are of no matter to you.’

‘On the contrary, it distresses me to think you have such a poor opinion of me. In the short time of our acquaintance, my opinion of you has been more than favourable. I’ve formed a great admiration for you, Miss Martin.’

Oh, good grief! Thank goodness Aunt Parry wasn’t here to listen to this; and I certainly wouldn’t be telling Ben of it.

‘But I see you’re not impressed by my admiration,’ he went on.

My face has always betrayed me. ‘I’d rather you didn’t express it,’ I admitted.

‘I never lied to you,’ he assured me. ‘I didn’t go down to Hampshire to observe Lucy Craven. I went to observe Christina Roche and report to her brother how she was coping with a stressful situation.’

‘You didn’t lie to me, Doctor. I know that. But you were far from frank. You did nothing to correct the false impression Lucy had that you’d come to make a judgement on her state of mind. You concealed important knowledge from me. Yours was a sin of omission, if you like, rather than of commission. You could have spoken one sentence concerning Christina Roche’s temperament, given one warning, but you didn’t. That one sentence might have changed everything. Even before that, you allowed a vulnerable girl about to be delivered of her first child, to be put in the care of a woman of unstable emotions and warped sentiments!’

He had paled. ‘You’re harsh in your condemnation of me. I knew Christina Roche to be unpredictable, even eccentric, but I swear to you, I never thought she’d behave in such an extreme way.’ He leaned forward earnestly. ‘It’s humiliating for me to have to admit this to you, but I misjudged the situation. I should have been more aware of the possibility that things might deteriorate. I underestimated the degree of her mania, for mania it is, this obsession with respectability. I hope you don’t think I conspired to pervert the course of justice. I gave my opinion before a judge that she is insane, and I stand by it. I told you once before, not every mad person is a gibbering idiot. Many do appear as sane as you and I. Christina Roche is one of those. But her mind is beyond reasonable awareness of her actions.’

‘Believe me,’ I hastened to say. ‘I have no wish to see Miss Roche or any other woman hang. Nor am I arguing that she’s sane. I’m quite sure she isn’t. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes when she found me in her room…’

‘You were in danger then,’ he said quietly. ‘And for that I’ll never forgive myself.’

‘Well, she’s in your care now and you can observe her as much as you need. Please, Dr Lefebre, I don’t wish to discuss this with you any further.’

He looked at me for a moment and then rose to his feet. ‘Then I’ll take my leave. I apologise for imposing my presence on you.’

I moved to tug at the bell pull and summons Simms, the butler, to escort my visitor out.

As we stood awkwardly awaiting his arrival, Lefebre suddenly said, ‘I shall always remember you, Miss Martin, sitting on the ferryboat, with the wind catching at your hair and the breeze making your cheeks glow like cherries. I thought you beautiful and later I decided you were also intelligent, such a rare combination.’

Fortunately at that moment Simms arrived and I was spared having to reply. I don’t know quite what I should have said. Lefebre bowed and left briskly.

That was the last I saw of him. Yet I have an indelible memory of him, even as he claimed to have one of me. If I see someone waving a handkerchief in a farewell gesture, or even washing pegged out on a line and undulating in a gentle breeze, I see Dr Lefebre sitting across from me in the railway carriage, a silk veil draping his hat. Then it is as though someone has lit a candle in a strange and darkened room. There is a rasp of the match catching, the flame flickers and leaps into life; and things are revealed of which one had not the slightest indication beforehand.