Poor Tom Is Cold (20 page)

Her voice tailed off and he could see her trying desperately to sort through her memories. Was there any evidence of him being unfaithful? Small signs she might have ignored?

Isobel Brewster did not have the delicate prettiness of Mary Ann Trowbridge but there was a forthrightness to her, a promise of a passionate nature, that was attractive. He believed her when she said she was engaged to Oliver Wicken. However, that didn’t mean the constable hadn’t been playing fast and loose.

He realised she was regarding him anxiously.

“I’m sorry, Miss Brewster. It is possible that Mr. Lee was mistaken in his identification, but you can see that Wicken could have met with this other young lady after you left …”

“No!”

There was no point in continuing.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked. “You can’t leave it like this surely.”

“The case is officially closed.”

“But you didn’t like the verdict, did you? I can see it. I can see it in your eyes.”

She was almost sobbing again. “Please, Mr. Murdoch. Please don’t leave it like this.”

He hesitated, not wanting to make a promise he wouldn’t be able to keep. “I must admit what you have told me changes the picture. There are some discrepancies that should be clarified. I’ll see what I can do to clear them up.”

Suddenly, she reached over, grasped his hand, and pressed it against her cold cheek.

“Thank you! I am quite aware that what is revealed may not be to my liking, but I would rather know the truth than not.”

He hoped she wasn’t deluding herself. He’d seen the truth burn like ice.

M
URDOCH WALKED
I
SOBEL
B
REWSTER
to her home, which was on Parliament Street, just below Queen Street. They did not speak at all and when they arrived, she dismissed him at the door. She said her mother and stepfather did not know of the engagement either, so there was nothing to be gained by telling them now. Murdoch could only guess at the anguish the young woman was going to go through alone. He promised to come back as soon as he had anything new to report and he left her.

Brackenreid had returned from his urgent appointment and Murdoch went to tell him what had happened. The inspector was surprisingly sympathetic to Isobel’s plight, muttering several “poor lassies,” but he was in no doubt that Wicken had deceived her.

“If you can get a bite on two ripe apples, why just have one?”

Murdoch murmured something noncommittal.

Brackenreid leaned back in his chair. “Do you think it’s possible that one of the lassies found out what Wicken was up to and put the gun to his head? It wouldn’t be too hard to write a note making it seem like a suicide. Miss Brewster could have returned, all weepy and wanting to make up for her harsh words. And lo, not only is he in the house he said they couldn’t get into, he is the one weeping. It all tumbles out; you know how men like to confess these things. She’s enraged, snatches his gun from his holster, and bang! She waits a few days, comes in with a good cover story.”

“I suppose it’s not out of the question, sir. Although it doesn’t make a lot of sense that she would implicate herself unnecessarily. The case was closed. Besides, I would find that hard to believe about Miss Brewster.” He remembered Isobel Brewster’s grief-ravaged face and he felt bad they were even talking like this. Brackenreid hardly seemed to have heard him.

“On the other hand, Miss Trowbridge’s story could have been all smoke and gammon. Maybe she saw them together. Brewster leaves, she confronts Wicken. He says yes, I do have another tickler. She is enraged, seizes his gun, and so on.”

Unexpectedly, Brackenreid stopped being a fool. “What you said applies just the same though, doesn’t it? Why be implicated if you don’t have to?”

“Yes, sir.”

“However, women do the strangest things when they have their cap set on a fellow.”

“Is that right, sir?”

The inspector looked at him sharply but Murdoch had kept his voice neutral.

“Regardless, there are inconsistencies. Go talk to people again. See Mrs. Wicken, the Chinaman. I did wonder about his reliability, by the way. The Chinese always lie. Don’t understand why, but they do.”

He stroked at his moustache. “I hate to put it this way, but murder would be preferable, wouldn’t it?”

“You mean rather than suicide, sir?”

“Quite. I don’t like to think of one of my constables being so unmanly. Anyway, see what you can do.”

Murdoch decided to visit Mrs. Wicken first. Painful as it might be to probe this question, she had a right to know this new information about her son.

The rain had stopped and a weak sun was struggling through the cloud covering, making a patch of silver in the pervading grey sky. He was warm enough today and his abscessed tooth was now only a sore gum, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of heaviness in his body. Everywhere he turned, no matter what he found, somebody was going to suffer.

When he got to the Wicken house, he paused for a moment at the gate, rehearsing in his mind what he was going to say. The place looked almost abandoned. All the curtains were drawn and no crack of lamplight
showed. The branches of the tree in the front were wrapped with black ribbon, and a wreath of crepe and intertwined willow branches was hung on the door. Murdoch pushed open the gate and walked up to the door. Before he had a chance to knock, it was opened by a woman he recognised as the solicitous neighbour who was with Mrs. Wicken at the inquest. She greeted him in a hushed, reverential voice.

“Good morning, sir. I’m Mrs. Morrow, one of Mrs. Wicken’s neighbours. If you’ve come to call on her, you’ll have to come later. She’s not receiving until this afternoon. But I’ll take your card if you wish.”

Murdoch fished in his coat pocket and took out his card case. He handed her one of his cards.

“Please tell her I need to have a word.”

Mrs. Morrow frowned. “She’s had a dreadful shock. I don’t know if she is up to talking about anything.”

“I appreciate that, Mrs. Morrow, and I wouldn’t trouble her if it wasn’t important.”

The woman shifted slightly so that she was more solidly in the doorway.

“We could all say that if we wanted to. Why, Mrs. Lynch’s eldest was here just yesterday and …”

Whatever Mrs. Lynch’s eldest had done, Murdoch was never to know, because at that moment Mrs. Wicken herself appeared in the hall. When she saw Murdoch, she actually smiled.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Morrow, I would be happy to see Mr. Murdoch.”

The guardian stood back, allowing Murdoch barely enough room to squeeze by her into the hall.

“Mrs. Morrow, will you take Mr. Murdoch’s hat and coat?” There was something autocratic in her manner that he thought was not conscious to her. She had been accustomed to having servants. The other woman didn’t seem to mind, however, and she did as asked, then went back to her post at the door, peering through the glass sidebars.

“We’ve moved in here,” said Mrs. Wicken, and she ushered him through the velvet portieres into the front room. Murdoch felt a twinge of uneasiness quickly followed by guilt at his own cowardice. He didn’t want to see poor Dora. However, she was in her Bath chair close to the fire. There were two lamps lit, the wicks low so that the room was full of shadows.

“Please sit down, Mr. Murdoch. It is kind of you to call.”

He didn’t know where to start and he procrastinated by making polite conversation. She was as well as could be expected, said Mrs. Wicken, but Dora had been poorly.

“She misses her brother dreadfully. You might not think it to look at her but she is quite aware of who is here. She began to be restless last evening when Oliver would usually have come in to play with her, before he
went on his shift. I cannot of course explain why he is not here.”

The girl made a moaning sound and turned as much as she could in Murdoch’s direction; the massive head rolled too far and her neck could not control it. Mrs. Wicken reached over quickly and righted her.

Murdoch could understand why young Oliver might be reluctant to tell his mother about a forthcoming marriage. It would be difficult indeed to extricate himself from the dependency of his mother and sister. He could see how distressed the child was. A man’s voice, barely heard, had stirred her.

Mrs. Wicken sat back in her chair and picked up the frame on which she was making lace.

“After the inquest I was hoping that the young woman who purported to be Oliver’s fiancée would have spoken to me. I would have found some comfort in our mutual grief. However, she left at once without a backward glance.”

She had given Murdoch his lead. “Mrs. Wicken, the reason I came to talk to you today has to do with that. You said you were not aware that Oliver was betrothed.”

“It was, I have to admit, a great shock to me. He was such an honest boy and he gave me no indication. I suppose he was afraid to upset me. There are very few new wives who would take on such a burden as Dora. She would have insisted they live elsewhere, I am sure.”

Again he hesitated, but there was no way around it if he was going to get any information at all.

“Mrs. Wicken, I was visited this morning by a young woman named Isobel Brewster. She is also claiming to be Oliver’s fiancée. She says they were secretly betrothed almost a year.”

“Good Lord. Am I to hear of a whole choir of fiancées?”

“I must say, she is quite credible. She says she saw him last on Monday night about eleven o’clock. They had a quarrel that she describes as trifling, and she is convinced he was not the kind of man to take his own life.”

Mrs. Wicken was staring at him in utter disbelief. She put down the lace. At that moment the invalid child moaned and she was distracted for the moment as she tended to her.

“I need to move her to the couch. Will you be so good as to help me, Mr. Murdoch?”

“Of course.”

“If you will take her by the legs, I will hold her head and we can swing her over.”

She wheeled the chair in closer and Murdoch followed. There was a wool rug tucked around the child’s legs.

“Ready?”

He nodded and with a slight heave they moved her onto the couch. Her mother turned the large head sidewards. The girl had pale blue eyes that in a normal child would have been pretty, but the pressure of the
fluid made them protrude horribly. She seemed to be watching Murdoch, although he could not be sure how much she saw. She made some more guttural sounds and her lips moved.

“She probably thinks you are her brother. She wants you to touch her,” said Mrs. Wicken.

“Of course, what … er … how …?”

“She likes to have her hair stroked.”

There was no way Murdoch could, or would have, refused. He reached out to the sparse hair, white and downy as milkweed. Gently he stroked the enormous head. The girl smiled and quite quickly her eyes closed.

“Thank you, Mr. Murdoch. That was kind. She will sleep for a while now.”

Mrs. Wicken stood up and went back to her chair by the fire. He too resumed his seat. For a few moments, he wondered if she had actually heard what he’d said or if she was going to respond at all. She picked up her lace making and without looking at him, she said:

“It is beginning to seem as if I did not know my son at all. Not one but two fiancées. It is quite extraordinary.”

“Mrs. Wicken, we cannot rule out the possibility that one or even both of these young women are not telling the truth.”

She frowned. “Why would they lie? They have nothing to gain. Even if he did go without my knowledge and bequeath everything to … another person,
with the verdict of suicide, there will be no redemption. The hope of money cannot be a motivation.”

“I have spoken to Inspector Brackenreid about the whole matter and he has asked me to investigate further. To put it bluntly, to find proof.”

“What can I do to help any further?”

“Isobel Brewster is the only one of the two women that I have spoken to as yet. She says that she would meet Oliver on his day off in the afternoon. Otherwise she met him on his beat. His last day off was a week ago. Did he leave the house that day?”

He could see how much she still wanted to deny it but she nodded. “Yes, he told me he was going to the lending library. He was an ambitious boy, Mr. Murdoch. He thought that if he was well read, it would improve his chances for advancement in the police force.”

Murdoch didn’t tell her that possibilities for promotion were limited these days and depended almost entirely on attrition in the ranks above.

“I’ll check if anybody saw him there. And I am going to talk to the other woman, Miss Trowbridge. Also, I was wondering if I might look in Oliver’s room.”

“Yes, of course, if you think it will help.”

“I believe his effects were returned to you. May I see them? I particularly would like to borrow the letter.”

“I burned it. His uniform belongs to the station. It was stained, so I doubt it would be reused. There was nothing else of a personal kind.”

She indicated a second door. “His room adjoined this one. It is not locked. When you’ve done, would you mind leaving by way of the hall? I don’t want Dora to wake just yet; she hasn’t been sleeping well. As you see, she needs care at all hours. I don’t know if I will be able to manage without Oliver’s support. It is quite likely that I will have to place her in the home for incurables … I cannot think how appalling that would be for her. You perhaps think she is hardly human but it is not the case. She is very attached to her family.”

Murdoch could think of nothing to say. Mrs. Wicken turned back to her task.

He stood in the middle of the room, pivoting slowly, trying to get some sense of the young man who had so recently left it. Presumably for reasons of economy, the Wickens lived on the first floor of the house and rented out the second floor. This meant that Oliver occupied what would normally have been the dining room. There were connecting doors to the front room and the kitchen at the rear, both screened with tasselled chenille portieres of a rich floral pattern. The wallpaper was embossed gilt in crimson and green designs and the ceiling paper was a buff and blue glimmer. The room wasn’t large and so much decoration made it seem suffocatingly small. The furnishings also would have done better in a more grand space. There was a massive wardrobe and matching bureau, both of dark
mahogany. A lace-covered dining table was shoved tight against the far wall. The single concession to the actual use of the room was a mantel bed, which was alongside the window. It was neatly closed up. Wicken was tidy or had been kept so by his mother, for there was little of the debris of daily living scattered about.