The Murder of Patience Brooke (18 page)

‘Mr Rivers taught music – they ’adn’t much but they was good people, clever, you know, educated. Mrs Rivers was sweet, pretty, but she wasn’t in good health. What they call delicate. They ’ad no servants but me an’ a little girl sometimes. I didn’t live there – I lived ’ere with Emma and me ’usband. ’E’s dead now. They was kind – you know, they’d give us food sometimes, an’ a shawl or dress or something.’

‘And the daughter, Patience?’

‘She was a clever girl, musical, too. She went with her father sometimes teachin’ in grand ’ouses – sometimes it was grand ’ouses, sometimes just ordinary folk. She was pretty, too, in a quiet way – not flashy.’

‘When did you stop working for them?’ asked Sam.

‘About five years ago. Broke me leg – on the ice – it never mended.’ She lifted her skirt to show the twisted limb which had never healed since an incompetent doctor had tried to set it.

‘What happened to the family afterwards?’

‘Mr and Mrs Rivers died – pneumonia in that bitter winter. Patience went to work as a governess or sum such in one o’ them grand ’ouses. She came ’ere to tell me she was goin’. I was fond of Patience. Felt for ’er – she was ’appy at ’ome.’

‘Did you hear from her again?’ Sam sounded quite calm. Dickens felt a fluttering in his own chest but he sat still.

‘’Ad a letter sometimes. She told us she was all right, teachin’ and that, and then after about a year, she wrote an’ said she was getting married to someone in the family she worked for – but that was it. After that, nothin’. That must ’ave bin three or so years ago.’ Annie shook her head, puzzled still by the lack of communication from the girl she had been fond of.

‘Mebbe too grand to write to us,’ said Emma unexpectedly. There was a hint of bitterness in her voice.

‘What makes you say that?’ asked Sam.

‘I dunno – they was grand people, I expect, rich mebbe and Patience, she ’ad somethin’ – yer know – not ordinary.’

That was true, thought Dickens. Patience was not ordinary. That was why he had agreed to let her stay at the Home. She had tried to disguise herself, tried to be effacing and quiet, but Emma was right – she had something.

Sam asked carefully, ‘Do you happen to remember the name of the family she went to work for?’

‘Crewe.’ The name hung in the air. Dickens had hoped, just for a moment, that it would be something else so that the Crewe family could stay in the box of memories that he had sealed fast shut for years. Emma was right about them, too – the Crewes were grand people and very rich.

‘Has anyone else been here to enquire after Miss Rivers?’ Sam thought that if someone had been at the Polygon then he might have traced her to Annie Saywell’s.

‘There was a man from a lawyer’s, ’e said. ’E asked if I’d ’eard from ’er. ’Ad she visited, or been ter visit. I said not since she’d left to go to ’er governessin’. ’E didn’t say what ’e wanted Patience for just that ’e had news for ’er.’

‘Can you remember what he was like?’

‘Queer lookin’ – mouth all twisted, but ’e were polite. Said ’e was sorry to trouble us. Didn’t come back.’

‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Saywell,’ said Sam as they prepared to leave.

‘’Ope yer find ’er, sir, she was a good girl to me.’

Dickens was silent as they drove back to Bow Street. Sam wondered what was on his mind, what had been said at Snide Alley which made Charles so thoughtful, but he waited. Dickens spoke at last.

‘The Crewe family, Blackledge and Patience are all connected, and I have been wondering –’ he broke off, uncertain how to go on – ‘I have been thinking whether there is any connection to me.’

Dickens explained how he had thought about the way in which the case touched his life: the Home, the song, the Polygon, Gray’s Inn and the Crewe family.

‘I can see the first links but how is the Crewe family connected?’

‘My grandparents worked at Crewe Hall, steward and housekeeper – forty years ago.’

‘But you have no recent connection with the Crewes?’

‘No – as you can imagine, I have not advertised the fact that my grandparents were servants,’ Dickens admitted. Somehow, it was not as important as it had seemed in the restless night before. That was Sam – he asked the important question, paying no attention to the fact of Dickens’s grandparents as servants.

‘So, forty years ago, your family was connected to the Crewes? I cannot really see a link to Patience’s murder. As you said, no one knows of the connection. It would be devious indeed if someone were to murder a girl at Urania Cottage with a view to exposing your humble roots. No, I think Patience’s murder is to do with Patience and her past.’

‘When you put it like that …’ Dickens felt a little foolish.

‘So,’ said Sam briskly, ‘Patience married “class” as Emma put it, and it would seem that something went dreadfully wrong. She left her husband, disappeared, was traced to the Home by Blackledge, was murdered, possibly by Blackledge, so that her husband could be free.’

‘There might have been a child, and that makes me wonder what must have happened that she left a husband, a child and a more than comfortable life to end up on the street where Alice Drown found her. I wonder whom she married in the Crewe family?’

‘We can find out – I’ll get Rogers to do some digging. Meantime, we are still in search of Blackledge. We must see if Rogers is back.’

Rogers was back, but there had been no sighting of Blackledge. He had enquired for him of the bent clerk at Ducat’s. The senior partner was out so the clerk was more forthcoming; it was clear that he did not like Blackledge and was not sorry to believe he might be in some trouble. He gave Rogers an address: Lantern Yard, off Wellspring Lane, a tributary of Whetstone Place. Rogers, in his plain clothes, would return to keep watch at Gray’s Inn at about five o’clock to see if Blackledge had arrived at his offices at all. Dickens and Jones would wait for him in a chop house near Whetstone Place. They would see Rogers there and he, they hoped, would tell them where Blackledge had hidden himself. If he had not seen him, then they would try to find his lodgings.

The chop house was busy at five o’clock as the clerks came in for their meals of mutton chops, kidneys, mashed potato, a pudding of Banbury cake, all washed down with pale ale. Dickens and Jones took a table by the window nearest the door. They bought a sausage roll apiece and a cup of tea, quick to consume if they needed to dash out. They watched the street through the blurred window, noticing the faces in the gas light. There was no familiar crooked countenance but he could have slipped past in the surging crowd. They hoped not. They chewed as slowly as they could and took sips of the tea. The face of Rogers suddenly loomed up like a drowning man’s in the steam of the window. Out they went.

‘No sign,’ he said. ‘Not been there all day.’

They went down the alley to find Lantern Yard. There were a few houses surrounding the small courtyard out of which another alleyway led. It seemed an odd place for the lawyer’s clerk to live, especially if, as Ambrose Tiplady had said, he had money. It was not the worst of places – those would be found deeper in the maze, but it was on the downward slope from barely respectable to disreputable. A scrawny woman with a tight bun of mousy hair and a harassed face was coming from the other alleyway. She turned as if to go into one of the shabby houses. Rogers asked for Mr Blackledge.

She pointed to a house on the other side of the court from her own. ‘Lodges there.’

They turned to the left to examine the property. It looked as though the house had two rooms upstairs and two down. The downstairs rooms were all in darkness, but there was a little light coming from one of the upstairs rooms. Rogers tried the front door, turning the knob. The door opened – perhaps someone had just come home upstairs. The door of one downstairs room was open; it was empty apart from a few broken chairs and a mattress. Rogers tried the other door which was locked. While Dickens and Jones waited in the empty room, Rogers went round to the side of the house in search of a window. A few minutes later, they heard the opposite door open. They crossed the little corridor, glancing up the staircase briefly, and went into Blackledge’s lodging.

The room was surprisingly clean and bare except for two neatly made up beds and a small deal table at which there were two wooden chairs. At the foot of one of the beds was a large wooden chest, the sort that a seaman might use. A cupboard of old oak hung in a corner. The window through which Rogers had climbed was grimy with a threadbare curtain stretched across it on a string. It looked as if no one lived there, as if it were waiting patiently for someone to make a fire in the small grate, light the one candle in its tarnished brass holder and set out a comfortable tea on the table.

There was nothing to see except what was in the chest. Rogers opened it and they stared inside at the clothes piled there. Rogers lifted out a ragged pair of corduroy trousers, a worn waistcoat and rough shirt. Dickens recognised them. ‘That’s what he wore when he was trying to take Scrap.’

Oddly, there was another, similar outfit of ragged trousers and waistcoat. The colours of both sets were similarly faded to the colour of mud. Underneath these were a canvas jacket, and a red woollen scarf.

‘That’s what Sesina described the pedlar as wearing,’ said Dickens. ‘I wonder where the tray is.’

Jones indicated that Rogers should look under the beds. Under one he found a stout tin cash box, but that was locked, too. Shaking it produced the rattle of coins inside. The front door opened. They waited, but the footsteps went upstairs. They heard voices from upstairs, a woman and a child’s then a man’s gruffer tones. It was time to leave. Rogers slid the cash box back under the bed. They would have to come back later.

As they turned to go, they saw hanging on the back of the door the black lawyer’s coat that Dickens had seen him wearing in the crowded street.

‘I wonder what he is wearing now? Or rather I wonder
who
he is now – our man of many disguises,’ Dickens whispered.

‘It is curious,’ said Sam.’ I wonder why he needed two workman’s outfits.’

‘Fastidious, perhaps,’ said Dickens, ‘though neither looked particularly clean.’

‘We’ll come back later. I’ll get Constable Feak to keep watch. There will be a couple of constables on the beat round here. He can ask them to keep an eye out. If Blackledge comes in, Feak can run to Bow Street in ten minutes, and we can hurry back.’

It was about seven o’clock now, and they did not know how long they would have to wait. Perhaps he would not come at all, perhaps he was elsewhere in another disguise and the lawyer’s suit was never to be worn again. The cash box, however, suggested that he would come back for his money, but when?

Dickens and Jones returned to Bow Street and the warm fire in the superintendent’s office. Tea was brought and they settled to their waiting.

‘Does the cash box mean blackmail?’ Dickens reflected. ‘What is his relationship to the Crewe family? He traced Patience – we do not know how – to the Home. Was it under the instruction of her husband with whom he had come into contact at Ducat’s? Did Blackledge kill Patience for money – was that the money in the box? Did Patience’s husband kill her and is Blackledge blackmailing him?’ He tried to tease out the various threads of the story.

‘Ambrose Tiplady said he had money – was he in the pay of Crewe for a time, earning his money by trying to trace her?’ offered the superintendent.

‘One of them killed her, but which?’

‘Perhaps he’ll tell us – when we find him. What do you know of the Crewe family?’

‘Not much – as I said, my grandmother worked as their housekeeper forty years ago – I’ve not paid them much attention since. They have an estate in Cheshire and there was a London house. It’s odd but my father did not talk about them much though he was a boy there. I suppose he was a bit ashamed. I did wonder though if the Crewes had any hand in getting him a job in the Navy Pay Office at Somerset House. It was a good step up for him.’ If only he had lived within his means, Dickens thought moodily. It was, no doubt, a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations, but he could not help wondering why so many of his should be so impecunious.

‘You don’t know anything about sons or grandsons – Patience’s husband would have to be a grandson or cousin, I imagine if he is of a similar age to Patience.’

‘We can find out about the family in Burke’s Peerage – see who has the title and if there are sons.’

‘And we can get some information from the town house. Rogers is good with servants.’

‘He’s a busy young man – and an engaging one.’

Rogers came in. Feak had reported in. Blackledge was at home – and would be receiving guests though he did not yet know it. Feak had hastened back to his guard post at the end of Wellspring Lane. He was sure he had not been seen and in any case the sight of a policeman in Whetstone Place would not have been out of the ordinary. The other three set off briskly. Feak reported that after Blackledge had gone in, he had dared a look at the house. Through the front window he had seen candlelight, but he had moved off for fear he would be seen.

All four went into Lantern Yard and saw the candlelight flickering. He was there. Feak went round the back; Rogers took his station at the window through which he had climbed. Dickens and Jones approached the front door which was ajar just as if someone had gone out. The door to Blackledge’s room was open, too. There was not a sound from within. They waited. Upstairs a child was crying. The sound was heartbreaking as if the child knew all the sorrows of the world. Jones touched the door gently and it opened soundlessly. They stepped forward. There was no one inside – only the candle burning in its brass holder. The chest was open and they saw a jumble of clothes – one of the workmen’s outfits was gone. But someone had been there with Blackledge – there was a bottle of wine on the table and two glasses. The door to the oak cupboard was open.

‘He must be nearabouts – otherwise why leave the door open? Let’s go and look.’ They turned to go out, noticing that Blackledge’s lawyer’s coat was not on its peg. Where had he gone?