Waxwork (13 page)

‘Of course you understand,' said Cribb, tight-lipped. ‘There's a man dead, Brodski. Murdered. He came here last winter to buy pictures of this woman.' He took out the photograph of Miriam Cromer and pushed it across the desk.

‘Straight, I never see this lady in my life!' squeaked Brodski. ‘God strike me down, I know nothing of this thing.'

‘You're lying!' said Cribb in a snarl. ‘He bought some pictures, three or four at least, one called
Aphrodite with Handmaidens.
He came back in March and asked to buy the plates.'

‘No, no! I swear it—I never sell such picture. You make the mistake, please believe me.'

Cribb sat grim-faced through the histrionics.

‘You don't believe?' finished Brodski.

‘Not a word.'

The fat man pitched into another crescendo. ‘This not the only picture shop in Holywell Street. There is four, five others. Maybe this man go there. You think?'

Cribb shook his head.

‘What will happen?' asked Brodski in despair. ‘What you do with me now?'

‘Find me an envelope. A clean one.'

Brodski unlocked the desk and rummaged through the drawer, in his confusion uncovering prints enough to put him away for months.

Cribb addressed the envelope to himself at Scotland Yard. ‘I'm giving you one chance, Brodski. We know that a shopkeeper in Holywell Street sold pictures of this woman to the man who was murdered. I shan't ask you to peach on one of your neighbours. It doesn't interest me who handled the photographs. What I want from you is the name and address of the supplier—the man who printed the photographs and owns the negatives. You understand? Take this picture, show it to the others in the street, get that information and write it on the back.' He took out his watch and flicked up the lid. ‘It's almost half past two. That gives you three and a half hours. Put the photograph in the envelope and see that it catches the six o'clock post at Charing Cross. It will reach me at Scotland Yard by the last delivery, at eight tonight. If it doesn't come, Brodski, you can expect me here within the hour. It won't be twenty-five pounds this time.'

The letter reached the Yard by the 8 p.m. delivery. Cribb had sorted through the post before the duty constable knew it had arrived. Such eagerness was exceptional. In the regular way he would have left the thing unopened till next morning. This was not a regular investigation. The only regular thing about it was the time ticking away.

He ripped open the envelope, glimpsing Miriam Cromer's face before he turned the photograph over. Brodski's message was written unevenly in the small space under Howard Cromer's ornate imprint:

Please Mr Cribb this truth. I ask all the street. Nobody know this lady. Brodski.

Cribb's lips tightened. He believed Brodski. The man had been badly scared. He would have supplied a name if he could. Whether his neighbours had been frank with him was less certain. Cribb had no way of finding out. He had played the trick and lost. He picked up his hat and left Scotland Yard.

He decided to walk the three miles home to Bermondsey. In his present frame of mind he would be no company for Millie.

Tomorrow was Wednesday. Unless there was a reprieve, the execution would take place on Monday morning. By now, the hangman must have received his summons. Miriam Cromer must have been moved into the condemned wing of Newgate, ready to take the short walk to the execution shed.

Unless there was a reprieve … A recommendation to the Queen from the Home Secretary. Something he had once heard passed through his mind, a story that Her Majesty was merciless towards miscreants of her own sex, reluctant ever to sign a reprieve. When a woman had confessed to murder, pleaded guilty and been sentenced to death, it would require more than an element of doubt to save her from the gallows. The abiding principle of British justice no longer applied in this case. Miriam Cromer was guilty unless she was proved innocent.

In reality, Cribb had three days left. If there were grounds for a reprieve, the Home Secretary would need to know before the weekend. He would need to weigh the evidence, make consultations, reach a decision and possibly make a recommendation to the Queen.

Three days.

Darkness was closing in as he took the footway over Hungerford Bridge. The Thames, blood-red and streaked with shadows, moved soundlessly below. The boards vibrated to the rhythms of a train steaming towards Charing Cross. Billowing vapour engulfed him.

Before it cleared, he had decided how he would spend Wednesday morning.

He would begin by winning the confidence of Inspector Moser. He would make it clear that he was not asking to see the Yard's collection of confiscated prints and photographs out of prurience. Nor was he ambitious to oust Moser as the scourge of Holywell Street. He was interested only in securing evidence of blackmail.

WEDNESDAY, 20th JUNE

I
NSPECTOR
M
OSER WAS NOT
easily convinced. He believed he had a responsibility to safeguard fellow officers from corruption. The pictures he confiscated were not kept in his office at the Yard. He locked them in despatch-boxes and delivered them in person to a store in the vaults of the Home Office. It was constantly manned by a store-keeper of unrelenting vigilance and failing eyesight. Moser escorted Cribb there and introduced him. This was at ten. It had taken three-quarters of an hour to win the concession.

Cribb was not shocked by the photographs the storekeeper brought out in the locked boxes. As he had patiently explained to Moser, twenty years in the force had removed any ignorance he had in the realm of sexual behaviour. Rather he found that the sheer mass of material oppressed him. Concentration was difficult as he worked steadily through everything retrieved from Holywell Street in the last twelve months. In front of him he placed the picture of Miriam Cromer. Each time he glanced at it to check whether there was the least resemblance to something from Moser's collection, he saw only her reproach.

After two and a half hours he had completed the chore. His head ached, his mouth and hands were dry with dust and he had found nothing.

He was ready to bet that the first part of that confession was a fabrication. But he had no proof. His findings were all negative. Howard Cromer had not been in Brighton on the morning of the murder. Brodski had not traced the source of the photographic plates. There was not one picture of Miriam Cromer in all Inspector Moser's haul from Holywell Street. Nothing conclusive.

From the Home Office he went directly to the public baths in Great Smith Street and took a shower. He followed it with the usual pint and pie at the Prince of Wales in Tothill Street and by 1.15 p.m. he was boarding a yellow bus in Victoria Street. It took him to Highgate.

There was nobody he knew in the police station. The sergeant on duty was busy with a complaint about damage to property, so after a word with a constable barely old enough to shave, Cribb picked up the local gazetteer and leafed through it. Among the clubs and societies he found no reference to the Highgate Literary and Artistic Society. Another negative.

He asked the constable if he had any knowledge of such an organisation. He had not. But across the room, the sergeant had caught the end of Cribb's question. ‘Hold on, will you? I can tell you a bit about that lot when I've dealt with this.'

Cribb waited twenty minutes, powerless to point out that in Newgate the minutes of a woman's life were numbered. The breaking of a few windows in Southwood Lane took precedence here.

‘There
was
a society of that name,' he learned at last. ‘They stopped meeting two or three years ago over some disagreement among the members. A group of them formed another society, but it didn't last more than a month or two. It wouldn't, without Mrs Davenant. She ran the original society single-handed—hired the speakers, booked the rooms, collected the subscriptions, paid the bills. They didn't need a committee.'

‘Is this lady still alive?'

‘Good Lord, yes, and don't we know it! She runs the Watch Committee now.'

‘Single-handed?'

‘You would think so.'

‘Where can I find Mrs Davenant?'

‘What day is it? Wednesday. Try the Board School two hundred yards up the road. She likes to visit the schools once a month to see the state of the children's heads. Public hygiene is another of her interests.'

So it was that Cribb presently found himself conducting a conversation with the enterprising Mrs Davenant across a succession of small cropped heads. Her own was sensibly covered for the exercise in something like a beekeeper's bonnet, but enough of her face was visible through the muslin for Cribb to see that it was extensively lined, and every line contributed to an expression of iron determination.

‘This is about the woman in Kew, is it not?' she said as soon as Cribb mentioned the Literary and Artistic Society. ‘That creature who poisoned a man. It was all in
The Times.
Lies!'

‘Lies, ma'am?'

‘That vile confession. A concoction of wicked lies. Mentioning
my
society in such a connection! I can tell you that I saw my solicitor as soon as I read the report. I wanted to sue, naturally, but he informs me that there is no possibility of legal redress. I am prevented from defending my own reputation. You would think from
The Times
that the Society existed for no other purpose than the debauching of innocent girls. Next.'

Another head arrived for inspection.

‘Do you recollect Mrs Miriam Cromer as a member of the Society, ma'am?'

‘I do not.'

‘It was six years ago, of course,' said Cribb. ‘She was just a girl of twenty then, known by her maiden name of Kilpatrick. I have a photograph of her which may assist your memory.'

‘My memory requires no assistance,' said Mrs Davenant, pushing the child away and beckoning the next. ‘And photographs, in my experience, distort the countenance beyond recognition.'

‘She referred in her confession to two friends,' Cribb persisted. ‘Perhaps you would remember three girls of about the same age coming to the meetings?'

Mrs Davenant denied it. She denied everything but the Society's existence. If he was to make any headway at all, Cribb had to start with that.

‘When was the Society formed?'

‘In April, 1881, the month poor Disraeli passed on.
There
was a prime minister! A lady would not be prevented from defending herself against libellous attacks in dear Dizzie's day, I assure you. Not only was he a gentleman and a statesman second to none, but a literary man. For our inaugural meeting we had a Disraeli evening, as a mark of respect, with readings from
Coningsby
and
Sybil.
Next.'

‘I expect you had a good attendance for that.'

‘Thirty or forty, certainly,' said Mrs Davenant. ‘The total membership was over eighty by the end of the year, although not all were regular attenders.'

‘This must be a very cultured part of the capital,' Cribb commented. ‘There's nothing like that in Bermondsey, where I live. You wouldn't get half a dozen to a meeting.'

‘If that is intended as a personal challenge, my man, you may wish to be informed that I have drawn audiences in excess of a hundred to temperance meetings in localities as benighted as Bow and Bethnal Green. Don't underestimate Dorothea Davenant.'

‘On the contrary,' said Cribb. ‘I was reliably informed that the Society existed entirely through your inspiration and unflagging enterprise, ma'am.'

For a second she rested her hands on the child's head and smiled. ‘One tries to occupy oneself usefully, Sergeant.'

‘Highgate should be grateful.'

‘Not only Highgate,' said Mrs Davenant. ‘Hampstead, Finchley, Muswell Hill and Crouch End. My membership list was a testimony to the Society's reputation in North London.'

Seizing the chance he had been fencing for, Cribb asked, ‘Do you by any chance still have that list, ma'am?'

‘Destroyed,' said Mrs Davenant firmly. ‘When the Society came to an end, I put everything to the flame, correspondence, accounts, reports of meetings, everything. I was extremely provoked, as you may imagine. Certain people had taken it upon themselves to make a personal attack on my management. They accused me of self-aggrandisement, Sergeant! I thought that was so despicable that I resigned my position and told them to manage the Society exactly as they wished. Of course it ceased to function. Highgate was deprived of culture by the vitriolic remarks of a clique of jealous incompetents. Headmaster!' she called over the child's head. ‘There appears to be something here. Have the doctor look at it, will you?'

‘That's sad,' said Cribb, ‘that a fine society like that should disappear overnight. Memories apart, there's nothing to prove that it ever existed?'

‘Not a thing.'

Someone gave a slight cough at Cribb's elbow. It was the headmaster, small, pale and white-haired. ‘Pardon me, Mrs Davenant, but I couldn't help overhearing what you said. If this gentleman is looking for proof of the Society's existence, I have it in my study. If you recall, I was a loyal attender for three years. When we made our little pilgrimage to Hampstead to look at the seat at the end of Well Walk where poor John Keats was accustomed to rest before he died, we all formed up for a photograph prior to our picnic and poetry recitation—do you remember? Well, I purchased a copy as a memento of the afternoon I discovered the romantic poets. Their verse has sustained me through my attacks of melancholia ever since. If this picture is of any interest, sir—'