Waxwork (14 page)

‘I should like to see it,' said Cribb. ‘Would you excuse me, ma'am?'

‘Please yourself,' said Mrs Davenant, seizing another head. ‘I have more vital things to attend to than photographs.'

The picture hung in a centre position on the wall facing the headmaster's desk. It showed about thirty people in summer clothes, some standing, others seated, against a background of elm trees. The definition was moderately good, good enough, anyway, for Mrs Davenant to be recognisable in a hat the size of a parasol. Others in the party, in particular those in full sunlight, were less easy to distinguish. Closely as Cribb peered, he could not discover anyone he would swear was Miriam Cromer.

‘These people on the left didn't come out so well,' he said. ‘You wouldn't remember who they were, I suppose, sir?'

‘I am afraid not. This was taken six years ago, in the summer of 1882,' said the headmaster. ‘Unhappily it has faded, being in a position that catches the sun. Candidly, I doubt whether I should know their names if the faces were clearer. The membership of the Society could not be described as stable. Mrs Davenant was indefatigable in her efforts to recruit, but many lasted as members for only a week. The programme of lectures was perhaps too narrow for certain tastes. No, most of these people are strangers to me.'

Cribb was trying not to feel persecuted. To have found the photograph and still be unable to identify the people in it was damnably frustrating. ‘It just occurs to me,' he said before admitting defeat, ‘that in group portraits the names are sometimes written on the reverse, to assist identification. I wonder whether—'

‘There's nothing on the reverse of this,' said the headmaster. ‘Look.' He lifted the frame off its hook and turned it for Cribb to examine. It was lined with plain brown paper.

Cribb took out a pocket knife. ‘You don't mind, sir?' Before the headmaster could answer there was a neat incision round three sides of the paper. Cribb folded it back and removed the backing of thin wood. ‘How about that, then?'

The picnickers were listed on the back of the mount in fine copperplate and Cribb's eye had picked out the name
Miss M. Kilpatrick
immediately. She was one of the group on the left blanched by sunlight. He turned the photograph and made out two female figures seated on a log and another standing near them. In front, two males in blazers and straw hats reclined on the ground. Their names, apart from Miriam's, were Miss J. Honeycutt, Miss C. Piper, Mr G. Swinson and Mr S. Allingham.

His mind reeling with the implications, Cribb asked, ‘Do you remember any of these people now we have their names, sir?'

‘Absolutely not,' the headmaster answered in a tone that left no doubt of his displeasure at the mutilation of his picture.

‘Then perhaps you keep a copy of Kelly's? I shall not damage one page of it, you have my word.'

The school copy of the
Post Office Directory of London
was five years old but it would do for Cribb's purpose. He turned up Hampstead and began running his thumb down the street-list. He was looking for the name of Honeycutt. It was less common than Piper and should be easy to spot. If there was a Honeycutt in Hampstead, the chance was high that he would have found the address of one of Miriam's friends. He saw it on the fifth page. James Honeycutt was an umbrella maker of Flask Walk.

Cribb muttered his thanks, jammed on his bowler, went out into the High Street and gave a piercing whistle. This contingency merited a cab. As it bowled across the Heath he sat well back, ignoring the scene. He was deciding how to broach the subject of indecent photographs with Miss J. Honeycutt.

Flask Walk was on the left at the lower end of Hampstead High Street. Cribb paid the cabby and marched up the middle of the narrow street looking for the umbrella shop. He reached the end without finding it. Cursing his luck, he went into a bookshop to inquire. Honeycutt's, he learned, had closed down three years ago. The premises were now occupied by an ironmongers. He crossed the Walk to see if the present owner could tell him the whereabouts of the family.

‘The Honeycutts? Couldn't say, sir. There was only the old man left, wasn't there? He wasn't up to carrying on the business after his daughter went.'

‘She went, you say? Where did she go?'

‘To meet her Maker. She died, sir. Suicide, it was. She took poison. A tragedy. She was only twenty-one, and a fine-looking lass, too.'

‘When did this happen?'

‘It must have been three or four months before the old man sold up his business. Yes, I would say it was August or September, 1884. It was all reported in the
Express
at the time.'

It was from the file of the
Hampstead and Highgate Express
in their office at Holly Mount that Cribb obtained a fuller account of Judith Honeycutt's death:

THE HAMPSTEAD POISONING TRAGEDY

Mr Adolphus, the North London Coroner, held an inquest on Monday last at the Civic Hall touching on the death of Judith May Honeycutt, aged twenty-one years, a spinster lately residing at Flask Walk, Hampstead, who was found dead on 31st August in the studio of Mr Julian Ducane, photographer, of West End Lane, West Hampstead. Mr Ducane deposed that the deceased had been in his employment as a retoucher and receptionist since March. On the Friday in question he had left her working in the studio while he went to Swiss Cottage to collect some materials. Upon his return at about a quarter to five o'clock, Mr Ducane discovered the deceased lying dead beside the desk where she had been working. From the attitude of the body, he suspected she had taken poison. A teacup was found beside the body.

Dr Pearson Stuart, principal pathologist at Haverstock Hill Infirmary, stated that he had conducted a post mortem examination and found traces of potassium cyanide. Tests he had carried out indicated that the deceased had swallowed approximately 10 grains, which must have induced rapid paralysis and death. Traces of the substance were also found in the cup, which had contained tea. In further evidence Dr Stuart stated that the deceased was three months
enceinte
at the time of death.

Miss C. Piper, of Kidderpore Avenue, friend of the deceased, stated that she had seen her the day before and found her in a cheerful frame of mind, despite her condition.

Mr Ducane, recalled, said that he had been unaware of the deceased's condition. He had always found her a reliable employee. In response to a question from the Coroner he stated that potassium cyanide was used in the developing process of photography and a bottle was kept on an open shelf in the studio. It was marked with a poison label.

In his final address the Coroner said that the evidence indicated that the deceased had taken her own life. Although a witness had testified that the deceased had declared herself unconcerned about her condition, it was possible that this was from bravado, to conceal her anxiety. The Coroner took the opportunity to comment that Mr Ducane had demonstrated lamentable negligence in keeping a deadly poison on an open shelf. While he could not have anticipated the tragedy as it had occurred, it was a matter for regret that the agent of Miss Honeycutt's destruction had been so readily to hand.

The jury, on the coroner's advice, returned a verdict of suicide.

Towards 5 p.m. the Manchester to Euston Express steamed through South Hampstead on the London and North Western Railway. In a second-class compartment of the third carriage, James Berry folded his newspaper and stood to put it in his Gladstone bag on the luggage rack. Seconds later the train entered Primrose Hill Tunnel. It had been a journey in keeping with the slogan of the L.N.W.R.—
Noted for Punctuality, Speed, Smooth Riding, Dustless Tracks, Safety and Comfort.
Moreover, not one of his fellow-passengers had recognised him. He had not been bothered with people goggling at him from the corridor or asking idiot questions about the contents of his bag.

Nor were there newspaper reporters on the platform at Euston to pester him. Coming down to London two days earlier had definite advantages. Instead of the usual pantomime of changing cabs and doubling back to give the press the slip, he was able to take a leisurely ride by the direct route to his usual lodging in Wardrobe Place, off Carter Lane, which he always found convenient for his work, being just up the hill from Newgate, right in the shadow of St Paul's.

The press had never succeeded in tracing him to Mrs Meacham's. He had made it his rule when visiting the prison to approach it indirectly walking the wrong way up Ludgate Hill and cutting through Bread Street to Cheapside and so down to Newgate Street. He could not avoid them at the prison gate, but they had not the slightest notion where he had come from. When he came out, if he suspected he was being followed, he took a couple of turns round St Paul's and dodged out by the southwest door, under the clocktower. They didn't reckon on a hangman visiting a cathedral.

This Wednesday afternoon, though, he arrived in style in Wardrobe Place, and gave the cabman a threepenny tip for helping him with his baggage. Mrs M. had tripe and onions cooking. She greeted him by name. He had never stooped to using a false identity with her. She was a fine woman, no busybody. She had never made inquiry as to the purpose of his visits to London, though he would have been surprised if she had not guessed by now.

After the meal he took a quiet walk round the City and retired early. Thursday would be an important day.

THURSDAY, 21st JUNE

I
T TOOK HIM FIRST
to Tussaud's. He travelled by the underground railway to Baker Street, a journey that recaptured in smells and sounds his first visit, as a lad twenty years before. Since then London had shrunk in his mind to Euston Station, Mrs Meacham's and the execution shed.

He arrived an hour before his appointment, for a good reason. He wanted to take a quiet look round before he met Mr Tussaud. So he paid his shilling at the turnstile like everyone else.

He was pleased to note that the Exhibition had moved from the old Baker Street Rooms into more commodious premises in the Marylebone Road. It was altogether more palatial than he remembered. He mounted a marble staircase into the Hall of Kings, a dazzling place with Richard the Lionheart, Henry and his six wives and every crowned head up to her Imperial Majesty. He felt a tremor of pride at joining them, albeit in a different room. The figures were so finely modelled that he might have walked up and introduced himself. Most riveting of all was a tableau of the Prince of Wales tiger-hunting on his Indian tour. His Royal Highness was up there on a howdah on the back of a stuffed elephant. He was in the attitude of firing both barrels into a tiger which his mount had cleverly pinned to the ground. Berry stood in front of the exhibit and imagined himself aiming the shotgun.

His steps took him next past the statesmen of the civilised world to the Chamber of Horrors, for which he discovered he had to pay sixpence more. That amused him. You could see the Royals and Mr Gladstone, Lord Beaconsfield and President Lincoln for a shilling, but to clap eyes on Burke and Hare and their companions it was a tanner extra. No-one seemed to mind stumping up. Only a few faint hearts waited upstairs while their bolder escorts had sixpennyworth of horrors.

The Chamber was cunningly lit with mantles of coloured glass set low on the wall to give a more horrid aspect to the figures. It was smaller down there than Berry expected. Quite a crush, in fact. The attendant kept asking people to move along as they came to the notorieties in the dock: Palmer, Peace, Kate Webster, Muller, Lefroy and the rest. The lighting apart, nothing had been done to make the figures grotesque. Most of them looked unexceptional. Murderers generally were, in Berry's experience. There were faces more villainous among the public filing past. The horror lay in discovering that those they had come to see were no different from anyone else.

He soon found Bill Marwood—his effigy, that is to say. It was a marvellous likeness. The eyes had that mild, almost dreamy look and the mouth was set in a downward curve that followed the line of the tobacco-stained moustache. He was in his own black bow and stand-up collar. Marwood to the life. The only fault was that he was holding the pinioning-strap all wrong, more like a butler with a tray than a hangman ready for work. This technicality did not disappoint those who had come to look. Out of interest, Berry lingered close to the figure to eavesdrop on the comments. Curiously, Bill Marwood with his strap had a more chilling effect than all the murderers together. One young woman visibly shuddered at the sight of him. ‘Don't be alarmed, dearest,' her chinless escort said. ‘That is only Marwood. He is dead. Berry has the job now.'

He decided against introducing himself.

So, fresh from seeing the show, he went back to the entrance at half past ten to keep his appointment. Mr Joseph Tussaud, grandson of the Exhibition's founder, his son, John, and five others were waiting in an office. Berry guessed that most of them were there to say that they had shaken him by the hand, which they did, to a man. There was not much said. One of them asked him if it had been raining in Yorkshire. Champagne was served by a liveried footman. Then Mr Tussaud Senior proposed a tour of the Exhibition. It would have been discourteous to disclose that he had just been round it.