A Fatal Freedom (27 page)

Ursula tried to think of some approach that would break through Alice’s determination and could find none. So she related a few details of life at the boarding house and Wilton Crescent.

‘And I have another job now. I am to attempt to sort out a tangle of accounts at the
Maison Rose
beauty clinic. Tell me, have you visited there?’

Before Alice could respond, the wardress announced that Miss Grandison’s visit was at an end and it was time for Peters to return to her cell.

‘Thank you for coming,’ Alice said, just as though it had been a social visit. ‘Please give my love to my sister. She is not to worry: I am fine. And I wish Mr Jackman well in his search for whoever it was that sent those chocolates.’

Alice Peters was taken away.

Then Ursula was returned to the office where Rachel waited. To the hopeful look the girl gave her she had to shake her head. ‘Your sister will only say that she did not send the poisoned chocolates.’

Rachel closed her eyes for a moment but said nothing until they had found a cab to take them to the underground station. Once settled she turned to Ursula. ‘Alice said nothing at all about why she wrote those words in her diary about Joshua not deserving to live?’

‘She says she cannot have her child believing its father was an unworthy person.’

Rachel cried out, ‘Oh Alice, Alice!’

‘She said that if her husband had not died, she would have remained with him, that a child should have both its parents and she could not have brought herself to abandon him or her.’

Rachel put a hand over her eyes. ‘How like Alice.’

‘I can understand wishing your child to have its father but if she believed her husband was such a dreadful man, could she not have taken it and gone to Daniel? Would he not have been a surrogate father and given the child a happier start in life?’

Rachel shuddered. ‘Do you not realise that she would not have been allowed to do that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It is illegal for a mother to remove her children from the care of their father.’

Ursula was appalled.

‘But surely a mother has every right to nurture and care for her child, especially if the father abuses her.’

‘The law does not agree. No matter how foul the father, how badly he treats the mother, he has sole rights to any offspring.’

‘That is dreadful!’

‘Now you can see what we are fighting for in our campaign for the female vote.’

It wasn’t votes for women that were concerning Ursula. If the situation was really as Rachel had outlined, it could well be suggested that Alice had a cast-iron motive for removing her husband from her life once and for all.

‘Do you really think that Alice could be found guilty of murder?’

Rachel looked out of the window and said nothing. Ursula wondered if she had begun to believe Alice might actually be guilty. Rachel might not know everything about her sister’s marriage but she surely knew enough about its dreadful aspects and how ensnared Alice felt herself to be.

The cab arrived at the underground. Rachel got out and paid for their fare.

Once back at Victoria station, Ursula said goodbye and went to find a bookshop.

As part of his commission for Joshua Peters, Thomas had looked into Daniel Rokeby’s background. By dint of a session at the local library and visits to several literary magazines, Thomas had amassed a considerable amount of information on him. The poet’s presence had been noted at several society gatherings; he had had two romantic stories published in magazines provided for the entertainment of women with little to occupy their time. And in several publications he found poems by him.

Thomas did not consider himself an intellectual in any way. He’d rather read accounts of petty crime than poetry lauding a woman’s looks or the joy in a blackbird’s song. Daniel’s verses to ‘Night’, which spoke of a ‘hushing wind’ and ‘the owl’s ghostly wings’ and ‘quivering planets shining through the black garb of night’ left him unmoved. But one of the poems contained a credit after the author’s name noting he was a member of a poetic society.

After his encounter with Mrs Firestone, Thomas made his way to the public house in Bloomsbury where he had followed Daniel for the first time.

It was approaching lunchtime and both bars were busy but there was no sign of Mr Rokeby. On his way out, though, Thomas caught sight of notice fixed in the entrance. The poetry society Daniel Rokeby belonged to was holding a lunchtime meeting there that day in an upstairs room. For a small fee, members of the public were invited to hear some of the poets read their most recent work.

Even as he read the message, two men passed him heading for the stairs. Thomas followed, thinking he should have gone home and changed his suit for a loose jacket and linen trousers. A cravat would have also been a good idea, as would swapping his trilby for a panama.

At the door a young woman with a straw hat on long, fair hair sat with a metal moneybox and a sheet of paper on which she noted the names of, presumably, those who were not members of the poetry society. Thomas felt in his pocket for the entrance fee, handed it over and was given a beaming smile. ‘May I take your name and address, sir? This is so we can inform you of other events of our society.’

‘Michael Prescott, 2 Cheyne Walk,’ Thomas said urbanely.

She wrote, and the box chinked as she added his coins. ‘Please, take a seat,’ the girl said, waving her hand at the room. ‘Our poets will soon be here.’

The audience was not many. The two young men Thomas had followed upstairs sat on the far side of the group of chairs, very close to a dais on which the poets no doubt were to stand as they read. Three seats at the front were occupied by a couple of smartly dressed middle-aged women accompanied by a young girl who looked as though she could be sister to the one manning the door. Another slightly older but just as smartly dressed woman sat on her own. For a dreadful moment Thomas thought that it was Mrs Trenchard. He did not imagine she could be a follower of modern poetry but she might have heard that the young man her niece had left her husband for was to perform and come out of interest. Then he realised that, under the severe hat, the women’s hair was brown not iron grey.

Minutes passed. Then more minutes. A few more people entered without paying, obviously members of the society. Thomas looked around but there was no one who looked like a poet.

The two women with the young girl grew restless. ‘If nothing happens in five minutes, I think we should leave,’ said one.

‘No, Mama, we must stay; I’m sure Rupert will be here soon,’ said the girl.

At last four young men entered carrying sheets of paper and glasses of beer. Long haired, wearing velveteen jackets and linen trousers, Thomas thought they looked exactly how he imagined poets should. And he was relieved to see that Daniel Rokeby was one of them.

The leader, short and chunky with a sparse beard the colour and appearance of hay, bounced up on to the dais and beamed at the scanty audience. ‘How very good it is to see you all here today. I am Boris Humphrey, Chairman of the Society. It is our very good fortune this lunchtime to have to read to us three of society’s leading poets …’

Thomas stopped listening. He was watching Daniel Rokeby. The other two poets were nervously shuffling their feet and sorting through their papers. When it came to moving up on to the dais, they stumbled and apologised awkwardly. Daniel, though, stood quietly, as though in complete command of himself, or in a trance.

He was the last poet to read his work. The other two, whose names Thomas did not bother to register, read three or four shortish works. All were bad and were read badly. At least, Thomas considered that works comparing a girl’s eyes with twinkling stars, or her hair with silken waterfalls, could not qualify for good poetry. Nor did a comparison between a beating heart and a racing horse, particularly when the heart had been spurred into action by the sight of yet another girl. It seemed all that the poets could be concerned with was the effect on them of pretty girls. Their delivery was histrionic and did their works no favours. By the stillness of the girl sitting with the two middle-aged women, and the fervour of her applause after the second poet finished, Thomas deduced that she had provided the inspiration for his work, particularly as he flushed deep crimson as he caught her gaze while bowing to the audience.

Then it was Daniel’s turn.

He stepped up on to the dais with a dreamy air, looked straight at the audience and said, ‘These are poems I wrote recently while staying in the Lake District. They are in a new style for me.’

Well, at least there seemed a good chance they would not be concerned with comparing Alice’s eyes to sparkling diamonds or the Milky Way.

The verses were simple, and as far as Thomas was concerned, all the better for it. Sheep and rocks and lonely farmers were more in his line, as was the image of a steamboat seen from above, sailing across a wide lake with the grace of a bird flying through an empty sky. The verses were read almost in a monotone and received only a spattering of applause.

Daniel, however, bowed and in a low voice thanked those who had come. As he straightened, he looked in Thomas’s direction and his eyes widened. The detective rose and came up to him. ‘I enjoyed that,’ he said. ‘Went to the Lake District myself once; I could recognise the pictures you created.’

Daniel looked modestly pleased.

‘Can we talk, or do you need to meet up with anyone?’

There was the slightest of hesitations then, Daniel said, ‘I’d be delighted to converse with you.’

‘A drink downstairs, perhaps?’

‘By all means.’

Daniel took his farewell of the stocky chairman and thanked him for the opportunity to read his verse.

‘Sorry there weren’t more people here, I’d expected a larger audience but it probably isn’t a good time of the year. Winter’s better. We’ll do another one in a couple of months’ time, say early November.’

The girl who had been taking the money went up, looking coquettish. For a moment Thomas was reminded of Millie. ‘Daniel, are you not to lunch with us? Boris said all the poets were invited.’

‘Now, Esther, I never said they were all coming.’

‘Boris has been very kind but Mr Jackman needs to talk to me.’

The girl’s face fell. She was sweet looking and Thomas didn’t think he’d have been as curt with her as Daniel had.

Downstairs, to enter the saloon bar they had first to exit on to the pavement. Standing in the road were two women handing out leaflets from a hessian bag bearing the slogan
Votes for Women
. Not many passers-by were taking the offered leaflet.

Daniel made an exclamation of disgust as he followed Jackman into the pub. Thomas got them two pints of the landlord’s special and they took their glasses out into a small courtyard. The day was warm and the courtyard, with two wooden benches and a dilapidated iron table, was more private than the bar.

Thomas looked at the young man speculatively. ‘You don’t approve of giving women the vote?’

‘They wouldn’t know what to do with it. Women are made for creating a home, not interfering with politics.’

‘Yet women serve on some councils now, and decide on matters pertaining to their lives.’

Daniel looked down at the foam of his beer. ‘Can you see Alice Peters running a campaign for, I don’t know, testing fallen women for sexual diseases?’

Thomas was shaken. ‘Is that the sort of thing that’s being talked about?’

‘Oh, yes! Talk to Rachel, she’ll fill you in on all the shameful ideas these women have.’

‘I thought she was a friend of yours.’

‘Oh, she is. Rachel’s sterling, top of the pole, if only she didn’t have these ridiculous ideas in her head.’ Daniel put his glass down, removed a cigarette case from inside his jacket and offered it to Thomas. Both men lit up. The cigarettes were Turkish and strong. Thomas resisted an urge to cough and studied Daniel. He might look like a cartoon version of a poet, with his velvet jacket, tasselled beret and linen trousers, but the verse he’d presented had been, in Thomas’s estimation, a cut above that of the other fellows. Someone who could compare sods of earth to the creation of a potato showed more sense than poets usually managed. Yet his radical objection to the Votes for Women campaign struck an odd note. Surely one expected a poet to be liberal, at any rate with a small ‘l’? And the night he had come with Rachel Fentiman and Ursula Grandison to his house to enlist his help, Daniel had been obstructionist and a downright boor.

‘Have you been in communication with Mrs Peters?’

Daniel flushed. ‘I am not a relative and the Trenchards look down on my relationship with Alice.’

‘Was Mrs Peters in touch with you after her husband died?’

Daniel kicked moodily at a stone on the courtyard. ‘There was hardly time before that sod of a policeman arrested her.’

Thomas did not agree with the use of such language to describe members of His Majesty’s Police Force but it matched so exactly with his own opinion of Inspector Drummond that he let it go.

‘It must have been a shock when Mrs Peters decided to leave her husband and fly to your protection.’

Daniel looked at him suspiciously. ‘I don’t like your use of the word “protection”, it seems to refer to a different sort of woman altogether.’

Thomas made a graceful gesture, ‘I apologise. Yet,’ he mused aloud, ‘would I be wrong in suggesting that Mrs Peters was indeed in need of protection from her husband?’

‘No, by God, absolutely right!’ The words were almost shouted. ‘He was a fiend of the first order.’

‘Because of the way he treated his wife?’

‘Of course.’

‘No other reason?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I wondered if Mrs Peters had ever suggested to you that her husband was involved in illegal activities.’

‘What sort of “illegal activities”?’

Thomas shrugged his shoulders. ‘I was hoping it was something you might be able to give me a hint about.’

‘You mean, something Alice, Mrs Peters, had told me about her husband?’