A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) (25 page)

‘Madame,’ I began again, ‘I understand, from a witness, that when you first called on Mr Jenkins, you were accompanied by a gentleman.’

‘What witness?’ she demanded.

‘A lady living upstairs in the building. Jenkins had an arrangement with her to bring down a tea tray when he saw new clients.’

‘I do not remember such a woman. She claims she saw
me
?’

Well, no, Miss Poole did not claim that, only that she’d seen a back view of a lady and a hat with lavender rosebuds on it. There were probably other hats with such decoration. Miss Poole had not heard the lady speak.

I decided not to answer Victorine’s question. It is the prerogative of the investigating officer that he asks, but does not answer, questions.

‘You were not accompanied? You have told us, I know, that you are alone in London.’

‘I
am
alone!’ she snapped. ‘But, as it happened, an old friend accompanied me on the journey across the Channel. I was nervous, you understand, at returning to this country after a number of years. Also I am a poor sailor. The gentleman, an old friend, agreed to come with me and see me settled here in London. He did also come with me to see Jenkins. But when Jenkins disappointed me, my friend could not remain here any longer. He had business in Paris to attend to. He returned to France. He suggested I return, too. But I explained to him I was now resolved to seek out Mr Jonathan Tapley, and would remain for as long as my finances allowed. He accepted that, but begged me not to waste more money on people such as Jenkins.’

‘And the name of this gentleman?’

Again, the slightest hesitation. ‘Hector Mas, I have known him many years. He knew Thomas, too. They were friends. Monsieur Mas was anxious to help me locate my husband.’

At that moment a gong sounded outside in the hall. She glanced in its direction.

‘I think I shall try to eat some soup. The boiled meat puddings they serve here are disgusting beyond description.’ Again the silk crêpe rustled and the scent of violets wafted by my nostrils.

Clearly, this conversation was at an end for now. I also stood up.

‘Thank you for your time, madame. We shall speak again. You won’t, I hope, leave this address? If you do, let Scotland Yard know. But, I beg of you, please don’t return to France for the time being.’

‘I must stay here,’ she said. ‘I now have some legal matters to attend to. My husband left no will. Also, I have learned I have a stepdaughter.’

‘Your husband never mentioned his daughter?’

She shook her head. ‘Never. I now understand he gave her away when she was an infant, to his cousin and his wife. They consider her their daughter. Thomas no longer had any responsibility for her and my belief is that he, too, considered her their daughter, rather than his.’ She nodded. ‘I shall make her acquaintance this afternoon, and that of Mrs Maria Tapley.’

‘You will?’ I exclaimed, unprepared for this development.

‘Oh, yes. They are coming here to meet me.’

Oh, how I wished I could be a fly on the wall of this dingy parlour when that encounter took place later in the day!

On my way out, I paused by the reception desk. There was indeed a corkboard fixed to the wall with scraps of paper or card pinned to it. A glance at them showed them to be targeted at visitors to the capital, mostly cheaply printed bills advertising Turkish baths, cigar divans, theatres and the like. There was even . . . ah, yes, there it was, a small card advertising the services of Horatio Jenkins, private enquiry agent.

I took it down and showed it to the formidable, bombazine-clad female who guarded admission to the hotel. ‘Did you see who placed this here, and when?’

She stared at it as if it might communicate some plague. ‘I have no idea. The notices change continually. I could ask the page-boy. But I doubt he’d remember. Do you wish to speak to the boy?’ She struck a bell on the counter.

A figure appeared in an ill-fitting page’s uniform.

‘This gentleman has a question for you,’ said the woman, and left me with the page.

He was an unprepossessing youth, stunted in build, and with crooked teeth and a knowing look. ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘You’re a rozzer, I’d bet my brass buttons on it.’

‘Your brass buttons are perfectly safe. This card, advertising the detective agency, when was it pinned on that board?’ I held it under his nose.

‘What’s it worth?’ asked the youth.

‘Let me explain something to you,’ I replied. ‘I am indeed an officer of the law. I am making some enquiries and if you withhold information, you will be in trouble.’

‘I ain’t got any information!’ said the page in disgust. ‘What information am I likely to have, stuck here? I’m run off my feet, I am.
She’s
banging that ruddy bell every five minutes. There’s someone wanting their luggage carried upstairs, or they want it carried down again. There’s someone wanting me to run out and find a cab and another one wanting me to run half a mile with a message. If they give me a shilling I’m lucky.
She’s
got me cleaning all their shoes, as well, because I’m boot boy, too, for my sins. I haven’t got time to watch that corkboard. People come in and pin up their notices all the time. When it gets too full,
she
tells me to take ’em all down and chuck ’em on the fire. I don’t read ’em.
She
might.’

‘Then let me ask you another question,’ I said. ‘The French lady who is a guest here . . .’

‘Oh,
her
,’ said the page.

‘Did she arrive alone?’

‘There was no gentleman, possibly a Frenchman, with her?’

He squinted at me. ‘There was a fellow in the cab with her, the cab she arrived in, but he never got out, never gave a hand with the bags or nothing. She got out, the cabbie got down from his perch and whistled to me. I went out and the cabbie and me, we dragged out all the bags. I was given the lot to carry and the cab rattled off with the other fare still in it. I never heard the fellow inside speak, never got a proper look at him. There’s not much light inside a four-wheeler and he had his hand up, sort of between his face and me. He might or might not have been a foreigner. He might have been the emperor of Russia. He might have had no legs. But it’s no use asking
me
about him.’

So, I thought, Hector Mas, if the man in the cab had been Mas, who had travelled to England with Guillaume, had not lodged in the same hotel. Out of the same discretion that kept him veiled in the darkness of the cab when she arrived? Or for some other reason?’

I gave the page a shilling in case I needed to talk to him again. He might prove a useful spy.

‘You want me to find out about that card?’ asked the page, encouraged by my largesse. ‘I could go round the other hotels hereabouts and see if they got one.’

‘No matter,’ I said. ‘It is no use now. The agency it advertises is no longer in existence.’

‘What do you think, then, Ross?’ asked Dunn when I returned to the Yard.

‘That she is either very plausible or telling the truth. Very likely, it is a mixture of the two. She tells me – us – nothing until she has to. Thus, she did not volunteer the information that she had used Jenkins’s agency. She did not admit at first she had been accompanied by a man when she called there. She had forgotten the tea tray and would not, anyway, have seen Miss Poole, who was standing behind her in the doorway, and did not come into the room. She had to decide quickly whether to continue to deny a man had accompanied her, or admit he’d existed. Not knowing if Miss Poole got more of a look at her than we know she did – or if I could produce another witness – Guillaume decided to admit it.’

‘And the reason for her reticence?’ asked Dunn, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the desktop.

‘What?’ asked Dunn, startled.

‘Well, sir, her hair is very elaborately dressed and it looked today exactly the same as it did yesterday, although conceivably she may have called a hairdresser to the hotel. She could, if necessary, change her appearance quite easily, if she does wear a wig. Both Major Griffiths and Miss Poole described a woman with deep red hair. We have seen one with jet-black tresses. That is not to say they are not one and the same.’

‘We shall have to keep an eye on her,’ said Dunn grimly. ‘In case she slips out of the country.’

‘The French police should be able to find her, if she did. She wouldn’t simply abandon her lodging house in Montmartre, unless she became desperate to disappear. I am more than a little interested in this fellow, Hector Mas. He wanted no one at the hotel to see him. Why was he so keen to stay out of sight? Guillaume tells us he has returned to France. I wonder, sir, if it is worth contacting the French police and asking if they know of him?’

‘I’ll get on to it,’ Dunn promised.

‘In the meantime, the lady is making claims on Thomas Tapley’s estate. Until that is settled, she won’t go away, sir.’

Later that evening Lizzie listened to all this in silence, paying close attention. After I’d finished speaking, she sat in thought for a moment or two before speaking.

‘So Maria Tapley took Flora to meet this newly discovered stepmother this afternoon? I’m surprised she allowed Flora to go anywhere near her.’

‘The Tapleys could hardly prevent her meeting the woman at some stage,’ I pointed out. ‘Better for it to be at once, so that Flora is prepared when the matter of the inheritance comes to court, if it does. She’d meet her then. She should know what she’s up against. Perhaps it was Flora’s own wish to meet the woman her father married in France?’

Lizzie thought that over and agreed. Her next question surprised me. ‘You say Victorine was in deep mourning? Top to toe? Even a widow’s cap?’

‘To the last detail and all good quality – to my eye. Black silk crêpe, even little lace mittens.’

Lizzie leaned towards me, her face animated. ‘Where did she get it all?’

‘What?’

‘The mourning ensemble, where and when did she acquire it?’

I confess I didn’t at first see where this question was going and replied, ‘I suppose, as a widow, it is quite proper she should dress that way.’

‘Yes, yes!’ said Lizzie impatiently. ‘But one doesn’t acquire such a complete set of widow’s weeds overnight! Victorine did not know until quite late yesterday, when she met Jonathan and was taken to the undertaker’s to see her husband’s body, that she was a widow, or so she says. She had hoped to find Thomas alive, if mentally muddled. Did she rush straight out from the undertaker’s to a dress shop, not pausing even to shed a tear?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘She came to Scotland Yard to surprise Dunn and me. She wore grey, a hussar jacket, and that hat you spoke of, with the lavender roses and ribbons.’

‘Just so. She had no time to go shopping. She must have sailed from France to England with a travelling box or chest.’

‘The hotel page told me she arrived with several bags.’

Lizzie nodded. ‘So, did she pack this complete set of black clothes, just against the possibility that she might find out that he’d died here? If she thought he was alive, it seems unnecessary. It took up space and added to the weight of her luggage. It suggests to me she thought there would be a very good chance he would be dead, and she did not want the expense of equipping herself with black crêpe clothing here. But why should he have died? He had recovered physically from his bout of fever. At the very least, it seems very pessimistic of her to have filled her boxes with clothing she might not need.’

‘Unless she was confident she
would
need it,’ I said thoughtfully.

Lizzie beamed at me. ‘Yesterday she wore grey. Grey is quite sombre enough a colour to wear for a week, until she had acquired some black clothes. If she’d done that, the puzzle of her sudden appearance in full mourning wouldn’t have arisen.
But this afternoon Maria Tapley and Flora were to call on her for the first time
. Victorine wanted to make a good impression and set the stage. She could not resist taking out the black outfit she had brought with her and wearing it.’

Lizzie sat back and waited.