A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) (27 page)
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Authors: Ann Granger
I lingered long enough to murmur, ‘Thank you, Major
Griffiths. I was a little afraid you might not recognise her.’
‘Well, she wasn’t all in black when I saw her last,’ admitted Griffiths. ‘And her hair was a different colour, I fancy, reddish. But she isn’t the sort of woman one forgets. I knew her the moment I saw her pass the doorway of your office there.’
‘Again, my thanks for waiting and identifying her. Perhaps you would give us a little more of your time, and sign a statement to the effect that she called on you in Harrogate and in what circumstances? Sergeant Morris will look after you. If you are to attend Tapley’s funeral, I’ll be meeting you again, sir.’
‘Thought I should attend the funeral,’ Griffiths repeated. ‘Proper thing to do. I confess I’m also interested to see if I can find out what’s likely to happen about my tenancy. Glad to have been of service, Inspector.’
I joined Dunn and Victorine Guillaume in Dunn’s office. Victorine was seated on the chair where I’d first seen her. Her dark eyes sparkled with anger as she watched me enter. Dunn looked relieved to see me. However, I was not prepared, this time, to carry the burden of the interview. I stationed myself by the closed door, and waited in silence.
‘Ah, yes, Ross . . .’ mumbled Dunn. He then straightened up and, turning to Guillaume, began briskly, ‘Well, madame, I am sorry for the little subterfuge, but it seems you have not been entirely frank . . .’
He got no further. She turned that blazing gaze from me to him and Dunn visibly blanched.
‘I am also very sorry, because I believe that neither you, Superintendent, nor you, Inspector Ross, has behaved as a
gentleman should.’ The dark eyes flashed at me again, ‘Particularly in your case, Inspector!’
‘I am afraid, madame, I am only a simple police officer,’ I said. ‘I have never made any claim to be a gentleman.’
‘It is as well!’ she said icily.
‘Now, look here, madame . . .’ Dunn wrested back control of the conversation. ‘You have not been frank with us, you know. You cannot blame us for our little trick. This is a murder inquiry. You should not keep information of any sort from us. You should have told us you travelled to Harrogate in search of your husband. You did not go unaccompanied. You presented yourself under false colours, madame, at The Old Hall. We should like to know why.’
‘Pah!’ She threw up her hands. ‘I do not keep secrets! I simply did not know you wished to be told all this. You have misunderstood. Why should my visit to Harrogate be of interest to you? My poor husband was not there and he had been living, I now know, here in London. He was murdered here. There is no connection with Harrogate, only a wasted and expensive journey made by myself. Of what interest or use is all that to you? I am not accustomed to being interrogated by the police.’
Oh yes, you are, I thought but did not say aloud. You’d be a lot more nervous if you’d never been through any official interrogation before. Innocence acts guilty, and the guilty present themselves as white as driven snow, that’s my experience. I wonder how you earned the money that bought you the lodging house in Montmartre?
‘You gave a false name . . .’ Dunn began. He must have been flustered to make such an elementary mistake.
She leaped on it. ‘I gave no such thing! I gave my maiden name, Guillaume.’
‘The gentleman with you also gave that name,’ Dunn persevered. His manner was growing terrier-like. She was doing her best to shake free of his line of questioning, but he’d got a grip.
‘If you would allow me to explain, Superintendent!’ We waited. Victorine’s manner grew calmer. She folded her hands in her lap and began composedly. ‘I told Inspector Ross . . .’ (A malicious glance at me.) ‘That I had travelled to this country with an old friend, a friend of both my husband and myself, Hector Mas. He has returned to France. But for a few weeks after we arrived, he stayed here to support me in my enquiries. When we landed in England, we travelled to Yorkshire. My husband had spoken of his boyhood there and I thought it possible that, if he had come back to England in a confused state of mind, he might have gone to his boyhood home. As a married lady, it would not appear proper to travel with an unrelated gentleman of a different name. So Monsieur Mas agreed it best that he present himself under the name of Guillaume and, as such, we travelled as brother and sister. Now, of course, it appears suspicious to you. But at the time, to us, it only appeared practical.’
She waited for our comment but since neither of us made any, she gave a cross sigh and continued.
‘On our arrival in Harrogate, we found it is a spa town with many visitors coming and going, often from the Continent, and our arrival did not occasion any surprise. We asked about a family called Tapley. We were told the name was very well known but no Tapley had lived in Harrogate or nearby for
many years. No one had seen Mr Thomas Tapley recently. However, the family still owned some property, The Old Hall, as it was called, now occupied by a tenant, and some farmland and farmhouse. So Hector, Monsieur Mas, suggested he walk over the moor towards The Old Hall, in the hope of encountering an employee of the estate or a servant at the Hall, whom he could ask about my husband, and whether he’d been seen in the area. Thomas might not have gone into the town, we thought, but he might have stayed at an inn, for example, near his old family home.’
I decided this was all going too smoothly and decided to toss a pebble into the water. ‘I believe, madame, that Monsieur Mas adopted the disguise of an artist, carried a painter’s satchel, perhaps?’
That did catch her off guard. Dunn looked surprised as well. I admit I’d only just made the connection myself.
‘Monsieur Mas,’ Victorine said firmly, ‘is an accomplished amateur artist. That is why he took his satchel of drawing paper and materials. The scenery around there interested him. However, he didn’t get any chance to draw nor any chance to speak to anyone. The only person he encountered was a ruffian declaring himself a gamekeeper, and carrying a gun. He was aggressive and abusive and drove poor Hector away. Hector was alarmed and didn’t stay to argue.
‘We decided to present ourselves at The Hall as tourists, respectable people who could not be driven off with threats of violence. We hired a barouche, which was an expense I could ill afford, but we needed it. We called at The Hall, met Major Griffiths, were invited into the house by him and shown some of the rooms. We tried to talk to him about the family, but he
became almost as surly as his gamekeeper and we found ourselves dismissed with little ceremony.’
‘And yet, madame,’ said Dunn, ‘had you presented yourself as Mrs Tapley, you would have received a far kinder reception.’
‘Yes, I realise that now,’ Victorine said irritably. ‘It is possible to be very wise after the event, as you say. In France, we call that
l’esprit de l’escalier
. . .’
We both stared at her uncomprehendingly.
‘The wit of the staircase,’ she translated obligingly. ‘It is the thing you should have said, but did not think of, and only occurred to as you were leaving. As we were returning to Harrogate in the barouche, Hector and I, we agreed it would have been better to present ourselves as Mrs Tapley and Monsieur Mas, and let the gossips make of that whatever they liked. But we had not. So, having found no trace of Thomas, or anyone who could help us, we decided to go to London. I knew that Thomas had a cousin, Jonathan, living there. Thomas had given me to understand he and his cousin were not on good terms. They had quarrelled. But I thought I might contact him, even so. However, when we arrived here I found, at my hotel, a card advertising a detective agency. I hesitated for some time but eventually decided to enquire first if they could help. I have explained all this to you, Inspector Ross.’
‘Indeed you have, madame,’ I agreed. ‘Tell me, while in Harrogate, you did not think to consult Newman and Thorpe, the firm of solicitors there who handle all your husband’s business?’
‘I did not know of Newman and – who?’
‘Thorpe, madame.’
‘I did not know of them.’ She frowned. ‘That is a great nuisance. If I had known, I should certainly have gone to them.’
‘If you had presented yourself in the town as Mrs Tapley, you might have been directed to them by someone,’ I said mildly.
‘Again, Inspector,’ was the chilly response, ‘you are wise after the event. Obviously, as I realise now, I was wrong not to give my married name in Harrogate. However, the fact remains I did not.’
She stood up. ‘Is there anything else you wish to know?’
‘Is there anything else you wish to tell us, madame?’ asked Dunn politely.
‘No!’ was the curt response. ‘I remind you I am recently widowed. I am very upset by all of this. I should like to return to my hotel and rest. I have the ordeal of my dear husband’s funeral ahead of me. What’s more, that man Griffiths will be there, he tells me.’
‘Before you leave, madame,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you’d be so kind as to repeat all you have told us in the form of a statement and sign it? I’ll call my sergeant.’
‘You are impertinent!’ she snapped. ‘To ask me to make a statement, to sign things, at this time and in these circumstances, is unkind, unnecessary and ungentlemanly. But we have discussed your lack of gentlemanly qualities already, Inspector.’
‘I fear I have lost your good opinion, madame, and I am sorry for it. But there, it is the way of police work. It cannot be helped,’ I told her ruefully.
An extraordinary thing happened then. I swear, she almost
laughed. She didn’t, but cast me a quizzical look as she swept past. I found myself smiling foolishly.
‘Take that sentimental grin off your face, Ross!’ ordered Dunn, when she had left with Morris. ‘You are not conducting a flirtation with the lady.’
‘No, sir, sorry. But she, well, she has a way of catching one off guard.’
‘Hum!’ growled Dunn. ‘Is she a liar?’
‘Ah, sir,’ I said. ‘There’s the thing. She doesn’t exactly lie. That is to say, she doesn’t, as far as we can prove anything. What she does is give out the truth in dribs and drabs; and then in such a way that it appears quite differently, as related by her, to the way it has been seen, previously, by us. She holds up a prism to the facts. They divide and become confusing. One can’t be sure what one’s looking at.’
‘So, are we wrong? Or just thick-headed policemen?’
‘She makes me feel like a thick-headed policeman,’ I confessed. ‘I do sometimes think she is playing some sort of game with me.’
‘Ross! I remind you that you are a married man, an officer of the law, and investigating officer in this case!’
‘I am not flirting, Superintendent! I wouldn’t dare. Lizzie would kill me.’
‘So, did Victorine Tapley kill her husband?’ Dunn asked grimly.
‘Beat him over the head with a blunt instrument, sir? No, I can’t see it. It would be too crude. I can imagine her poisoning his soup, perhaps? But that’s not how the poor fellow died.’
‘Because he ran away from her before she could do it?’ asked Dunn.
‘We don’t know, sir.’
Dunn looked thoughtful. ‘I said she was a clever woman,’ he said at last.
I’d thought I was the one who’d said that.
Dunn ran his fingers through his cropped hair, making it stand up on end like a hearth brush. ‘I, too, shall attend this funeral, Ross,’ he announced.
‘I am glad to hear it, sir. There are things about this funeral I should like to discuss with you. We shall have all parties gathered together in one place. I think it may prove a day of reckoning.’
Elizabeth Martin Ross
THE DAY of the funeral dawned dank and chill, as if recently departed winter had decided to make a surprise return visit, just when we all thought we’d seen the last of it for a while. Overnight a fog had rolled up from the river and swirled about, trailing its fingers through the streets as if a fire smouldered nearby. It was not so bad as to be categorised as a ‘London Particular’, that thick brown soup which fouls the air, causes pedestrians to cough and choke, and cabs and carts to collide with one another. But still, it was bad enough. Air in our street and around was made worse by smoke from the engines at the railway terminus nearby, trapped at low level. By the time the day is over, and we have reached home again, I thought, we shall all of us smell like kippers.
‘It will be better in the Marylebone area,’ said Ben optimistically.
Mrs Jameson accompanied us. She had expressed a wish to see her late lodger decently laid to rest. The three of us squeezed into Wally Slater’s four-wheeler, hired for the purpose, and proceeded at a painfully slow pace north of
the river. Wally, in honour of the occasion, had tied a black scarf round his hat, and Nelson had black rosettes pinned to his bridle. Ben had found a black armband, and I had donned the mourning I had last worn for my poor father. The clothes had been packed away in a box since then and suffered for it. So, in a way, I was glad of the poor light because then my skirt and fitted jacket would not display its creases and darns so obviously. Mrs Jameson was dressed in her habitual sober manner, but not in black. It was not the Quaker custom, she informed us, to wear ‘outward trappings’ or make a ceremony of the occasion.
‘Sorrow is in the heart, Mrs Ross. Indeed, I am very sorry for what happened to poor Mr Tapley. I still find it difficult to imagine that some ruffian forced his way into my house and struck the poor man down dead in the upstairs parlour. We pray he is now at peace; and that his assailant may yet repent of his crime.’
Despite Ben’s optimism, the air wasn’t so very much better by the time we reached St Marylebone church. We waited outside, with damp dripping from the trees and seeping through our clothing, for the arrival of the hearse with the coffin. I took the opportunity to look around to see who might be attending. I didn’t expect there would be much of a crowd. Superintendent Dunn was already there ahead of us. The family had not yet arrived and apart from Ben and myself, and Mrs Jameson, there was only an elderly female. She told us, between much sniffing into a handkerchief, she had been governess to ‘dear little Flora’ from her arrival at the age of three in the household until she grew old enough to be sent away to school.
‘The family has always been so good to me,’ she confided. ‘Mr Tapley – Mr Jonathan Tapley – settled a small annuity on me in recognition of my services. But now to think that the other Mr Tapley, dear Flora’s papa, is to be buried today. The poor child.’ She took refuge in the handkerchief.
‘Did you know Mr Thomas Tapley?’ I enquired.
She shook her head. ‘I never met the gentleman. He did call a few times to see his child in the early years, before he went away to France. But I did not meet him, only glimpsed him, on the few times he came, when Flora was called down to the parlour by her aunt. I would take Flora down and leave her at the door. He never stayed long, her papa, I mean.’
Another party arrived, swelling our numbers. It consisted of four gentlemen, three of them, as it turned out, known to Ben. All four had come down from Harrogate for the occasion. They were two solicitors by the name of Thorpe, father and son, I gathered; and Major Griffiths. The fourth gentleman was a real John Bull of a figure, of stout build, red in face, and wearing a low-crowned hat, a broadcloth coat and old-fashioned breeches and gaiters. He informed us he had been a boyhood friend of Thomas.
‘Though I’ve heard nothing of him for years,’ he explained. ‘Not since he went off to live abroad. I little thought I’d be coming down to London to see him buried.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor fellow, he were a sorry horseman and a poor shot, but come to book-reading, well, he could quote you Shakespeare by the yard.’
At this point the rumble of wheels and clatter of hooves announced that the hearse had arrived in sombre splendour, drawn by a pair of jet horses, black plumes nodding above
their ears. The Tapley carriage followed close behind. Now I saw for myself the matched carriage pair of ‘golden horses’, so vividly described by Joey. I confess they appeared inappropriately showy for the sad occasion, even though they, too, sported black plumes and rosettes. Down from the carriage stepped Jonathan, a black silk scarf tied round his top hat, and holding up his hand to help down first his wife and then Victorine. I had been wondering if they would allow her to come with them, as a family member. Whatever their feelings towards her, and Jonathan’s suspicions, I supposed they could hardly
not
have brought the widow with them. It would have occasioned gossip, and the Tapleys had a horror of that.
I studied Victorine Tapley as closely as I could without staring at her too openly. She was undeniably a handsome woman, even if not in the first flush of youth. She carried herself like a queen. But then, she had been a trained dancer. An expensive-looking hat, trimmed with ostrich feathers dyed black, was securely pinned to her intricately coiled hair. Surely such a fashionable hat came from Paris, I thought, awkwardly aware of my own old-fashioned mourning bonnet. More than ever I was convinced Victorine must have brought her entire mourning wardrobe with her from France, despite it taking up at least two boxes besides the hatbox for the millinery. She expected poor Thomas would soon be dead, I decided, if he wasn’t already. But was I looking at a murderess?
Flora stepped down last, appearing almost to have been forgotten. She wore a small mourning bonnet with a leafy patterned veil. She followed her uncle, aunt and stepmother with bowed head. Maria Tapley glanced back at her once, but
otherwise, I got the impression both Jonathan and his wife were keeping their eyes firmly fixed on the widow.
The coffin was carried into the church, the family following behind and the rest of us following them. Our small gathering seemed even more modest in the spacious, elegant, white and gold interior. The service was brief. We left again. Ben and I, with Mrs Jameson, climbed back into Wally’s growler, joined there by Superintendent Dunn. We set off behind the hearse, the family carriage and the vehicle that had been hired to carry the Thorpes, Major Griffiths and the John Bull incarnation, together with the little former governess whom they had kindly taken up with them. Our destination was the modest railway station, situated near to its bigger brother at Waterloo, which was the starting point of the private line running to the huge burial area, known as the Brookwood Necropolis, some twenty-five miles out of London.
By the time the coffin and the pallbearers had been loaded aboard, and we mourners had entered a separate carriage, our party had gained two more members. There was a couple, apparently husband and wife, of middle age and stolid appearance. They did not introduce themselves, spoke to no one en route and I did not remember seeing them in the church. I did wonder if they had somehow attached themselves to the wrong funeral. Ours had not been the only party at the station waiting to be taken to Brookwood and there would be at least two other funerals that afternoon. I didn’t know if they suspected that they had got mixed up, if indeed they had. But if so, they were sitting it out with true British determination.
Mrs Jameson seemed fascinated both by Victorine and by Jonathan Tapley. After a baffled look or two at the
Frenchwoman, Mrs Jameson fixed her gaze on him throughout the journey to Brookwood, although, if she thought he had noticed or anyone else had observed, she looked quickly away or down. On one occasion she caught my eye, watching her as she watched him, and she blushed quite pink. It’s not surprising, I thought, that she should find it hard to connect such a prosperous figure of a successful man with the spindly form of her shabby lodger. She must wonder anew how it could be that Thomas Tapley had ended his life in her first-floor parlour.
Flora remained behind her veil. The pattern of leaves that sprinkled it meant that her features could only be glimpsed dimly in small areas. As the veil quivered in the rocking of the carriage, these areas flickered like a magic lantern show. I saw an eye and then one side of her mouth, then her cheek, all frozen in a misty gloom. Sometimes I had the eerie feeling that, if the veil were suddenly removed, there would be no Flora behind it, only a doll’s porcelain face. From time to time, her Aunt Maria glanced at her again, but did not offer any words of comfort, nor even touch her arm. Flora was ‘bearing up’; and that was all that mattered.
The Necropolis had two platforms at which mourners could descend: one for the area used for Church of England funerals, and another for Nonconformist ones. It would have given the unknown couple the opportunity to slip away and await the right funeral, but they stuck with us. Perhaps, after all, they had come to see Tom Tapley buried.
The twenty-five miles travelled from London had not proved far enough to shake off all traces of the fog. A perceptible mist filtered across the cemetery grounds, a huge area of
parkland. It had been designed to be a resting place for the dead of London, for whom little or no burial space remained in the city and whose families could afford to buy a plot here. The mist snaked between the trees and around the headstones and monuments, hovering above the areas of green sward and restricting our view. The day appeared darker than it should have been at this hour. The sun’s rays had not penetrated the cloud cover at all that day.
We walked in a sedate procession, our feet crunching on the gravel paths, passing by stone urns, decked with carved draperies; and angels who cast down their sightless eyes at us, spreading wings that would never flap free of the earth. It had grown much colder. The mist grew thicker by the minute. It was a fairly long walk at our slow pace and by the time we reached the appointed site, the light was failing fast. The clergyman who had come with us from the church, conveyed in the Tapley carriage, spoke the necessary words and poor Tom Tapley was lowered into the ground, amid the smell of freshly turned soil. We all set off back to the platform for the train.
Now that the task was over, a sense of relief could be felt. Our disciplined procession had broken up and become more of a scattered group. The undertaker’s men walked in a little group, to one side. The stolid husband and wife had at long last approached Jonathan and Maria and were expressing some condolences. The Tapleys were accepting these with equanimity, although I had a strong suspicion they had no idea who these people were. Tom’s widow had dropped back and walked by herself. Ben was talking to Major Griffiths; Superintendent Dunn chatted with the stout gentleman in
breeches. The little governess was whispering to the pair of solicitors, and Flora . . .
I looked round, sensing a spurt of alarm. Where was Flora? Quickly I looked in all directions. I saw only trees, headstones and stone figures on plinths.
I shouted out her name as loudly as I could, heedless of the impropriety in the surroundings. ‘Flora!’
Immediately our party was in disarray and panic set in. Jonathan shouted, ‘Where the devil is she?’ His wife gave a shriek and fell back to be supported, unhappily, by the clergyman. The four gentlemen from Harrogate split up and ran in different directions. The stout gentleman in breeches was crying, ‘Halloo!’ as though he were on the hunting field and we saw he was pointing in the distance. Indistinctly, amid the trees and difficult to discern in the gloom and mist, something moved, some strange shape, constantly changing. Suddenly as it broke free of the sheltering trees it could be seen to be made up of a man and a woman, struggling. All the men, including the pallbearers but with the exception of the clergyman who was still encumbered with Maria Tapley, began to race in that direction, shouting. Ben was yelling, ‘Police! Stop!’ The male struggling figure broke away and the female one sank to the ground. Dunn began roaring, ‘Mas! Devil take it, it must be Mas! Catch the scoundrel!’
Then the hunt was on, as the fleeing male figure darted and dodged among the monuments and headstones. The pursuers had spread out and were attempting to cut off his escape. Maria Tapley had recovered her senses, and she and the governess were both running towards the form of Flora collapsed on the ground. The clergyman, his surplice flapping,
hastened behind them, clutching his prayer book and trying to keep some dignity. I looked for Victorine and saw that she was running, too, but not with the rest. She was heading in the opposite direction.
I picked up my skirts and set off after her. I didn’t know where she was going, or her purpose, and I had no one to help me by heading her off. I made every effort, jumping over graves and sprinting across the grass. She knew I was behind her. She glanced back once and then dashed on. But I was younger and fitter and I began to gain on her. At that point, she stooped and picked up a small marble flower vase and hurled it at me with the force and accuracy of a bowler in a cricket match. I ducked and it whizzed over my head. Our chase was on again. But she had wasted time in stooping to take up her missile and hurl it. I had reached within a few feet of her. I hurled myself forward, arms outstretched, and grasped a handful of the material of her skirt.
She turned on me, hissing in rage, and tried to shake me free but I was not to be cheated of my prey, now that I had her in my grasp. At that moment, she stumbled over the granite kerbstone of a grave and fell to her knees. I threw myself on her and wrapped my arms round her waist. She was abusing me ferociously in French. It awoke memories of those long-ago French lessons of my girlhood and I replied vigorously in the same language.