A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) (6 page)
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Authors: Ann Granger
I begged Biddle to cut short Jenny’s personal history and future prospects and get on with the events leading up to the fatal day. It came down to no one calling at the house except the bread roundsman at the kitchen door that day, and a pair of Quaker ladies who’d come to take tea with Mrs Jameson the previous afternoon. The milkman’s cart came down the street both days. Jenny had gone out with a jug to fetch milk from him. He did not come round to the back of the house. Mr Tapley had received no visitor that Jenny saw, but she agreed he might have let someone in himself and taken that
person upstairs unbeknown either to her or her mistress. Had she ever suspected he’d done that? No, not that Jenny had ever discovered. But she didn’t think Mr Tapley was the sort of man with anything to act furtive about. He didn’t know anyone to come calling; that was her opinion. She had not seen him on the day of the murder. She supposed he’d gone to a coffee house in the morning as usual, because he’d left his rooms when she went up to make the bed and dust. Everything had looked normal.
‘Just his books everywhere,’ Jenny had said. ‘All them words, thousands of them. Wonderful, really.’
Biddle had been inclined to agree.
Jenny could read and write and had once looked into some of Tapley’s books. But the print had been too small, the words too long and unfamiliar, and the subject matter dull.
‘He was a quaint old gentleman,’ Biddle had written verbatim in his notes, ‘and very old fashioned in his clothes and ways. He always spoke of taking a “dish” of tea. But he was always very polite.’
The mystery – why anyone should deliberately set out to murder such a man – deepened. My policeman’s suspicious mind had already decided there must have been more to Thomas Tapley than had met the eye. But would we be able to find out what it was?
Biddle had established one last point and it was an important one. The back door, in the kitchen, was not secured during the day because Jenny was ‘in and out’ all the time. The woodpile to keep the kitchen range going, the coalhouse from which to feed the parlour fire, and the pump supplying the household’s water needs, were all in the yard. Mrs Jameson
also kept a few chickens in a shed in the back yard. Jenny fed them and collected their eggs.
At this news I asked if the chickens were let out to roam free during the day. Biddle said there was a moveable wire cage where the birds spent the daylight hours before being locked inside again at night. Jenny had taken Biddle outside to show him.
‘It means Jenny can move the chickens around from spot to spot and they clear out all the beetles and such on the ground. But they were all back in their shed by five. I asked her to take me outside and show me,’ added Biddle, ‘because the other one, your maid Bessie, kept interrupting and I wanted to get Jenny on her own.’
I could imagine the scene and thought Biddle shrewd to have got Jenny away.
‘It’s pity it didn’t rain earlier today,’ I grumbled. ‘We might have had some good footprints in the yard.’ I thought about the chickens. ‘Might they have squawked if disturbed by a stranger coming through the yard?’ I wondered aloud.
But Biddle thought otherwise. ‘They wouldn’t raise the alarm, sir, begging your pardon. It’s geese what cackle when strangers come near them. Not chickens, silly things they are. Geese are as good as a watchdog. My grandpa keeps them. He’s got a pig, too, in his backyard and it’ll eat all your rubbish. A pig’s very useful.’
I deferred to Biddle’s superior knowledge of animal husbandry, and praised the lad for having done a good job interviewing the servant girl and checking the yard. I told him to write it all out nicely so that it would go on record. Biddle blushed red to the tips of his rather prominent ears and began
to thank me fulsomely until I ordered him to stop.
Oh, and Jenny didn’t have a follower, Biddle threw this fact into the pot. Mrs Jameson wouldn’t allow it. ‘Though she’s quite pretty, that Jenny,’ opined Biddle.
I told him to go home now and to concentrate on the report he was to write in the morning; and not start getting unprofessional thoughts about witnesses.
Biddle now turned even redder and I feared his head would burst into flames in the only case I’d ever seen or was likely to see of spontaneous combustion.
DAWN WAS breaking before I made my own way home. I like this time of day and even tired as I was, and worried about this new case, I breathed in deeply of the morning air that was still relatively fresh and unpolluted. The first workers were on their way to their places of labour, picking their way round the puddles that dotted the cobbled street and had gathered in the gutters. Chimneys puffed out the first smoke of the day as housewives or sleepy servant girls got the range lit. I could easily guess the topic of conversation over the breakfast would be all about the comings and goings at the Jameson house the previous night.
No one was yet rattling about in our kitchen and the parlour fire had long gone out. But the room was still warm and I settled down in the chair before the ashes and fell asleep.
I was awoken later by movement and voices and opened my eyes to see Lizzie standing over me with a cup of tea in her hand. I glanced up at our clock and saw I’d been sleeping for about an hour and a half. From the kitchen came the sounds of breakfast being prepared by Bessie with Jenny’s help.
‘Mrs Jameson will be down shortly,’ Lizzie informed me. ‘I hope the poor woman was able to get some sleep. I slept like
a log,’ she added frankly. ‘I’ll tell one of the girls to take a jug of hot water upstairs so you can shave.’
Later when I came down, shaved and wearing a clean shirt, Mrs Jameson and Lizzie were at the breakfast table. I asked our guest how she’d slept.
‘Not well, Inspector, though the bed was most comfortable and I’m very grateful to you and Mrs Ross for your kindness. But I won’t impose on you for a second night. I keep worrying about the locksmith. I do know of one. I think he will come at once. I must get back to my house immediately. I don’t like it to stand empty. Only think, if someone has the key he may have returned and left with everything of value he could find.’
‘Constable Butcher was keeping an eye on the house,’ I assured her, but she looked unconvinced.
Before she and Jenny left us, I sat them down in our parlour and interviewed them again. I began with Jenny, as I hadn’t spoken to her at length myself and she had found the body. I was worried she might start rolling about and roaring again but under her mistress’s eye she behaved quite sensibly. Biddle had thought her pretty; I was inclined to agree. She had a pink and white complexion of the sort traditionally associated with milkmaids, round blue eyes and copper-coloured hair. I wondered again about followers. Surely such a pretty girl must have a sweetheart? Perhaps he lived back in her hometown of Chatham. Or perhaps he had crept up the back stairs and struck down Thomas Tapley, dead on the carpet.
‘Your mistress sent you to see what kept Mr Tapley from coming down to supper. Tell me exactly what you did, anything you noticed or heard.’
‘I only knocked on the door, sir, and called his name.
I didn’t see nor hear nothing strange before that. Honest, sir, I never let no one into the house that day. Someone might’ve come in through the kitchen when I wasn’t in it, and gone out that way, but he took an awful risk, sir, because either me or Mrs Jameson could’ve walked in at any time. He was pretty clever at getting in and out of folk’s houses, if he did.’ Her round blue gaze stared at me guilelessly.
I have met such a gaze more than once and from a hardened criminal, so that, in itself, didn’t impress me. But, to be fair, she seemed a girl who wore her emotions on her sleeve and not a natural deceiver. Nor did I wish to frighten her. Honest or guilty, if they think you believe them, they relax and are less guarded in their speech.
‘Yes, yes, Jenny. Go on from when you knocked on the lodger’s door.’
‘He didn’t answer, sir, so I thought perhaps he’d dozed off in his chair, him being an elderly gent. He’d done that once or twice before. So I opened the door and looked in, thinking I’d wake him. Ohmigawd . . .’ Jenny broke off and gave her employer a furtive look. ‘Sorry, madam, it sort of slipped out. I meant to say, oh
my goodness
. . .’
Even Mrs Jameson looked a little amused at this hasty correction.
Jenny carried on, ‘He was lying on the carpet all bashed about and bleeding. I never saw such a sight in my life. Not never. My pa works in the docks at Chatham and they have accidents there sometimes and men gets mangled but I bet they don’t see sights worse than that one I saw. I hopes never to see such a horrible thing again, no, not for the rest of my days!’
When I’d been a young boy, working down in the mines of my native Derbyshire, I’d seen mangled bodies, too. It had still shocked me to see one in a private house and Jenny’s terrified display the previous day was to be excused.
Jenny then returned to insisting no one had visited or called at the door during the day. The kitchen door had not been locked because her duties took her into the yard at frequent intervals; but she couldn’t understand that anyone had slipped in past her.
‘He was a wicked sneak thief, sir, that’s what he was. Poor Mr Tapley disturbed him and the horrid creature beat the poor old gent’s brains out.’
Jenny might be right, at that, but I still didn’t think so. The way Tapley lay sprawled suggested to me the murderer had disturbed him, and not the other way round. But I left it there for the moment and told her she could go back to Bessie in our kitchen while I spoke with her mistress.
Jenny got up, still protesting vigorously that it wasn’t her fault if anyone had got in. Her day was a busy one. She couldn’t be expected to have eyes in the back of her head. I set aside my theory – never a strongly held one – that some admirer of Jenny’s had been responsible for the savage deed. The girl might be possessed of a vivid imagination and she might be inclined to panic – I would not easily forget her roaring on our kitchen floor – but she was shrewd enough for all that.
When Jenny had left us, I turned to Mrs Jameson. She gave me much the same account as she’d given Lizzie the previous evening. I was again struck by how easily Tapley had talked his way into her small household. She was aware of it and regretted it now.
‘Indeed, I can’t blame Jenny if someone slipped in through the kitchen, when I took in Mr Tapley with no proper references. I wish I could explain to you how it came about, but he was such a pleasant, harmless sort of person.’
Of a type I’d certainly met before, I thought grimly. ‘Mrs Jameson, please be frank, did Mr Tapley at any time seek to borrow money from you?’
‘Oh, no, Inspector!’ She looked shocked. ‘Certainly not. He always paid his rent regularly and never sought extra time to find the money.’
She then surprised me by adding, ‘I do not think he was a confidence trickster, as I believe such people are called.’
Lizzie was right. Mrs Jameson was a very sensible woman and by no means naive. She’d been unwise to let her rooms to the man, but at the time perhaps there had been no reason why she shouldn’t. Were all my suspicions about Tapley unfounded?
I accompanied her back to her house, Jenny trailing dolefully behind us. I wondered how soon she would be using her Quaker references to seek a new place. Before I left them, I warned them that neither must go into either of the rooms rented by Tapley. Nothing must be disturbed until the police gave permission.
‘I shall probably be back again later today myself, with another officer,’ I told them. ‘Because we’ll need to search those two rooms thoroughly by daylight.’
Search his rooms again was all we could do for the moment. Apart from that I would make sure news of the murder reached the later editions and the evening papers. With luck someone would come forward with information or at least to confirm
the identity of our man. We would need as much luck as we could get.
When I reached the Yard that morning, Sergeant Morris was waiting for me. He’d been told of the case by Superintendent Dunn and ordered to assist me. Thank goodness for that, I thought. I also found Biddle’s report on my desk, neatly written out.
‘Well, well,’ I said to Morris, ‘that boy will make a detective yet! Have you read this, Morris?’
‘I have, Mr Ross,’ Morris replied lugubriously. ‘And it seems a very nasty affair to me, very
untoward
as you might say.’
‘You might, indeed, Sergeant. There are a number of mysteries around the deceased. Not the least of them is how he acquired his skill at talking his way into the homes of respectable women, renting rooms from them, even persuading this one to let him have a street-door key giving free access to the house, with no other reference than one from his previous landlady. His appearance was down at heel. He was well spoken and educated but appeared out of thin air in response, Mrs Jameson says, to an advertisement she’d placed in the local press. That might suggest he was already living locally – or it might not.’
‘He’d kissed the Blarney stone, by the sound of it,’ observed Morris.
‘We’ve no reason to suppose him Irish, or Welsh or Scottish or, come to that, English. He told this respectable Quaker widow he had a wish to return to live in London where he’d lived many years earlier and that was all he told her. She took him on trust. But that does not mean
we
have to
take anything about him on trust. That includes his apparent straitened means. He never tried to borrow money from her or to delay payment of his rent. He spent a fair amount on books, even if most of them do appear second-hand. He went to a coffee house every morning to make his breakfast, though his landlady would certainly have been willing to have him eat it in her house at no extra cost. He told her it was because he liked to read the newspapers. He dined with her in the evenings.’
‘What did they talk about, while they were having their supper?’ asked Morris.
People who don’t know him sometimes underestimate Morris. That is their mistake and many wrongdoers have made it.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But you are quite right. If he didn’t talk about himself, what did he talk about? Not religion, I shouldn’t think. The lady is a Quaker but there’s no Bible in Tapley’s rooms, nor any other devotional book. We shall have to ask her, Morris.’
‘A Quaker lady, you say?’ Morris said thoughtfully. ‘They’re inclined to see the best in people, are Quakers.’
‘The lady is not naive, Morris. I’ve spoken with her. She’s sharp enough. It makes it all the more remarkable that she let the two rooms to him.’
‘What I meant to say, sir,’ Morris explained, ‘was that they’re good people themselves – though I dare say they have their occasional black sheep – and they look for good in others. They reckon the world a sinful place and no police officer will argue with that! But they pride themselves – although they don’t go in for pride, it being sin – on seeing the good in
others. Perhaps this Quaker widow lady trusted Tapley because she saw something in him that others might not.’
‘Hm, well, I’ll bear that theory in mind, Morris. Now I’d better go along and see Superintendent Dunn and get his view of the matter.’
Dunn’s view was predictable. I didn’t need to hear it from his lips to know it. The superintendent believed in taking the direct line between two points. It was sometimes difficult to dissuade him from any conclusion so reached.
‘Well, it’s a dreadful business, of course, when a respectable gentleman is murdered in a decent household, with the roast ready to come to the table and a scripture-reading lady downstairs in the parlour. But from the police point of view, Ross, it is a simple matter. A thief broke in, Tapley disturbed him – or he was alarmed to come upon Tapley reading – so the miscreant struck out in a panic, having in hand some implement of his criminal trade, and killed the poor old fellow.’ Dunn looked satisfied at having arrived at this. But, because he knew me as I knew him, he waited for my objections.
‘There was no sign of any breakin,’ I ventured. ‘No forced window.’
Dunn waved this away. ‘He slipped in through the kitchen, then, while the maid had her back turned, he went up this servant’s stair . . .’ Dunn tapped my plan of the upper floor. ‘He used this spiral stair to reach the first floor. He left the same way after committing his heinous assault. We have to seek among London’s criminal fraternity, Ross! First port of call, known housebreakers.’
‘But why should he attack Tapley, if Tapley was reading quietly and hadn’t noticed that the door had opened behind him, sir? Why creep in and strike the victim down? It was unnecessary and, frankly, madness. It is one thing to be charged with housebreaking, and another to be charged with murder. We don’t hang a man for theft any longer in this country but we do hang him for a murder.’
‘Housebreakers are not reasoning beings, Ross. They plan their breakin and nothing more. Anything more is due to their low, violent instincts.’ Dunn nodded in agreement with his own words.
I was not ready to give up my argument. ‘Habitual housebreakers operate by night or at dawn, when the household is asleep, sir. An opportunist sneak thief, on the other hand, doesn’t go upstairs, where he may be trapped. He seizes a purse left lying on a table, a small ornament of value, something of that nature, and clears out as fast as he can.’
Dunn began showing signs of irritation. ‘So, are you saying the culprit entered the house with the express purpose of killing this blameless man, in his sixties, who spent his days in coffee houses and his evenings reading? Who was apparently in receipt of some small income, enough to prevent him pawning or selling his gold watch, but not enough to buy a new set of clothes or make him worth robbing?’
‘It does sound very odd, sir,’ I had to agree. ‘But we have to consider it. The victim, Thomas Tapley, is something of a mystery figure. We know nothing about him, nor did his landlady.’