A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) (7 page)

‘I am aware of that, sir.’

‘This female, Mrs Jameson, ought not to have let her rooms to him,’ the superintendent went on crossly, rubbing his hands through his wiry hair. ‘It was very unwise of her. Bound to be trouble sooner or later, perhaps not murder, but some problem. She knew absolutely nothing about the fellow! What on earth made her take him in?’

‘Sergeant Morris thinks perhaps she identified some good qualities in him,’ I ventured.

Dunn snorted. ‘I wish I had a guinea for each time some deceived woman has told me that! They usually offer it as an excuse after the man has spent all their money, or run off with the nursemaid, or turned out to be a bigamist. Your Mrs Jameson wasn’t the first woman he’d charmed in that way, apparently,’ Dunn rumbled on, ‘because he showed her a letter from his previous landlady in – where?’

‘Southampton, sir.’

‘A port . . .’ observed Dunn thoughtfully. ‘There is a regular packet service to and from France sailing from Southampton, is there not?’

‘I have wondered if that means anything, sir. He certainly might only recently have arrived in this country after spending some years abroad. That would account for his not being able to produce any other references.’

‘He might have been abroad, or in gaol or in the madhouse. Do we have this letter of reference?’ Dunn looked fiercely at me.

‘So far we have nothing, sir. That includes his house key – and it looks increasingly as if the murderer took that with him. If he did, it will be of no use to him now. Mrs Jameson is fetching in a locksmith this morning. But it indicates he intended to return and that suggests something he wants is there. We have to find it. But without knowing what it is, identifying it in the first place will be a problem.’

‘Tapley will have kept that letter of reference from his former landlady,’ mused Dunn. He got up from his chair and walked to the window where he stood with his back to the room, his hands clasped at the small of his spine and balancing on the balls of his feet. His shiny, uncreased boots looked brand new. Distracted, I wondered if he found them tight.

The superintendent spun round and fixed me with his small but piercing grey eyes. ‘Find that letter, Ross! It was the only bona fide piece of recommendation the fellow had. If he’d ever intended to move to new lodgings he’d have need of it again. He’d have kept it, mark my word. We must trace his former landlady in Hampshire. She may be our only lead.’

‘I’ll be taking Morris with me to the house shortly, sir, to search Tapley’s two rooms again,’ I said. ‘Before we leave I’ll arrange for the report of the murder to appear in this evening’s newspapers. I will tell the pressmen that we are anxious to confirm the identity of the corpse; and that there is a possibility the victim lived briefly in Southampton. That may spark some interest. If we can find the coffee house he was in the habit of frequenting, he may have chatted more freely to someone there. I’ll get Biddle on to that when he reports back on duty again. The youngster did very well last night, sir.’

Dunn squinted at me, the grey iris of his eyes almost invisible. ‘Experience tells me, Ross, that this nice old gentleman, who wouldn’t hurt a fly and collected books, was on the run from something or someone!’

It wasn’t the first occasion when Dunn had abandoned a fixed point of view and taken up another. The speed with which he’d changed his mind this time was still disconcerting. So, from seeking known housebreakers, I was now to chase down Tapley’s history and seek a reason for murder. The next step would be for Dunn to decide this had been his idea from the first.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

I sent a man out to go round the newspaper offices and make sure the murder made the late editions. Morris and I then returned to the Jameson house where we found the locksmith busy at his trade, and Mrs Jameson standing over him. She looked unhappy, as well she might, because removing the old lock had made a sorry mess of the front door, leaving an unsightly gap around the newly fitted replacement. The next person to be called to the house would be a carpenter, I guessed.

I explained to the lady that, as soon as the work was finished, it would help us if she would go and stay with my wife – or perhaps with some other acquaintance – for a few hours so that we could search the house.

‘It’s better you are not here, ma’am,’ I told her. ‘It gives us a free hand and we’ll be moving about a great deal in the two rooms rented by Tapley. That might upset you. But I am glad of a chance of a word with you. When Tapley dined with you, did he speak much of himself?’

Mrs Jameson took her eyes reluctantly from the locksmith. ‘Oh, well, no, he didn’t, Inspector. Now that you come to mention it, he hardly told me a thing. I didn’t
pry
, naturally.’

‘Naturally. So, if I may ask, what did you talk about?’

She looked vaguely up and down the street as if something there might jolt her memory. ‘He read the newspapers, every day without fail. He must have read them in coffee houses or public libraries because he never brought one into the house. I should have noticed, or Jenny would have done. I don’t allow a newspaper into the house, you see, Inspector. The papers are full of all kinds of unsuitable reports of people misbehaving in every way. I wouldn’t wish a young person like Jenny to find one and read of it. Having a young person in the house is a great responsibility, Inspector, as I expect you find with your maid.’

She didn’t know Bessie, I thought. Banning newspapers from the house wouldn’t have kept Bessie from hearing the gossip and any shocking news in particular. Maidservants operate a sort of telegraph system of their own by which anything like that runs round like wildfire. No doubt Jenny, too, would gather this sort of intelligence. Morris was right. There was a kind of innocence of the world about Mrs Jameson. Jenny would be much more alert to its pitfalls.

‘So,’ Mrs Jameson was saying, ‘of an evening, if he came down and dined with me, he told me of any current events he thought might interest me. I think I shouldn’t have known what was going on in the wide world if poor Mr Tapley hadn’t told me. I don’t mean he told me details of lurid murders—’

She broke off and looked at me in distress. ‘Oh, dear . . . and now the press will be reporting his murder.’

‘But he spoke to you of, perhaps, international affairs? What the government intended to do at home?’ I tried to sound reassuring. ‘Of course he didn’t report scandal.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s it! In fact, he made me realise how lamentably ignorant I have become since poor Ernest died.’ She turned her attention back to the locksmith. ‘I shall miss Mr Tapley. Have you finished?’

I thought she meant, had I concluded my questions, but I realised she had addressed the question to the locksmith.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. He sounded relieved.

‘Then you may be on your way and I will call and settle the bill with your employer.’

The locksmith, a sturdy fellow with close-clipped hair, prepared to set off, gathering up his tools and a small canvas sack that appeared to be heavy.

‘Wait!’ I called to him. I pointed at the sack. ‘Is that the old lock?’

‘Yessir . . . the lady don’t want it. Mr Pickles might have a use for it.’

‘He works for Mr Pickles,’ Mrs Jameson explained. ‘Mr Pickles is a member of our society.’

‘Society?’ I asked. ‘The Society of Friends, Inspector. He is a fellow Quaker.’

I nodded understanding. ‘But, if you don’t mind, I’ll take charge of the lock for the time being. I’ll write you a receipt for it.’

Both of them looked surprised. ‘What do you want with it?’ demanded the locksmith.

‘He didn’t pick this lock,’ said the locksmith, holding up the sack. ‘The only way he’d open this lock is with a key. This is a Bramah, this one is. That’s the best you can buy, you ask anyone in the trade.’

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘Yus, really,’ said the locksmith. ‘There was a feller picked one a few years ago, or reckoned he did, but it took him hours and hours and he done it with no one watching him. It was a special lock the company had put on show in their window. They were offering two hundred pounds if anyone could pick it. That just shows you what a good’un the company thought it had made. So this feller, he had a go and got it open after weeks fiddling with it. But no one saw him actually do the opening of it, did they? So they don’t know how he done it. He might’ve picked it and there again, he might not. I, myself,’ added the locksmith, ‘know a bit about locks and I couldn’t pick a lock like that one I just took out of the lady’s front door.’

‘Just leave it there,’ ordered Mrs Jameson, cutting short this flow of information that I was actually finding quite interesting.

The locksmith shrugged, set the bag with the old lock down on the ground, and trudged away. I scribbled out a receipt for the lock and handed it to Mrs Jameson, who murmured, ‘I am sure there is no need . . .’

‘Regulations require, ma’am, that if I take possession of something at the scene, I give you a receipt for it.’

As she passed by me, Jenny whispered, ‘I’m glad we’re going out for the day, sir. I don’t like it in this house no more. It fair gives me the creeps. Every little sound makes me jump and I don’t see how I’m going to sleep here. I won’t even be able to get my work done, not with looking over my shoulder every two minutes.’

As I’d already guessed, Jenny would soon be seeking a new place, Quaker references in hand.

‘If you leave here during the next few weeks, you must leave us the address of your new place of employment,’ I told her. ‘In case we need you.’

‘Whaffor?’ asked Jenny indignantly.

‘It’s procedure,’ I assured her.

‘If I get a new place, the lady there won’t want the police coming round the minute I start working there!’ Jenny declared truthfully, if impolitely.

‘Then I advise you to stay here for the meantime, until we’ve finished our enquiries.’

Jenny rolled her eyes at me. At that moment her mistress called her and she hurried away without further argument.

‘She’ll stay, at least for the next few weeks,’ said Morris, who’d been listening. ‘She won’t have any choice. Everyone will know she’s been working in a house where the police are making enquiries. It’ll cast a shadow over her, as it were. She won’t get offered a new place soon. She’ll have to wait for it all to quieten down.’

Now we had the house to ourselves and went upstairs to search Tapley’s rooms thoroughly.

‘The letter, Morris, from the landlady in Southampton, that must be somewhere. The superintendent is right in believing Tapley would have kept it. We are also looking for the missing house key. The murderer, if he has it, can’t now use it. But if he took it, I want to know.’

We looked under the carpets. We pulled out drawers and checked to see if anything was taped to the back of one. In the end we found the letter in the place where Tapley would most obviously have hidden it: in the bookcase. We had to take out every single book and open each at every page, but we found the former landlady’s letter tucked neatly into a volume of Cowper’s poetry. The volume was bound in green cloth and I made a mental note to wash my hands carefully before I ate. Arsenic is less used now to produce the colour green, since the danger of absorbing the poison through the skin is known. But it is still to be found in older books.

The earlier landlady’s name was Mrs Holland and she lived in St Michael’s Alley, Southampton. Mr Thomas Tapley had lodged with her from February in the previous year until the end of July. He had then moved out. He had been an excellent lodger, caused no disturbance of any kind, paid on time and had been unfailingly courteous and helpful. She was sorry to see him leave.

‘Doesn’t sound like it from that letter,’ observed Morris, staring gloomily at the sheet of paper in my hand.

‘I agree, it doesn’t. But I need her to confirm it. For one thing, if she does, it confirms he had a regular source of income. I want to know what that was.’

We didn’t, however, find the missing house key despite our thoroughness. The murderer, if he had it, would find it useless now; but it did suggest he’d meant to come back. What had he been seeking, and why had we found no private papers of any kind?

We returned to Scotland Yard. I sent a telegraphed message to Southampton, requesting any information about Thomas Tapley who had resided briefly the previous year in St Michael’s Alley – and asking that someone go and interview the landlady.

Biddle returned in the late afternoon, footsore and perspiring, having trudged round every coffee house south of the river in the vicinity of Waterloo Bridge rail station. He had also crossed the bridge and asked questions in the many coffee houses and cigar divans of The Strand and the immediate streets around it, on the north side. Two days earlier, Lizzie had met Tapley near Waterloo Bridge heading for the busy area beyond. Returning, quite some time later, she’d seen him again, ahead of her on the bridge this time, making for the south bank and home. I wanted to know where he’d been in the meantime.

But Biddle’s search had been curiously unproductive. Several waiters thought they remembered a small gent in a shabby coat who came in occasionally, but he had not been a regular. Of that all the waiters were certain. They knew their regulars. Moreover, their establishments saw a fair number of small shabby men who drifted through, spending little cash and making the most of a warm room and a free newspaper. They could not be sure the man Biddle was asking about was any one of them.

Those who thought they remembered Tapley at all, as an individual, agreed he had not been talkative. ‘Not a chatty gentleman,’ said one of them, ‘other than to remark on the weather, like most of ’em do, especially if it’s raining. They always come in from the rain talking about it – as if it never rained in London.’ Tapley? He had read the newspapers, drunk his coffee – or smoked his cigar as the case might be – and left. They didn’t recall him greeting or being greeted by anyone else as an acquaintance. But then, they couldn’t swear that the customer had been Tapley at all.

Emerging from this collective vagueness of memory, the only thing they were certain of was that, whoever he was, he’d not been one to leave the small change for the waiter. They remembered generous tippers.

‘Kept moving lodgings and kept changing coffee houses,’ I said sourly to Superintendent Dunn when I went to report on my lack of progress at the end of the day. ‘He’d not wanted to attract attention or invite questions, if you ask me.’

Dunn leaned back in his chair and rubbed the palm of his hand over his stubble of grey hair. ‘Why?’ he asked simply.