An Appetite for Murder (2 page)

Frances thought it would be useful to learn as much as she could about what diet was recommended by doctors, both for reduction of corpulence and general health, and on her return home, she delved into the collection of medical texts that had been left to her by her late father. Mr William Doughty had once been the proprietor of a chemists shop on Westbourne Grove, and had liked to read about the diseases of his customers to give him better authority when selling remedies. Irregularities of the digestive system along the whole of its turbulent, troubled and lengthy tract had often been discussed with much relish at the Doughty dinner table.

There was however, as Frances discovered, a considerable difference between the opinions of pharmacists, who were in general agreement as to which draught or powder best suited their customers, and doctors, who could agree on nothing at all, and her studies only served to increase her mystification on the subject. Frances’ companion, Sarah, who had once been the Doughty family’s servant and was now a no less indispensable assistant detective, arrived home from an errand to find her employer throwing down pamphlets onto the table in despair.

Frances and Sarah had only been detectives for a year, and both, though they would not have admitted it to their clients, had been obliged to learn the art as they practised it. At first, Sarah had acted only as directed, but the former maid of all work, with more insight and initiative than anyone other than Frances gave her credit for, had a hard cynical view of the world and soon showed that she could see to the heart of problems and determine a course of action on her own account.

‘There is almost no article of food or drink,’ exclaimed Frances, ‘that has not been both denounced as the cause of fatness and praised as the natural food of man. Here we have a doctor who tells us that we are made fat by drinking pure water, and others who urge us to drink nothing else. Meat is of course either the best food of all, or a snare for the unholy. One man says that butter is to be avoided at all costs by those wishing to lose excess weight, but another declares that it cannot make us fat at all. It seems he tested his theory by feeding doves on nothing but butter and found that they grew very thin and died.’

‘Do doves eat butter?’ queried Sarah, looking dubious.

‘They do not, I am sure of it,’ said Frances, ‘but this gentleman, while a person of education, seemed not to know that.’

‘I am not considered fat, am I?’ asked Sarah, suddenly. She was a woman constructed on generous principles, large in every part of her person, especially about the waist, shoulders and forearms.

‘You are exactly as you should be,’ Frances reassured her firmly. She had read a great many opinions, all of them expressed by gentlemen, as to the correct amount of fat a woman should carry on her person, and there was considerable disagreement on that too, leading to pages of animated exposition on the subject of bosoms and hips and abdomens and how full and rounded and soft they should be. Frances was tall and thin and wanting fat on every part of her form, and it was no comfort to have it confirmed in medical prose, that sometimes approached indecency, just how far she deviated from the most admired female proportions.

That evening, as Frances and Sarah enjoyed a hearty supper of mutton stew followed by a pie made from the best bottled gooseberries, Frances wondered how it was possible for so many persons to disagree on the diet that was best for health. Surely if one simply ate wholesome, nourishing and digestible food, neither too much nor too little, that ought to be enough?

As they ate, another letter arrived, hand delivered, which was, thankfully, nothing to do with diet, and which Frances discussed with Sarah. A Mr Hubert Sweetman, who revealed that he had not long emerged from a term in prison, wanted to trace his estranged family; a wife, son and daughter from whom he had heard nothing since his conviction in the autumn of 1866. A man who had been in prison for over fourteen years, and who might well have originally been sentenced to twenty and granted an early release, had clearly not committed a trivial offence. ‘He might be a murderer,’ observed Sarah with a thrust of her lower lip. Frances agreed, pointing out that she had interviewed murderers before, although admittedly she had not known them to be murderers at the time.

It was, thought Frances, an unusual proceeding for two single ladies to consider allowing a potentially dangerous convict into their home without at least securing the protection of a man. Fortunately, one of the two single ladies concerned was Sarah, whose powerful hands were equally well adapted to kneading pastry or knocking a man unconscious. She could show a fearsome aspect in times of danger, and had learned the secrets of personal combat from her eight brothers, one of whom, Jeb Smith, was, when in the roped ring, known professionally as the Wapping Walloper.

For the last two months, Sarah had been ‘walking out’ with Professor Pounder, proprietor of a gentlemen’s sparring and self-defence academy. While the Professor was good-looking, modest, kind and respectful, Sarah had made it very clear to Frances that no tender words had been exchanged, were expected, or wanted, and that the friendship made no difference to her steadfast allegiance to her employer. Frances felt sure that had Professor Pounder attempted to introduce a little romance into the association, the result would have been bare-knuckle fisticuffs, with no guarantees as to which of the pair would be able to come up to the scratch after the first round.

Since Frances had been a child of six when Mr Sweetman entered prison, and Sarah had then been living in Wapping in conditions that had given her little leisure for reading, neither recalled Mr Sweetman’s crime, and both felt that more information was required before deciding how to reply to the letter. After supper Frances and Sarah went down to the kitchen to make tea, and shared an amiable cup with their landlady, Mrs Embleton. That lady’s generosity in allowing them to remain in the house even after discovering their profession was something for which Frances was constantly grateful, and she tried, not always successfully, to do nothing that might alarm either her landlady or the other tenants. Admitting a hardened criminal to her apartments was, she thought, most probably beyond what Mrs Embleton might deem acceptable behaviour.

‘I do recall the event,’ she said, when Frances broached the subject of Mr Sweetman. ‘It was all the talk of Bayswater at the time, a man who had never given any trouble before, but brought low by debt. He robbed a safe, and used great violence to an unfortunate old man, who nearly died.’

‘He is out of prison now and has asked me to find his family, from whom he has heard nothing since his conviction,’ said Frances.

Mrs Embleton was usually a very calm lady, but even she drew a sharp little breath. ‘If they have not visited or written to him in all that time he must be a very abandoned character,’ she said.

‘I think,’ said Frances, ‘you would prefer it if I did not accept him as a client. I will abide by your wishes, of course.’

‘You have not yet seen him?’

‘No.’

Mrs Embleton sipped her tea thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps we should not judge him. He was by all accounts once considered respectable, and even the worst of men might be reclaimed. He may be truly penitent. I think he should be allowed the chance to prove that he has seen the error of his ways and wishes to lead a useful and honest life.’

‘Then you would not object to him coming here?’

‘I would object to your going to meet him anywhere else,’ said Mrs Embleton. ‘I am glad that you are so confiding as to ask. See him, and use your judgement. You will know very soon if he is fit company.’ She glanced at Sarah. ‘I am sure he will give you no trouble.’

Later, Frances re-read Mr Sweetman’s letter but it offered no further clues as to the man and his intentions. She was not so optimistic as Mrs Embleton. Many of her clients came to her with a sincere and candid manner and a simple request but really wanted something else far less creditable that they were unwilling to reveal. So it might prove with Mr Sweetman, and if he did call, she must make it very clear to him from the outset that she wanted no dissembling. Sweetman, as a convicted felon, would have emerged from prison destitute and might want to find his family only in order to live off them. Or worse – perhaps he blamed them in some way for his predicament and was seeking revenge. His wife could well have very good reason to want to have nothing to do with him, and if necessary Frances might have to take Mrs Sweetman’s part against her husband. It was a potentially dangerous situation, but the more Frances thought about it the more she felt obliged to take the case, since if she declined, Mr Sweetman might go to another detective less concerned for the safety of his wife. If she heard no more from him, which given the fact that he was probably unable to afford her services, she would have a word with Inspector Sharrock of Paddington Green, who might be interested in the recent arrival in Bayswater.

Frances duly replied to Mr Sweetman, who was lodging in Moscow Road, advising him of her fees and adding that she would be able to see him at any suitable time on the following day.

C
HAPTER
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WO

A
t an early hour the next morning, Frances unexpectedly received a hand-delivered reply from Mr Sweetman, saying that he would call that evening at seven o’clock. The time of both delivery and meeting suggested to Frances that Mr Sweetman had some occupation that commanded his day, and she wondered what it might be. She spent much of the intervening time composing reports on her investigations, and dealing with correspondence, a significant portion of which she noted unhappily was directed to those clients who had failed to settle their accounts in over a month. One lady, a customer of the carriage class, who were the worst payers of all, had actually favoured Frances with a request to perform a second task before she had paid for the first. Doughty’s chemist shop had never supplied goods on credit, but this client, with a wide circle of acquaintances, all of whom she heartily detested, seemed to think that Frances was a gossip-collection agency, and was therefore too valuable to lose. It was one instance when Sarah’s undoubted skills in the task of extracting payment were best not employed.

Her correspondence done, Frances read the obituary and letters of tribute to Mr Whibley in recent copies of the
Chronicle
, then opened the folder of letters on the subject of his demise, laid the papers on the table in front of her, and studied them carefully.

Mr Sweetman arrived promptly at the appointed hour, a little ruffled by the gales that still swept the streets, and spattered with fresh sleet. He was something over fifty years of age, with the sallow yet barely lined face of a man who had not been burned by the sun for many a year. Other than that he bore no resemblance to the dangerous felon Frances had been expecting. Altogether he looked well set-up and respectable, and was, under his greatcoat, clad in a suit of clothes which, while obviously made for another man some years previously, was clean and well brushed. He sat at the little table across which Frances met all her clients, and removed his hat, carefully wiping away spots of moisture from the crown with a pocket handkerchief. His hair was trim and quite grey.

Frances introduced Sarah, who sat knitting a woollen shawl with a pair of long steel needles that gleamed in the firelight, and it was to Mr Sweetman’s credit that he did not find the sight especially alarming, something that suggested to Frances that he did not have a guilty conscience.

‘It is very kind of you to see me,’ he said, gratefully, his expression speaking more of unhappiness than anxiety.

‘Have you consulted any other detectives?’ asked Frances, suspecting from his tone that she was not the first.

‘I – yes – I have spoken to two but I took the decision not to employ their services,’ said Sweetman, with an air of distaste. ‘They did not seem trustworthy. You, on the other hand, have been recommended to me as both honest and efficient. I have been told many stories of your successes which I can scarcely credit in one so young.’

‘They are all true,’ declared Frances, not without some apprehension as she knew that the stories of her exploits published in the
Chronicle
were highly exaggerated, and did not know which ones he had read, ‘and you will find me trustworthy, but I expect my clients to be the same, although I am too often disappointed. You must tell me the truth, and you must not conceal anything of importance.’

He nodded. ‘I will be perfectly frank and open with you, Miss Doughty. In the year 1866, I counted myself as a contented man. I was employed as office manager of J. Finn Insurance, a trusted position I had held for three years, with a salary sufficient for my needs. Susan, my dear wife, and I had been married for nearly fifteen years and we had two children in good health. My only unhappiness concerned my sister, Jane, a widow, who was very ill and lacked means. I assisted her out of my earnings, but later I was obliged to borrow funds both to pay for her care and also to secure the education of her son, a youth of considerable promise. But, I was more than able, with a little economy, to repay the interest on the loan, and Edward – my nephew – promised me that he would repay the capital as soon as he was able. In August that year I arrived at the office one morning to find the safe had been opened and emptied, and one of the clerks, Mr Gibson, who had been working late, had been violently attacked and was hovering between life and death. It was a very shocking thing, of course, and I never imagined for a minute that I might be suspected, but then the police came to know that I was in debt, and also it was clear that the safe had not been forced but opened with a key. Only two men apart from myself had a key to the safe, and they were dining at a club that evening in full view of a large company. I, too, had an alibi; I had been visiting my sister and the police interviewed her, but she was too frail and confused to give a certain reply, and when they looked in my house they found Mr Gibson’s pocket book, which I had never seen before. I had hoped that when Mr Gibson came to his senses he would be able to say that I had not been his attacker, but unfortunately although he recovered, he remembered nothing of the circumstances.’ Sweetman shook his head with regret. ‘Mr Finn, the director, actually came to court and was a character witness for me, but to no avail. One of the other clerks, Mr Browne, had been passing by the office that night and actually saw the thief at the door, but they tried to make out it was me he saw.’