An Appetite for Murder (8 page)

‘Yes, apart from the servants, of course.’

‘And after his death you examined all his papers and found nothing to suggest that he had any special knowledge of where the Sweetman children went?’

‘If I knew that, I would tell you. I have no reason to conceal such information.’

‘Was there a trusted servant he might have confided in?’

‘There was a valet, Mr Pennyforth, who had been with him five years.’

‘Do you have his address?’

‘I am afraid not. He was entitled to one hundred pounds under the will, but I have never been able to find him to hand him what he was due. When I went to Whibley’s house on that sad morning, I found that Pennyforth had already departed and left no message or forwarding address. I placed an advertisement in the newspapers but received no reply. I retain the money safely for him still, in case he should reappear.’

‘Could you describe him to me?’

Elliott looked surprised, as might any man asked to describe a servant. ‘Er – he was quite young, about thirty or possibly a little less, nothing very remarkable about his appearance. Middling height, hair dark, I think. That is really all I can remember.’

Frances passed a sheet of paper and a pencil to him. ‘Please could you write the valet’s name so I can be sure of how it is spelled,’ she said.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, without demur. He was obliged, while writing with his right hand to steady the paper with his left, and Frances observed that he had some difficulty in moving his left arm into place, and there were the marks of an old scar down the back of his hand. He wrote the valet’s name unhesitatingly in a neat, clear and perfectly even script, and passed the paper back. Frances quickly saw that Mr Elliott was neither Bainiardus nor Sanitas.

Frances hoped she would not find it necessary to call upon all Mr Whibley’s past friends and their offspring in the faint hope that he might have said something to them about the Sweetman family. It would be better, she thought, to begin by tracing Mr Pennyforth, who might be the one person who could reveal if there was anyone other than Mr Elliott who Mr Whibley had spoken to shortly before he died.

Frances showed Elliott a portion of the Bainiardus letter. ‘This is a letter received from a gentlemen saying that he was an intimate friend of Mr Whibley’s for some years,’ she said. ‘Do you recognise either the hand or the paper?’

‘I am afraid not.’

She then presented the Sanitas letter, which received the same response.

‘Do you still have Mr Whibley’s correspondence?’

‘No, he was, like so many gentlemen, in the habit of destroying letters that he felt he no longer needed. He liked everything about him very tidily arranged.’

‘Did the housemaid or the cook mention him receiving any callers on the day before his death?’

‘It was not something I thought to ask them,’ he said reasonably.

Frances could think of nothing more to ask, and Mr Elliott, promising that he would advise Frances if he thought of anything new that was relevant to Mr Sweetman, departed.

Frances completed her notes without glancing at Sarah, who she knew would be giving her a very hard look. ‘So it’s murder cases now?’ said Sarah, at last. ‘And from the outset; not just ones that happen to fall on you by chance.’

‘Mr Curtis asked me to help his uncle,’ said Frances, ‘which I am already doing. I am sure it would have come to this eventually, and if I am to take a case of murder I might as well be paid for it from the start.’

‘This Mr Curtis, is he one of those handsome types?’ asked Sarah, suspiciously.

‘He is married with a family, and his looks, whatever they may be, are of interest only to his lady wife,’ said Frances, although she thought that Mr Curtis could well be considered handsome. ‘Now then, we have a lot to do and must make plans.’

Frances was far too busy to think of eating supper. She had been perusing Mr Rustrum’s slim booklet entitled
Healthful
Living
, which advocated a breakfast consisting of dry brown bread, fruit and tea taken in the Russian style with lemon. Dinner was the same, with the addition of no more than four ounces of poached white fish or lean meat with vegetables, and supper was the same as breakfast. Frances looked in vain for a mention of a nice pot of tea made properly with milk, and cake or buns in the afternoon, but this seemed to have been omitted. Missing a meal entirely was, according to Mr Rustrum, better than eating to excess. He declared that he sometimes went for a whole day without food and felt better and stronger for it and claimed that his system of eating, allied to fresh air and exercise, was bound to lead to a long and active life. It certainly sounded economical, and Frances thought that if her clients continued to delay payment she might be obliged to follow Mr Rustrum’s advice out of necessity. Mr Lathwal had also provided a treatise on the vegetarian diet, explaining how it was both approved by science and calming to the spirit, including instructions for the preparation of lentils – something that Frances had never eaten – dishes of rice and vegetables and various combinations of the three with some interesting sounding spices. There was no suggestion that any of these foodstuffs should be restricted in quantity. The consumption of flesh food was denounced as both unnecessary and harmful, clogging the body with poisons and making the eater dull and heavy, not to mention tainted by the horrible cruelty involved in its production.

‘Supper!’ announced Sarah, putting a jug of milk, some thick slices of bread and butter and a corner of ham on the table. Frances put the booklets aside and began to eat.

‘If only I could find someone who was a patron of the Bijou Theatre and remembers what happened to the boy and girl!’ she exclaimed. ‘Sarah, could you go to Redan Place tomorrow and find out as much as you can about Mrs Sweetman; when she was last seen and if she had any visitors. Of course, if she did they would all have been dressed like Esquimaux, and we could scarcely tell if they were men or women, but at least we would know the day they called. And ask if anyone ever went to the Bijou Theatre or knows someone who was once employed there.’

‘Then I’ll go to some agencies to see if they know where Mr Pennyforth is,’ said Sarah. ‘If he had a good place with Mr Whibley he ought to have found a new situation by now.’

‘So he ought,’ agreed Frances, ‘but only if he had a good character from his employer. If Mr Whibley’s death was unexpected, he should have stayed on to receive a character from a family friend or executor. Perhaps Mr Whibley dismissed him? Well, the agencies will know. If you can find Mr Whibley’s housemaid and cook I will need to know if any visitors were admitted between Mr Elliott’s visit on the eleventh of January and the morning of the thirteenth, when Mr Whibley was found dead. Then could you call on Mr Knight and Mr Taylor for their usual services regarding both J. Finn Insurance and Anderson, Walsh and Whibley.’

Charles Knight and Sebastian Taylor, generally known as ‘Chas’ and ‘Barstie’, were two businessmen – proprietors of the impressive sounding Bayswater Display and Advertising Company, which they ran from a single attic room above a watchmaker’s shop on the Grove, a room which was also, although they did not care to admit it, their living accommodation. Their long association with some of the more unconventional elements of Bayswater business life had given them useful insights into local companies, and they were often able to supply Frances with information unknown to the press or indeed the police.

Ignoring Sarah’s grimace at this prospect, Frances went on, ‘I shall visit J. Finn Insurance where I already have an appointment with the present manager, Mr Finn the younger, who may recall something his father said. After that, I will go to see Mr Minster, the gentleman who unexpectedly came into money after the robbery. And then –’ she sighed, ‘I am sorry to say I will be seeing Dr Adair, Mr Lathwal and Mr Rustrum, those keen rivals in the question of diet and joint enemies of Sanitas.’

‘Not all of them at once?’ queried Sarah, bringing a jam tart to round off the meal.

‘Yes, although they do not yet know it.’

Sarah nodded. ‘Interesting. Do you want me here in case a fight breaks out?’

‘They should be ashamed of themselves if it does, and Mr Gillan will get to hear of it the same day,’ said Frances. ‘I have no patience with such pretensions. These men all claim to have the interests of society at heart, yet it seems that all they can do is stand by their beliefs for reasons of reputation. Surely the general good is more important than their personal fame?’

Supper over, Frances sent a note to Mr Sweetman’s undeniably handsome nephew confirming that she would be helping his uncle, and asking for an early meeting.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

T
he office of J. Finn Insurance, scene of the 1866 robbery and attack on the unfortunate Mr Gibson, was situated near where Westbourne Grove met Chepstow Road, and was flanked by an auctioneer on one side and a seller of sweets on the other. Frances observed that the door to the main office, while fashioned to look invitingly solid and reliable in its own right, was also furnished with a number of heavy security locks. There was a narrow vestibule which opened into a main office closely crowded with desks, the clerks who manned them bent over their work in attitudes calculated to suggest to the eye of their employer both enthusiasm and industry. Frances, who had written a preliminary letter explaining her business, was shown at once into the presence of the manager.

Mr Finn junior had a room of his own and, thought Frances, needed one. He was younger than the late Mr Thomas Whibley probably by some twenty years, but was heading towards that gentlemen’s appearance and, in all probability, his fate.

He reposed at his ease behind a desk piled high on either side with papers, crossing his hands over a bulging stomach. His face was pink and pulpy, the skin with a freshly groomed shine, and a thick roll of fat around the neck and throat lapped over his collar. His auburn hair was trimmed very short, and a narrow clipped beard dotted pale bristles about the line of his jaw.

On the wall behind the desk beside the portrait of the queen, there was a picture of a venerable and dignified looking gentleman with an abundance of white whiskers bearing the legend ‘John Finn 1804–1877’. A decorative silver photograph frame sat on the desk, tilted so that only Finn could see the subject. There was nothing on open display that would enable Frances to easily see Mr Finn’s handwriting, although there were a few sheets of paper with jotted notes and a bundle of sealed letters, which she could not examine closely without it causing some comment.

He rose to greet her and it was an effort for him to do so. Although young, he did not carry his weight well, as some men did, and there was a cushion on his chair of a kind that gave support to an overworked spine.

Young Mr Finn had Frances’ letter lying open on the desk before him. Once he had ushered her to a chair and sat down again, tucking the cushion into the small of his back, he rested his fingertips on the paper and tapped it gently.

‘Miss Doughty,’ he said softly, ‘I will do whatever I can to help you, but I fear that may be very little. I was not working here at the time of the robbery; I was a mere schoolboy then.’

‘Did you attend the same school as Benjamin Sweetman?’ asked Frances, hopefully.

‘No, I was born in Cambridgeshire and schooled there. I did not come to London until I was sixteen; that was two years after the robbery.’

‘I had thought, perhaps, your father might have spoken of it,’ said Frances, glancing at the portrait of the elder Finn.

Mr Finn placed his fingertips together, producing the effect of linked pork sausages hanging in the window of a butcher’s shop. ‘Ah, a great many people make that assumption,’ he said. ‘No, Mr Finn senior was not my father, he was my great-uncle. Of course, he did sometimes allude to the crime, which grieved him deeply. It was not so much the theft of the money, but the violent assault on Mr Gibson, who was a trusted employee of many years standing, and of course, the terrible betrayal by Mr Sweetman.’

‘He thought Mr Sweetman to be guilty?’ said Frances, surprised. ‘I had heard otherwise.’

‘Yes, I am sure you have. My uncle was a good, charitable man, who liked to think the best of everyone, and right up to the trial he believed Sweetman’s protestations of innocence, and did everything he could for him, but he admitted to me later in confidence that once he had heard the evidence there seemed to be no other conclusion.’

‘Did he ever tell you what became of Mrs Sweetman and the children after the trial?’ asked Frances. ‘Mr Sweetman is very anxious to find his family, and I do not, as the police do, believe he had any hand in the death of his wife.’

Finn sighed and, young as he was, he looked for a few moments almost aged as his heavy features sagged into deep crevices. ‘That is a horrible business. We heard of it only yesterday and could scarcely believe it. How can such tragedy strike a respectable family twice? All I know,’ he went on, ‘and all that my uncle ever knew is that after Sweetman was found guilty the family went away. I expect they did not like to be pointed out in the street as the wife and children of a criminal.’

‘They might have changed their names,’ suggested Frances.

‘It would not surprise me to learn that they had, but if they did my uncle was not told what it was.’

‘Did he offer Mrs Sweetman any monetary assistance after she left Garway Road? He cannot have done so without knowing her new address.’

‘My understanding,’ said Finn, carefully, ‘and this is only from small comments that were dropped into conversation and never elaborated upon, is that she found some other means of financial support. In those circumstances my uncle might well have ceased to assist her.’

‘A man, do you think?’ said Frances, drawing the inevitable conclusion from his delicacy of expression.

Finn bent his head over Frances’ letter, although he hardly seemed to be looking at it. ‘I think nothing,’ he said after a few moments, glancing up again. ‘It is all story and rumour and very unpleasant and may not even be true, and I was far too young to know more. Even that much I was probably not intended to hear.’