The Daughters of Gentlemen (16 page)
Read The Daughters of Gentlemen Online
Authors: Linda Stratmann
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General
HAPTER
T
WELVE
I
t was a few moments before Mrs Brooks came to the door, her face red and glowing, haloed in a cloud of starch-laden vapour. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘well they’re in now, and Davey’s back.’
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ said Frances, ‘but it’s you I wish to speak to.’
She shrugged. ‘Well I don’t know nothing, but you can come in if you like.’
The back parlour and most of the scullery had been given over to ironing. A long wooden table was covered with a thick cloth, and there were several hot irons, some light with fine points, and some as heavy as doorstops, towering heaps of linen awaiting them, bowls of water to be sprinkled for steam, and piles of neatly folded sheets and pillowcases.
‘I just wanted to ask if you could remember who was living at Mrs Springett’s when Matilda came home to have her child,’ said Frances. ‘Of course I can’t speak to Mrs Springett about that with Davey there.’
‘I don’t know why you’d want to know that,’ said Mrs Brooks. ‘There’s tea in the pot if you want a cup.’
‘Thank you,’ said Frances and helped herself. In the overheated atmosphere of the house an almost constant supply of a refreshing beverage was essential. ‘I will be open with you Mrs Brooks,’ she said. ‘Although I am teaching at the school, I am also a detective, and I am making some private enquiries on behalf of the governors. I regret that for reasons of great confidentiality I am not at liberty to tell you any more.’
Mrs Brooks looked very surprised, and stared at Frances as if she was some new creature in the zoological gardens which had just arrived from a country she had never heard of and could not imagine.
‘As a part of those enquiries I need to speak to the people who were living next door seven or eight years ago. I was hoping you might recall some names.’
Mrs Brooks, while considering the question, took up a flat iron from the hearth, tested its temperature with a licked finger, and, satisfied with the sizzle, began to apply it to linen in a series of brutal thumps. ‘Well, there was Jinny, of course, that’s Mrs Springett, and Barney, that was her old man, only he wasn’t too well – he died not long after, and Jem – no, I tell a lie, he was from home then, on his apprenticeship. And then there was the two lodgers.’
‘Two?’ asked Frances, surprised.
‘Yes, I remember that particular, because when Tilda came home unexpected she had to share a bedroom with Jinny because the lodgers had the other.’
‘Do you remember their names?’ asked Frances, taking out her notebook.
Mrs Brooks screwed up her face but after some thought shook her head. ‘No, I can’t after all this time – Watson maybe, or Wilson or Wigson or … no, it’s gone.’
‘Not the same name for both, surely?’ said Frances. ‘Or were they related?’
‘Oh yes, they were sisters.’
‘Oh!’ said Frances, taken aback. ‘And had they been there long? Were there no male lodgers before?’
‘No, never any men lodging there before Davey, and Jinny only allowed
him
because he was a friend of Jem and she knew him to be very quiet and respectable.’
‘Forgive me,’ said Frances, ‘but I had been given to understand that the father of Matilda’s child was someone who once lodged with her mother.’
‘Then you’ve been told wrong,’ said Mrs Brooks. ‘It was a messenger boy what came to the school and talked a lot of nothing and turned her head with his ways. I expect you know the type.’
Frances did not know the type and was not sure why Mrs Brooks thought she might.
Matilda, she now realised, had been a young woman who, while her position in society was always destined to be a humble one, was prepared to undertake anything short of substantial wickedness in order to improve her prospects. Her specialty was the blackmail of anyone who had reason to fear information in her possession. The true identity of the father of her child could never be known, and Matilda was probably willing to point the finger at anyone who would pay her money rather than be identified. Was the messenger boy story true? Or had Matilda even persuaded Mrs Venn that the father was her own husband, and extracted money from her in return for her silence? The child had been called Edie, and Professor Venn’s Christian name was Edward. Could that be coincidence or a part of Matilda’s blackmail plan?
With a wedding due to take place, and hopes of establishing Davey in a comfortable business, Matilda must have started to increase her demands. Frances very much doubted, however, that Mrs Venn, even if physically able to strangle the girl, was prepared to commit such a cold-blooded act. Matilda was a possible source of the insinuations about Professor Venn in the pamphlet. She could not have written it herself, so who might she have told? Would she have told anyone? The girl, Frances reflected, had been a highly successful blackmailer for several years, and must have known that her secrets were only valuable while she alone guarded them.
At teatime Chas and Barstie came to see Frances bearing one of Mr Whiteley’s best fruitcakes and a pot of jam, and looking flushed with optimism. Water was soon set to boil and what had been planned as a meal of bread and butter became a feast.
‘Bayswater,’ said Chas, draining his teacup and setting it down with a satisfied smile, ‘is the land of opportunity for those who know how to take advantage of it. Especially,’ he added, with a significant wink, ‘when election time rolls around! All the to-ings and fro-ings and excitement and plain downright panic, and everything is an emergency and has to be done expressly and on the instant and money no object! Oh yes!’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Money – no – object!’
‘Bayswater,’ said Barstie dreamily, ‘is a pond – a smooth still pond with little fish and big fish all swimming about minding their own business, but you only have to stir it and the big fish try to swallow the little ones while all the refuse that has settled in the depths comes up for everyone to see.’ He sighed with pleasurable anticipation.
‘How very glad I am,’ said Chas, ‘that I was never a patron of the Bayswater Bank.’ Barstie said nothing but glanced at Chas as if to suggest that had he been, the losses he would have sustained in the recent crash would not have been extensive. ‘Mr Paskall, on the other hand, is in a most precarious position, and he and his son have been working night and day to avoid the dread hand of the bailiffs. I have even heard it hinted that a
certain person
, who I decline to name, has been involved.’ He shuddered. ‘Fortunately that unpleasant fellow has not been seen around here lately, which does not mean of course that he is
not
here. Desperate times indeed, and doubly so now. There’s to be a big meeting at the offices of the Paddington Conservative Association tomorrow evening and if Paskall can’t convince them that he isn’t about to go bankrupt, it’s the end of him as a candidate.’
‘But he hopes he has found a way out of the difficulty,’ said Barstie. ‘You may expect a very important announcement in the morning newspapers!’
Chas nodded. ‘Barstie here has been in and out of Mr Paskall’s office almost as much as the man himself, and has been privy to all the arrangements.’
‘A marriage is to be announced that will solve everything!’ said Barstie. ‘If all goes to plan, generous funds will be flowing into the Paskall coffers very soon.’
But is Mr Paskall not already a married man?’ said Frances.
‘He is,’ said Chas, ‘but his old friend Mr Matthews is a widower.’
‘You don’t mean an engagement between Mr Matthews and the Duchess?’ asked Frances.
They nodded.
‘But you advised me only a few days ago that the lady was immune to persuasion.’
‘Matters have changed,’ said Chas. ‘Mr Paskall is certain to be elected to parliament, and his influence in these parts is such that his recommendation will be enough to secure victory for others whose fortunes have hung in the balance. I have even heard it said —’
‘Possibly by Mr Paskall’s own agents,’ said Barstie.
‘I have heard it said,’ continued Chas, flicking a pellet of bread at his friend, ‘that Paskall is certain to gain a high office sooner rather than later. What sister would deny assistance to a brother destined for ministerial status?’
‘But what of her daughter, who she dotes upon?’ asked Frances. ‘Have there been provisions made for her?’
‘All attended to,’ said Barstie. ‘Mr Rawsthorne has been very ingenious and drawn up a settlement that satisfies the wishes of the mother and secures the girl’s fortune, while leaving sufficient to save Mr Paskall from ruin.’
‘And,’ said Chas, ‘my spies tell me that there may be another betrothal in the wind.’
‘Paskall and Matthews,’ said Barstie. ‘The two fathers have been very hugger-mugger with a scheme to unite their families, though whether the young parties involved have been told of it, I can’t say.’
Chas grimaced. ‘If young Paskall knows of a plan to marry him to Miss Vinegar, and he is
not
on the next steamer to Australia, he is a braver man than I am.’
‘I suppose,’ said Frances, ‘that you are now far too busy with election business to undertake a commission for me.’
Their protests were loud and long, after which Frances told them of the recent correspondence concerning the suspicious suitor, and Chas said that he would be willing to place a substantial wager that the man’s name would shortly be appearing on a list of Bayswater bankrupts.
When they had departed, Frances and Sarah spent a quiet and comfortable evening, Sarah occupied with some mending while Frances made a list of every woman she could think of aged between forty and fifty who might have even the remotest connection with the school and who might have been the lady who had taken the pamphlet to be printed in Soho. There were, she realised, when she had completed her list, many more she would not know of, the aunts of past pupils, for example, or relatives of teachers, and as to ladies who had some doubts about the advisability of marriage, well, she had recently shared a hall with several hundred. Only a large force of policemen could hope to interview all of
them
.
She was now in a terrible dilemma. It was her duty to report her recent findings to the governors of the school, and it was possible that one of them might, without realising it, have information that could further her enquiries and even locate the mystery woman, but if she so much as revealed the name of the printer, who might well retain copies of work done, then the governors, or Mrs Fiske, if her husband confided in her, which she felt sure he did, would thereby be enabled to obtain a copy of the pamphlet and see the wicked insinuations it contained. There would follow a scandal from which the school would never recover.
The next morning as anticipated, the society columns of the newspapers carried the announcement of the forthcoming nuptials of the Duchess of Kenworth and Mr Roderick Matthews. Frances had decided to follow the news of the election so that she would be fully informed about politics when she was eventually permitted to vote; an improvement that she was sure could not be far distant. She learned that Mr Gladstone had made a lengthy address denouncing the Conservative government’s foreign policy and the Conservative candidates had made an address entirely approving of the government’s foreign policy. Mr Grant, a local man who had once been the director of Grant and Co., printers, of Farringdon, and was now one of the Liberal candidates for Marylebone, had made a speech attributing the recent trade depression to the neglect of home affairs for foreign affairs and strongly recommended the repeal of Schedule D of the Income Tax, which seemed very sensible to Frances. Perhaps, she thought, if wives and mothers and educated spinsters were permitted to vote, brave young men would no longer be sent half way across the world to die for some cause they hardly understood – they would be at home with their families leading happy and productive lives. Her brother had read books about the glories of war, of battles and charges and victories won, which he had thought very admirable, but Uncle Cornelius, who was old enough to remember the Crimea, had said sadly that it was not like that at all, and spoke of cold and rain and mud and cholera.
There were two more letters that morning, one from a lady who had met a very pleasant and eligible gentleman in Hyde Park and wished to know something of his antecedents, and one from Mr Arthur Miggs, the young publisher, who asked Frances to discover the identity of
Aquila
who wrote literary reviews in the
Chronicle
and other papers, and had been unkind about a recent volume he had published on behalf of a client.
The client, Frances learned, was also unforthcoming about his name unless he, or possibly even she, had been christened Augustus Mellifloe. Mr Miggs had enclosed a clipping from a weekday newspaper. It read:
The author of
Mes Petites Chansonettes
has none of the qualities that go to make up the complete poet. He lacks both the power to evoke sympathy in the reader, and the variety of imagination and expression that he requires if he hopes to please; relying too heavily on consistency of metre which quickly becomes monotonous, elaborate rhyming which detracts from what sense there is in his verses, and noble sentiments so trite that only the most depraved individual would disagree with them. The brief introduction to this mercifully slim volume in which he dedicates the poems to his mother is the best of his work.
Frances could easily see that Mr Mellifloe had good reason to be upset at this item, but, not having read the work in question, was unable to judge whether
Aquila
was correct. Fortunately there was amongst her father’s small library a handbook of business law, from which she learned that an expression of opinion as opposed to a statement of fact was unlikely to result in a successful prosecution for libel. As to discovering the identity of
Aquila
, Frances could see that if Mr Miggs was to do so, another kind of criminal charge might be the result. She wrote a letter advising him that she was too busy to take the case, and suggesting that he approach
Aquila
through the medium of the newspaper in question, perhaps with a polite suggestion that the review might be published again in modified form.
The morning and afternoon were spent meeting her new clients. The lady with suspicions of her servant arrived by carriage and was more than pleased to accept the services of Sarah as a general house cleaner, which would permit her free access to all parts of the property. She looked with some apprehension at Sarah’s large hands, all but obscuring the piece of needlework she was engaged in, and said, though she hardly liked to mention it, that once the culprit was discovered, the matter should be dealt with as peaceably as possible.
Frances next met the lady whose daughter was being pursued by an ardent suitor, a gentleman who had declared his romantic attachment within days of the first meeting and was even now pressing for a wedding date to be set. She extracted sufficient details to supply Chas and Barstie with what they required, and wrote them a letter.
The two ladies whose husbands were mysteriously absent for part of the week were both small and plump and well-dressed and liked the colour mauve. They wore identical lockets, had the same sad expression and provided Frances with portraits of the same man. Frances promised them that the matter would be settled without delay.
She was not expecting another visitor that day so was surprised when Mrs Embleton came up and said that a lady had called and wished to speak to her. The lady’s name was Mrs Fiske. Frances asked for her to be shown up immediately and refreshments brought.
‘Miss Doughty,’ said Mrs Fiske, ‘it is to my regret that we have been unable to make each other’s acquaintance sooner.’
‘I, too, have greatly looked forward to meeting you,’ said Frances. ‘May I introduce my associate Miss Smith.‘ She ushered the visitor to a seat. ‘How may I assist you?’
‘You are perhaps too young to fully appreciate a mother’s anxiety for her daughters,’ said Mrs Fiske, ‘but it is that which brings me here. You have met Charlotte and Sophia, and I think you will have observed that they are quite different in character. Charlotte is a gentle, timid, tractable girl, while Sophia, although two years her junior, has the stronger will and a better mind.’
‘Both girls have merit,’ said Frances diplomatically.
‘They speak very highly of your chemistry lesson. Sophia has said that when she is older she would like to become a chemist or even enter the medical profession. I have not yet broken this news to her father.’ She paused, and it was a very particular kind of pause which always preceded a query of some delicacy. ‘I have come to ask if you have discovered the origins of the pamphlets that were distributed at the school.’
‘I am continuing my enquiries,’ said Frances, ‘and I have made some progress, but I have not yet identified the person who arranged for them to be placed there or the motive behind the action.’
‘May I ask, since you are now teaching at the school, whether you have had cause to observe anything of … an unfortunate nature – anything you would consider inappropriate, or that gives you any reason to believe that the girls may be in danger of any kind? I have been to the school and spoken to Mrs Venn and I have not observed anything untoward, but you, an independent person working within its walls – you may have another view.’
‘You surprise me by that suggestion,’ said Frances. ‘In my brief acquaintance with Mrs Venn I have judged her always to have the best interests of the girls at heart. She protects them as she would do if they were her own.’
Mrs Fiske looked somewhat relieved. ‘I am glad to hear it. You are aware, of course, that only Charlotte of all the girls actually read the pamphlet, and she claims to recall or at least to understand nothing of what she read, and I hope that may be the case, but I think sometimes she has bad dreams and talks in her sleep. Sophia has heard things she ought not to have heard and has made some remarks to me about the school, which if true …‘ she shook her head. ‘I have tried to question her but she is more difficult to manage than her sister, and now she has become silent on the subject as she knows I mean to pursue it, and she will not be moved. I have spoken to Mrs Venn and Miss Baverstock who tell me that they perused little more than the title, and none of the other teachers saw it at all. If I could only find a copy then I could satisfy myself as to its contents.’
‘But how would that assist you?’ asked Frances. ‘The words of a person who places anonymous and unsuitable literature in the desks of schoolgirls can hardly be trustworthy. They may have been motivated by malice, jealousy, business rivalry or even a disturbance of the mind, and are therefore to be dismissed.’
‘I understand that,’ said Mrs Fiske, ‘but a mother will always worry about her babes. Her mind is full of terrible fears of things that will probably never happen but it is her duty as a mother to anticipate them and take steps to prevent any possibility that they might occur.’
‘Can you tell me what it is that Sophia has said?’ asked Frances.
‘Things that should never pass the lips of any young girl, let alone one of just twelve,’ said Mrs Fiske grimly. ‘She said that a wicked man lives in the school, behind a locked door, and there he does wicked things. He is a bad husband and makes his wife very unhappy. She asked me the meaning of the word ‘dissipation’. I hardly knew what to say.’
Frances thought carefully. Sophia’s knowledge was rather more detailed than might have been learned from Charlotte talking in her sleep, but the girls’ desks were too far apart in the class for Sophia to have been able to read Charlotte’s copy of the pamphlet. She suspected that Sophia, the more intelligent and manipulative of the two, had simply prised the information from her sister. Mrs Fiske probably thought so too, but had preferred to suggest otherwise.
‘There is no man living at the school, of that I can assure you,’ said Frances. ‘There is a single gentleman who teaches art, but he lives elsewhere and has no room of his own on the premises. I believe the only man ever to live in the school was Professor Venn, and he died several years ago. Neither is there any locked door. Please reassure Sophia that she has nothing to be afraid of.’
‘Oh, Sophia is not afraid,’ said Mrs Fiske, ‘but Miss Bell overheard her telling these tales to the younger girls, to put them in their place, and some of them are afraid. I am sorry to have to say it but Sophia will sometimes “Queen” it over the younger girls and even a few of the older ones and they are quite used to doing her bidding. Miss Bell told me that about two weeks ago Sophia played a game with them, marching them round and round and saying she was taking them to see the “Friend to Women” who lives in Soho. I wish I knew what she meant by it.’
‘
Two
weeks ago?’ said Frances. ‘Surely not!’
‘Why, what does it matter? It was the same day that the girls performed a dance display –
that
I do remember. About a week before Charlotte found that dreadful pamphlet.’
‘Oh,’ said Frances, ‘
now
I understand.’
As she indeed did – she understood that a great deal of her efforts of the last eight days had been wasted, and she needed to re-think the events that had taken place in the school for perhaps as long as the last month.
The next morning Frances returned to the school and this time there were two people she especially wanted to see, Miss Baverstock and Mlle Girard. She now knew exactly what it was that had troubled her when she had spoken to the French mistress, that tiny feeling of almost ticklish discomfort at the back of her mind that somewhere there was a small but possibly crucial gap of time unaccounted for. She had initially received the impression that on the morning that Charlotte had found the pamphlet, all the girls had been under continuous supervision and therefore unable to consult with each other about what story they would tell, a circumstance which had made their agreement convincing. This, she now discovered, had not been the case. Miss Baverstock, pinned down relentlessly and made to recount events in detail as they had happened moment by moment, told Frances that her first reaction on finding the pamphlet had been to take Charlotte to Mrs Venn and she had been making for the door when it had occurred to her that the other girls’ desks should be searched. She had told the rest of the class to go up to the common room, where she believed Mlle Girard was marking compositions. She then followed them up the stairs, taking Charlotte to Mrs Venn’s study, when she heard a sound behind her, and, believing it was one of the girls lagging behind, turned around and saw Mlle Girard leave the art and music room. She quickly requested Mlle Girard to remain there for a conference, took Charlotte into Mrs Venn’s study, and explained what had occurred. She then returned to the hallway, where she discussed the situation with Mlle Girard and asked her to sit with the class in the common room, which she did. The girls had therefore been unsupervised for at least two or three minutes, which was, Frances thought, ample time for a domineering child such as Sophia to tell them all what to do.
Frances next demanded to question Charlotte again. Told by Miss Baverstock that Charlotte was in a reading class she asked for Charlotte to be removed from the class. Told that this was not possible, she replied that it was entirely possible and not only that but she could prove it by going into the classroom and removing Charlotte herself. Miss Baverstock went to fetch Charlotte.
Behind the closed doors of the art room, garlanded by the sickly scent of too many dried flowers, Frances bluntly advised the cowering girl that she knew what had happened. ‘I think that while Miss Baverstock was looking at the pamphlet that fell from your desk, Sophia ordered you by some signal to say nothing. Then, when she came home after school, she told you that the girls had agreed that they would all say that they had never seen the pamphlets before. Everyone had to stand by that story, because none of you wanted anyone to know that when the pamphlets were found you had all had them in your possession for at least a week, and you had all read them. Isn’t that true?’
Charlotte burst into tears.
‘I will take your response to imply the answer “yes”,’ said Frances. ‘And now I must start from the beginning and find out exactly when the pamphlets were put in your desks, so I may learn who put them there. You cannot avoid answering my questions by crying. I will wait all day for you to stop if I have to.’ Charlotte sniffled and gulped and stopped. ‘When you first found the pamphlets, were they tucked away securely in a book or was that something you did yourselves to hide them?’
‘We hid them later,’ Charlotte admitted. ‘When we found them they were just thrown on top of the books.’
‘So, placing them in the desks was the work of perhaps a minute at most,’ Frances surmised. ‘And on what day did you first find them?’
‘I can’t remember,’ said Charlotte, looking as if she was about to cry again.
Frances was merciless. ‘You can and you will,’ she demanded. ‘Do you know how much time I have wasted because not one single one of you could tell the truth? You are the daughters of gentlemen, and this is not the kind of behaviour your parents expect of you.’
Charlotte dissolved into fresh sobs and all that Frances could extract from her was that she had found the pamphlet on the morning after the dance display. A consultation with Mrs Venn and Miss Baverstock, both of whom were deeply shocked by her revelations, soon provided the answer. On Tuesday the 17th of February the girls had had spent the first class of the morning arranging displays of their work in the schoolrooms. They had then taken part in a final rehearsal of the dance display, something which had required them to express the spirit of flowers, fans and ribbons. After luncheon the visitors had arrived and the girls had conducted them about the school. A light tea had been served in the music and art room and the dance display had been performed to universal acclaim. Sometime between the evening of Monday the 16th and nine o’clock on Wednesday the 18th, for part of which time the school had been entertaining visitors, someone had spent no more than a minute dropping the pamphlets into the girls’ desks. Since there had been some displays of embroidery in the classroom, anyone found in there could easily have accounted for their presence.
Frances could do no more than ask all the members of staff to try and recall as much as they could about the time in question and make a list of the visitors they had seen and to whom they had spoken. She returned home in a mood of despondency to find that two new letters had arrived.
One was a note from Chas and Barstie advising her that the suitor whose intentions they had investigated was an earnest individual who made a habit of paying violent court to pretty young women with whom he had persuaded himself he was in love, only to take to his heels when the wedding day arrived. He was, however, the heir to a fortune, and if the anxious mother could only prevent his escape, they thought he might make a fair prospect.
The second letter was more controversial.
Dear Miss Doughty
Forgive me for thus writing to you. I most earnestly entreat that you do everything in your power to prevent a terrible crime. The wedding of Mr Roderick Matthews to the Duchess of Kenworth must not take place. Mr Matthews, who masquerades as a widower and single man, has a wife living, but is ashamed of his humble connection and does not make it known.
The wedding took place on 6th October 1874 at the church of St Mary’s Havenhill, near Mr Matthews’ country estate. The bride was his ward, Caroline Clare, and the witnesses were a housemaid, Mary Ann Dunn, and Mr Matthews’ farm manager, Joshua Jenkins. Mrs Matthews was an unhappy lady and soon left her husband and now resides abroad.
I am,
Very respectfully
A friend of the family