The Testimony of the Hanged Man (Lizzie Martin 5) (5 page)

‘What had Mr Canning ordered?’ I asked casually.

‘Nothing, only that if they went out, I was to go along with them.’

‘Why so?’

Ellen dropped her eyelids. ‘To help with the little girl, sir. She’s three. She can be mischievous. Run away and not come back when called, that sort of thing.’ Ellen’s face turned scarlet.

‘Run away?’ I asked as gently as I could. It was the first time the significant words had been spoken. ‘Do you think that is what Mrs Canning has done, Ellen?’

‘Oh, no, sir!’ Ellen looked as if she would faint. She swayed on the chair.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ I urged her. ‘What you tell me does not get back to Mr Canning nor to Mrs Bell or the maids. You can speak to me in complete confidence.’

But Ellen had realised the pit yawning at her feet. ‘I only meant, sir, that the little girl was playful.’

‘Would you describe your mistress as a happy woman, Ellen?’

There was a silence. Ellen was afraid of her employer and of Mrs Bell, but she was at heart a truthful girl. ‘Sometimes I fancied she was a little sad, sir. But she loved Miss Charlotte dearly.’ Ellen leaned forward. ‘She would never have left Miss Charlotte or let any harm come to her, sir.’

‘She took Miss Charlotte with her,’ I pointed out.

It was as if I’d unlocked a barrier. Her hands clasped and pleading eyes fixed on my face, words poured from the nurserymaid as in a torrent previously held back by a dam.

‘As God is my witness, I tried to find them, sir. I looked for them everywhere, up and down the streets about here, and in the park, asking all the people.’ The tears began to roll again. ‘When I came back, there was Mrs Bell blaming me all the more, because I’d told other folk the mistress was lost somewhere; and Mr Canning doesn’t like other people knowing his business.

‘Mrs Bell says that if she had had the hiring of me, I would never have come to work in this house. But it was Mrs Canning who chose me from all the girls sent by the agency. She is a kind, good lady and I have always considered that I work for her – for the mistress, although it is the master as pays my wages, of course. Mrs Canning it was, who told me I was not needed to go out that awful day when they vanished off the face of the earth, snatched away by some devils and perhaps murdered.

‘Mrs Canning said to stay home. Mrs Bell said to go out and look for them.

‘Then I’m in trouble because I didn’t find them and asked people . . . So what was I to do, sir? Whatever I did, it would be wrong and they’d be blaming me. They blame me still! I don’t think I’ve slept a wink since. I only stay here in this place because I hope to see Miss Charlotte come running in, quite all right and no harm come to her. She’s a blessed angel, so she is, that child. Now, for all I know, she is with the angels.’

With that, poor Ellen threw her apron over her head and sobbed into it.

I took pity on her and let her go. She had, in any case, confirmed what I had suspected. Jane Canning had run away, taking her daughter. They all knew it, Canning included.

When I returned to him he was pacing up and down the drawing room. ‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘Thank you, sir, I think I have a fair picture of what happened leading up to Mrs Canning’s departure from the house.’

Canning looked at me sharply and, I thought, with some alarm.

‘Now, sir, it is a painful business but it is my duty to ask a few personal and distressing questions. Was Mrs Canning in good health?’

‘Excellent health!’ he snapped.

‘She could not, for example, have suffered some nervous crisis? She could perhaps be wandering in London, with the child, a victim of loss of memory, perhaps?’

‘Don’t talk drivel!’ he roared at me. ‘Are you the best man Scotland Yard can produce?’

Sooner or later I had to let him know there was a possibility I had already encountered his missing wife. ‘There are many in London sleeping beneath arches, in doorways, any little corner where they can hide away. Even respectable people might come to such a pass if—’

‘This has nothing to do with the matter,’ he cut short my speech. ‘I shall go to the Yard tomorrow and demand they put another man on the case. My wife has been abducted and instead of looking for the malefactors who have done this heinous thing, you stand here and babble of the wretches who sleep in doorways. Not that anyone should be sleeping in a doorway! Are there no laws on vagrancy? What are the casual wards of the workhouses for? I pay my taxes, Ross, and I expect value for them. Find my wife.’

‘I am trying to tell you, sir, that last night, quite late on my way home, I encountered a woman, with a child, who was sleeping rough near the river. She gave me the name Jane Stephens.’

His ruddy complexion drained of all colour so quickly I took a step forward, fearing he might be about to collapse. But he was of stronger stuff.

‘If you are going to suggest that my wife has taken leave of her senses and, in her madness, has taken my daughter and is sleeping with her on the streets, then – then I fear you may have lost
your
senses, Inspector. The woman may have given you the name Stephens. It is coincidence.’ His eyes glittered in rage and his little Vandyke beard was thrust forward belligerently.

I said nothing. He turned away and walked over to the window where he stood for a couple of minutes staring out into the street, his hands clasped behind his back. Eventually he swung round to face me, his composure regained.

‘In any event, whether you came upon my wife last night or not, my daughter has been abducted and you are required to find her. I pay my taxes and expect the guardians of the law to carry out their duty.’ He marched over to the circular table in the centre of the room, decorously draped in a lace cloth, and picked up an envelope. ‘These are photographs of my wife and daughter. Let me know as soon as you have located them. The address of my wife’s great-aunt in Southampton is also there, since you asked for it. But you will not find Jane on the coast.’

‘You are sure of that, sir?’

‘Of course I am sure! Do you try and vex me, Ross?’

‘No, Mr Canning, but I hope you understand the importance of being entirely frank with us? We cannot investigate any matter if we are not given the full facts.’

‘You have been told all that you need to know,’ he returned icily.

I left the house, knowing he watched me go. However, due to the high wall around his property, I doubted he could see what I did next. I inquired at the houses on either side. I went to the back doors and asked the domestic staff there. No one had seen Mrs Canning on the day in question. But a couple of interesting facts did emerge. Mrs Canning never went out alone. In fact, Mrs Canning was hardly ever seen at all.

Back at the Yard I studied the photographs contained in the envelope. One was a studio portrait of a very young woman with pleasant, regular features. Not conventionally pretty, perhaps, but suggesting an open, generous nature. The sitter fixed the camera with a trusting look. She had a great deal of fair hair parted centrally and swept back to a just-discernible bundle of hair at the nape of her neck. The whole thing was artfully arranged. She was posed on a sofa that had the delicate, gilded style of a century earlier, and held a book in her lap, closed but with her forefinger marking the place, as if she had been reading when the photographer came in. The rococo sofa and the book probably belonged to the studio. I could not say whether this was the young woman I’d encountered by the river because I had not been able to see much of her face. But nothing suggested she could not have been the unknown vagrant.

There were two other photographs. One was of a little girl posed by a pedestal with an urn of flowers atop. I suspected these were also supplied by a studio. She was a round-faced child, with fair curls, wearing an elaborate dress with a flounced skirt and button boots. A slight frown seemed to pucker her forehead as if she studied the photographer while he studied her. I fancied she had the look of her mama, but more determined.

The third photograph was a family group and had been taken earlier, only a month or two after the child’s birth. Mrs Canning sat with the baby Charlotte on her lap. The child was so wrapped up in petticoats, ribbons, and a large bonnet it was difficult to see much but a pouting baby face and a pair of chubby fists poking out. The mother looked older than in the photograph taken seated on the sofa alone. I picked up the first photograph again and compared the two. Yes, the studio portrait had been taken probably very soon after the marriage. There was a bloom on the young woman that had been lost by the time of the family group study. Childbirth might account for that . . . or marriage itself. Canning stood at his wife’s shoulder in the family group. His hand rested proprietarily on the back of her chair. His Vandyke beard bristled as he tilted his chin and he glared fiercely at the camera. It was not, I decided, a happy picture.

It was time to enlist the help of the Hampshire Constabulary. I took a sheet of paper and carefully composed a message to be sent by electric telegraph that very evening.

I saw from Lizzie’s face when I arrived home that night that she had been waiting for me with concern. So, as we ate, I described my long and frustrating day to her. When I told her of Canning and of my fear I had already encountered his missing wife and child beneath the arches of Waterloo, Lizzie looked even more worried.

‘You say the servants could tell you nothing? Perhaps if you tried again?’ she said, when I described my visit to St John’s Wood. ‘In my experience the staff of a large – or even modest – household generally know what is going on in the family.’

‘They are under the control of the eagle-eyed Mrs Bell,’ I replied with a sigh. ‘Even the nursemaid who could, I’m sure, tell me a great deal more, did not give away much. She lamented and was genuinely distressed, but as much for her own situation as for the loss of her mistress and charge, I fancy. It was enough, though, to confirm my suspicions. Canning appears to be a very possessive man with regard to his wife. He expected her to be home every day when he returned from Charing Cross. He didn’t like her to go out unaccompanied. She appears seldom to have gone out at all, and they didn’t entertain at home.’

‘He’s jealous, perhaps?’ Lizzie suggested. ‘If she is much younger, and he is how you describe . . .’

‘His possessive behaviour wouldn’t be grounds for her to obtain a legal separation,’ I mused. ‘At least, not unless there were something else. If he were violent, perhaps?’

Lizzie said quietly, ‘Whatever the law may say, it is almost impossible for a woman to divorce her husband. If Jane has no money of her own, protected legally in some way from her husband’s grasp, then she is penniless now. If her only family is that one very elderly lady in Southampton, she has nowhere to go. The aunt would be horrified if she turned up on the doorstep. Whatever the truth of the matter, from now on she will be marked out by the scandal and her reputation ruined. You know as well as I do that whatever a divorce court may decide, in the public mind the blame always rests with the wife. Besides, there is the little girl. Superintendent Dunn is right. In the circumstances, a judge would not even allow her to keep the child until she is seven years old. It is very hard for women like poor Jane.’

‘Be careful whom you marry!’ I said with a smile in an attempt to lighten the gloomy conversation.

‘I was fortunate to meet you again, Ben, after so many years. Jane Stephens, if that is her maiden name, met Mr Hubert Canning. No doubt he appeared an excellent prospect and the elderly great-aunt would have been anxious to see Jane comfortably established. I do wonder where she is now, and the little girl. It’s terrible to think what a state they may be in.’ Lizzie glanced at the clock. It was getting very late.

I, too, hauled myself wearily from my comfortable chair. ‘I wish I could even hazard a guess. The best I can say is that, so far, her body has not been hauled from the Thames. I have telegraphed a request to my opposite number in Southampton tonight, asking him to send someone to call on Jane’s elderly relative. It may help to find out the background to her marriage. I will do my utmost to find them, Lizzie,’ I added.

My wife smiled ‘Yes, Ben, I know you will. If anyone can find them, you will do it.’

‘What I cannot do is investigate Mills’s murder at Putney.’ I picked up the poker and rattled it in the grate.

‘Was Dunn very angry about that?’

‘He wasn’t so bad, quite sympathetic. But he was firm I should leave the matter alone. So nothing can be done.’

‘Mm,’ was all the reply. My wife had a thoughtful look on her face that I recognised only too well.

‘No!’ I said firmly.

‘No, what?’

‘This is not something for you to take an interest in!’

‘It seems those like the governor or the home secretary, who could do something, will not. If they won’t, you can’t. So, if I don’t, who will?’ Lizzie asked serenely.

This was true. It still didn’t make it a feasible proposition – or a desirable one. I did my best to explain this, all the time sensing my arguments were bouncing off a brick wall. ‘What can you possibly hope to find out?’ I pleaded at last. ‘The whole thing happened,
if
it did, in the middle of Putney Heath – and sixteen years ago. I have no address. I wonder now if Mills himself could have found the house again. He says it wasn’t far from the Portsmouth road but that’s a vague location, for the main route down to the south runs right across the heath. Above the roof was a weathervane fashioned like a running fox with his brush held straight out behind him. That could have blown down in a gale since then. Or there might be two or three houses with such a weathervane.

‘Perhaps if I could find some additional evidence to support Mills’s statement, I might get those in authority to take an interest. But the likelihood of finding any such evidence is – well – it’s impossible now.’

She had listened patiently to my argument and, as always, had an answer. ‘I could find Wally Slater and get him to drive me out to Putney in his cab. With Wally, when I get there, I will have freedom of movement. The house, Mills told you, stands apart from others.’