The Testimony of the Hanged Man (Lizzie Martin 5) (6 page)

‘It was sixteen years ago,’ I reminded her. ‘There will almost certainly have been changes. It is not only hereabouts that London has seen such a mania for building. Putney will have seen many more houses built in the last twenty years. Who knows if that particular house is still the lonely dwelling it was when Mills came on it. Besides . . .’ I reached for the last brick in my argument. ‘It’s too far for you to go, anyway. Setting aside the cost, that old nag of Slater’s will never make it there and back without dropping in the shafts.’

‘He doesn’t have Nelson any more. He has a new, younger horse. It’s called Victor.’

I allowed myself to be distracted. ‘Victor?’

‘It would have been called Victory, to keep the memory of Nelson going, you understand. But Victor is easier to say.’

‘You still can’t drive all over the heath hoping to find a house that might not exist.’ Here, I thought, I had put up an insurmountable obstacle.

My wife smiled at me. ‘Oh, I can find out if it exists. When did this suspicious death occur? The fifteenth of June, eighteen fifty-two, I think you said.’

‘I did. Mills informed me it was a Tuesday. It is one of the details that makes me think he did see something. He might, of course, have been mistaken in what he thought he saw.’ As I spoke, I resigned myself to the inevitable.

‘Then my first visit must be to Somerset House. They have records of all deaths, don’t they?’

‘Well, don’t let Dunn find out, at least!’ I begged.

‘Oh, Superintendent Dunn,’ said Lizzie. ‘He’s such a nice man but he does fuss so.’

Fuss?
The image of Dunn, scarlet with rage, was hardly conveyed by such a mild term. But there was a more urgent consideration than Dunn’s fury should he learn that Lizzie had once again involved herself in police business.

‘Listen to me,’ I begged her, ‘for once, at least! Let us suppose you would not be going on a wild goose chase. Let’s accept there was a murder done and witnessed by Mills. He says the killer was a young – very young – woman. That means she is today probably no more than forty years of age. Let us say she is still living in the house with the running fox weathervane and you manage to find it. Then you also find
her
, my dearest Lizzie, and she is a murderess.’

‘Ben, do have a little confidence in me! I am not likely to forget that,’ she said, clearly put out.

‘Do, please, be tactful, Lizzie,’ I begged. ‘And don’t let Bessie out of your sight. Or Slater, come to that. The three of you can’t just run round talking of murder.’

‘As if we would,’ retorted my wife, affronted.

‘In Bessie’s case, as if she wouldn’t!’

Chapter Five

Elizabeth Martin Ross

I UNDERSTOOD Ben’s dilemma. He had once told me that any police officer should try and keep a personal distance from the case he was investigating. That he must concentrate on the facts. That he must not let his emotions take over. But Ben cared about other people’s suffering. He had seen too much of it as a child. If he could help, he would. Only if convinced he could not, would he reluctantly accept that he must set the matter aside.

Now, in addition to the case of Mills, he had that of a missing woman and child to think about. He felt he had failed to help the woman when he found her sleeping beneath the arches. So that, too, preyed on his mind.

It was time for me to take a hand. I could do nothing about the case of Jane Canning. But I might be able to find out something about the background to the story Mills, the murderer, had spun. If I could discover anything, even if it indicated Mills had invented the whole tale, it would help set Ben’s mind at rest. Frankly, to find Mills had lied would be the most helpful result of my inquiries. Ben would gain peace of mind. To learn that Mills might have spoken the truth could be unbearable. But I would do my best. ‘And you have not yet begun, Lizzie!’ I told myself optimistically.

When Ben departed for Scotland Yard the following morning, I sought out Bessie in the kitchen where she was washing up with the usual vigour. I wondered we had an unchipped plate left.

‘I am about to tell you something in confidence, Bessie,’ I informed her.

Bessie abandoned the dishes, wiped her hands on her apron and positioned herself before me with shining eyes. ‘Yes, missis?’

I told her what I had omitted to tell her before: Mills’s account of what he claimed had happened sixteen years earlier at Putney.

‘Cor,’ said Bessie with a deep sigh.

‘You don’t tell anyone else about this,’ I reminded her.

‘You know I won’t, missis.’ She sounded affronted.

I did know I could trust her. ‘There are difficulties in the way of the inspector looking into this story.’

‘We can do it!’ said Bessie promptly.

‘It may not be necessary,’ I warned. ‘The police may yet take it up and then we must not interfere.’

‘Wouldn’t do us no harm to go out to Putney and take a look round,’ said Bessie.

‘That’s true, but it will be unofficial and we must be very, very careful.’ I explained that I wanted her to seek out Wally Slater, the cabman, and commandeer his four-wheeled growler for the next day, explaining it was to go to Putney (and to enquire the cost). I fully intended to pay Wally a fair price for the journey there and back. However, when Ben found out I really was going to make the trip, the first – or almost the first – thing he would ask would be how much it would cost, so I had to have the answer ready. To travel there by train or omnibus, and walk around the area when we got there, would slow inquiries considerably.

‘I’ll find him,’ promised Bessie. ‘He’s usually waiting up at the station in the cab rank there. I’ll wait there and if he don’t turn up, I’ll tell the other cabbies I want to talk to him. The message will get round quick enough. Of course, I won’t tell the other cabbies what I want him for.’

‘Today,’ I said, ‘I will go to Somerset House, and see if I can at least find out the identity of the old gentleman who died on that date in eighteen fifty-two at the house with the running fox weathervane.’

Unfortunately, my own investigations did not begin very well. I soon arrived at the imposing pillars of Somerset House where records of births, deaths and marriages were kept. When I stepped inside, I stood bewildered. Here some of the greatest in the land had once lived, but now the whole great palace resembled nothing so much as a busy beehive, filled with scribbling clerks serving a dozen government departments.

As I stood staring, a friendly uniformed porter approached me. ‘Morning, ma’am! What would you be looking for?’

Grateful for his help, I explained I hoped to track down a death certificate. He appeared to find this the most natural thing in the world. He then directed me down a corridor and up a stone staircase, where I found myself in another corridor, eventually entering a room where I found a desk presided over by a clerk.

This official was a pallid, podgy young man in a tightly buttoned blue coat. His hair was artfully curled, I guessed with the aid of tongs, and held in glistening immobility by a lavish application of Macassar oil. His whole demeanour was that of one who feels he should be engaged on better things than answering the public’s questions. I began to fear things would not go on as well as they’d started. I was right.

I explained politely I was inquiring about a death at Putney in 1852, on the fifteenth of June, to be exact. Decedent was male.

‘So is half the population,’ he returned, heaving a deep sigh. ‘Name?’

‘I don’t know his name.’

He stood and leaned across the desk to bring his plump cheeks and shining curls unpleasantly close to me. ‘Then how, madam, is anyone to look him up?’ His breath smelled of violet cachous.

‘In the volume containing records or references for that year.’

He let out a squawk and then a shout of laughter that caused other people in the room – busy looking things up – to look at us instead. Ripples of disapproval flowed over us.

‘The total of deaths in this nation during a whole year fill more than a single volume! There is a row of them. You must know the name. Then I will show you the appropriate volume – names beginning with that letter – and you may search through it.’

‘But it’s his name I want to find out!’ I protested.

‘Why?’ he asked suddenly.

‘It is of interest to me.’

He pursed his lips, which made him look like a mature cherub. ‘You can’t be a relation or you’d know his name.’ He looked even more pleased with himself at having made this deduction.

‘I am not, to my knowledge, related to the gentleman.’

His scornful look turned to one of suspicion. ‘Not a relation, thought as much! Then what’s his death to you, eh?’

‘That,’ I said sternly, ‘is my business.’

‘Is it, now? Well, keeping and protection of the records is my business. We have to be sure they won’t be misused. I am not convinced you are doing anything but waste my time – that is, if you don’t have some nefarious purpose in mind?’ His features creased into the pantomime sneer of one who has just uncovered a dastardly plot.

‘
Nefarious . . . 
What kind of nefarious purpose could I possibly have?’ I gasped.

He leaned forward again. ‘Impersonation!’ he hissed.

‘How,’ I snapped, ‘am I to impersonate an elderly gentleman, let alone one who died sixteen years ago?’

‘You could be acting for someone else. Or it might have to do with a will. I can’t help you – not unless you bring me the deceased person’s name and his address at Putney. Now, madam, you are causing a disturbance and I must ask you to leave.’

Watched by everyone in the room, I made a dignified exit.

‘Hullo!’ said my kindly porter. ‘That didn’t take you long! Get what you wanted?’

‘No,’ I said shortly. Then, not wishing to be rude to someone who had been nothing but polite to me, I added, ‘The clerk wasn’t very helpful.’

He eyed me thoughtfully. ‘What was the problem, then?’

‘I don’t know the deceased man’s name,’ I explained. ‘I know when he died and where: at Putney. But I don’t know the exact address.’

‘Putney, eh?’ said the porter with a frown. ‘You say you know
when
the gentleman passed on?’ He pointed a finger heavenwards.

I felt a glimmer of hope and told him, even though the doorman was probably no more than bored and curious. ‘In eighteen fifty-two, on the fifteenth of June.’ For good measure, I added, ‘I believe there was a summer storm at Putney on that day.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Your best bet,’ he informed me, ‘is parish records. Putney . . . that’ll be St Mary’s church.’

Seeing my surprise at his omniscience, he added, ‘I know Putney. My wife was in service at Putney when she was a girl. Lots of toffs have houses in Putney, you know. There’s people of quality has died in Putney. Some of ’em died in duels on Putney Heath in my old father’s day. They don’t allow that now. Of course, them – the gentlemen what blew one another’s heads off with a set of duelling pistols – they would have driven out to Putney for the occasion; and their dead bodies would have been put in their carriages to be driven back again and buried in town.

‘But if they live and die in Putney, folk are buried in Putney. St Mary’s church’s register of burials, that’s where the gentleman will be found. Not the date he died, but the date they buried him and that won’t be more than a week later, not if he died in June. In June it’s starting to warm up and you say there had been thunderstorms? You can’t have a corpse lying about the house in thundery weather. It’d go off in no time. Yes, parish records, that’s where you’ll find it all written up. Then, when you know he’s there, why, you will be able to see his grave and his headstone, especially if he only died back in eighteen fifty-two. That will give you the exact date he passed, more than likely. Headstones, that’s what I tell people like yourself who come here seeking their forebears. If you want to know about the late lamented, then go and find his headstone. It’ll tell you all about him, and the names of his wife and his children into the bargain, more often than not. Marvellous thing is a headstone.’

His powers of deduction left me speechless for a moment. Even Ben would have been impressed. They should employ the porter upstairs at the inquiry desk, and the plump clerk with the curls down here minding the door.

‘Your wife wouldn’t know a house at Putney, on the heath, an old house . . . with a running fox weathervane?’ I asked in a burst of optimism. ‘Possibly it’s located not far from the road the coaches take going down to Portsmouth.’

‘I’ll ask her,’ he said. ‘You come and see me tomorrow.’

I had sent Bessie to arrange with Wally to take me to Putney on the morrow but time there might be saved if I paid a brief visit to the porter beforehand. Wally would get me there and back quickly. I thanked my new friend and went home not entirely displeased.

Inspector Ben Ross

I should have been worrying what Lizzie might be getting up to in her visit to Somerset House, but I had plenty of other things to occupy my mind and my time and, whatever Lizzie had learned, I’d find out that evening.

I’d sent out information on the missing Jane Canning to all the London police stations. Nothing relevant had come back to me. I had also written to my colleague in Southampton by the previous evening’s post and he should receive my letter today, probably by his local afternoon post. With luck I would hear from him within a day or two. All of the London workhouses were contacted and none reported any female applicant by the name of either Canning or Stephens. Canning had told us he had inquired of the hospitals. We, nevertheless, inquired anew. No adult victim of any accident had been brought in of that name, and no unidentified child except for a boy, a crossing sweeper, crushed beneath the wheels of a cart. It was more than possible that Jane would not have given either of the two surnames we knew for her, if she had been admitted. But showing her photograph at the hospitals also took us no further forward. They had not seen her.

A little before twelve we received a message from Wapping that a woman’s body had been recovered from the Thames. I hurried over there, fearing the worst.

I was conducted by a constable of the River Police into the mortuary set up for reception of bodies taken from the water. An attendant drew back the sheet to reveal a woman, no longer in her first youth, with a bruised face and other contusions on the torso. Her skin was coarse, her hair appeared coloured by henna, and when I picked up one of her hands and turned it over, the palm was callused. This was not Jane.

My first reaction was to be thankful it was not the woman I’d encountered beneath the bridge that evening. It is important, when investigating any case, not to take too personal an interest. But I did feel a personal responsibility for poor Jane Canning. Dunn was right. I should have seen that she was arrested for vagrancy. Then the whole matter would have been investigated at once and Jane returned to her husband, with her child. But would that have been for the best? I really didn’t know. All I did know was that, if my mind had not been so full of Mills and his story, I’d have paid more attention to a well-spoken woman who was inexplicably sleeping rough with a young child in her arms.

My initial sense of relief was replaced by a curiosity about the bruising on the body before me. I asked the constable who had conducted me there if a police surgeon was available and, after some delay, a short, dishevelled individual in a grimy frock coat appeared.

‘What do you want?’ he demanded. ‘I am a busy man with a waiting room full of patients.’

‘I apologise for inconveniencing you, Doctor,’ I said, ‘and appreciate that you’ve come. Would you look at this woman’s body and tell me what you consider the cause of her injuries.’

He hissed in annoyance, bent over the body and announced, ‘Caused by the impact when she hit the water. Did she jump off a bridge?’

‘No one saw her go in, sir,’ said the constable. ‘A ferryman reported seeing female clothing caught against some railings on steps going down into the water. He thought there was a body in the clothing and so there was, that one.’

‘Not been in the water long,’ said the surgeon. ‘Rigor may have been delayed by the temperature of the water, but I would hazard a guess, without further examination, that she went in some time during last night, before the tide went out. Some time before midnight, say? If her clothing caught against the railings, as described, that would have prevented her sinking to the bottom. As to whether she was alive or dead, that I cannot say without opening her up and examining the lungs. If she was alive, there will be river water in them and in the airways.’