The Testimony of the Hanged Man (Lizzie Martin 5) (7 page)

‘I understand the face being bruised from hitting the water,’ I said. ‘But the bruises on the chest and abdomen, beneath the clothing?’

The surgeon looked up at me, a surprisingly keen expression on his face. ‘Ah, you think you have a murder victim, do you? The body bruises look older to me than the ones on the face. She has been the victim of some violent assault, certainly, within the last week. I can tell you no more, Inspector, without further examination. All I can say is that those bruises didn’t kill her.’ He moved to the top of the trestle on which the poor wretch lay, and carefully parted her hair and turned her head, raising it to look at the back of the skull. ‘No visible head injury,’ he said. ‘You must be patient, Inspector, and await the result of the internal examination. Then I – or whoever conducts it – can tell you whether she was alive or dead when she went into the water.’

I returned to Scotland Yard and told Morris I was satisfied that I had not seen Jane lying dead. As to what postmortem examination of the unknown corpse might reveal, that might not land on my desk. I would wait until it did, if it did.

I also found a visitor awaiting me when I returned, Mr Canning. He jumped up from the chair Morris had provided for him and advanced on me, red in the face and little Vandyke beard aimed like a dagger at my chest.

‘I have been here almost an hour, Inspector Ross!’

‘I had to go and view a female body recovered from the river,’ I said brusquely. I had had more than enough of Hubert Canning, the respectable taxpayer.

He paled at my words. ‘My wife?’ he gasped.

‘No, Mr Canning, not your wife. But I had to view the corpse to make sure.’

The visitor sat down suddenly on the vacated chair, pulled out his handkerchief, took off his round hat and mopped his sweating brow. While I had him at a disadvantage, I listed all the steps we’d taken to find his wife. He nodded but appeared speechless.

‘Mr Canning, are you quite sure you have no idea what caused Mrs Canning to leave home in such a way? It does appear to have been quite voluntary on her part. We have found nothing to indicate a criminal gang such as you claimed had kidnapped her and Charlotte.’

That rallied him. He stiffened, tucked away the handkerchief and said firmly, ‘She had no reason at all to behave in such a disgraceful way. She must have taken leave of her senses. Have you tried the asylums for the insane?’ He paused but I didn’t oblige him with an answer. In an obstinate voice, he went on, ‘I must have my daughter returned to me. As for my wife . . . See here, you must find the child.’

With that he got up and stalked out. I was more than ever convinced that he knew why his wife had fled. Nor was he particularly concerned to have her returned. But his daughter, he did want her – and to find little Charlotte, I had to find her mother. I wondered whether Canning had gone back to his place of business or to his house. I decided it more likely to be his wine emporium, somewhere he felt in control. Being in control, I had decided, meant a great deal to Hubert Canning.

‘I am going to St John’s Wood to interview that nursemaid again,’ I told Morris.

The door of Canning’s house was opened to me by the maid named, I recalled, Purvis.

‘The master is not here, sir,’ she said, as soon as she saw who stood on the step.

‘I have not come to see Mr Canning. I have come to see Ellen Brady, the nursemaid. Is she here?’

Purvis blinked and a look of panic crossed her face. ‘If you would wait here, sir, in the hall . . .’ She fled towards the rear of the house.

As I anticipated, Mrs Bell appeared, advancing towards me like an avenging Fury. Without any greeting, she asked immediately, ‘Why do you want Ellen?’

‘Is she here?’ I asked again.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Bell drew a deep breath. ‘I must ask you again, Inspector Ross, why you wish to see her?’

‘Why must you ask me that?’ I asked as mildly as I could.

‘Why?’ Her complexion, that had been very pale, flooded with colour. ‘I am responsible for the servants here, Inspector Ross, in the absence of Mr Canning.’

I smiled at her. ‘But not, Mrs Bell, responsible for the investigation into the disappearance of Mrs Canning and Miss Charlotte Canning. Now, will you call down Ellen Brady? Oh, and tell her to bring her bonnet and shawl.’

She was obliged to give way, but not without marking her displeasure.

‘Very well, Inspector Ross, if you insist. However, if you have reason to call again in the absence of the master, I would be grateful if you apply to the back door of the house.’

She turned on her heel and marched away; and I heard her instructing Purvis to go up to the nursery and fetch down Ellen, complete with outdoor clothing.

In due course Ellen appeared from the direction of the back stairs, wearing a grey cloak and a minute bonnet perched on the front of her hair, secured with a large pearl-headed pin and tied with ribbons under her chin.

‘Yes, sir?’ she asked apprehensively, eyeing me as if I’d come to accuse her of some crime and haul her away in handcuffs.

‘Don’t worry, Miss Brady,’ I told her. A faint rustle at the rear of the hall told me that either Mrs Bell or Purvis lurked there, listening. ‘On the day she went missing, Mrs Canning took Miss Charlotte out for a walk. Now then, I think it likely that she followed the route she normally took on these occasions. You usually accompanied her, did you not?’ Ellen nodded. ‘So you can show me exactly the way.’

We left the house and Ellen indicated we should go to the right. We set off sedately. When we were out of sight of the house, I said, ‘Don’t be alarmed, Ellen, but I am anxious to talk to you without anyone else eavesdropping.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Ellen, still apprehensive. ‘I thought as that was your idea. Are we still to walk the way Mrs Canning normally wanted to go?’

‘Yes, if you would.’

‘Well, then,’ said Ellen, ‘we’d walk to Regent’s Park. Miss Charlotte liked to visit the boating lake. Not that we ever went on it, of course. We’d walk right round it. That was in good weather. In bad weather, we’d cut the walk short, but we always went out, unless it was fairly pouring it down.’

‘It was good weather the day they left the house and disappeared?’

‘Yes, sir, it was a very fine day. I wasn’t surprised Mrs Canning wanted to walk out with the child. Only surprised she didn’t want me with her.’

So, I thought, that was a change to the normal routine. Something had happened to bring that about.

Aloud, I said, ‘Then let us go to the boating lake. Now, Ellen, you must believe that anything you tell me I will use only as necessary for finding Mrs Canning. I will not report to Mr Canning, or Mrs Bell, or anyone else other than another police officer, what you tell me. You can speak absolutely freely.’

She didn’t answer, so I added, ‘It won’t cost you your place!’

At that Ellen burst out, ‘I won’t have a place if Mrs Canning and Charlotte don’t come back, will I? I dare say that I won’t have a place in that house any more, even if – when they do. Mrs Bell is so angry with me – and the master – that for two pins they’d turn me away today, so they would! It is only because they want to keep an eye on me that they keep me in the house at all.’

‘Oh, why so?’

‘So that they know what I do and whom I speak to, such as to you, now, today.’

‘Ellen,’ I said gently, ‘what is it they are afraid you will tell me?’

I received no answer to this for some minutes. Then Ellen said stonily, ‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir.’

‘I’m sure – or reasonably so – that you do know, or can hazard a guess,’ I said.

‘I don’t gossip, sir.’

It was time to be as obdurate as she was being. ‘See here,’ I said to her, ‘Mrs Canning may be, almost certainly is, in danger, to say nothing of even greater danger to the little girl. Don’t you want them to be found and brought back home safely?’

‘Yes,’ said Ellen simply. After a moment she added, ‘I’ve scarcely slept a wink for thinking of them and worrying, and that’s the truth.’

We walked on in silence until we reached the park. Another short walk inside the park itself brought us to the boating lake, where I indicated a wooden seat. Ellen sat down and I beside her.

‘We should have brought some bread for the ducks,’ I said.

‘We used to do that,’ said Ellen. ‘Miss Charlotte liked . . .’ She fell silent and I waited patiently. I sensed she had decided to tell me something but was not sure how to begin. A nursemaid pushing a baby carriage walked past us. A small boy carrying a hoop trotted alongside her.

‘Mr Canning is a strange sort of feller, so he is,’ said Ellen suddenly, her Irish brogue more pronounced. ‘He won’t let anyone into the house, you know. There’s never a visitor. They never go out together except to church of a Sunday morning. Then it’s straight there and home again. No family comes. I don’t know that Mr Canning has any. I know that Mrs Canning has an elderly relative, an old auntie, down in Southampton. She lived there with her before she was married. She told me so. She told me, she missed the sight of the sea and the air being different in a big city. She would like to take Miss Charlotte to the seaside somewhere, for a little holiday. But Mr Canning always said he couldn’t leave his business. Sometimes Mrs Canning said she felt she couldn’t breathe at all, here in London. I understood what she meant for I feel the same way myself. I grew up in the countryside.’

‘When I was a boy back in my home in Derbyshire,’ I told her, ‘I was sent down the pit to work at ten years old. There was precious little fresh air there.’

‘In the dark?’ asked Ellen, looking anxiously at me.

‘Very dark.’

‘Were there rats, sir?’

‘Big as a small dog.’

‘Weren’t you scared?’

‘Terrified. It made no difference, I had to go down. There were younger boys than me down there.’

‘You won’t mind being in the city, then,’ said Ellen, ‘for all the smoke and the stink of it. It must be better than being buried down there with the coal.’ She folded her hands in her lap. ‘Mrs Canning was a very unhappy person, sir. Mr Canning – I’m not saying he’s the only man in the world to be like it – but everything must be done how he wants it. Mrs Bell runs the household, down to the smallest detail, without any consultation with Mrs Canning, because he will have it so. Mr Canning goes to his business selling the wine to the gentry. Poor Mrs Canning has no say in anything and is allowed to go nowhere, not to meet with other married ladies or anything like that, no tea parties or charity circles, such as a lot of ladies give their time to. That’s why she and I and little Miss Charlotte walked out every day.’

‘Yet it was Mrs Canning who chose you to be the nursemaid, I believe.’

‘So she did, sir. Mrs Bell hires and dismisses the maids – and they do come and go at a fair old clip, you can believe me. They don’t like working there. Purvis doesn’t mind so much. She’s a walking streak of misery like old Mother Bell herself. Only Mrs Bell was never a mother and when it came to engaging a nursemaid, Mrs Canning – for the only time ever, I do believe – put her foot down and said she must choose whom it would be. The agency sent several girls and she chose me. Mrs Bell didn’t like it. She doesn’t like me. But, perhaps because Mr Canning was proud to be a new father and all, he let Mrs Canning have her way in that. Mrs Canning and I always got on famously.’

‘So what do you think caused Mrs Canning to take the child and run away?’

I wondered whether Ellen would deny that was the case. Instead, said, ‘The master and mistress had a terrible argument, sir.’

‘When was this?’

‘Well, they’d had a few of them this last month or two. But this particular one was the evening before – before Mrs Canning left. She told him how unhappy she was, and lonely, and wanted it all to change, to be allowed to make friends. There were ladies at the church who had called and left cards. But she was not allowed to call and leave cards back. She wanted to do that. Mr Canning would have it was all nonsense and he wouldn’t have her “running about the town” in his absence. He said all manner of things, besides, unkind things. Mrs Canning was in tears and he only shouted at her.’

‘How did you come to hear all this, Ellen?’

‘Miss Charlotte had been restless. She woke often at night and called out. I think she was aware her mama was unhappy and that made her unhappy and frightened, too, not understanding it, you see. So I would get up to go to Miss Charlotte and I could hear, the house being so quiet at night, how Mr and Mrs Canning argued. I sleep in the nursery, sir, and it’s on the same floor as Mr and Mrs Canning’s room. Mrs Bell and the maids are on the floor above and probably don’t hear. That night, my, oh my, they made so much racket perhaps the staff sleeping above did hear. But you won’t get any of them to admit that to you, sir.’

‘So, this has been going on for a few months?’

‘Yes, sir. It began, I do believe, after Mrs Canning had the misfortune to lose the baby.’

‘What baby is this? I asked, startled.

‘She was expecting another child, sir. But with three or four months she miscarried and was quite ill for some weeks. This happened last year, towards Christmas.’

‘So Mrs Canning had been down in spirits for almost a year, since losing the baby,’ I mused.

‘Yes, sir. Women do get that way after a healthy birth, even. Any midwife will tell you so. With losing a child, well, what would you expect? But Mr Canning couldn’t see it. He just lost his temper and shouted at her, as usual. Then she’d be sobbing and he’d storm out. I’d go in and try and comfort her. That fool of a doctor he called to examine her made it worse. He told Mr Canning that Mrs Canning was suffering from hysteria. He said it was a sickness of the womb, and very common among women. Mr Canning told her she must “pull herself together” – that’s his phrase. If she didn’t, he said, he would send her to a clinic recommended by that doctor, and they would treat her there.’

‘What sort of clinic?’ I exclaimed.

‘The master and the doctor both called it “a special place for treatment of female hysteria”. I’ve heard of such places, sir. They do all manner of indecent things to women there; and take such liberties . . . It’s what no kind, gentle lady like Mrs Canning should have to put up with. Don’t ask me to speak more of that, sir, because I won’t. It’s not fitting. I’m a respectable girl, and the dirty words won’t leave my lips. But the poor lady isn’t ill, sir! She’s only unhappy.’