A Case of Doubtful Death Read online

  With the hour approaching for the arrival of Miss Palmer, Frances peered out of the window. Although it was only September the weather had been shockingly inclement, and the early days of what had promised to be a delicious autumn had suddenly declined into a misty gloom and whole days of smoke-laden fog. A cab paused outside and a gentleman alighted, helping a frail-looking lady descend. Her head was bent and she was muffling her face with a woollen shawl. Frances watched them as they approached her door and then waited for them to be shown upstairs.

  Frances supposed that other detectives must have offices where they saw clients across a desk, but she, having none, used the parlour table, which was always furnished with a carafe of water and a glass, so that nervous clients could moisten their throats, also a discreetly folded napkin which was often pressed into service as a handkerchief. A notebook and a number of sharp pencils were essential for recording what was said, but just as valuable to Frances was Sarah’s no less sharp observation and opinions.

  Alice Palmer was twenty-two but she seemed faded like a portrait badly painted and left in the sun. Anxiety lay upon her, a deadly unseen canker that consumed her energy. Frances suspected that the young woman had barely eaten since her brother’s disappearance. Miss Palmer’s gentleman companion, who was scarcely older, helped her to be seated and introduced himself as Walter Crowe, saying that he and Alice were engaged to be married. Frances did not normally provide nourishment for her clients, but in this case, sent for tea and sponge cake. Mr Crowe smiled sadly as if to say that nothing could tempt Alice to eat until her brother was found.

  Frances knew that asking timorous clients to talk about themselves often helped ease them into a frame of mind where they could talk more freely about the things that troubled them. She invited both Alice and Walter to tell their stories, and learned that Walter was the son of a journeyman carpenter, and, seeking to better himself, was now a joiner with his own business. Alice’s mother had died when she was seven, and she and her three brothers, of whom Henry was the eldest, had been left orphans when their father died in a railway accident four years later. Henry, who had been just fifteen at the time, had been the mainstay of the family, ensuring that all the children were kept clean and decently clothed, received an education and, in due course, found respectable employment. Her brother Bertie was now eighteen and worked in a butcher’s shop on the Grove, living above the premises, and sixteen-year-old Jackie was apprenticed to Walter and lodged with him. Alice worked in a ladies’ costume shop on the Grove, and she and Henry shared lodgings in Golborne Road.

  The tea and cake arrived, and Sarah stared at Alice with an expression of savage determination, which Frances knew very well, realising that the young woman would not be permitted to leave the house without having accepted some nourishment. Alice, moved almost to tears of terror at Sarah’s look, sipped milky tea and put a fragment of cake into her mouth.

  The Life House, Frances was told, was situated in Church Lane not far from the eastern entrance of All Souls Cemetery, Kensal Green. Henry’s duties lasted from midday to midnight every weekday after which the other orderly, a Mr Hemsley, was there for the next twelve hours. Henry had never complained about the nature of his work, or his long hours, or made any suggestion that he might seek other employment. He invariably walked home, but was careful to creep in quietly so as not to wake Alice, who was always in her bed by 11 p.m. He was a sound, reliable man, a man you might set your watch by and know that once he had promised to do a thing it was as good as done. He was the very last man to run away and put his family to worry and distress.

  Tuesday the 21st of September had started showery, but as the day wore on the streets had gradually become occluded by a cold, grey fog. Alice had gone to her work that morning as usual, leaving Henry’s breakfast and some food for his luncheon on the table, and returned to find that the breakfast had been eaten, the dishes cleared, and the luncheon taken. She had gone to bed at her usual time, but when she awoke the next morning she saw, to her surprise and concern, that Henry’s bed had not been slept in. She was obliged to go to her work, but as soon as she was able, she sent an urgent message to Walter to say that Henry had not come home. From that moment Walter’s efforts to find her missing brother had been both determined and tireless.

  Walter’s first action was to go to see Alice’s brother Bertie at the butcher’s shop, who confirmed that he had not seen Henry that day. Walter then sent Jackie to Golborne Road to see if Henry had returned home, but the boy came back with the news that Henry was not there.

  Walter next called on Alice at her place of employment, hoping that Henry might have gone to see her or at least sent a note, but she had still heard nothing from her brother and was now almost out of her wits with worry. Walter then took a cab up to the Life House and found that while he was not permitted to enter the wards, which were the preserve of staff and medical men, he could be admitted to the side chapel, which he found crowded with visitors; friends of the recently deceased Dr Mackenzie who had come to pay their respects. The doctor’s remains were in an open coffin, surrounded by floral tributes and sad faces. There was nothing unusual about the corpse, which looked very peaceful.

  Walter was informed by a distressed and exhausted Dr Bonner that his colleague had collapsed and died the night before, indeed Mackenzie had been speaking to Henry Palmer when he had suddenly clutched his stomach and chest, groaned with pain, and fallen. Bonner and Palmer had spent an hour doing all they could to revive him, but had at last given up hope. Bonner, who was well acquainted with Mackenzie’s history of ill health, was in no doubt that the doctor had indeed breathed his last. Since Bonner understood that Mackenzie’s landlady, Mrs Georgeson, waited up for her tenants so she could lock the premises at night, he had instructed Palmer to call on her and inform her of what had occurred. It was by then almost eleven o’clock, so Bonner had told Palmer that after speaking to Mrs Georgeson, there was no need for him to return to the Life House that evening, and he should go home. Palmer had departed as instructed, and Bonner had not seen or heard from him since, but then he would not have expected to. He had remained at the Life House after Palmer left until the arrival of the other orderly, Mr Hemsley, an hour later, and had then gone home to try and get a little rest. Early the next morning, he had notified Mackenzie’s friends by telegram, inviting them to a viewing at the chapel at ten o’clock. As far as he was aware he was still expecting Palmer back at the Life House at midday for his next period of duty.

  Walter had observed but not spoken to the other partner in the Life House, Dr Warrinder. That gentleman had been very upset and was fussing about the place, constantly asking Bonner if he was sure that his friend was really dead. He had even held a mirror to Mackenzie’s nose looking for the misting that would show the doctor still breathed, but without finding anything that might give him hope.

  Walter had next gone to Dr Mackenzie’s lodgings and spoken to the landlady Mrs Georgeson, who had just returned from viewing the body. She confirmed that Henry Palmer had come to the house a little after eleven o’clock the previous night to inform her of Dr Mackenzie’s death. He had left after a few minutes’ conversation and had last been seen walking down Ladbroke Grove Road. At this point in Walter’s narrative, Frances fetched a directory with a folding map on which he pointed out Henry’s most probable route home, going south down Ladbroke Grove Road away from the Life House, and making a left turn either down Telford Road, Faraday Road or Bonchurch Road, all of which would have led to Portobello Road, then turning right down Portobello Road for a short distance and left into Golborne Road.

  It was about a ten-minute walk from Dr Mackenzie’s lodgings to Henry’s home, allowing for the darkness and the fog. Walter had carefully followed each of Henry’s possible routes, but had seen no sign of him. He asked everyone he met on the way if a man had been there and suffered an accident or been taken ill, but had learnt nothing. That evening Walter and the Palmers held a family conference and agreed that if Henry
was not back by the next morning they would inform the police.

  Early the next day Walter went to Kilburn police station. The desk sergeant listened with grave attention, but took the view that Henry would have been upset by the death of Dr Mackenzie and had either taken a little more drink than was good for him, or his mind had become temporarily unhinged. Walter had found it impossible to convince him that both these suggestions were out of character. He then spoke to an Inspector called Gostelow, who impressed him as a very sensible man, and promised that he would circulate Henry’s description to his constables and ask them to look out for the missing orderly, but he comforted Walter with the comment that in such cases most people turned up later of their own accord, looking more embarrassed than anything else. Given that Henry had experienced a shock, he thought that such behaviour was not unexpected. Walter was unhappy that nothing more was to be done at that stage, but accepted that since Henry was an adult and had been missing for less than two days, the matter was unlikely to be treated as an emergency. Fearing that Henry had met with an accident and was lying unconscious in a hospital bed, Walter then sent messages to every hospital in Paddington giving Henry’s description and asking if an unidentified patient had been admitted. There was another family conference, and it was decided to put an advertisement in the Penny Illustrated Paper, which was duly arranged, although it was by then too late for an engraved portrait to go in the current week’s edition. Walter also asked Reverend Day at St Stephen’s to make an announcement during his Sunday sermon.

  Walter and Jackie went out searching together, visiting any public houses where Henry might have called, not that he frequented such places, but it was possible that after the shock of witnessing Dr Mackenzie’s death he might have felt in need of a restorative. They entered every shop along the way, stopped at market stalls, spoke to street traders, beggars and idle loiterers, showing them Henry’s photograph, but returned home exhausted and none the wiser.

  On the Friday morning Walter, without telling Alice the nature of his errand in case it distressed her, visited the mortuaries at the Kilburn and Paddington workhouses to ask if any unidentified bodies had been recently brought in, but the only one received which was still unnamed was at Kilburn and it was that of a young woman, probably an unfortunate, who had drowned herself in the Grand Junction Canal about two weeks previously.

  At Kilburn police station, Walter learned that all constables had been alerted to look for Henry, but so far without result. Walter’s next thought had been to interview the cabmen who drove along Ladbroke Grove Road, but due to the inclement weather on the night that Palmer had disappeared none could recall having seen him. Walter, seeing Alice’s health decline with the pain of uncertainty, had then suggested employing a detective. Miss Doughty, he had heard, was clever and sympathetic, and did not demand fees beyond what a working man might afford. They had some money put aside for the wedding but agreed that they were willing to spend it on finding Henry.

  That very morning Walter had been present at the funeral of Dr Mackenzie at All Souls, Kensal Green, and looked carefully about him during the brief but heartfelt ceremony. Henry was not there. Walter had been worried enough until that moment, but once he saw that Henry Palmer, a man of duty and sensitive emotions, had not attended Dr Mackenzie’s funeral, he felt suddenly convinced that the young man was dead.

  Frances felt a little guilty about taking the couple’s wedding savings, but as she looked at Alice, who was making a great meal out of her little corner of cake, she thought that if Henry was not found soon, there might be no wedding, but a funeral. Walter gently took Alice’s thin white hand and stroked it as if it was a piece of bone china that might break. He looked appealingly at Frances. ‘Do you think you can help us?’

  ‘I will make some preliminary enquiries,’ said Frances, ‘and if I feel there is nothing I can do, there will be no charge.’

  ‘And you’re to eat something,’ growled Sarah, looming over Alice, ‘because you’re no good to your brother like that!’

  Alice crammed a piece of cake into her mouth and burst into tears.

  Once the clients had departed Frances gave careful thought to all the many possible reasons for Henry Palmer’s disappearance. The two most important factors, she believed, were the character of the man, and the death of Dr Mackenzie. Everything that she had been told about Palmer suggested that he was most unlikely either to have turned to drink or gone insane. Even the possibility that the mortuary might close down following Dr Mackenzie’s death, a matter that cannot in any case have been determined that same night, would not have been enough to provoke any unexpected behaviour. Palmer was a young man of proven ability who might easily have found another post on the recommendation of Doctors Bonner and Warrinder, and he had calmly and resolutely seen his family through far worse crises than this. It followed that he had been overtaken by some unforeseen catastrophe, which had occurred somewhere between Dr Mackenzie’s home on Ladbroke Grove Road and his own in Golborne Road. If he had been taken ill, or met with an accident, and was lying insensible in a hospital or had lost his memory, or had died and was in a mortuary, the efforts of his family would surely by now have alerted an attendant to his identity. It was, thought Frances, far more likely that during his ten-minute walk under the concealing cloak of foggy darkness he had become a victim of foul play, which explained why those in the vicinity had seen, or professed to have seen, nothing. His body might in the course of time make itself known by foul odours emanating from a cellar or a drain. If Dr Mackenzie’s death had had anything to do with Palmer’s fate, it might only be that it had resulted in the young orderly having had the misfortune to be in a place where he would not otherwise have been at that time.

  Frances, however, could not help wondering if Dr Mackenzie’s death, even though due to natural causes, had been brought on by some external factor as yet unknown, something that might have resulted in Henry Palmer’s disappearance. The last people who had seen Palmer alive were Dr Bonner and Mrs Georgeson. She composed notes to them saying that she would be calling for an interview, and ordered a cab.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Logic dictated that Frances should attempt to recreate Henry Palmer’s last known journey, but the night was closing in and she did not feel bold enough to retrace his steps on foot in the dark and the fog, while a possible murderer roamed at large. That would have to wait until daylight, when she might at least, weather permitting, be able to look about her.

  Before setting out on her first call, Frances asked Sarah to take a message to two friends of hers who were always happy, in return for a small consideration and sometimes gratis, to supply information about Bayswater trade, often of a nature that was not publicly known.

  Charles Knight and Sebastian Taylor, usually known as ‘Chas’ and ‘Barstie’, were two enterprising and energetic individuals, men of business whose fortunes appeared to ebb and flow with the tides. Since the summer they had been enjoying a period of comparative calm and, for them, stability. Their nemesis, a loathsome young man carrying a sharp knife, who was known only as the ‘Filleter’ and often lurked about Paddington exuding a noxious air of menace, had not been seen for some weeks, and while they anxiously awaited the glad news that he was in a place where he could no longer trouble them, Chas and Barstie had decided to become citizens of Bayswater. They had accordingly taken accommodation in Westbourne Grove above the shop of Mr Beccles, an elderly watchmaker. Chas, bulging with optimism at this recent development, spoke airily of their ‘apartments’ and their ‘offices’, his words conjuring up a picture of vast suites of elegance and comfort, as if the apartment and the office was not in fact one and the same location and numbered more than a single small room, and was not at the top of two flights of damp, narrow stairs. The elevation of the premises above street level was, thought Frances wryly, what justified Chas in claiming that he was going up in the world of commerce. They had recently established a company, The Bayswater Display and Advertising Co.
Ltd, although whether that was actually the nature of its business Frances was unsure. Whatever it was they did, it seemed to involve long hours facing each other across a shared desk, a great deal of running up and down stairs, and occasional food fights.

  ‘Mr Palmer’s disappearance may have nothing at all to do with his occupation or any person at the Life House, but I must first satisfy myself of that before I dismiss the idea,’ Frances told Sarah. ‘If the gentlemen can tell me anything about the business, the directors or the employees, whatever it might be, that would be of the greatest assistance.’

  Dr Mackenzie’s lodgings were on the east side of Ladbroke Grove Road, just a little to the north of its junction with Telford Road. The houses in that location were not so tall or so grand as those in other parts of the long thoroughfare, and the builder had not thought it necessary to encrust them with pillars and porticoes, but they were respectable enough. As Frances stepped up to the door she saw the top of a housemaid’s cap bobbing about in the basement area below. At the sound of the knocker, the maid turned her head up to look, her face a white circle, as pale as the cap, with watery grey eyes and a pinched nose. She said nothing, but made to go indoors at a pace that suggested that Frances might have to wait several minutes for admission. Moments later, however, the front door was opened by the landlady.