Death in Bayswater Read online

  All this time Frances had imagined, indeed hoped, that Rosetta and her unknown lover, a man enigmatically referred to in the letter as ‘V’, were still together, living quietly, perhaps raising a family, and giving every outward appearance of respectability. They might even have married after William’s death. This recently discovered document proved otherwise.

  Frances had been trying to locate Louise Salter, an old schoolfellow of Rosetta’s who had been a witness at her wedding to William Doughty in 1855. The Salter family had left Bayswater many years ago following a business reversal but Frances hoped that Louise might have corresponded with Rosetta and know where she was to be found. The registers in Somerset House held no record of either Louise’s marriage or death, but an old Bayswater directory listed a Bernard Salter, silversmith, and the Bayswater Chronicle confirmed that he had gone bankrupt in 1858. An examination of records held at Somerset House revealed that Bernard Salter, silver finisher, had died in Tower Hamlets in 1864, leaving property valued at less than £30 and probate had been granted to his son, Vernon Horatio Salter.

  A terrible thrill of excitement had pervaded Frances’ body when she saw this name, the name perhaps of the man who was her natural father. Eagerly, she scoured the registers and found no record of the death of Vernon Salter, only his birth in 1837, which made him five years younger than her mother. If he and Rosetta had married after the death of William, it was too soon to know, as the most recent registers were not yet available for public examination. Frances had previously searched for a bigamous marriage under her mother’s maiden and married surnames, and found nothing, but her new searches had uncovered a marriage record in 1865 for a Vernon H. Salter, in the fashionable district of St George Hanover Square. She purchased the certificate, and it was this horrible document that she was now examining.

  Vernon Horatio Salter, son of Bernard Salter, silversmith (deceased), had on 3 April 1865 married Alicia Dobree, daughter of Lancelot Dobree, gentleman, with an address in Kensington. Louise Salter had been a witness to the wedding, the other being a Miss Edith White. For a moment Frances wondered if she had been led astray by a series of coincidences, but then she saw that the certificate gave Vernon’s address as the same lodging house in Chelsea where Rosetta had given birth to the twins. The conclusion was inevitable. Less than two years after stealing Rosetta away from her family, her lover had deserted her for another woman.

  Frances, feeling suddenly chilled to her soul, said nothing. She could have tried to discover more, but heart-heavy, the will to do so had drained out of her. She replaced the certificate in its envelope and put it in her desk drawer with the other family papers. By the time she returned to the table to sit there in silence, Sarah was clearing away the breakfast things. She gave Frances a wary glance, but did nothing to disturb her reverie, and took the dishes down to the kitchen. So this, thought Frances, was the bitter reward for her curiosity. She was the daughter of a woman who had abandoned her husband and children and a man who had left his mistress and child to marry money. She had always feared that by prying into her own history she might uncover something that it was better not to know, and now she had. What this might mean about herself and her character she dared not imagine.

  Sarah returned with a fresh pot of tea and this had barely been finished when there was a knock at the front door. They exchanged glances of surprise, since no clients were expected that morning and Sarah crossed to the window and peered out. Frances and Sarah occupied the first-floor apartment in what had once been the family home of a man of substance. The other residents were elderly ladies of the most impeccable respectability, whose rare visitors were usually antiquated clergymen, or quiet females devoted to charity work. ‘Two women,’ said Sarah, ‘one young one not so young, mother and daughter I’d say. Daughter holding up the mother who looks like fainting away any minute.’

  ‘For us, I am sure.’ Frances welcomed the distraction, reflecting that hard as her situation might be there were many others who had worse trials to endure. Perhaps, she thought, the reason that being a detective suited her so well was that she could make wrong things right, and thus avoid the tendency to transgression that she was now very afraid must lurk in her nature. There was just enough time to tidy the little table across which she interviewed all of her clients, make sure that the carafe of water was filled, and bring clean napkins for the wiping of moisture from foreheads and eyes.

  All was in place when the maid announced that a Mrs and Miss Price had called asking most urgently to see Miss Doughty. Frances had, like every inhabitant of Bayswater, studied the reports of the trial of Jim Price although she had probably given the details of the case more careful attention than most. Although the clients who came to her door were more likely to be concerned about a lost dog or faithless spouse than presenting her with a case of murder, she thought it best to know all she could about Bayswater crimes, since in that small bustling part of London everything seemed to be connected with everything else, like the strands of a spider’s web. She knew that the mother and sister of the condemned man had, despite the pain it must have caused them, attended every day of the trial, hoping that some miracle would occur to provide the vital piece of evidence that would prove his innocence. Even after the verdict was announced they had not according to the newspapers wavered in their belief that Jim Price had not murdered his sweetheart, a belief that, as far as Frances knew, they shared with no one else.

  Frances asked the maid to show the visitors upstairs, and Sarah took up some knitting and settled into an armchair by the parlour fire. Her solid reliable presence was always a source of immense comfort. Sarah had once been a maid of all work when the Doughtys had lived above the chemists shop, but in her new occupation as assistant detective, she had become as indispensable to Frances as her ability to think. Sarah’s strong arms had saved Frances’ life on more than one occasion, ensured her health when sometimes she had been so absorbed in a problem she had almost forgotten to eat, and the former servant’s stout common sense was an antidote to many a wild theory.

  If Frances had entertained even a moment’s doubt that the two women who had begged to see her were any other than the mother and sister of the convicted murderer Jim Price, that doubt vanished as soon as they entered the room. Mrs Price was a short round woman in her forties, though much aged with grief, her face, grey with misery, folded into deep lines. It was clear that she cared nothing about her appearance or comfort, but that her daughter had been making gallant efforts to tidy the wisps of faded hair that fluttered about her face, and ensure that she was well-wrapped against the autumn chill in a long coarse woollen shawl that constantly threatened to slip to the floor. Mrs Price, oblivious to heat or cold or anything but the pain within, clung tightly to her daughter’s arm. The girl, who could not yet be eighteen, was a slender shadow of her mother, and looked almost too frail to support her parent, something she was achieving only through courage and necessity. Sarah rose at once to assist the struggling girl, and guided Mrs Price not to the straight-backed chair that faced Frances across the table, but a more comfortable seat by the fire. Mrs Price whispered her gratitude, and panted softly, the dry sobbing of a woman who had no tears left inside her.

  ‘It is very kind of you to see us, Miss Doughty,’ said the girl, looking relieved at seeing her mother so well looked after and almost falling into a chair with exhaustion. ‘You must be so very busy, and I was afraid, as we had no appointment …’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Frances quickly. ‘May I offer you some refreshment? You both appear very fatigued.’ As a rule Frances only offered her clients a drink of water but in this case she did not want either of them to faint or, in the case of Mrs Price, actually expire before the interview was over.

  ‘It is very hard to think of food at a time like this,’ the girl admitted. ‘I do not believe mother has eaten these two days.’

  Frances glanced at Sarah who nodded, and went down to the kitchen. It would not be long before a jug
of nourishing hot cocoa and a plate piled high with bread and butter appeared. ‘How may I help you?’ Frances asked her guest.

  Miss Price cast her gaze to the floor. ‘I expect you have read in the newspapers about my brother, Jim.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘We were allowed to see him yesterday. He is bearing up well, trying to maintain hope of a reprieve. But I fear that unless something new is discovered …’ She sighed, a sigh that seemed to have been torn up from the depths of her thin body. ‘We have met with Mr Rawsthorne the solicitor. He is writing a letter to the Home Secretary on our behalf. He mentioned you, Miss Doughty; he thought you might be able to help us. He said that you had often succeeded where others had failed. But there is so little time, eighteen days before the …’ Her eyes filled with tears. The effort of saying the last word ‘execution’ was beyond her.

  Mrs Price uttered a gulping sob. Sarah returned with the refreshments so swiftly that Frances felt sure she had found some cocoa ready-boiled and begged it from their landlady, Mrs Embleton, a kindly soul who had suffered far worse inconvenience with very little complaint since Frances had taken up residence.

  ‘This is what you need,’ Sarah told Mrs Price, in a tone that anticipated only compliance. ‘Drink it all up!’ As she poured the thick liquid into a cup a faint whiff of warm brandy enhanced the atmosphere.

  ‘What is it you would like me to do?’ Frances asked, as Sarah brought the jug to the table, poured cocoa for the daughter, and began to distribute thickly buttered bread.

  Miss Price held the warm cup as one would have cradled a gift. Her fingers were pale and slim as bone, the tips abraded from long hours spent plying a needle. ‘We want you to prove him innocent,’ she said, earnestly. ‘Jim has sworn to us on all that he holds most holy that he did not commit this dreadful crime. But it looked so bad for him when the police found blood on his hands and clothes. He has always said, and still says that the blood was not Martha’s but that of a man he found lying in the street, a drunken man who had fallen, and whose face was bleeding. Jim helped him up and set him on his way, and that was how he was stained with blood.’ She sniffed the aroma of the cocoa cautiously, then sipped.

  ‘But the man was never found, he never came forward,’ Frances observed.

  ‘No, and it is possible, of course, that since he was the worse for drink he does not even remember the incident. Or perhaps he was doing something he ought not to have been doing, and dare not admit where he was. But supposing he could be found, and even if he is unable or unwilling to speak up, then some person who knows him might recall that he came home that night with blood on his face.’

  Frances had undertaken and triumphed in harder tasks than this one, but not, she knew, in so short a time. ‘I will see what can be done, but even if this man is found, and can tell his story, it may not ensure that your brother is exonerated.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Miss Price with a little quiver of her lower lip, ‘but Mr Rawsthorne said that where doubt is raised in a case then a respite is possible. If Jim’s life can be spared, if the – his fate –’ at this, Mrs Price uttered a wail of misery, ‘if it can be delayed by a few weeks while new witnesses are examined then there will be time for the police to find the real murderer.’

  At least, thought Frances, with some relief, she was not being asked to solve the murder. Sarah disapproved of Frances getting involved in cases of murder, which seemed to happen quite often, and Frances, without even needing to look, knew that her assistant was frowning hard. ‘Let us approach our task one step at a time,’ she said gently. ‘The first thing to do, I agree, is to find this witness. I can guarantee nothing, but I promise I will do my best.’

  ‘Anyone who knew Jim would never have believed he could have hurt Martha,’ pleaded Miss Price, ‘why they were sweethearts since they were children, and we always knew they would marry one day. Martha was such a dear good soul, she would not have been untrue.’

  The unhappy client was undoubtedly sincere, but Frances judged her to be a girl who would always think the best of others. She had not, as Frances had, come into contact with the worst elements of Bayswater – the liars, the cheats, the thieves and the cold-hearted murderers. ‘I must interview your brother as soon as possible, it is essential that I hear the whole story from his own lips.’

  ‘You’ll need to write to the justices to get an order to let you in to see him,’ advised Sarah, returning to her knitting. Frances could not help wondering how Sarah was familiar with the protocols of visiting a condemned felon in a death cell at Newgate, and decided it was best not to enquire, at least not until they were alone.

  ‘There won’t be any trouble about that,’ Miss Price reassured them. ‘Mr Rawsthorne told me that if you call on him he will let you have the paper you need. Mother and I have promised to go and see Jim once we had spoken to you. If you could come with us and tell him you were helping him it would give him new heart, I know!’

  ‘Then we will go at once,’ said Frances.

  Miss Price turned to her mother with a brave smile. ‘There, mother, what did I say! Miss Doughty will put it all right!’

  Frances was not so confident, but she knew that there was no time to waste. Both she and Sarah would have to concentrate all their energies on the task. She examined her appointment book. ‘Sarah, while I am out I would like you to send a note to Ratty to say that I want to see him later today. Then could you study the newspaper account of Mr Price’s trial and make a list of all the witnesses and most especially anyone who was mentioned in court but did not appear. I will need to see them all. I have one client calling this afternoon, it’s Mr Candy again; if I am not back in time, see him and find out what he needs.’

  Sarah nodded. Ratty was one of a band of messenger boys who knew the streets of Bayswater and the comings and goings of its inhabitants better than anyone. Sarah’s young relative Tom Smith had organised what might have been a ragged rabble into a flourishing concern that fetched and delivered anything and everything all over west London with speed and reliability, and counted Ratty as one of his best ‘men’. Ratty, a bright and industrious youth, harboured ambitions of becoming a detective and now commanded his own group of agents who were dedicated exclusively to carrying out searches for Frances. If anyone could find the man with the injured face it was he.

  Frances and Miss Price helped the older woman down the stairs, Mrs Price murmuring grateful blessings on Frances with every step, and a cab was secured to take them to the office of Mr Rawsthorne. That gentleman had been the Doughty family solicitor for many years, and he and Frances’ father William had counted themselves as friends. It was a matter of some embarrassment to Frances that one of her earlier investigations had inadvertently resulted in the failure of the Bayswater Bank which had very nearly ruined Mr Rawsthorne’s business, but he had recovered from this setback and bore her no ill-will. Many of her clients came from his personal recommendation and she in turn was happy to direct those in need of a solicitor to him. She rather hoped that he would be available to speak to her that morning and she would not have to deal with his confidential clerk, Mr Wheelock, a scrawny young man with ink-stained teeth and an insolent manner, a hoarder of secret and sometimes damaging documents. Mr Rawsthorne’s office occupied the ground floor of his handsome villa in Porchester Terrace, which ran north from Bayswater Road. There were no means by which the Price family could afford his services, but Frances knew that some solicitors took on important cases such as this with little or no fee, as success could be just as lucrative in terms of fame. She had not yet discussed her fee with her visitors and felt that a similar arrangement must have been expected and could hardly be refused.

  The early morning fogs that had recently been such an unwelcome feature of the season had thankfully cleared, to be replaced by an unfriendly breeze, making a cool day into one that excited wintry shivers. Frances looked anxiously at her companions, but they appeared to be not so much impervious to cold, as accustomed to it. S
he was just boarding the cab when a voice called out and she turned to see a slight but energetic figure, Mr George Ibbitson of the Bayswater Chronicle, running up waving his hand. Ibbitson was a seventeen-year-old clerk, who having displayed both promise and enthusiasm, was currently being instructed by his superiors in the ways of a newspaperman, and was always to be seen where there was information to be gleaned. He often called on Frances for the exchange of intelligence. ‘Miss Doughty, have you heard the latest?’ he exclaimed.