Death in Bayswater Page 20

  ‘Woman,’ said one of the newsmen, clawing damp hair from his eyes.

  ‘Young and good-looking,’ said another. ‘That’s what I heard. Only not looking so good once he’d finished with her if you know what I mean.’

  Frances and Sarah, since they did not resemble newspaper persons, were able to enter the station unimpeded, where they found a large crowd of men and women waiting for attention, and the desk sergeant, red in the face, employing a colleague to assist him with the crush. Inspector Swanson strode out of a side office accompanied by a doleful gentleman, shook hands with him and bid him farewell, then took a look at the record book on the desk, made some pencil notes in the margin, and called out a name. A woman bundled in dark shawls rose from a bench and went with him. Moments later Sergeant Brown emerged from another room bidding goodbye to his interview subject and beckoned to another. As each individual left the station, they were seized upon by the newsmen, demanding to know what questions they had been asked and what they had learned.

  If the matter had been less urgent Frances would have left and returned later, but time was running out for Jim Price, only nine days from execution, and she remained. At length, Sharrock appeared, and on seeing Frances and Sarah, he gave them an almost sympathetic look before he beckoned them to his office. The normally crowded room now resembled a junkyard where the contents of every ash bin in the district was waiting to be sorted. Boxes and bundles were piled high in every available space, stowed on the floor, the desk, shelves and even on his chair.

  ‘All right, but make it quick. I’ve got half Paddington out there looking for lost relatives.’

  There was no point in Frances even looking for somewhere to sit. ‘Is there any word on Jim Price?’

  ‘No. Next question.’

  ‘I was thinking –’

  He puffed out his cheeks, but said nothing and gestured her to go on.

  ‘Last night you said that whoever murdered Mr Ibbitson had been interrupted and ran away. So there ought to be a witness who saw him.’

  Sharrock rolled his eyes. ‘Any more ideas which the police have already thought of? There’s men asking around everyone in the area right now. We’ve spoken to all the residents of the Mews; none of them saw or heard anything, and we don’t suspect any of them either.’

  ‘I assume the body of the second victim hasn’t been identified yet.’

  ‘That’s right. Young female, might be a servant or shop girl or some such.’

  ‘And was she cut in the same way as before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Constable Cross mentioned a chalk mark.’

  ‘We find lots of those about the place. Might have something to do with the murder but I doubt it.’

  ‘Only, I have heard mention of a club for young men with money but no sense who go around committing crimes and taking risks for a wager, and they show what they have done with a chalk mark. They call themselves the Bold Bloods and they have their headquarters at the Piccadilly Club. I would not be surprised if the three young men who were ejected from the meeting last night were of their number. Their leader appears to be a Mr Pargeter, although from his description I don’t think he was amongst them.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Sharrock sounded unimpressed. ‘Well that won’t solve the murders unless they have formed themselves into a murder club, which I rather doubt, but it might clear up some of the smaller crimes round here. I’ve questioned some of those sparks but when you ask them about it they keep quiet. Probably part of their code.’

  ‘Have you had a report as to when the murders were committed last night?’

  ‘Not yet. Of course we won’t get an exact time, but we do know that Mr Ibbitson was last seen at seven o’clock and he was found at half past eight.’

  ‘The blood on the bonnet ribbons was dry to the touch. He must have been killed soon after seven.’

  Sharrock grunted. ‘Well we’ll leave that for Dr Collin to decide, shall we?’

  ‘Inspector, I know you don’t wish me to look into these murders, and I would not wish to do so myself, but I am thinking of the effect they will have on my attempt to gain a reprieve for Jim Price. I would be grateful therefore if you could let me know as soon as the second victim is identified. I will ensure that I have messengers here to bring me the information. I cannot afford delay.’

  ‘No, well neither can I.’ He made to conduct her to the door, but as he did so there were loud hysterical screams from the public office. ‘Looks like I might have the answer for you now.’

  It was a while before some semblance of calm, or at least what passed for calm in the police station, was restored. A draper’s assistant had arrived to make enquiries about her sister, a trimmer of hats, who had failed to attend a family gathering. She had not been permitted to see the body but after seeing her sister’s best bonnet with the silk flowers she made by hand, was left in no doubt as to the identity of the dead woman. The victim had been twenty, and engaged to be married in the spring. Sharrock looked like a crushed man as he told Frances what he had learned. ‘It’s like we’ve got Old Nick himself walking about out there. Nothing more you can do here, Miss Doughty.’

  ‘Do you know when the inquests will open?’

  ‘Well with normal cases, the drownings and the drunks, I’d say Monday, but in this case – I wouldn’t be surprised if the coroner sat this afternoon.’

  Sharrock proved to be right. Frances and Sarah did not hope to learn anything at the opening of the inquest at Providence Hall, but somehow they both felt they ought to be there. The court was more than usually crowded with newsmen, many of whom must have known George Ibbitson personally, and they were very pale, quiet and strained. Mr Gillan sat in a corner, with a helpless look, like a man in a dream. When he saw Frances, it was the first time he had not hurried over to her, although she could see that he wanted to speak to her. She went and sat by him, and saw that his eyes, though dry, had a red rawness about them, as if much scoured. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘Honest. You’ve got to believe me. He never told me what he was planning. If he had, I would have told him not to, or at least had someone go with him.’

  Frances would have done anything to spare George Ibbitson’s family the pain of appearing to give evidence, and volunteered to do so, but in the end it was his father, who had seen the clean corpse, neatly shrouded in a sheet, who had made the formal identification at the mortuary and was called up to whisper out his words to the courtroom. A Miss Whitaker, her voice clouded with tears, confirmed that the deceased young woman was her sister. Both cases were adjourned until Monday, and the coroner urged very strongly that medical men should put all their other work aside and give their full attention to the Bayswater tragedies.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was the second of the three Sundays before Jim Price’s execution. That morning at St Stephen’s church, Reverend Day preached a sermon about guarding against the evils of the world, and the congregation joined him in prayers for the recent departed. Frances allowed herself some additional time to say a quiet prayer for the prisoner. He was not mentioned in the sermon and she suspected that she and Sarah were the only persons present to give him any thought. Sarah had put a pudding on to boil before they departed for church and later that day as they tackled the hearty assemblage of suet crust, beef and gravy, followed by fig jelly, Frances, with very little appetite for the feast before her, wondered what the condemned man was enjoying for his Sunday dinner.

  Frances, in her continuing and so far fruitless efforts to acquire information about the Wheelock marriage, had asked Ratty and his men to watch the activities of the servants of Wheelock’s new home. She had just settled down to an afternoon of letter writing when a small boy arrived with the news that the Wheelocks’ parlourmaid, who had been away on her half day visiting her sister, was on her way back to attend to the household for the evening.

  Sarah put on her cloak, picked up a basket of apples, and hurried away. The fruit was part of Sarah’s plan to m
ake the young woman’s acquaintance, and there would follow a process of earning her trust to the point where she was willing to divulge information which she was supposed not to.

  When Sarah returned it was with apples so bumped and bruised they looked as if they had been used for a game of skittles, although Frances had no doubt they would appear on her dinner table in some more tempting guise before long. Sarah said that after meeting the girl in the street following an apparent upset of the basket, she had represented herself as a cook working for a small family, and as servants did, they had compared notes on their situations. The parlourmaid, whose name was Hannah, was twenty-four and had been with the household for a year, having replaced a girl who had left to marry. The coachman, Mr Nettles, the cook/housekeeper and the scullery maid had all worked for Mrs Wheelock, the former Mrs Outram, for several years. Hannah remembered old Mr Outram, who had been a hale gentleman for his advanced age, and had died very peacefully several months ago. It had cost the cook some ingenuity to accede to his insistence that all meals be produced on strict vegetarian principles, something his wife had been able to tolerate only because there were secret supplies of roast beef and boiled ham in the larder. After his death she had regaled herself with meat dinners in plenty.

  The lady’s maid, Daisy, the one servant who was in constant attendance on her mistress, had been appointed by Mr Wheelock not long after the wedding, her predecessor having been summarily dismissed. Hannah did not know the reason for the dismissal. She did not like to say anything against Daisy, but then in a sudden rush revealed that she thought that Daisy was careless, and not respectful enough in her manner, and she was sometimes obliged to wonder if she had ever been a lady’s maid before.

  When Sarah ventured on the subject of Hannah’s new master there was a difficulty, since the young woman was reluctant to say very much at all. ‘I can tell when a servant has had her mouth stopped and this one has, good and proper,’ Sarah reported.

  ‘Would you learn more from Daisy?’ asked Frances, not very hopefully.

  ‘In Wheelock’s pay, I’m sure of it. You’ll get nothing from her. I don’t know what he’s promised her but we’d never match it. I could try talking to the others, but they’re not close enough to the mistress to tell us much and if I approached them as well it makes it more likely that Wheelock will find out I’ve been asking questions. I did ask where the last lady’s maid went, pretended I knew someone looking for one, but Hannah didn’t know. The girl was called Mary Ann. No surname.’

  Frances sighed. Without a surname she would be impossible to trace. ‘Can you discover more from Hannah?’

  ‘Give it time, yes.’

  ‘When will you see her again?’

  ‘Tomorrow. I mentioned a favourite recipe and now I have to make it so she can taste some. Nothing like a slice of cake to start a conversation. The cook is almost as old as the mistress and likes to put her feet up in the afternoon and let Hannah do most of the work, so I can go round then.’ Sarah went to make the cake, and other rather more quickly assembled treats for teatime.

  Tom called with a report on Miss Digby’s romance, and seeing that there were scones in the oven, a pat of fresh butter in the larder and a new pot of jam, stayed a little longer than he had planned. ‘’Tisn’t the maid carrying the notes, after all. It’s Miss Digby’s friend, a chattering type who she went to school with, an’ knows all ’er secrets. Not that ladies’ secrets are very excitin’ but I bet ’er father thinks so. They went out to take a little turn in the park after church and she passed Miss Digby a message, an’ then they whispered a lot. I did ’ope to get ’old of the note but she put it in ’er dress front, so that wasn’t very advisable.’

  ‘I don’t believe ladies are careless with love notes,’ said Frances, who had never received a love note but had read about such things in novels. ‘I shall not tell her father about this just yet, or he might be tempted to challenge her with it. Let her imagine no one knows her secret, keep a close watch and see where she goes.’

  The inquest into the death of George Ibbitson and the draper’s assistant killed on the same night was due to resume on Monday morning. In the usual way of such things the first session had done little more than identify the bodies. Often a week elapsed between hearings, but given the urgency of the situation the medical men had agreed to give their examinations some priority. Frances was due to go to Somerset House to follow up her idea about tracing the Wheelock wedding, and Sarah agreed to attend the inquests and report back. There was a substantial amount of mail that morning, including quite a number of letters for Sarah from women denouncing their husbands as the Bayswater Face-slasher, and asking if she would come to their houses and take them away. ‘Cheaper than divorce, less risky than arsenic,’ was Sarah’s comment.

  When Frances had first visited Somerset House she had had only a few pennies to spend and had gone there crushed inside an omnibus that had heaved and creaked like an old sailing vessel, and was as damp underfoot. On another occasion, having spent the last of her funds on a certificate, she had walked all the way home. Now, as a busy detective able to charge her clients the expenses of travel, she adopted the relative comfort of a hansom cab in which she could read through her notes and had the added benefit of little low folding doors in front to protect her skirts from mud splashes. The brief bout of fair weather had vanished and all was now squally teasing winds and rain showers.

  Her idea was to try and discover the home of Mr Wheelock’s parents, an address he might have used when planning his wedding. At first Frances feared that she might have to examine every directory for London and the surrounding counties, but then she thought of a better idea. Since she knew Mr Wheelock’s age to be about twenty-four, it was not hard to find his birth in the registers and discover that it had taken place in Lambeth in 1857. Hoping that his family had not removed from the area since then, her next task was to examine the most recent Surrey directories, thankful that the surname was an uncommon one. To her great relief, she was successful. The name of the head of a Lambeth household was Mrs Mary Wheelock. Frances might have gone further, and obtained a birth certificate to confirm that Mrs Mary Wheelock was Mr Timothy Wheelock’s mother, but this would have taken a week, and in view of Mr Chandler’s great sense of urgency in the matter, she felt pressed for time. She decided to assume the connection, and go to the appropriate registry office, the address of which was listed in the directory. Hopefully this would supply the location of the wedding. It would be a long journey and she could not get there that day before the office closed, so it would have to be undertaken first thing next morning.

  Much against her better judgment, she took the opportunity to look into her own family mystery. In 1865 Alicia Dobree had married Vernon Salter, who Frances believed to be her natural father, when he was twenty-eight years of age. Frances expected the bride to have been a young heiress but was unable to find any trace of a birth of that name in the registers, which suggested that she was either born abroad or before September 1837 when registration began. Old directories of Kensington listed Alicia’s father Lancelot as resident from 1827 onwards, and showed that his fortune had been made in silk.

  Frances was returning home, sitting alone in a cab with her thoughts, and was not far from her destination when the hansom, which had already been going barely more than walking pace in the growing weight of traffic, finally drew to a halt, impeded by a delivery cart which had paused for unloading. Through the vent above her head she heard the driver calling out to the carter to hurry up, and suspected that he was modifying the normally ripe language he would have used on such an occasion out of consideration for his lady passenger. She was craning her neck, trying to look ahead to see how far the obstruction went, but could detect nothing in the great crush of vehicles and horses. All about her was the rumble and creak of carriages, the panting of protesting animals, and the cries of coachmen and irate passengers, then the rain swept in with a mocking howl and attacked her face like needles. Fr
ances was pulling her cloak more tightly about her when a lithe figure suddenly vaulted on to the cab, and managed by some acrobatic means to slither into the seat beside her. The sour stench told her at once who he was and she turned and stared in horror to see none other than the Filleter sitting beside her with an ugly sneer.

  She tried to cry out but for a moment her throat was paralysed, then she gulped and called out ‘Driver!’ her voice sounding hoarse with fright.

  ‘Moving on now, Miss!’ said the driver and the cab jerked into motion. Frances gasped. Had he not noticed the weight of the extra passenger, or had he been distracted by the furore around them? She looked about, wondering if it was safe for her to demand that the driver stop and open the doors so she could jump from the cab, something he was unlikely to do without payment of his fare, or even whether in her long skirts it was possible for her to scramble over them herself, but then the Filleter’s hand closed firmly about her upper arm.

  ‘I wouldn’t advise that,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t scream, do as you’re told and you won’t get hurt.’

  She had never been so close to him before, and neither his smell nor his appearance improved with nearer acquaintance. He seemed to be dressed in the grave-clothes of a long buried corpse, which hung badly on his long thin frame. He did not look her in the eye but stared downwards, his body hunched like a predatory beast about to spring on its prey. His face was unshaven and grimed with dirt, the long dark hair thick with dried mud and dust.

  Frances made an effort to remain calm. ‘What do you want with me?’ she demanded.

  ‘Just a talk. I hear you’ve been spreading rumours about me. I don’t like that,’ he added in the curious soft voice that always made her shiver.