Ann Granger (14 page)

With this last impatient outburst he glared at me as if I were the obstacle.

‘Dr Lefebre,’ I said a little nervously, ‘I am acquainted with an inspector, plain clothes division, of Scotland Yard.’

‘Are you, by George!’ he returned in surprise.

‘His name is Inspector Benjamin Ross. He’s experienced and will know how to go about his enquiries in the house in a manner that won’t upset the Roche ladies.’

‘You are full of surprises, Miss Martin.’ He smoothed his beard. ‘Well, then, let us go down and tell Miss Roche.’

With this he opened the door but I signalled he should wait. I put out my head to check if anyone were about, then stepped into the corridor first, motioning him to follow without delay. I thought that if anyone were watching, we must look a real pair of conspirators and the worst of conclusions would be drawn.

We found Christina and Phoebe Roche in the drawing room, seated side by side. They’d taken the brief interval to change their gowns and were now both dressed in black, looking for all the world like a pair of crows on a fence. I was astonished at this unexpected display of mourning for someone who was, after all, only on the premises by chance and whose shocking death had been dismissed so brusquely by Miss Roche only some half an hour earlier. I realised they were observing form, even in these unusual circumstances. Perhaps my words had had something to do with it. At any rate, a death at Shore House was a death. They, or more probably Christina Roche, had decided it must be marked in a suitable way if only for the time Brennan’s corpse remained here. Neither Constable Gosling nor anyone else would be able to say the matter hadn’t been treated with due respect. They were listening to Williams who was speaking rapidly and with insistence. The housekeeper broke off as we entered and treated both of us to a hostile glare.

‘Later,’ said Miss Roche to her.

Williams withdrew.

Dr Lefebre moved faultlessly into action and I had to admire him. He commiserated with the ladies on the misfortune come upon them. They must not become even more distressed by attempting to deal with the law. He would take care of that. It was not a suitable task for ladies. ‘Police officers,’ said Dr Lefebre with an apologetic glance at me, ‘are accustomed to deal with some rough persons in the line of their profession. They have little to do with females of refinement such as you.’

‘I want the body off the premises,’ snapped Miss Roche. ‘I have told Williams to tell Greenaway to remove it and put it somewhere out of the way.’

At this Lefebre looked very alarmed and exclaimed, ‘Excuse me!’ He dashed out after Mrs Williams.

I knew he had gone to countermand the order to move the corpse before the arrival of the constable, and hoped the housekeeper was more in awe of him than of me.

‘It’s not a bit of good his insisting,’ declared Miss Roche, also guessing his purpose. ‘I cannot have the body of a rat-catcher lying about in the garden where anyone may fall over it.’

‘I said bringing Brennan here would mean bad luck,’ burst out Miss Phoebe. ‘Oh, Christina, the whole county will talk of nothing else! The gossip, the scandal! We shan’t be able to show our faces, not even in church.’

‘Pull yourself together, Phoebe. The county will take its lead from us. We must show dignity and restraint and refuse to let ourselves be forced into any change of ways by this wretched occurrence.’

I decided it was time for me to speak up. ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Roche, but I have had the misfortune to be involved in a murder investigation once before.’

Miss Phoebe threw up her hands, squeaked and fell back in her chair.

‘Have you, indeed?’ said her sister in a way that suggested she wasn’t a bit surprised to hear it.

‘These things cannot remain a private matter. The police will want to ask questions of everyone here.’

‘What can any of us tell them?’ wailed Miss Phoebe.

‘Quite,’ said her sister. ‘What, indeed? Should Constable Gosling forget himself to the degree that he tries to badger either my sister or myself, I shall put him in his place. Brennan was a rascally fellow. He roamed round the countryside and probably got himself into all kinds of mischief and mixed with some very unsavoury company. No doubt he quarrelled with someone of similar low character as himself, that person pursued him bent on vengeance and by purest mischance came upon him in our garden. None of that can be laid at our door.’

I thought of the knife but decided this was not the moment to mention it. Fortunately Dr Lefebre returned at that moment, somewhat out of breath but triumphant.

‘The body will remain as it is until Gosling gets here. After that it can be removed to the nearest suitable place. Is there an undertaker’s establishment nearby?’

‘No,’ said Miss Roche curtly, as if the idea that anyone in the district might require the services of an undertaker was preposterous.

Miss Phoebe whispered, ‘There is a carpenter in the village who makes coffins as required. He made a beautiful one for Lucy’s baby. It was taken to the churchyard in our carriage while we walked behind. Everything was done very decently.’

An image of the sad little procession leapt into my mind and I recalled the doctor’s jest as he and I ‘walked the hill’ behind the trap on our journey to Shore House.

‘I wasn’t thinking of burying Brennan,’ said the doctor, ‘but of preserving his body for a while – for official purposes. Undertakers’ premises usually have mortuaries attached to them. However, Gosling, when he deigns to get here, may have an idea.’

I knew he referred to a post-mortem examination but probably the ladies didn’t. They looked vaguely perplexed.

The doctor went on more briskly, ‘Now then, ladies, I wish to put it to you that this will require the attention of Scotland Yard.’

They both stared at him in silence. Miss Phoebe’s expression suggested she did not know what or where Scotland Yard was. Her sister, Christina, looked at Lefebre as if he had gone as mad as the unfortunates for whom he cared.

‘Nonsense,’ she said.

‘Alas, dear lady, it may prove necessary. Besides, I further put it to you that it would be better to have a total stranger come here and make enquiries than someone who may be known locally, perhaps have acquaintances, and be inclined to gossip?’

It was clear this argument made a powerful impression on both sisters. Phoebe leaned forward and touched her sister’s arm imploringly. Christina Roche said nothing but waited for the doctor to support his suggestion.

Dr Lefebre hastened to follow up his advantage. He indicated me. ‘We are fortunate in that Miss Martin is acquainted with an inspector of Scotland Yard – plain clothes division.’

‘Plain clothes?’ asked Miss Roche thoughtfully.

‘Just so, ma’am. There would be no uniform about the place to occasion comment. Inspector Ross is, Miss Martin tells me, a very gentlemanly officer.’

I hadn’t exactly said that. Ben had no pretensions to be a gentleman and might even have considered the suggestion an insult.

‘He is very tactful,’ I said, ‘and educated.’

‘Then why is he a policeman?’ returned Miss Roche. ‘Never mind, don’t tell me. I suppose he has been forced into the profession by some scandal in his past.’

The assumption that Ben was no better than James Craven spending his remittance money in Canton caused me to bridle. I’d opened my mouth to refute it when Dr Lefebre caught my eye and shook his head. I stayed silent but mutinous.

‘I should like, with your permission and if it’s possible,’ Dr Lefebre went on, ‘to travel up to London by the late train today. That is, if I can get to the railway station in Southampton in time. If not, and as Gosling is taking his time appearing, it looks increasingly doubtful, I’ll go first thing in the morning. I shall of course call on your brother to inform him—’

‘Oh, good heavens, Charles!’ wailed Miss Phoebe. ‘What ever will he say?’ She fell back again in her chair.

‘Do you require smelling salts, Phoebe?’ demanded her sister unsympathetically.

‘Oh, no, Christina, I only—’

‘Then if you can’t be sensible, be quiet. Of course Charles will have to be told. Very well, then.’ Christina Roche lifted her hand and gestured in the general direction of London. ‘Let the man from Scotland Yard be sent for.’

Part Two

Chapter Nine

Inspecter Benjamin Ross

THEY SAY a police officer develops a nose for trouble. I’m not a great one for relying on unfounded instincts myself, preferring something I can demonstrate to a court. Facts turn into evidence and that’s what you can produce to nail your villain: not some vague feeling. Defence counsel would soon have you if you tried that. (Not that the gentlemen of the bar are averse to playing on the instincts of juries, but the judge is there to stop that kind of thing.)

However, experience has taught me to know when a witness isn’t being frank … and when mischief is afoot. That’s not something one can demonstrate to the bewigged assembly of learned friends, but only a fool ignores it.

Since Lizzie left London I’d been prey to imprecise but niggling premonitions of disaster. I told myself sternly this was only because I harboured the feelings for Lizzie that I did. I’d been strongly against her going to Hampshire. I’d mistrusted the tale told her by Mr Charles Roche and I didn’t like anything in which Mrs Julia Parry had a hand. Mrs Parry, I knew, cared little for inconvenience or risk to others, provided she wasn’t troubled herself. She wanted Lizzie out of the house. I understood that and wanted Lizzie out of the Parry household myself – but for quite other reasons. (I had my own plans for the way in which she should leave.)

Mrs Parry was rewarded in her machinations and I was thwarted: partly because of my own clumsiness and partly because of Lizzie’s headstrong nature. Not that I wanted my girl any different to the way she was, of course, but I did wish she would listen to me sometimes.

There, now you have it. That’s how I felt on the Wednesday morning when I arrived at Scotland Yard. There is one more thing I ought to mention. I’d received by the early post a letter from Hampshire, written by Lizzie on the night of her arrival. She described her journey in an entertaining way but could tell me little of the members of the household, other than that one of the sisters seemed to be a dragon and the other her paler copy. As for the young wife to whom Lizzie was to be companion, she was little more than a schoolgirl. Only one person appeared in this letter in any detail, a Dr Lefebre, and there was far too much about him for my peace of mind.

For this reason my first action on arrival at my place of work was to seek out a copy of a medical directory and look up the dashing doctor. I rather hoped I wouldn’t find him, that I’d be able to prove him an impostor. Then I’d rush to Hampshire and arrest him. Quite on what charge I didn’t know, since the law of this country is remarkably generous to impostors. One may declare oneself a duke or a king if one has a fancy (or is lunatic enough), and provided one doesn’t seek to gain financial advantage from the fact, the law lets you do it.

But no, there he was in the directory in bold type … and he was a mad doctor! He had studied in Vienna and Paris, practised his profession in the asylums of both cities and was established in London as an authority on insanity in all its forms. He even ran a private hospital where, I didn’t doubt for a considerable fee, the aristocracy and other influential persons might lock away their more embarrassing relatives.

This entry, sparse enough, nevertheless provided me with a great deal to mull over.

‘So that is how the land lies!’ I thought grimly. ‘Little Mrs Craven is out of her senses and the doctor was sent for to declare her so. In which case, Lizzie is companion to a dangerous lunatic and at the mercy of some unexpected fit of frenzy on the mad woman’s part. Neither Mrs Parry nor Mr Roche saw fit to mention that when describing her duties.’

This, in itself, was bad enough. But I also knew well enough that doctors had a way of making an impression on female susceptibilities. Not that I thought Lizzie so easily swayed. But her own father had been a doctor and so the medical profession might appear to her in a very favourable light. I didn’t know whether Dr Lefebre was married. I suspected not. Not many women would fancy marrying a madhouse keeper, however distinguished his reputation. (There may be some women in the country who’ve come to believe they
have
inadvertently married madhouse keepers, but that’s another matter.)

Lizzie, however, with her medical parentage, might see it otherwise. Surely the prospect of being the wife of a successful and no doubt wealthy physician, whatever his chosen discipline, compared very favourably with that of being married to an impecunious inspector of the Metropolitan Police who never had any free time.

At this point in my gloomy reflections – a little after midday – a message came that Superintendent Dunn wished to see me at once. I hurried along to his office, walked in and – there my rival was. Dr Lefebre! It could be no other. Lizzie had described him in such detail that I couldn’t be mistaken, surely? And what a suave debonair-looking fellow he was. The clothes on his back must have cost a year of my wages. His whiskers were immaculate and the top hat sitting on his knees was of finest quality. The sight of him confirmed all my worst suspicions. But what brought him here to the Yard?

I confess I panicked and burst out, before anything was said by anyone,
‘What’s happened?’

Obviously something had occurred serious enough to bring the doctor here and my great fear was that it had happened to Lizzie. I then caught Dunn’s eye fixed on me in a way that brought me to my senses. I managed to add in a reasonable tone of voice (I thought), ‘You wished to see me, sir?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Dunn a little irritably. He was a heavily built man with a shock of unruly hair. It generally began the day brushed into submission but rose in revolt as the day went on until, by the end of it, it bristled like a yard brush. At the moment it was just beginning to break loose. Perhaps he ought to let Lefebre’s barber get at it.