Ann Granger (16 page)

‘It was all I had to hand,’ he explained apologetically. ‘It was in my pocket by a piece of luck or they would have moved the body before I could fetch a better sheet.’

I turned the bill over and saw that a rough sketch had been made on the reverse. It showed the outline of a human form, some circles marked as rhododendron bushes and some arrows indicating the direction of the house, the sea shore and the path which Lefebre believed Mrs Craven to have taken round the side of the house into the garden.

‘You’re a detective, sir,’ I said to him. I wasn’t being sarcastic; I was impressed.

‘No,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘I’m a professional man accustomed to make careful observation and take notes as I go along in order to make an accurate diagnosis.’

He then explained how he had been waiting by the front gate while the groom saddled a horse for him, when Mrs Craven and Lizzie had come along the road, returning from their walk. Mrs Craven had taken fright at the sight of him and run away in the direction indicated by the arrows.

‘Taken fright?’ I asked.

‘She believes I’m at Shore House with the purpose of declaring her not of sane mind.’

‘And are you there for that purpose?’

‘No,’ said Lefebre coolly, ‘only as an observer on behalf of my old friend, Charles Roche. He isn’t able to travel there himself on account of his business commitments. Miss Martin has written to you of Mrs Craven’s circumstances?’

‘A little,’ I said. ‘She wrote on the evening of the day of your arrival and had had little time to talk to Mrs Craven.’

‘So she won’t have told you about James Craven? Ah, I thought not.’ Lefebre recounted the history of James Craven, which I was later to learn he had told Lizzie.

‘Has anyone heard from young Craven since he left for the Far East?’ I asked.

‘His wife hasn’t, neither has Charles Roche. But he did arrive safely in Canton and presented himself at the Roche
hong
(as they call a warehouse in the East). Roche received a letter from his agent there apprising him of the fact. James Craven is accommodated, free of any cost to himself, in a bungalow with a Chinese manservant to take care of him. The agent has already paid the first instalments of remittance money. For a fellow who had nothing but undeclared debts and not a penny to bless himself with when he first turned up in London, he hasn’t done badly, in my view!’ concluded Lefebre crisply.

‘He’ll be lonely, however, so far from home.’

‘There will be others of his kind to keep him company and help him gamble away his remittance. Also…’ Lefebre put a hand to his mouth, coughed gently and glanced at the sleeping old lady. ‘Europeans in his situation generally take a concubine and I dare say Craven will do the same, in due course.’

It all sounded highly irregular to me, but I was concerned with those at Shore House not with someone oceans away, relaxing amid tasselled lanterns, opium fumes and silk-clad females.

I looked again at the piece of paper in my hand. ‘Where is the body now, do you know?’

‘It’s been taken to the new military hospital at Netley, just outside Southampton, for post-mortem examination. I took the liberty of sending a letter with it asking that the examination be carried out as a matter of urgency, although I don’t anticipate my original diagnosis will be challenged. It should have been done this morning. The hospital, as you probably know, was opened to receive its first patients only last year, ’63, and its mortuary is the most modern available. It seemed the best place to keep our corpse until you could arrive. The military authorities have been remarkably cooperative.’ For the first time Lefebre looked slightly awkward. ‘You may not approve, however.’

‘It sounds excellent to me,’ I said, albeit a little grudgingly. Why couldn’t a police surgeon have carried out the examination? I was well aware that I was coming to this case late, even though the murder had only taken place the previous morning. Events had already started to slip from my control and I must watch out or they’d run away completely. I said briskly, ‘I should like to stop in Southampton long enough to visit the hospital before travelling on to Shore House.’

‘They will be expecting you.’

‘You won’t mind, Doctor,’ I began next, ‘if I take this opportunity of asking you for an account of your activities yesterday morning. You saw Brennan at the house?’

‘I saw him arrive a little before ten. He set to work in the downstairs rooms with his dog, seeking out the rat. I’d arranged with Greenaway, who is both head groom and coachman, to ride out with me across the heath. I sent word to the stables I should be ready shortly and he could saddle up as soon as was convenient. I went upstairs and got ready. I was told Greenaway would be another fifteen minutes, so I went downstairs—’

‘You saw Brennan again there?’

Lefebre shook his head. ‘No, but I heard him talking to the dog, urging it on. I could hear the animal snuffling along the skirting boards. Brennan had a theory the rat had a nest and if it was indoors, it was likely to be behind the skirting.

‘I can tell you frankly I didn’t care for what I’d seen of Brennan. Miss Martin may have written in her letter to you that we met Brennan with his wife on the heath on our way to Shore House. Greenaway told us that the man was considered honest in his way and not given to pilfering. However, there was a distinct slyness in his manner. In my judgement he wasn’t a fellow one could trust. There’s more than one way of being dishonest, as you’ll know, Inspector. Now, as I was saying, I decided to go outside and smoke a cigarette. I walked down to the front gate.’

‘Forgive me interrupting again,’ I broke in, ‘but you didn’t take a turn in the garden?’

‘No. I stood at the gate for a while. No traffic passed me except a gypsy woman with a basket of pegs. She asked me if she might offer them for sale at the kitchen door. I told her that she certainly might do so as far as I was concerned.’

‘And she entered the property?’ I asked sharply.

‘She did. She went round to the back of the house where the kitchen would be. But she was not gone long, eight minutes at the most. Then she came back. I gathered she’d made no sale. She offered to read my palm. I told her I had no wish to know my future but I gave her a sixpenny piece and she blessed me.’ Lefebre grimaced.

‘Where did she go then?’

‘She set off in the direction of the village. The village is about three quarters of a mile from Shore House. The church lies between, no more than a quarter of a mile from the house. The church is ancient and I’d guess it predates the houses in the village. That is why it isn’t central to the place but lies outside. There must have been an earlier village, around the church, possibly abandoned at the time of the Black Death. The site of the later present-day settlement may owe something to an unwillingness to rebuild on the site of the legendary plague. Country folk are superstitious. There’s a bend in the road, so I soon lost sight of the gypsy. I smoked a second cigarette. Then Mrs Craven and Miss Martin came into sight. I understand they’d visited the church but found it shut up. Mrs Craven, as I’ve already explained, ran away at the sight of me. Miss Martin and I exchanged a few words and she then went in search of Mrs Craven.

‘The stable boy arrived at that point and told me Greenaway was saddled up and ready to leave. So I went to the stables and we rode over the heath for about an hour or a few minutes less. When we returned the stable boy told us what had happened. That is to say,’ Lefebre corrected himself pedantically, ‘he told us the rat-catcher was dead in the garden and everyone in a great to-do. They’d got the rat-catcher’s dog there at the stables, caught up in some netting. It was the only way, the lad said, they could get it away from the body. The beast was still snarling and trying to disentangle itself. I told the boy he should stay away from it. Greenaway’s opinion was that they should throw a bucket of water over it to calm it down and shut it in one of the empty loose boxes. I left them to it. I went into the house, sought out Miss Martin and asked her what had happened. I wanted a clear account before I saw the Roche ladies and I knew Miss Martin would give that.’

I wasn’t surprised he already appreciated Lizzie’s clarity of recollection but I hoped his admiration for her went no further.

Morris would be able to verify most of the doctor’s story with Greenaway and the stable boy, and ask in the kitchen about the visit of the gypsy. I was curious about the gypsy woman. If she’d walked on towards the village, Lizzie and Lucy, returning from the church, might have seen her.

There was a silence while I mulled over what he had told me and also began to consider the matter of the knife. If the murder weapon came from the hall table, as Lizzie had suggested to Lefebre, it did indicate a member of the household. But possibly Brennan himself could have removed it and taken it into the garden with him for some purpose – or even because he thought it of value, the sort of knick-knack which could be profitably sold on. He might even have wanted to keep it. Greenaway may have told Lizzie and Lefebre that the rat-catcher was no pilferer. Certainly if it was thought Brennan was light fingered, he wouldn’t get work in well-to-do residences. But a fancy knife might have appealed to him.

‘Had Brennan caught rats in or around the house before?’ I asked.

‘It was the impression I received. The Roche ladies certainly knew who he was. Brennan himself, during our meeting on the heath, asked Greenaway to tell his employers he was in the neighbourhood.’

‘Well, even the rich have rats,’ I said drily.

‘Quite so,’ returned Lefebre in his smooth way.

Perhaps this talk of rats had seeped through to Percy in his slumbers, for at this point he awoke, let out a tremendous yowl of frustration and began scratching at his basket walls. The old lady awoke too and began to soothe him with more promises of chicken. Our conversation ceased.

Chapter Ten

Inspector Benjamin Ross

OUR FIRST sight of the spanking new military hospital at Netley was certainly impressive. The huge main red-brick block ran almost out of sight for a quarter of a mile at least, and stood in a fine park of many acres running down to the waterside. We descended before its magnificent entrance and stood in awe.

‘Regular palace,’ observed Sergeant Morris, clearly impressed. ‘And stuck out here in quite a gentleman’s estate. Not much like a hospital as we know ’em in London, sir, is it? Army done itself all right, if you ask me.’

Lefebre smiled at him. ‘Believe me, Sergeant Morris, the need for such a place as this was sorely lacking when we went to war in the Crimea. It was because there was nowhere to bring the many casualties of that sad affair that the government caused this to be built for future conflicts.’

‘The assumption being that there would be some – and with a similar high casualty rate,’ I remarked.

‘You and I,’ Lefebre said to me, ‘are men of caution. But there are always men in power who see waving a flag, and sending others to be shot or sabred, as a matter of sound policy and honour as well. As a police officer you must have seen a pair of bullies square up to one another inside or outside a public house and beat each other to a pulp in the name of “settling the thing”. But violence seldom does “settle the thing”.’

‘You are a man of peace, Dr Lefebre,’ I exclaimed, much surprised by the warmth with which he spoke.

He raised his shoulders in an eloquent shrug. ‘I know what I believe isn’t fashionable. I confess I’d hesitate to air my views here. In most quarters it would be considered unpatriotic. I am a patriot but I am also a medical man. I seek to preserve life, not blast it into oblivion.’

‘But you treat the mind,’ I said curiously. ‘You do not repair bodies.’

Lefebre turned his head and gave me a curious look. ‘And do you think,’ he asked, ‘that mind and body are separable entities? That one may be whole if the other is not?’

I was spared answering this by the arrival of a tall man with fair hair clipped very short but sporting a splendid moustache.

‘Ah, Inspector! We’re very pleased to welcome you to Netley. I’m Dr Frazer and I carried out the post-mortem examination of your man.’ He shook my hand heartily. ‘Brought your sergeant along, I see. Splendid, splendid. Good to see you again, too, Doctor. Come along then. You’ll be anxious to view our handiwork. Still, no hurry! Chap won’t run away, eh?’

He wheeled and made off at a fast pace while we scrambled behind him in some disorder. We progressed briskly down long spotless corridors past men on crutches, men with bandages, but also men with no sign of outward injury who must be here for some good reason. We encountered white-coated male orderlies, whom I would have expected, and lady nurses I’d not expected. These maidens had a gaze in their eyes that cut like a lancet and so much starch in their aprons they crackled as they passed by us. There was medical paraphernalia of every kind and everything brand new. It was quite unlike the chaos of the hospital wards I’d had occasion to view before, every surface battered and scraped and all enveloped in an air of despair.

Morris had respect and admiration written deep on his features. I suspected that when we got back to London, Mrs Morris would hear of nothing but this visit for days, if not years, to come. He was, however, unlucky enough to bump into a trolley, fortunately untenanted, and send it careering off to crash into a wall. Scarlet with embarrassment he scuttled after it to retrieve it, apologising profusely. One of the viragos in a starched apron descended on him and snapped, ‘The wheels have just been oiled!’

‘Don’t worry, Sergeant.’ Frazer looked over his shoulder at the mortified Morris and grinned. ‘This is the army. If it doesn’t move, paint it. If it does move, oil it!’

‘I’m surprised to see ladies working as nurses here,’ I remarked.

I’d nearly said ‘respectable women’ and had substituted ‘ladies’ in the nick of time. I knew, of course, that ‘trained nurses’ were appearing in London hospitals. So different from the illiterate slatterns and drunken crones who had formed the majority of the nursing sorority during most of my life. This brand-new breed originated with those brave women who followed Florence Nightingale to the Crimea. Decent young women were now learning their profession in the school she’d set up.