A Breach of Promise (51 page)

“Oh! Bless my soul! Well … you had better come in.” The housekeeper stepped back and invited them to enter. “Dr. Loomis is busy with a patient this minute, but I’ll tell him as you’re here and it’s important. I’m sure he’ll see you.”

“Thank you very much,” Monk accepted, following Hester to where the housekeeper led them to wait and then left them. It was a most agreeable room, but very small, and looked onto the back garden of what was apparently a family home. Children’s toys lay neatly stacked against the wall of a potting shed. A hoop and a tiny horse’s head on a stick were plainly discernible.

Hester looked at Monk, the question in her eyes.

“Grandchildren?” he suggested with a sinking feeling of disappointment.

She bit her lip and said nothing. She was too restless to sit down, and he felt the same, but there was not room for them both to pace back and forth, and even though she wore petticoats without hoops, her skirts still took up what little space there was.

When Dr. Loomis appeared he was a mild-faced young man
with fast receding hair cut very short and a friendly look of enquiry in his very ordinary face.

“Mrs. Selkirk says you have come a great distance to ask about a crime?” he said, closing the door behind him and looking from one to the other of them with a frown. “How can I help you? I don’t think I know anything at all.”

“It happened twenty-one years ago,” Monk answered, rising to his feet.

“Oh …” Loomis looked disappointed. “That would be my father. I’m so sorry.”

Monk felt a ridiculous disappointment. It was so strong it was physical, as if his throat had suddenly tightened and he could barely catch his breath.

“Perhaps you have his records?” Hester refused to give up. “It was about a Samuel Jackson, who died of bleeding. He had two small daughters, both of them disfigured.”

“Samuel Jackson!” Loomis obviously recognized the name. “Yes, I remember him speaking of that.”

Monk’s hope surged up wildly. Why else would a man speak of a case many years afterwards, except that it worried him, was somehow incomplete?

“What did he say?” he demanded.

Loomis screwed up his face in concentration.

Monk waited. He looked at Hester. She was so tense she seemed scarcely to be breathing.

Loomis cleared his throat. “He was troubled by it …” he said tentatively. “He never really knew what caused him to bleed the way he did. He couldn’t connect it with any illness he knew.” He looked at Monk earnestly. “But of course we know so little, really. A lot of the time we are only making our best guess. We can’t say that.” He shrugged and gave a nervous laugh. His pale, blue-gray eyes were very direct. “I think, to be honest, his greatest concern was because he couldn’t help, and Samuel was so desperate to stay alive because of his children. And as it turned out, Mrs. Jackson did lose them. She couldn’t care for them, poor woman. She was left with almost nothing. She was obliged to make her own way, and she couldn’t do that
with two small children … especially not ones that weren’t … normal.” He looked as if he hated saying it. There was a tightness in him, and his hands moved uneasily.

“She did very well for herself,” Hester assured him acidly. “Could Samuel Jackson have died of any sort of poison?”

Loomis regarded her curiously. “Not that I know of. What makes you ask that? Look … Mrs. Selkirk mentioned a crime. I think she actually said murder. Perhaps you had better explain to me what you are seeking, and why.” He waved to them to sit down, and then sat on the chair opposite, upright, leaning forward, listening.

Monk outlined to him all that he knew about Samuel Jackson, but he began with a brief history of the case of Keelin Melville and her death from belladonna poisoning. It took them nearly three quarters of an hour, and neither Hester nor Loomis interrupted him until he had finished.

“What you are saying”—he looked at Monk grimly—“is that you think Dolly Jackson—Delphine Lambert, as she is known now—murdered Samuel in order to escape her situation because he insisted on keeping the children, and she couldn’t bear to have them. She wanted perfection and wouldn’t settle for anything less.”

“Yes,” Monk agreed. “That is what I’m saying. Is it true?”

“I don’t know,” Loomis admitted. “But I’m prepared to do everything in my power to find out.” He stood up. “We can begin with my father’s records. He never destroyed them. They are all in the cellar. Do you know exactly when he died?”

“Yes!” Hester said straightaway. “September twenty-seventh, 1839. It’s on his gravestone.”

“Excellent! Then it will be a simple matter.” Loomis led the way out into the hall, calling his intentions to Mrs. Selkirk and instructing her that he was not to be interrupted for anything less than an emergency. “I’m glad you came today,” he went on, going to the cellar door and opening it. “We’ll need a light. There’s no gas down here. I have very few patients today, and my wife has taken the children for a day or two to see her father. He is not very well and does not travel, but he is very
fond of my daughters.” He smiled as he said it, and his own affection was clear in his eyes. Perhaps that was some of his feeling for Samuel Jackson.

He found a lantern and lit it, then led the way down the narrow stone steps to the cellar where rows of boxes filled with papers lay neatly stacked.

It took them only ten minutes to find the right box for the month of September in the year 1839, most of the work moving the boxes above it.

“Here it is!” Loomis exclaimed, lifting out a handful of papers. “Samuel Jackson…” He held it closer to the light, and Hester and Monk both peered over his shoulder while he read the generous, sprawling hand.

“You are right—he didn’t know,” Hester said the moment she came to the end. She stared at Loomis. “He wasn’t satisfied. He just couldn’t prove there was anything wrong. Can we get an order for an exhumation?”

Loomis chewed his lip. “Difficult…”

“But possible?” she insisted.

“I don’t know.”

“Where do we begin?” Monk asked urgently. “We can’t just let this go!”

“With the police,” Loomis answered, meeting his eyes. “We’ll go up to the station and speak to Sergeant Byrne. He’ll remember Sam Jackson—and Dolly. I won’t let this go, I promise you. But it’ll be very hard….”

Hester straightened up. “We’ll find Sergeant Byrne, then we’ll find the judge.”

Monk looked dubious. “The question is, if it was poison, will it still be there to find, even if we can dig him up?”

“Depends what it is,” Loomis answered, putting away the rest of the papers and closing the box. He handed all the papers on Samuel Jackson to Hester. “Depends on the quality of his coffin, if it’s all dry inside, and what’s in the surrounding earth. I don’t know what chance we have of proving anything this long after. Arsenic remains, I know that. But this doesn’t sound
like arsenic. I think my father would have seen that. This was bleeding … more like an internal ulcer burst, or an artery, or something of that sort. I don’t know why he wasn’t satisfied, but from his accounts here, he wasn’t.”

“Probably because Samuel had no history of earlier illness,” Hester suggested. “There’s no mention of pain before, or difficulty with eating, no nausea or earlier signs of blood.”

Loomis looked at her quickly.

“I am a nurse,” she explained. Then, as if she recalled the general reputation of nurses as women who scrubbed floors and emptied slops, she added, “In the Crimea. I’ve done a good deal of field surgery.” She said it with pride. It was not boasting but a statement of fact.

Loomis nodded slowly, his face full of admiration.

“Then we had better take these papers and see if we can get Sergeant Byrne on our side, and then persuade a judge that we have reasonable cause to suspect a murder. I warn you, it may be a long and fruitless task, but I am ready, if you are.”

“We are!” Monk said without hesitation, including Hester automatically and without even bothering to glance at her.

Sergeant Byrne at the local station was quite easily persuaded. He was a middle-aged man who had known and liked Samuel Jackson, and Jackson’s death had shocked him. He took little convincing that there was cause for further investigation. He was more than willing to leave his tedious paperwork and go immediately with Hester, Monk and Dr. Loomis to call upon Judge Tomkinson across the river in Parsons Green.

The judge occupied a large house with an excellent view over a sweep of lawn towards the water, and he did not appreciate being taken from the dinner table.

Loomis had been right in that it was difficult and frustrating to a point close to loss of both temper and hope to persuade Judge Tomkinson to order an exhumation of the body of Samuel Jackson, decently buried, without question, twenty-one years before. He argued with every point they raised,
shaking his head and tapping his fingers on the top of his cherry wood desk.

They tried every line of reasoning they could think of, relevant and irrelevant, based on logic or emotion, anger, pity or the desire for justice. The judge dismissed them all, for one cause or another. Even Sergeant Byrne’s presence moved him not at all.

Finally, at quarter to seven in the evening, it was Monk’s impassioned anger at the death of Keelin Melville which won him over.

“Melville?” the judge said slowly, letting out his breath in a sigh. “The Melville who built that marvelous hall for Barton Lambert? That place full of light?”

“Yes!”

Hester held her breath.

Loomis looked nonplussed.

The judge frowned at Monk. “Are you saying you believe this woman murdered Melville to stop the case, and thus you from pursuing her past, and probably finding these wretched children of hers?” he asked with rising emotion.

“Yes … my lord.”

“Then—then perhaps we had better find the truth of the matter,” the judge said with a sigh. “Not that I imagine it will do any good now. About the only justice you will get will be to spread the news around that she was once Dolly Jackson of Putney and that Leda and Phemie are her natural children.” There was a hard edge to his voice. “For whatever satisfaction that may bring you.”

“Very little,” Monk replied. “It sounds like vengeance, and would hurt her present husband and daughter for very little reason.”

“Then you’d better make the best of your exhumation,” the judge replied with a tight shrug. “Although if you find poison, that won’t help his present family very much.”

Loomis took the paper as the judge signed it.

Monk pushed his hands into his pockets. “Thank you.”

“It may not help anybody now,” Hester acknowledged. “But
if he was murdered, we can’t look away because it will hurt. It always hurts.”

The judge did not reply.

The rest of the evening was spent in frantic organization. They had barely half an hour to eat a hasty supper, then Loomis went to the local police station to inform them of their intentions and show them the judge’s order.

When he had gone, Monk searched his pockets, then turned to Hester.

“How much money have you?”

She looked in her reticule. “About two shillings and four-pence,” she answered. “Why?”

“We’ve got to pay the grave diggers,” he answered grimly. “It’s hard work, and we haven’t got the time to haggle. I’ve only got half a crown and a few pence. We’ll need more than that. There’ll be the local sexton as well.” He looked anxious, his eyes bleak, mouth tight.

She understood his reluctance to ask Loomis. He had given a great deal already. But who else was there? Callandra was still on holiday.

They stared at each other.

“Gabriel?” she suggested. “He’d lend it—even give it. How much do we need?”

“Another thirty shillings at least! Maybe two pounds.”

“I’ll ask him.” She started to move even as she spoke.

“He’s miles away,” he protested.

“Then the sooner I start, the better chance of being back in time.” She smiled with a little twist. “At least we know he’ll be at home.”

“You stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll go!”

“Don’t be stupid!” She dismissed the idea with unaccustomed brusqueness, even for her. “I know him, you don’t. You can’t turn up on the doorstep and ask for two pounds.”

“And you can’t go…” he started.

“Yes, I can! Come with me as far as getting a hansom, and
I’ll be perfectly all right. Hurry up and don’t waste time arguing.”

For once he conceded, and putting on coats they walked swiftly together along the footpath to the main road, and within ten minutes he had hailed a cab and she was on her way back east again towards London and the Sheldon house.

She sat upright in the back of the cab, her back stiff, her hands clenched in her lap. She felt as if they stopped at every cross street while traffic passed. The horse seemed to amble rather than trot. She was frantic with urgency, muttering under her breath, fingernails digging into her palms.

When at last she got there she ordered the cabby to wait, paid him nothing, in spite of his protests, just so she would be certain he would not leave. She ran across the footpath and up the steps, leaning on the doorbell in a most uncivil fashion.

As soon as Martha answered she greeted her with barely a word, then went across the hall and up the stairs. She knocked on Gabriel’s door and, without waiting for an answer, opened it.

“Hello?” he said with surprise. Then, reading her face, “What is it?”

“I need some money to pay grave diggers for an exhumation.” She wasted no words on niceties. “Please? I don’t know who else to ask. It’s terribly important!”

His eyes were level and curious, but without hesitation.

“Of course. Tell me about it afterwards. How much do you need?”

“Three pounds.” Better to be safe.

“There’s four guineas on the dresser.” He pointed to the chest near the wall. “Take it. Just promise me you’ll tell me about it afterwards.”

“I will! I swear.” She flashed him a heartfelt smile. “Thank you.” And without waiting any further, she ran out of the room again and down the stairs.

The cabby was standing by the horse, grumbling and staring at the house door.

“Back to Putney,” she ordered him, scrambling in again. “As quick as you can! Please hurry!”