Cater Street Hangman (13 page)

Charlotte slid her arms round her and kissed her.

“I know, I heard you.”

It was welcome, almost unbearable in its relief after she had been feeling so alone. It was harder than ever to control herself, but she had had years of practice.

“Oh. I’m sorry. I had not realized we had raised our voices.”

Charlotte adjusted a hairpin for her and stepped away, tactfully leaving her to compose herself. Odd what sensitivity Charlotte had sometimes, while at other times she was so outspoken.

Charlotte was staring through the window.

“Don’t worry about Grandmama. If she says anything to Papa he will be very angry with her, and she will come off the worse for it.”

Caroline was too surprised to hide it. She swung round in the chair to stare at Charlotte’s back.

“Whyever do you think that?”

Charlotte still looked out of the window.

“Because Papa was somewhere he does not wish to speak of. We must face that. Therefore he will be angry with whoever mentions it again.”

“What on earth do you mean?” Caroline could hear her own voice shaking now. “What are you saying, Charlotte? You cannot suspect your father—of—of—”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he was gambling, or drunk, or associating with people we would not like. But he does not wish Mr. Pitt or us to know of it. It is no use pretending to each other. We cannot pretend to ourselves. But don’t worry, Mama, he cannot have had anything to do with Lily, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Charlotte—,” she could think of nothing else to say. How could she stand there so calmly, speaking those words?

“I think it may be very foolish,” Charlotte went on—and this time Caroline heard the catch in her voice and knew she was only keeping control of herself with the greatest effort— “because I think Mr. Pitt will find out anyway.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. And it will seem the worse for not being revealed of one’s own free will.”

“Then, if we could persuade him—,” but she knew she lacked the courage. Edward would be angry, go into that cold bitter retreat she had experienced only a few times—like the occasion she had defied him over Gerald Hapwith. That was years ago, and all so silly now. But the pain of the estrangement was easy to remember.

And more than that, she was afraid to know what it was he wanted to hide. Perhaps Pitt would not find out?

But he did. Mr. Pitt returned two days later, in the evening and—perhaps to be sure of catching Edward—by surprise, not having called in the morning to forewarn them. They were all at home.

“This is not very convenient, Mr. Pitt,” Edward said coolly. “What is it this time?”

“We have established that you must have walked back along Cater Street, from approximately five minutes to eleven, until a few minutes past the hour.”

“You had no need to come to tell me that,” Edward was sharp. “Since I arrived home at about quarter after, that much is obvious.”

Nothing seemed to discompose Pitt.

“To you, sir, who know what you did. To us, who have to accept your word, it is satisfying to obtain proof. If murderers could be caught merely by asking them, our job would hardly be worth doing.”

Edward’s face froze.

“What are you implying, Mr. Pitt?”

“That we have established that you left Mrs. Attwood at quarter to eleven. It would take you about half an hour of comfortable walking to reach your home here, and you would pass along Cater Street between five to eleven, and about five past.”

Edward was white-faced.

“You had no right—!”

“It would have been a great deal easier, and have saved much time, sir, if you had given us Mrs. Attwood’s address earlier. Now perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me where you were on the night Chloe Abernathy met her death?”

“If you know where I was on the night Lily was killed, you know I can have had nothing to do with it,” Edward said between his teeth. For the first time he looked really frightened. “What do you imagine I can tell you about Chloe Abernathy?”

“Only where you were,” Pitt smiled broadly. “And if possible, with whom?”

“I was with Alan Cuthbertson, discussing business in his rooms.”

Pitt’s smile became wider, if anything.

“Good, that is what he says, but since he was acquainted with Miss Abernathy fairly well, it was necessary to check that he was being precisely honest. Thank you, Mr. Ellison. You have done Mr. Cuthbertson and the police a service. I’m obliged. Ma’am,” he inclined his head in a small bow. “Good night.”

“Who is Mrs. Attwood, Papa?” Sarah said immediately. “I don’t recall your having mentioned her?”

“I doubt I did,” Edward said, looking away. “She is a rather tiresome woman who is a dependent of a man who once did me a favour, and is now dead himself. She has become ill, and I occasionally render her some small, practical assistance. She is not bedridden, but close to it. She seldom leaves the house. You might visit her yourself, if you wish, but I warn you she is most tiresome, and wandering somewhat in her mind. She confuses reminiscences with fantasy on occasion, although at other times she is lucid enough. No doubt it comes from spending a great deal of time alone, and reading romantic novels of the cheapest kind.”

The relief was immense, but later that night in bed, Caroline woke and began to think. At first she worried about the fact that Edward had been so concerned about hiding his visit to this Mrs. Attwood. Was it really to protect a sick woman? Or because she was perhaps a little common, a little loud, someone he did not wish to be associated with?

Then the deeper worry came to the surface and would not be ignored. She had questioned in her mind, had feared for a moment that he had had something to do with Lily. He was lying beside her now, asleep. She had been married to him for more than thirty years. How could it even have crossed her mind that he had murdered a girl in the street? What kind of a woman was she to have considered such a thing, even for a second? She had always believed she loved him, not passionately of course, but adequately. She knew him well—or she had believed so until this week. Now she realized there were things about him she did not know at all.

She had lived in the same house with him, the same bed, for over thirty years, and borne him three children, four counting the son who had died when only a few days old. And yet she had actually considered he might have garotted Lily.

What was her relationship worth? What would Edward think or feel if he knew what had been in her mind? She was confused, and ashamed, and deeply afraid.

Chapter Seven

I
T WAS THE FOLLOWING WEEK,
the beginning of September and hot and still, when Millie came to Charlotte in the garden. Her face was pink and she looked flustered. She had a piece of paper in her hand.

Charlotte put down the hoe she was using to poke around the soil between the flowers. It was a pastime rather than a job, an excuse to be outside instead of attending to the preserves she should have been stewing for Sarah to bottle. But Sarah was out with Dominic on some social affair, while Emily was at a tennis party with a whole group of people, including George Ashworth, and Mama was visiting Susannah.

“What is it, Millie?”

“Please, Miss Charlotte, I found this letter this morning. I’ve been trying to decide all day what I should do about it.” She held out the piece of paper.

Charlotte took it from her and read:

Deer Lily,

This is to tel yu that I ant warnin yu any mor. Ither yu dus as yur told or itll be the wors for yu.

It was unsigned.

“Where did you get this?” Charlotte asked.

“I found it in one of the drawers in my room, Miss. Where Lily used to be.”

“I see.”

“Did I do the right thing, Miss?”

“Yes, Millie, you did. Most certainly. It would have been very wrong not to have brought it to me. It—it might be important.”

“You think the murderer wrote her that, Miss?”

“I don’t know, Millie, probably not. But we should let the police have it.”

“Yes, ma’am. But Mr. Maddock is busy unpacking the next cases of wine this afternoon, and the master said it had to be done straight away.”

“That’s all right, Millie. I’ll take it myself.”

“But, Miss Charlotte, you aren’t going out by yourself, are you?”

Charlotte stared at her for a moment. “No, Millie, you’ll have to come with me.”

“Me, Miss Charlotte?” She froze, her eyes wide.

“Yes, you, Millie. Go and get your coat on. Tell Mrs. Dunphy I need you to come with me on an urgent errand. Now go on.”

Three quarters of an hour later Millie was in the outer waiting room of the police station, and Charlotte was shown into Inspector Pitt’s small room to await his return. It was drab, functional, and a little dusty. There were three chairs, one of them on a swivel, a table with locked drawers in it, a rolltop desk, also locked, and a brown linoleum floor, worn patchy where feet had trodden from door to desk and back again.

She had been there for only ten minutes when the door opened and a sharp-nosed little man in overly smart clothes came in. His face dropped in surprise.

“’Allo, Miss! You sure you’re in the right place?”

“I believe so. I’m waiting for Mr. Pitt.”

He looked her up and down carefully. “You don’t look like a nose.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You don’t look like a nose.” He came in and closed the door behind him. “An informer, a spy for the crushers.”

“For whom?” she frowned, trying to understand him.

“The police! You did say you wanted to see Mr. Pitt?”

“Yes.”

He grinned suddenly, showing broken teeth.

“You a friend of his?”

“I have come on a matter of business which, forgive me for frankness, is not your concern.” She had no wish to be rude. He was a harmless enough little man, and apparently friendly.

“Business? You don’t look like you have business with the crushers.” He sat down on the chair opposite, still looking at her in amiable curiosity.

“Do you belong here?” she said doubtfully.

“Oh, yes,” he grinned. “I got business too.”

“Indeed?”

“Important,” he nodded, his eyes bright. “Do a lot for Mr. Pitt, I do. Don’t know how he’d manage without me.”

“I dare say he’d survive somehow,” Charlotte said with a smile.

He was unoffended.

“Ah, Miss, that’s ’cos you don’t know anything about it, begging your pardon.”

“About what?”

“About the workings, Miss: the way things is done. I’ll wager you don’t even know how to break a drum or to christen the stuff and fence it afterwards.”

Charlotte was completely lost but, in spite of herself, interested.

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Ah,” he settled himself more comfortably. “But you see I knows everything. Born to it. Born in the rookeries, I was. Grew up there. Mother died when I was about three, so they say. And I was very small. Lucky that—”

“Lucky? You mean someone took pity on you?”

He gave her a look of friendly contempt. “I mean they saw my possibilities—that if I stayed little I could be of use.”

Memories of things that Pitt had told her about small boys up chimneys came back, and she shivered.

“Had you no family? What about your father, or grandparents?”

“Me father was crapped in forty-two, year I was born, and me grandfather got the boat, so they said. Me ma had a brother who was a fine wirer, but he didn’t want nothing to do with kids, did he? Not one that was too young to be any use. Besides, fine wiring ain’t an art as needs kids.”

“What is ‘crapped’?” she asked.

He drew a hand across his throat, then held it up behind him to imitate a rope.

She blushed with embarrassment.

“Oh, I’m sorry—I—”

“Don’t matter,” he dismissed it. “Weren’t no good to me anyway.”

“And your grandfather went to sea? Didn’t he return?”

“Bless you, Miss. You really is from another world, ain’t you? Not went to sea, Miss, but got sent to Australia.”

“Oh.” She could think of nothing else to say to that. “And your uncle?”

“Fine wiring is the picking of ladies’ pockets, Miss. Very delicate art, that is. Don’t use kids, like some does. No use for me, see? So they gave me to a kidsman who taught me a bit o’ oly fakin’—that’s pickin’ silk handkerchiefs out o’ pockets to you, Miss, to earn me keep, so to speak. Then when I got older, but not much bigger, he sole me to a first-class cracksman. Climb through any set o’ bars, I could. Ease myself through them like a snake. Many’s the toffken I bin in and out of, and opened the door for ’em.”

“What’s a toffken?” She felt her father would be furious if he knew of this extraordinary conversation, but it was a world which appalled her too much to turn her back on it. She was fascinated as a child is by a scab that he must keep picking at.

“A swell house, like maybe you lives in.” He seemed to bear her no resentment, but rather to find her the more interesting for it.

“I don’t think we have a great deal worth taking,” she said honestly. “What happened to you then?”

“Well, come the time I got too big, of course. But before that, he got caught and I never seen him again. But he’d taught me a lot o’ things, like how to use all ’is tools, how to do a spot of star glazing—”

“Star gazing?” she said incredulously.

He burst out with rich, dry laughter.

“Bless you. You are a caution. Star
glazing.
Look.” He got off his seat and went to the window. “Say you wanted to get through that piece of glass. Well, you lean up against it,” he demonstrated. “Put your knife here, near the edge, and press hard but gentle, till the glass cracks. Not so hard it falls out, mind. Then you put brown paper plaster over it so it all sticks, and presto—you can pull the glass out without a whole lot o’ noise. Put your hand in and undo the latch.” He looked back at her in obvious triumph.

“I see. Didn’t you ever get caught?”

“Of course I did! But you expects that, don’t you, occasional like?”

“You didn’t consider taking—a—a—regular job?” She did not want to say an
honest
job. For some incomprehensible reason, she did not want to hurt his feelings.

“I’d got a ready-made team, ’adn’t I? Got me tools, a good crow, the ’andsomest canary in London, and a good fence as lived in a flash house, nice and comfortable for us, and a few dolly-shops if we hit hard times. What else did I need? What did I want to go and break me back for in some factory or sweatshop for a few pence a day?”

“What are the birds for?”

“Birds?” his face puckered up. “What birds?”

“The crow and the canary?”

He chuckled in genuine delight.

“Oh, I do like talking to you, Miss. You’re a refreshment, you are. A crow is either a quack, a medical man, or in this case, a feller what stands around and gives the warning if anyone comes along as is dangerous, like a jack, or the crushers, or whatever. And a canary is the one who brings your tools for you. If you’ve got any class, you don’t bring your own tools. You goes to the place, takes a good look around, and then your canary brings them when all’s clear. She’s usually a woman. Works better that way. And Bessie was as ’andsome as a summer day, she was.”

“What happened to her?”

“Died of cholera, she did, in ’sixty, the year before the American war. Poor Bessie.”

“How old was she?”

“Eighteen, same as me.”

Younger than Emily, younger than Lily Mitchell. She had lived in the slums, been a carrier of burglar’s tools, and died of disease at age eighteen. It was an existence which mocked Charlotte’s tidy life, with its small difficulties. The only big thing that had ever happened to her was her love of Dominic, and Lily’s death. Everything else was comfortable. Have we mended all the linen? Shall we preserve peaches or apricots? Is the fishmonger’s bill too high? What shall I wear to the party on Friday? Do I really have to be civil to the vicar? And all the while there were people like this funny little man here fighting just to eat. And some of them lost: the smallest and the weakest, the most easily frightened.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say.

He looked at her closely. “You’re a funny creature,” he said at last.

Before she could react to that, the doors swung open and Pitt came in. His face dropped in surprise when he saw her. Apparently whoever was outside had failed to forewarn him.

“Miss Ellison! What are you doing here?”

“She’s waiting for you.” The little man shot to his feet with excitement. “She’s been here sittin’ this past half hour.” He pulled an exceedingly elegant gold watch out of his pocket.

Pitt stared at it. “Where did you get that, Willie?”

“You got a nasty mind, Mr. Pitt.”

“I’ve got a nasty temper, too. Where did you get it, Willie?”

“I bought it, Mr. Pitt!” His outrage carried no anger, only ringing innocence.

“From whom? One of your dolly-shops?”

“Mr. Pitt! That’s real gold, that is. It’s quality.”

“Pawnshop then?”

“That’s not nice, Mr. Pitt! I bought it respectable.”

“All right, Willie. Go out and convince the sergeant while I talk to Miss Ellison.”

Willie lifted his hat and bowed elaborately.

“Out, Willie!”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Pitt. Good afternoon, ma’am.”

Pitt closed the door behind him and indicated a chair for Charlotte. Now that he was alone with her he seemed less assured, conscious of the shabby surroundings. Charlotte found herself wishing to put him at ease. She pulled out the letter straight away.

“Our new maid, Millie, handed this to me a little over an hour ago. She found it this morning in her room. I should explain that the room used to be Lily’s.”

He took the letter and unfolded it. He read it, and then held it up to the light.

“It doesn’t look old, and hardly the type of letter one would wish to keep. I think we may presume she received it shortly before she was killed.”

“It’s a threat?” She moved a little closer to look at it herself.

“It would be difficult to read it as anything else. Although, of course, it may not be a threat of death, by any means.”

A world of fear opened up to Charlotte’s imagination. Poor Lily! Who had threatened her, and why had she not felt she could turn to any of them to help her? What isolated struggle had been going on in their house under the smooth exterior of housemaid’s black and white?

“What do you suppose they wanted her to do?” she asked. “Whoever wrote that letter? Do you think you can find them, and punish them?”

“They may not have killed her.”

“I don’t care! They frightened her! They tried to force her to do something she obviously did not want to! Isn’t that a crime?”

He was looking at her with surprise, taking in her anger, her sense of outrage and pity, and perhaps guilt because it had all happened in her house and she had not seen it.

“Yes, it is a crime, if we could prove it. But we don’t know who wrote it, or what he wanted her to do. And the poor little creature isn’t alive to complain now.”

“Aren’t you going to find out!” she demanded.

He put out a hand, as if to touch her, then remembered himself and withdrew it.

“We’ll try. But I doubt that the person who wrote this killed her. She was garotted exactly the same way, with a wire from behind, as Chloe Abernathy and the Hiltons’ maid. A cracksman might have threatened two maids, but he would never have tried it with a girl like Chloe.” His eyes opened wider with a new thought. “Unless, of course, he mistook her for Lily. They were of a similar height and colouring. I suppose in the dark—”

“What would he threaten them for? Two maids, I mean?”

“What? Oh, burglars often use housemaids to let them in and tell them where all the valuables are in the house. Perhaps if she refused—,” he sighed. “But it seems a rather extreme way of going about business, and largely unnecessary. A burglar could find enough indoor servants who are willing, or loose-tongued, not to need to resort to this kind of thing.”

“Why didn’t she come to us?”

“Probably because it wasn’t a burglar at all, but some kind of romantic involvement,” he replied. “Something she preferred that you not be aware of, that she thought you wouldn’t approve of. I expect we shall never know.”

“But you will try?”

“Yes, we’ll try. And you did the right thing to bring it. Thank you.”

She found herself uncomfortable under his gaze, and she was conscious of the shabby room again. What had made him become a policeman? She realized how little she knew about him. As so often happened, her thoughts spilled into words.