Death at Bishop's Keep (17 page)

Kate frowned. “You're welcome,” she said pointedly, feeling in her heart the unfairness of playing Watson to this self-absorbed Holmes.

Sir Charles turned to look at her for a long moment, his smile fading. “Forgive me,” he said, very seriously. “Thank you, Miss Ardleigh, for spying the feather. You have sharp eyes.”

Kate smiled. “What c'n you tell from a brok'n feather?” Mr. Prodger asked.

“That depends upon whether it is possible to locate the remainder of it,” Sir Charles replied.

“Indeed,” Kate said, “and upon who has possession of it.”

Mr. Prodger gave his whiskers a rueful shake. “I've heard of lookin' for a needle in a haystack, but lookin' for one partic‘lar feather in a town the size of Colchester—” He barked a laugh. “All I c'n say, sir, is if you find it, you're a sight sharper'n Wainwright. He couldn't find a feather if the bloody thing was stuck in his cap. Or ticklin' his arse.” He looked at Kate. “Beggin' yer pardon, ma'am.”

“Until the end of the nineteenth century, British jurisprudence was ruled by oral and documentary evidence. New investigative technologies, such as fingerprints, ballistics, and toxicology were often regarded as irrelevant and even frivolous by those whose task it was to summon the criminal before the bar. What counted was the criminal's confession, which every effort was bent to obtain.”

—ALISTAIR CARRS, Criminal Detection in the Nineteenth Century

 

 

 

O
n Saturday morning, Charles applied himself to solving a murder. The jobmaster Prodger had given the victim a name—Monsieur Armand. Whether it was the man's real name remained to be seen. Charles offered the information to Inspector Wainwright, whom he found once again seated at the small table in the chilly basement office, surrounded by stacks of papers.

“Armand?” Wainwright asked irritably, when Charles had finished the narrative of his investigations. The pallid light fell upon the table through the dingy window, illuminating a wire basket containing official memoranda, an inkstand and fragment of much-used blotter, and a Prince Albert red-and-gilt ashtray filled with a quantity of cigarette butts. The inspector scraped back his straight wooden chair, rose, and went to warm his hands over the kettle, which was heating on the gas burner.

“Armand,” Charles repeated. He took the other chair, which was missing two of its wooden turnings.

Wainwright rubbed his thick hands together. His brown wool coat was worn at the elbows and in want of brushing, and his collar had already seen several days' service. “Don't know that a name takes us anywhere,” he said, his voice heavy with an irreversible gloom. He took the tea canister from the shelf and shook out the last spoonful of loose tea into a cracked white china teapot. He poured hot water from the kettle into the pot, took down a tin of My Lady's Tea Biscuits, and returned once more to his chair. “We already knew he was French, from the coat label. ‘Armand' probably isn't the real name.”

“Perhaps,” Charles said. “But I have found something else that may help us.” He took out a piece of paper and unfolded it carefully.

The inspector opened the biscuit tin. “What's that?”

“A fragment of feather,” Charles said, turning it over with a pencil. “Certainly a nonindigenous species.
Pavo christatus,
I believe. From the breast of a male bird. This specimen does not bear the familiar ‘eye' of the splendid tail plumage, of course, but the iridescent blue color reveals its—”

Wainwright pulled out several crumbly biscuits and put them on the table. “Where'd you find it?” He gestured at the biscuits. “Tea will be ready shortly. Have a biscuit.”

“No, thank you,” Charles said. “It was found in the chaise hired by the victim.” By Miss Ardleigh, he thought to himself, but did not say. The interested, interesting Miss Ardleigh, who absolutely refused to relate the reason for her interest.

The inspector made a growling noise deep in his throat. “Observe that the feather is broken,” Charles said, pointing. “With the aid of a microscope, it would be possible to match it to—”

“Haven't got a microscope.” Wainwright picked up a biscuit and bit it. It crumbled in his hand. With a muttered curse, he dropped the crumbs on the floor. He got up, fetched the teapot and two cups, and brought them to the table. “Anything else?”

Charles retrieved the feather, folded it into its paper, and put it back in his coat pocket. From his portfolio, he took an enlarged photograph. “This,” he said, laying it on the table. “Tell me, Inspector, has Monsieur Armand yet been buried?”

“Yesterday.” The inspector squinted suspiciously at the photograph. “What is it?”

“It is the enlargement of a fingerprint on the whip handle of the chaise hired by the victim.” Charles picked up a pencil and pointed to a ridged whorl. “Observe this unique configuration.”

“And just what d'you expect to prove with that?” As Wainwright picked up the teapot and began to pour, his voice was laden with something like scorn.

“It is regrettable that the corpse has been buried. If it were to be exhumed and the man's fingerprints compared to—”

Wainwright set down the teapot so smartly that hot tea splashed onto the photograph. “Exhumed!” he exclaimed.

Charles retrieved the photo hastily. “Have you read Mark Twain's
Pudd'nhead Wilson?”

The inspector stared at him.

Charles tried a different tack. “It is unfortunate that fingerprints are not generally in use. But with the proper equipment and training, an astute police officer like yourself could make quite a name—”

“Not got proper equipment,” Wainwright growled, picking up his cup, “and not likely to get it.” He blew on it, bitterly. “Have to buy even my own tea and biscuits. The superintendent won't give me a farthin' for fingerprints or photos or feathers, when he won't give me a telephone or a typewriter. Or a microscope. Of course,” he added with ill-concealed resentment, “a learned gentleman like yourself wouldn't understand that.”

Charles frowned. He felt, he thought, the same frustration that Dr. John Snow must have felt forty years before, when he tried to explain his theory of the transmission of typhoid to the Ministry of Public Health. Such stubborn unwillingness to accept anything new!

“But my dear fellow,” he said urgently, “if this fingerprint does not belong to the victim, it must belong to the killer. Don't you see? We have here the opportunity to establish—”

“A confession,” Wainwright said into his teacup.

“Beg pardon?” Charles asked.

“A confession.” The inspector set his cup down. “That's what we need to solve this murder. That's what a jury would understand.”

“I see,” Charles said. He cleared his throat. “I wonder, though,” he said mildly, “just how a confession is to be obtained from a killer who has so far eluded detection?”

“Your tea's gettin' cold,” the inspector said. “Drink up.”

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur: Why so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Henry IV, Part I, III, i

 

 

 

O
n Saturday afternoon, Kate, as a proposed neophyte, was to be introduced to the Order of the Golden Dawn. She and Aunt Sabrina drove to Colchester, where the Temple of Horus was to meet at Number Seven Keenan Street.

As they rode through the warm autumn sunshine, past fields hazy with the smoke of burning stubble, Kate considered whether she should tell Aunt Sabrina that she and Sir Charles had the day before discovered the name of the dead Frenchman. But Aunt Sabrina seemed to be in quite a gay mood, talking animatedly about this and that. Perhaps she was relieved that the matter of the dead man was behind them. In any event, Kate hated to bring it up again, and to disclose her mischief. Aunt Sabrina had terminated the investigation. If she knew that her niece had violated her expressed wish by going detecting with Sir Charles, she would be deeply disappointed.

Furthermore, Kate told herself, there was nothing concrete to report. That the dead man had given the name of Armand to Mr. Prodger meant very little. It could have been a false name. No, the only
real
evidence they had turned up was the fingerprint and the blue feather. And the name of a street—Queen Street—which, on the one hand, might have been the murdered man's destination and, on the other, might have nothing to do with his death. Kate would not know unless she could go there herself and inquire, and she could not for the life of her think how she might accomplish that.

But although the jaunt seemed to have yielded little useful information, Kate could not regret the fact that she had gone. For one thing, Beryl Bardwell had enjoyed the opportunity to exercise her wits. For another, Kate had enjoyed the hour she spent with Sir Charles, observing his methods of patient and painstaking analysis. She had not thought that so much was to be learned from a single wheel.

As Sir Charles drove her back to the Marsden carriage, waiting at the railway station, Kate had renewed her request to see the photographs of the dead man, somewhat diffidently, since her aunt had instructed her not to pursue the matter. To that request, she added that she would like to see the photographs of the wheelprint that he had taken at the site. In reply to his surprised, “Why?” she had replied evasively, “I hope it is not too much trouble.” She could not tell him that Beryl Bardwell was toying with the idea of using a broken wheel as a clue to the solution of a murder.

 

Number Seven Keenan Street was a three-story brick house, with a modest frontage on the street. The parlor and the dining room directly behind it were quite crowded, Kate saw, and she thought as she was introduced to her hostess that the gathering looked more like an afternoon
soiree
than a meeting of magicians. Beryl Bardwell, who viewed the afternoon as a time for research, was making mental notes.

“Miss Ardleigh, my dear.” Mrs. Farnsworth extended her hand with a warm smile. “It is kind of your aunt to bring you. She says you are making wonderful progress in your research.”

“Research?” Kate asked. She was momentarily startled, before she realized that Mrs. Farnsworth was referring to her secretarial work, not Beryl Bardwell's covert inquiry, of which Mrs. Farnsworth herself was the current object. “Oh, yes. The membership lists.”

“Indeed,” Mrs. Farnsworth replied. “The Order is growing so fast that it is well-nigh impossible to keep account of its membership.” She smiled easily at Aunt Sabrina. “When you leave, my dear Sabrina, be sure to take with you the packet of letters and other documents I have assembled for you.”

Mrs. Farnsworth was oddly fascinating, Kate thought. Her figure was petite, spritelike, almost a child's figure, but it was her face, under a wealth of brown hair, that captured and held the viewer's attention. Her luminous eyes were brown, with large, dark irises; her lips were full and sensual; her mercurial mouth seemed capable of almost any expression, and with every change of expression her face seemed completely remade. Unlike her guests, most of whom were conventionally garbed, her costume was dramatic: an emerald green robe with a low-cut gauze-sleeved green bodice, decorated with blue-green feathers with exotic markings. She wore a gold pendant at her throat which, Kate saw in an instant of startled recognition, was similar to her aunt's.

Mrs. Farnsworth's theatrical dress was no doubt explained by the fact that she was a retired actress. Quite recently retired, it seemed, from the collection of colorful playbills Kate had remarked in the hallway. Two of George Bernard Shaw's were prominently featured,
Widowers' Houses and Arms and
the Man, and Shakespeare's
As You Like It,
which had apparently enjoyed a long run at the St. James. Mrs. Farnsworth had recently changed her name, it seemed: on the playbills, she appeared as Florence Faber. Kate couldn't help but think she must have made a fetching Rosalind.

Like the lady, Mrs. Farnsworth's parlor was dramatically decorated. The plum-colored walls were hung with Oriental-style draperies and ivory fans; sculptures of Egyptian deities stood on painted columns in the corners; and hieroglyphic paintings—copied in the British Museum, Aunt Sabrina confided in a whisper, by Mrs. Farnsworth herself—occupied prominent places in the dimly lighted room. The Oriental carpets that overspread the floor were of rich blues and purples, although they were worn, as were the furnishings. It was the room of someone who had a more exotic taste than ready money.

But the room was quite small, and its decor was hardly visible in the crush of people. Aunt Sabrina made her way through the crowd, murmuring greetings here and there, Kate a step behind. They paused on the outskirts of a group gathered in front of the fireplace. Dominating the group was Oscar Wilde, a tall man, several inches over six feet and portly. His dark brown hair fell nearly to his shoulders and his lips were full and finely chiseled in a face that spoke of dissipation. He was elegantly dressed in a lavender tailed coat, flowered waistcoat, and white silk cravat, loosely tied. Listening, Kate thought that his sentences, although they were clearly extemporaneous, seemed as perfectly composed as if he had constructed them in writing and delivered them from memory.

The conversation was not about some mystical topic, but on the subject of America. “Of course,” Mr. Wilde said, drawling out the words with wry humor, “if one had enough money to go to America, one would not go.” With languid grace, he tapped his cigarette into the fireplace behind him.