The Children of Silence (24 page)

‘Then there is the question of personalities,’ said Barstie eventually, regarding the scattering of crumbs on his tea plate with a world of sadness. ‘Mr Edwin Antrobus is generally stated to be a worthy fellow.’

‘For worthy, read dull,’ interposed Chas. ‘No one likes to speak ill of the dead. And even though he is still by the strict letter of the law, alive, everyone believes that he is actually dead and so they speak of him accordingly.’

‘He appears to be a man without vices,’ observed Frances, ‘if there is such a thing.’ It was an odd thought, but it occurred to her that she would not like to marry a man who was wholly without vices. In the few novels she had read, young women liked to be admired by men with vices because the situation carried a certain piquancy, but they usually married the worthy earnest fellow and settled to the life of contented domesticity which the author felt was appropriate.

‘If he had any vices he kept them a close secret,’ said Barstie. ‘As to Mr Lionel Antrobus, he has more quills than a porcupine, and you approach him at your peril. Yet if he says he will do a thing you can count upon him doing it, and if he were to oppose you he would do so in an honest fashion.’

‘Has he ever been known to act in an underhand or dishonest manner?’ asked Frances.

Chas shook his head, wonderingly. ‘Far from it, sticks to proper principles even if he was to suffer by it himself. Known for it. Respected, very highly respected, but not liked at all.’

Barstie looked hopefully at his empty teacup and brightened as Sarah freshened the pot with hot water. ‘Now the real Don Juan is Mr Luckhurst. There are females in the case – several, I believe, and all very demanding on his purse. Luckhurst is a bachelor who lives alone and very simply in rooms above the cigarette workshop, but there is a well-appointed little apartment in Notting Hill he likes to visit.’

‘Which he is entitled to do as he pays for it,’ said Chas.

Frances had received a letter from Mr Luckhurst that very day inviting her to take tea with him, and she was suddenly very relieved that she had not yet written to accept. Sarah gave a low chuckle and Frances was unable to meet her eyes. She took a deep draught of tea to calm herself. ‘Is he in debt?’ she asked Chas.

‘No, but he runs it a very close thing.’

‘So Mr Antrobus’ legacy would have been unusually welcome. Mr Luckhurst was left two thousand pounds in the will. He claims not to know about it, but his partner might have hinted as much. If Mr Antrobus had died under circumstances that did not arouse suspicion Mr Luckhurst would have gained substantially and the business would not have been harmed. His partner’s disappearance, however, went badly for the business, and he was obliged to take a smaller salary to meet the expenses.’

Chas drained his cup and smacked his lips. ‘Thus reducing the number in his personal harem from three to two.’

Frances was not sure if she required so much detail, since she hardly liked to imagine Mr Luckhurst, or any man for that matter, reclining on a couch of silken luxury, attended by extravagantly bejewelled sirens.

‘I cannot see Mr Luckhurst as a murderer,’ Frances observed to Sarah after the visitors had left, ‘whatever the provocation.’

‘You didn’t see him as a ladies man. You’ve been wrong before.’

‘True, but judging by Dr Collin’s account, I don’t think Mr Luckhurst is tall or strong enough to have murdered the man found in the canal, neither do I think him capable of breaking the other man’s neck.’

‘Do you still think Mr Antrobus is dead and not run off with another woman? He’s been to America; he might go there again. He could be farming tobacco as he knows so much about it.’

‘I would never deny a possibility. If he was murdered soon after he was last seen, anyone who stood to benefit by his death has been remarkably patient. We have two bodies of about the right age to be Mr Antrobus, both dead for about the right amount of time, and there is so much uncertainty and so many conflicting tales that I cannot rule out either being him. But both were found purely by chance.’

‘All the more reason to think he’s alive and doesn’t want to be found.’

‘Except that he hasn’t contacted his sons.’ There was a long period of silent reflection. Frances’ own mother had abandoned her for a man and had never contacted her once in all the years that her family had maintained the fiction that she was dead. Perhaps in her mother’s case the shame of betrayal was a worse blow than death. Edwin Antrobus too might have something to conceal that would be crueller to his sons than his absence.

Sarah made another pot of tea, but even this did not help clarify Frances’ thoughts.

Later that day Frances had only just bid farewell to another new client, a gentleman who suspected his business partner of undertaking competing trade behind his back, when there was an urgent rapping on the front door. It was not the heavy thump of fists that usually announced the arrival of Inspector Sharrock but the quick smart sound made by the head of a silver-topped walking cane. Frances peered out of the window and saw Cedric Garton. There was a carriage waiting, which at once alerted Frances’ attention. ‘I think we are wanted,’ she told Sarah. Cedric’s manner on the doorstep was sheer impatience, and when the maid answered his knock, he darted past her with great energy.

By the time he had reached their door Frances and Sarah were ready to go out. Since neither was a lady of fashion to whom preparation to face the admiring world was the work of at least an hour, it took only moments for their wraps and bonnets to be put in place.

‘Dear ladies!’ exclaimed Cedric, as he appeared at their door. ‘If you are planning to go anywhere at all I beg you to abandon the idea at once and come with me! I have a carriage ready.’

‘Of course!’ said Frances as they followed him downstairs through a delicate waft of gentleman’s cologne. ‘But tell me what is the matter?’

‘It’s young Ratty, I’m afraid; he’s just been arrested. I was fortunate just now to see him being taken away, and he called out to me to fetch you.’

They all leaped into the cab, and Cedric told the driver to ride like the wind to Paddington Green police station. ‘I hardly recognised the lad at first he has grown so, but I am very glad he saw me.’

‘Do you know why he has been arrested?’ asked Frances.

‘No, but he was very distressed and might even be injured, though not badly as far as I could see, at least he was wriggling and yelling enough.’

Frances shook her head. ‘He will not like being in the hands of the police, whatever the matter might be. Poor boy, I will do whatever I can for him. Where did you see him?’

‘Pembridge Villas, being dragged into a cab by two burly boys in blue and screaming fit to burst. Then off they went in the direction of the police station. There were other police about too, and a hand ambulance was being wheeled away with something on it, covered up.’

Frances suffered a growing sense of dread and guilt. ‘I hope I have not been responsible for this. Ratty has been doing some work for me, and it might have led him into danger and perhaps even caused someone’s death.’

‘Now you can’t know that,’ said Cedric reasonably. ‘What was the lad doing?’

Frances explained about the meetings in Pembridge Mews, and all the way to the station Cedric made reassuring noises about the terrible things that could go on in narrow alleyways that might have nothing at all to do with her enquiries.

At the station, Frances and Sarah ignored the protestations of the desk sergeant and hurried towards Inspector Sharrock’s room, where loud howls told them that Ratty was being questioned. The sergeant abandoned his post and placed his wide form in their way, spreading out his arms with an expression of fierce determination.

‘Stand back or there’ll be trouble!’ he bellowed, but Cedric merely leaned forward and said a few whispered words in his ear. The sergeant turned bright red, said nothing more and went back to his desk.

‘You can’t just barge in like that!’ cried the Inspector as Frances and Sarah walked into his office, closely followed by Cedric. ‘Oh no, of course, forgive me, you are Miss “goes wherever she pleases” aren’t you? Well you can’t come in here, I’ve got a murder suspect and he’s very dangerous!’

Ratty looked anything but dangerous. The assured would-be detective who had been trying to look older than his years was now a very scared boy, sitting hunched over in a chair, his arms wrapped tightly about him, pale as a ghost and sobbing loudly.

‘Nonsense!’ retorted Frances, confronting Sharrock. ‘Inspector, how could you? You have young children of your own, would you want them to be treated like this?’

‘My boys wouldn’t go around carving people up,’ protested Sharrock.

‘I din’t, I din’t!’ Ratty wailed, and Frances pulled up a chair and sat beside him.

‘It’s all right,’ she soothed, ‘I’m here now.’ She took a handkerchief and mopped tears and snivel from Ratty’s face.

‘And they wouldn’t go lurking about alleys up to no good!’ added Sharrock.

Frances gave him a hard look. ‘He is working for me. If he was “lurking” as you say, then he was doing it on my behalf. And I can’t believe that he has carved up anyone.’

‘Oh really? Well you ought to pick your people a bit better. He won’t even give me his proper name. Just says he’s called Ratty. What sort of a name is that?’

Frances made an effort to stay calm. ‘It is what he is always called. He doesn’t know his proper name.’ A fresh torrent of tears was assisting her in the cleaning of Ratty’s face which was beginning to blossom into bruises, and there was a cut on his head. His forearms were still pressed tight across his narrow chest, the hands clutching at his upper arms were clotted with drying blood, and his suit was also smeared with red.

‘I din’t ’urt no one!’ gulped Ratty. ‘The gent wuz dead when I saw ’im.’

Frances tried to unlock Ratty’s grasp, without success. ‘I hope the policemen didn’t hurt you.’

‘Hah!’ exclaimed Sharrock. ‘Where did he get that suit, just tell me that? Stole it I expect!’

‘I gave it to him,’ said Frances steadily. Sharrock scowled but was silent.

‘Inspector,’ Cedric addressed him, stepping forward, ‘I would stake my reputation on the boy being honest.’

Sharrock looked him up and down and narrowed his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t recommend that, sir.’

Ratty wiped his nose on his shoulder, an action that improved the condition of neither. ‘Coppers din’t ’urt that much. It wuz the murderer in the alley; ’e comes rushin’ out an’ knocked me over, an’ I think I banged me ’ead, ’cos the nex’ thing I wuz on the ground ’n then I went to look at the gent, but ’e wuz dead. There wuz blood all over! So I went to get ’elp ’n then the copper comes. C’n I go ’ome, Miss?’

‘Yes, of course you can,’ Frances reassured him, carefully avoiding looking at the Inspector, although she could hear him growling, ‘but if there is anything you know that might help catch the criminal, you must say what it is first.’

A constable came in and Sharrock took him aside for a muttered conversation, then grunted and nodded.

Sarah had gone to get a basin of water and a cloth and managed to persuade Ratty to let her bathe his face and hands and examine his bruises. ‘He’s been knifed!’ she called out suddenly as she removed the coat to show that Ratty had been slashed across one arm. His clutching hand had stopped the worst of the bleeding, but it was still oozing badly. Sarah quickly pressed her large fist about the wound.

Sharrock ran out and roared for someone to fetch a surgeon. ‘Soon have him stitched back up again,’ he said as he came back into the room. He gave a loud sniff. ‘Looks like the lad might be telling the truth after all,’ he admitted. ‘No knife on him, and no knife in the alley, just a dead man stabbed in the stomach. Nasty business.’

‘Do you know who it is?’ asked Frances, hoping that the incident might be the result of an altercation between a pair of dangerous criminals.

‘We do, and if you hadn’t come rushing in just now I’d have paid you a visit. He had one of your invoices in his pocket. He’s the headmaster of the deaf school, Mr Eckley. Any idea who might want him dead?’

‘Oh dear!’ Frances thought of the dispute with Dr Goodwin, the pursuit of Isaac Goodwin, the dismissal of the deaf teachers and the children whose hands had been tied in class. ‘He was not a popular man, I am afraid, but I can’t imagine anyone going so far as to murder him.’