Elementary Murder Read online

  ‘Mrs as was.’

  ‘Through here, you say?’

  He saw the slight lowering of her eyelids as she walked over to the back door and swung it open. Her tone had changed slightly now, as she said, ‘Out yonder, through the gate an’ right. Her gate’s opposite the privies.’

  ‘It’s much appreciated,’ he said and moved quickly into the back yard.

  ‘Bye then,’ she said, and closed the back door with just a little too much force, he thought.

  He stepped out into the alley and saw the row of privies the woman had spoken of. A stale and unpleasant odour drifted towards him. He turned quickly to the gate to his right and pushed it open. The small back yard was identical to the one next door. He approached the window and peered through. A small woman, perhaps in her late sixties, was sitting at the kitchen table eating what looked like beef stew. She was facing the window and he tapped quite forcefully on the glass but there was no reaction. She really was stone deaf. It was only on her third mouthful of stew that she deigned to glance up at the window. When she caught sight of Brennan standing there watching, she dropped the spoon and almost fell from her chair in shock.

  He held his hand flat against the window pane to show he was no threat to her. He also mouthed a few words in an exaggerated fashion in the hope that she could lip-read.

  I want to speak with you. I am a policeman.

  He had to repeat that last sentence several times before the truth finally dawned on her and she reluctantly left the table and came to the door. She opened it and let him in.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked uncertainly, returning to her food and sitting down again.

  He spoke slowly, and she cupped her right ear so that she was able to hear some of what he was saying. The conversation was at times strained and he had to repeat himself several times, making sure she registered his exaggerated pronouncements.

  ‘I wish to speak with your granddaughter, Emily.’

  ‘What’s she done?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s to do with school.’

  She nodded, as if that explained everything. ‘She’s not here.’

  Brennan looked quickly round, saw the single place at the table opposite her laid for one, could hear – and smell – the rest of the stew simmering in a pot by the small kitchen range.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Had to go out. Something to do with books.’

  ‘Books?’

  ‘Said she needed to get some books before the library closed. She’ll be there for a while. Always is. Loses herself in her books, she does.’

  He stepped closer so there would be no mistake in her hearing what he said. ‘Does her father give her books?’

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. She turned round and went back to her plate of stew.

  ‘Emily’s father is dead.’

  He looked at her, saw her pick up the spoon and began to eat once more. If what Nathaniel Edgar had told him was correct, then Emily’s father was still very much alive. He wondered if he should ask her about Emily’s parentage, but decided that it would take too long to make himself understood. Moreover, her response would very likely be an angry one. Meddling in family matters that don’t concern him.

  ‘Well thank you. I’m sorry for disturbing you. I’ll be going. When she returns, ask her to come to the station. I want to speak with her.’

  She watched him as he moved to the door but said nothing.

  It was as he closed the front door behind him and stood on the pavement, watching two women across the way standing in their doorways and talking as their children played with an old buckled bicycle wheel in the middle of the street, that something struck him. Something the woman next door had said to him.

  Perhaps it was just another coincidence.

  At the station there was no sign of Constable Jaggery, so he went directly to Captain Bell’s office but was told he had left for the day.

  ‘But he left this for you, Mick,’ said the desk sergeant when he came back.

  He handed Brennan an envelope which he tore open and read the contents:

  Liverpool Constabulary informed. They have agreed to keep an eye on the boys’ home in Seaforth Road. I have arranged permission for you to travel to the Waifs and Strays’ Home to speak with the child. I wish to be informed immediately of any developments. God speed.

  Alexander Bell.

  Brennan looked at his watch. Five-thirty. It was too late to travel over to Seaforth at this time of night – he’d never get back, for one thing, and for another, by the time he arrived at the boys’ home on Seaforth Road the place would be shut up for the night and presumably all the boys tucked into their beds. Billy Kelly would be in need of special care, but the authorities at the home would take care of that. No, he would wait until the morning and catch the first available train to Liverpool.

  He folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. ‘I’ll head off home then,’ he said to the desk sergeant.

  ‘Oh aye,’ he replied with a knowing wink. Brennan was a creature of habit, and he’d be sitting in his usual seat in the Crofter’s in five minutes.

  ‘By the way,’ said Brennan, turning at the doorway, ‘where’s Constable Jaggery?’

  The desk sergeant laughed. ‘Went through that door not ten minutes ago, cursing like a pitman.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh they sent word down from the infirmary about a scuffle up yonder. Constable Hardy asked for assistance. And Jaggery had been rubbing his hands about finishing early once you got back.’

  But Brennan was alerted by the news. ‘What scuffle?’

  ‘No idea, Mick. I just sent him up yonder. He’ll sort the buggers out. Drunks, more like as not.’

  Without a word more, Brennan was through the doors and marching up King Street in search of a hackney.

  When he got there, whatever scuffling had taken place had ended. As he raced up the steps of the infirmary he was met by a dishevelled-looking Constable Hardy who was making a valiant effort to readjust his uniform to something like normality.

  ‘What’s been going on, Constable?’ Brennan asked.

  ‘Well sir, I was guarding the victim like you asked, stood just outside the ward I was cos that matron wouldn’t let me get any closer to him. Then that headmaster turns up and demands to see him. Tries to come it all high an’ mighty wi’ that matron. She tells him he can’t go in till visitin’ time an’ I chips in an’ tells him he can’t go in even then. He says why not so I tells him it’s me orders an’ more than me life’s worth. Family only, I says. But there is no family, he says. An’ I says that’s nowt to do wi’ me, pal.’

  He stopped to take a breath. His face was still flushed and Brennan could guess what came next.

  ‘So then he tried to barge his way in?’

  ‘Aye. Tried anyroad. I grabbed him back an’ he swung round an’ we ended up rollin’ down the ward like two drunks on a Saturday night. All I could hear was screamin’ from the nurses an’ jeers from the men in the beds. ’Course they was all cheerin’ the headmaster on, like. Me wi’ me uniform on an’ all. I managed to get him down an’ told the matron to send word down to the station on account of me not bein’ able to leave me post, like you said.’

  ‘Quite right, Constable. You did well.’

  ‘I had to hold the bugger all that time, an’ him wrigglin’ like a bloodworm.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Room down yonder. Sort of store cupboard. Freddie Jaggery’s with him.’ Constable Hardy laughed. ‘Shit hisself when he saw Jaggery come bouncin’ down the ward like a circus bear!’

  Brennan turned to go, then stopped and said, ‘So who’s guarding Mr Edgar?’

  Hardy’s face went scarlet. ‘Them nurses, I reckon.’

  ‘You reckon? If you’re not back outside that ward in ten seconds you’ll be inside it in twenty. In a bed of your own!’

  Hardy rushed off down the corridor while Brennan went to the store cupboard. He knocked on the door
then opened it. Richard Weston was slumped in a corner, his head in his hands, while Jaggery was examining a box that bore the legend ‘Urethra Dilators’. When he saw Brennan, he smiled and nodded towards the disconsolate figure on the floor beside him.

  ‘Feelin’ a bit out o’ sorts, is Mr Weston.’

  Weston slowly raised his head and looked at Brennan. He gave a cough and stood up with some effort. Brennan noticed he had the beginnings of a black eye, and his lip was swollen.

  ‘Now, Mr Weston. What’s this all about?’

  Before he could answer, the door was pulled wide open and Matron stood there, a dark and forbidding expression on her face. She glared first at Weston, then Brennan, but settled her basilisk gaze on Constable Jaggery.

  ‘Are you having difficulty passing water?’

  Jaggery looked nonplussed.

  ‘Or perhaps the blockage in your urethra is caused by gonorrhoea. Whichever it is I would be more than willing to apply that instrument under local anaesthetic.’

  Jaggery looked at Brennan for explanation.

  ‘I think she’s asking you to put that box down, Constable. In her own inimitable way, of course.’

  Jaggery placed the box back on the shelf as if it contained a deadly viper.

  ‘Good,’ said Matron. ‘Now I’m sure you would all be much more comfortable away from this infirmary so that I could reestablish some semblance of order and restfulness.’ She stood to one side and the three of them trooped out, like recently chastised schoolboys.

  Once outside the infirmary, Brennan motioned for Weston to sit on a bench by the entrance to the building. It was with some discomfort that the man sat down. Brennan sat beside him, and then turned to Jaggery.

  ‘I think you’ve earned that pint, Constable.’

  ‘You mean I’ve done for the day?’ His eyes lit up.

  ‘All the earlier tomorrow.’

  ‘As bright as a budgie, Sergeant.’ With that unusual simile ringing in Brennan’s ears, Jaggery almost fluttered his way through the infirmary gates.

  ‘Now, Mr Weston, what’s this all about?’

  The headmaster took a deep breath. ‘I came here with the best of intentions, Sergeant Brennan. To visit my colleague. I wished to see him, speak with him, so that I could let my staff know in the morning. They’re all very worried about him, you know. Then your constable became very heavy-handed and spoke to me with a lack of respect.’ He gingerly touched his swollen lip.

  ‘He was acting on my orders, Mr Weston. If someone has made one attempt on Mr Edgar’s life they could well try again.’

  ‘But I’m the man’s headmaster, for God’s sake!’

  Brennan leant towards him and said quietly, ‘Mr Edgar told me about Emily Mason.’

  It was as if the man had been shot. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked sharply, swallowing hard to regain his composure.

  Brennan sighed. ‘You told him once that she was your daughter.’

  ‘Well, it’s nonsense.’

  ‘She’ll confirm that, will she?’

  Weston looked ready to launch into a staunch denial of the relationship, but one look into Brennan’s eyes told him how futile that would be. The man had cast-iron certainty in those eyes.

  ‘I don’t see how this is of any concern,’ he said finally, with an air of resignation.

  ‘It’s possibly of no concern at all. But I’ve been to her home. The one she shares with her grandmother.’

  The expression on Weston’s face told its own story. A smile of resignation, all hostility now fled from his eyes, to be replaced with something akin to fondness. Finally, he said, ‘It’s a wonder you made yourself understood with old Peggy.’

  Brennan remembered the feeling he’d had after his visit, as he stood outside the old woman’s house and recalled what the neighbour, Mrs Houghton, had called her.

  Old Peggy.

  He had that feeling again. And although he didn’t believe in coincidences, perhaps there were times when they just happened. Still, he had to ask.

  ‘Interesting name, Peggy.’

  Weston looked at him curiously. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Women called Margaret are often given Peggy as a sort of fond nickname, aren’t they?’

  ‘And what if they are? I don’t really see what you are talking about.’

  ‘When she was a little girl, Dorothea Gadsworth was under the care of someone called Julia Reece.’

  Weston looked away and gave his attention to a small group of people who were waiting outside the main entrance for the doors to open for visiting hour.

  ‘Dorothea’s parents told me that Julia Reece and her mother were forced to leave Hawkshead as a result of the shame Julia’s lewd and blasphemous act had brought upon them.’

  ‘A sad story,’ said Weston in a low and trembling voice.

  Brennan sighed and carried on. ‘They told me her mother’s name was Margaret. Margaret Reece.’

  ‘Is it such a wonder that Emily’s grandmother is named Margaret? Is it an unusual name? An exotic one? Peculiar to the rickshaw-pullers of Yokohama, perhaps?’

  He could see the man was rattled, his voice rising as a growing sense of outrage contended with a feeling of entrapment.

  ‘Perhaps if you took a deep breath, Mr Weston, and allowed me to finish?’

  The headmaster was about to retort but thought better of it. From the growing queue outside the infirmary entrance, heads were beginning to turn.

  ‘The boy – young man – who was caught with Julia Reece was known only by the name of David.’

  Weston said nothing but his head began to droop, and he examined his hands, which were now clenching and unclenching.

  ‘Your name is Richard.’

  ‘How observant.’

  ‘But on the sign outside your school it reads “Richard D. Weston”. What does the D stand for, Mr Weston?’

  In barely a whisper, he replied, ‘David.’

  Brennan sat back, satisfied.

  Richard Weston was the one Dorothea Gadsworth had recognised.

  Probably not straight away, but the recognition developed, much like the image on a photographic negative plate, until the moment he entered the staffroom alongside Reverend Pearl and Henry Tollet, the inspector.

  It was a long time before Weston answered. Then he began to speak. ‘I assure you, Sergeant, that I had no idea who Miss Gadsworth was. The name meant nothing to me. What happened in Hawkshead was a very long time ago.’

  ‘Yet she recognised you.’

  ‘Apparently so.’ He paused and seemed to gaze into the middle distance, back to the past itself. ‘What we did that day in the church at Hawkshead, and the thing that happened because of it … caused both of our lives to change for ever. Julia’s mother – a widow – was forced to leave the village because of the scandal, and I went back to Windermere.’

  ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘When I asked you where you were in the summer of 1880 you told me Cambridge.’

  ‘If you recall, I answered by telling you about my father and his solicitor’s practice in Cambridge.’

  Brennan thought back to the interview. Clever, he thought. Very clever.

  ‘I was actually spending that summer on my uncle’s farm. I had plenty of time on my hands back then. I was quite wild. Carefree and wild. A combination not uncommon, but when it meets someone equally wild, equally carefree …’

  He paused for a while as the past drifted before his eyes.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now, of course, but it was her idea. The belfry. She even suggested tugging on a bellrope once we’d finished as a sort of demonic sign of what we’d done. Only we never got the chance. We were both castigated, although it was easier for me. I could catch the ferry back to Windermere and leave my uncle’s farm early. Return to Cambridge unsullied, as it were, by the scandal of what we’d done. The tragedy of what we’d done.’

  He looked up, and Brennan saw now there were tears in the man’s eyes
. Humiliation? Regret? Fear of being exposed?

  ‘But the shame of what I had done was compounded when, a few months later, I received a letter from Julia, informing me that she was with child. Our child. They had moved in with a distant relation in Manchester. I suppose in a way that news changed me more than anything else. Made me realise what dangerous creatures we really are. We had created a life at the same time as destroying one. But she also told me she was engaged to be married to a man named Sidney Mason, who had accepted a sum of money from Julia’s relation so that the child would be born in wedlock.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I decided to go to Manchester, to speak with Julia and offer my hand in marriage. But it was too late. By that time her condition was common knowledge and Mason acknowledged locally as the father. That brought her shame enough, but can you imagine what damage would have been done if another man suddenly arrived claiming he and not Mason were the father? No. They had done with shame, done with fleeing its consequences. So the wedding was rushed through and Julia Reece became Julia Mason. And Emily was born.’

  ‘He was a bad father?’

  Weston nodded. ‘The very worst kind. Violence. Women. Gambling. And all the while my beautiful daughter was witness to every kind of wickedness. I knew little of this at the time. All I could do was continue with my own life, training to become a teacher. When I qualified I moved to the north, to Wigan. Not that I could ever see either of them, just to know that I was close by if they needed me. Then, one night, the swine came home blind drunk, so drunk, in fact, that he fell down the stairs, but not before giving poor Julia the beating of her life.’

  Brennan could picture the scene, the horror of the violence that poor little Emily had grown so accustomed to in her short life.

  ‘By that time I was working at George Street – I started at the same time as Nathaniel Edgar – and once I’d heard what had happened I went over to Manchester and persuaded both Julia and her mother to move over to Wigan, to make a fresh start – another one – and send the child to the school I was working in. I would be sure to keep a very close eye on her and make sure she had the best of teaching. When I became headmaster and Emily was of an age, I encouraged her to become a monitor and work towards pupil-teacher status.’