Murder in Park Lane

by Karen Charlton

  Satisfaction spread across Grey’s face. His quill flew across the page. ‘Fraud, deception and impeding a lawful burial. Are there any more charges I can add, while we’re at it? Stealing a shroud, perhaps? I’ve always liked that one.’

  ‘I’ve never touched a damned shroud!’ Bentley yelled.

  Lavender smiled. ‘No, I can’t think of any more but I’ll let you know in the morning if I do. I’ll leave him with you.’ He beckoned across to the gaoler to take Bentley to the cells.

  ‘Don’t you want to see that Rawlings fellow, Lavender?’

  ‘Not now,’ Lavender said, fighting back his exhaustion. ‘Right now, I’m going home to my wife.’

  ‘Oh, by the way, before you leave, Sir Richard Allison is back in London and he sent you a message.’ Grey passed across a folded note.

  Sir Richard’s message was brief. He’d completed the autopsy in Chelmsford and discovered that Frank Collins’ skull had an irregular shaped hole. He believed the man had died following a massive blow to the back of his head.

  Lavender sighed. This evidence supported Bentley’s claim that Collins had fallen against the corner of the hearth. Sir Richard’s writing swam before his eyes. His head ached. He desperately needed sleep.

  ‘Is there a problem, Detective?’ Grey asked ominously, his quill poised over the charge sheet. ‘Do I need a fresh piece of paper?’

  ‘No. Goodnight, Mr Grey.’ Lavender thrust the note in his coat pocket and made a hasty escape.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Friday 25th September, 1812

  London

  Lavender slept heavily that night but was up before dawn fretting about Ike Rawlings’ involvement in the MacAdam murder. Oswald Grey’s comments about his indecision had been made in dry jest but they irked him all the same.

  He knew he should charge Rawlings and be done with it. The man had both the motive and the opportunity to kill MacAdam. He also had the opportunity to place the farrier’s knife in the coffin, although this was the weakest point in the case against the stone carrier. A good barrister would argue Rawlings had plenty of opportunity to simply throw the knife away somewhere on the road between London and Chelmsford; he didn’t need to keep it and hide it in the coffin. Was it possible Rawlings had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time on the night of the murder?

  Lavender decided to leave his decision about Rawlings until after he’d spoken with Lady Tyndall’s coachman. He arrived at the mews adjacent to Park Lane just as first light illuminated the narrow, cobbled street. He was pleased to see the blacksmith was already at work and firing up his forge.

  He dismounted, led his horse across to the smithy and pulled the farrier’s knife out of his pocket.

  A huge grin spread across the big man’s hairy face when he saw the knife in Lavender’s gloved hand. ‘Well, I don’t believe it! You found me ruddy knife after all.’

  ‘Is it definitely the same one that vanished from your forge?’ Lavender asked.

  ‘Yes, though it weren’t stained like that. Where’d you find it?’ The blacksmith wiped his hand on his leather apron and reached out for the knife.

  Lavender shook his head and put it back in his pocket. ‘I’m afraid I can’t let you have it back just yet. It was used to kill David MacAdam on Sunday night. I need to keep it as evidence.’

  The blacksmith’s face flashed with a mixture of shock and disappointment but he nodded and said he understood.

  Lavender tied his horse to one of the iron rings in the wall next to the forge and climbed the short flight of stone steps up to the dwelling above Lady Tyndall’s coach house. He rapped on the door and admired the window box of red geraniums alongside while he waited.

  Tolly Barton still had sleep crusted in the corner of his eyes when he answered the door. He’d thrown on a grubby shirt over his breeches. His braces dangled down behind him and his feet were bare. He was a grey-haired, gruff fellow, probably in his late fifties. He was also a little deaf. Lavender had to explain the purpose of his visit twice. Eventually the man invited him inside.

  The small, smoky kitchen was crammed with furniture, cooking utensils and other items. A startled woman glanced up from the hearth, where she was frying ham over the coal fire. Like Barton, she’d also dressed hastily and her grey hair was still down round her shoulders. Above her head, a drying rack, laden with damp laundry, swung on the end of two ropes.

  ‘Please excuse my visit at such an early hour, Mrs Barton,’ Lavender said, ‘but I need to ask your husband some urgent questions about a murder we’re investigating.’

  ‘Ah, the poor chap who were killed at Mrs Palmer’s? We ’eard about that, didn’t we Tolly?’ She spoke very loudly to compensate for her husband’s deafness. The coachman nodded but didn’t respond. ‘Such a shame,’ the woman continued. ‘Such a nice man. Lady Tyndall loaned ’im ’er coach sometimes, didn’t she, Tolly?’

  Again, Barton simply nodded. His wife was obviously the more talkative of the pair. Lavender wondered how much of what she said her husband actually heard.

  He turned to Barton and raised his voice to the same level as the man’s wife. ‘I believe you took MacAdam to Bruton Street on the night of the murder and brought him home again, Mr Barton. I need you to tell me about your return journey. I need to know every detail.’

  Barton shrugged. ‘It were just another trip. I brought ’im ’ome, settled the ’orses down and came up ’ere for me supper.’

  ‘We ’ad a bit o’ tripe,’ his wife added helpfully, obviously taking Lavender’s request for information to the extreme.

  ‘Was MacAdam in good health? Where did he climb out of the carriage?’

  ‘’E came back to the mews with me,’ Barton replied gruffly. ‘’E seemed fine.’

  ‘It’s shockin’ to think ’e were murdered a few hours later,’ his wife murmured.

  ‘He was murdered sooner than that,’ Lavender said loudly. ‘We believe the attack took place just after you arrived back here in the mews – possibly outside the coach house or in the vicinity.’

  Mrs Barton gasped. ‘What? You mean the killer were in our street?’

  ‘Mr Barton, did you see – or hear – anything at all?’

  Barton hesitated.

  ‘For the love of God, Tolly, if you know somethin’, tell the Detective!’ Mrs Barton shouted. ‘That killer needs catchin’ and hangin’ – it may be one of us next! It gives me the shivers to think of ’im still roamin’ the area.’

  ‘I’m thinkin’, woman, don’t nag me.’ Barton screwed up his face while he tried to remember. The gentle sizzle of the ham in the pan was the only sound. Finally, he shook his head. ‘I saw nothin’. There were no one else around in the mews – but I were distracted wi’ the ’orses and the carriage.’

  ‘Well, ’e might not ’ave ’eard somethin’, on account of ’is affliction, but I ’eard somethin’,’ Mrs Barton said. ‘I were up ’ere waitin’ for Tolly and I ’eard a couple quarrellin’.’

  ‘That’s not what ’e means,’ her husband protested.

  Lavender frowned and held up his hand. ‘Let her speak.’

  ‘It were a man and a woman. She were a quarrelsome ’arridan and were shoutin’ at him.’

  ‘One of your neighbours, perhaps?’ Lavender suggested.

  She shrugged. ‘They’re a peaceful lot round ’ere, by and large. I didn’t know the voices.’

  ‘Have we done?’ Barton asked abruptly. ‘I need to get to work.’

  ‘One final question, Mr Barton. Did Lady Tyndall know about MacAdam’s trips in her carriage to Bruton Street to see his young woman?’

  Barton shifted uneasily on his bare feet and glanced away. ‘She didn’t. Well, not until Sunday, at least. MacAdam asked me to tell ’er that ’e used the carriage to meet up with ’is friends at The Porcupine in Covent Garden – but I knew what were goin’ on. The girl ’ad taken a few trips wi’ MacAdam in the coach. I’d seen ’em together – and I’d seen the ring on ’er finger. My
ears might be bad but there ain’t nothin’ wrong wi’ me eyes.’

  ‘Did you lie for MacAdam?’

  ‘I didn’t lie – I just didn’t say nothin’. I do as I’m bid and drive where I’m told. Lady Tyndall don’t ask my thoughts and rarely speaks to me. I keep me mouth shut.’

  ‘You said “she didn’t” know about Miss Howard but she found out on Sunday. What happened then?’

  Barton shuffled uncomfortably again. ‘I may ’ave let somethin’ slip about MacAdam’s young woman when I brought ’er ladyship back from church.’

  ‘How so? What happened?’

  ‘She said I were to drive MacAdam to The Porcupine again that evenin’. I were distracted with one of the ’orses – she had a loose shoe – and without thinkin’ I just said: “To see ’is wench on Bruton Street, you mean?”’

  ‘That’s more than lettin’ somethin’ “slip”,’ his wife said, frowning.

  ‘Well, I were fed up of ’im actin’ like ’e were a bloody lord,’ Barton replied angrily. ‘’E’d told that gal it were ’is carriage.’

  ‘How did Lady Tyndall react?’ Lavender asked.

  ‘She were annoyed and demanded I tell ’er the truth about ’is visits to the gal.’

  Lavender waited for Barton to elaborate further but he said nothing else.

  He didn’t need to. Lavender had the information he needed. He thanked them both, left the smoky kitchen and walked out gratefully into the fresh morning air.

  Lavender felt dazed as he collected his horse, walked it round to Park Lane and tied it to the railings. He intended to visit Mrs Palmer’s to tie up some loose ends about the Collins murder but he needed to think about what he’d just learned before he moved on to the other case. He stood thoughtfully beside his horse, stroking her neck, and watched a couple of groomsmen gallop over the grass of Hyde Park, exercising their horses.

  Mrs Barton had just confirmed Ike Rawlings’ story that there was an arguing couple somewhere in the mews on the night of the murder. Was it MacAdam and a woman? Did some furious woman kill MacAdam?

  In all of Lavender’s career, he’d only ever arrested three women for murder. Two of them had his sympathy; they’d both been battered and abused by their husbands. One had slowly poisoned her husband to death with arsenic. The other had grabbed a bread knife in the heat of an argument and slit her drunken spouse’s throat. The third woman, a particularly nasty creature he’d met in Northumberland a few years ago, had finished off her frail stepmother by sprinkling digitalis from the foxglove plant in her food.

  Poison was always a woman’s preferred method when it came to murder but as his murderess with the bread knife showed, women were as lethal as men in the heat of an argument. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that during an ugly argument with MacAdam in the back of the smithy, some woman grabbed the farrier’s knife and plunged it into him.

  Carefully, he considered the women in MacAdam’s life. Mrs Palmer and Lady Louisa Fitzgerald had no motive to kill the man. Amelia Howard adored MacAdam and was ignorant of his lies and deceit. Her vixen of a little sister was probably quite capable of murdering a man in cold blood but Lavender struggled to see what Matilda Howard would gain from killing the lothario. Matilda and Bentley needed MacAdam alive. Besides which, as far as he was aware, both the Howard girls had remained in Bruton Street after MacAdam climbed in the coach to travel home.

  That left Lady Tyndall. A woman with a reputation for jealousy who’d financed MacAdam and loaned him her coach. She’d tried to give him the impression that she was unconcerned by MacAdam’s relationship with Miss Howard but according to Mr Barton she was ignorant of his trips to see his fiancée in Bruton Street – until Sunday. The day he died. She knew where MacAdam was that night – and she probably knew about the open door into the smithy at the back of her carriage house. Did she creep out of her home and confront him about his deception? Did they end up in the smithy arguing? Did she stab him?

  Everything now depended on what Woods discovered from Lady Tyndall’s maid, Harriet. In the meantime, he needed to tie up loose ends in the Collins murder.

  Lavender shook his head to clear his mind and walked to Mrs Palmer’s.

  The tousled and sleepy maid who answered the door told him Mrs Palmer was ‘still a-bed’.

  ‘Never mind,’ Lavender said. ‘Don’t disturb her. I just need to visit the bedchamber of Frank Collins to look at something, if that’s all right with you?’

  The girl nodded and led him upstairs to the murdered man’s untidy room. She used her key to open the door and hovered nervously in the doorway. ‘Sir Richard came to see Mrs Palmer last night. ’E told ’er Mr Collins were dead and you were after Bentley for the murder. Did you catch ’im?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lavender walked across to the hearth, bent down on one knee and examined the broken terracotta tile at the corner. ‘I imagine Mrs Palmer was upset?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She were right upset. We both were. She said she’s ruined. She sent me round to ’er friends askin’ them to call on her this mornin’ and comfort her.’

  ‘So Lady Tyndall and Lady Louisa Fitzgerald will be here later today?’

  ‘Yes, at eleven.’

  Lavender nodded and turned his attention back to the shattered tile. It had been hit with some force and was cracked into tiny pieces. ‘How long has this been damaged?’

  The maid inched her way across and peered over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know.’

  Lavender took off his glove and ran his hand over the recently cleaned area of thin carpet next to the hearth. It had the stiff, matted feel of material that had been heavily soaped and left to dry out. ‘Did you clean this bit of carpet?’

  ‘No. The gentleman lodgers ’ad accidents sometimes with their pipes and tankards of ale. They’d borrow a bucket of water and a cloth from the kitchen and clean it up.’

  Lavender took out the penknife he always carried in his coat pocket and prised up the stiff carpet from the edge of the hearth. It ripped away from the tacks that held it with a series of sharp pops.

  ‘What you doin’?’ the girl asked in alarm. ‘Mrs Palmer won’t like that.’

  ‘Looking for evidence of the biggest “accident” your gentlemen lodgers ever had.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  A dark stain pooled across the floorboards beneath the carpet.

  ‘What is it?’ the maid asked in alarm.

  ‘The blood of Frank Collins,’ Lavender said. ‘This is where he fell to his death and cracked his head open on the hearth after MacAdam hit him.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It was mousy young Sarah, the housemaid, who answered the door to the servants’ entrance of Lady Tyndall’s house. She grinned when she saw Woods on the doorstep. ‘Ooh, you’re a brave one comin’ back ’ere after last time.’

  ‘Good morning, treacle,’ Woods said, smiling. ‘It’s all right – I’ve not come to rouse the dragon. I were just hopin’ to have a quick word with Lady Tyndall’s maid, Harriet.’

  Sarah shook her head and smoothed down the apron over the skirts of her blue-striped uniform. ‘Well, you can’t. She’s gone back to her mother’s. She were dismissed from her post two days ago.’

  ‘Dismissed? Why, what happened?’ Despite the obvious tension between mistress and maid on Monday, Woods was surprised. Had Lady Tyndall dismissed the girl to cover her tracks? Did young Harriet know too much?

  Sarah rolled her eyes and jerked a thumb in the direction of the upper storeys of the building. ‘She’s what happened. She’s forever dismissin’ ’er personal maids. They don’t last long ’ere.’

  Woods nodded, kept his opinion to himself, and asked for the address of Harriet’s mother.

  The narrow house on busy Long Acre was crammed between a butcher’s and a cobbler’s. It was a dilapidated and mean neighbourhood. Harriet answered the door and looked at him with confusion.

  ‘Good mornin’, Harriet,’ Woods said. ‘Do you remember me? I’m Constable Woo
ds.’

  The girl’s dark eyes took in the bright blue coat and scarlet waistcoat of his distinctive uniform and she nodded. ‘You’re the constable who were askin’ Lady Tyndall questions about Mr MacAdam.’

  ‘That’s right. Can I have a word with you?’

  She hesitated for a moment then opened the door wider and led him through a narrow passage into a small and chilly parlour. She stood awkwardly, clutching at the apron over her threadbare brown gown. ‘My ma’s gone out with the little ones.’

  ‘It’s you I wanted to see, Harriet. I understand you’ve left Lady Tyndall’s employment now, is that right?’

  She nodded and lowered her head. ‘I weren’t good enough for her.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ Woods said gently. ‘I can tell from lookin’ at you that you’re a hard worker – and you’ve such pretty hair, too.’

  She flushed and raised her hand to push back some of the wiry black curls escaping from her cap.

  ‘Did she give you a reference?’

  Harriet shook her head and brushed a tear from the corner of her left eye.

  ‘That’s a shame. I could see you were doin’ your best when I came round on Monday. How long did you work for her?’

  ‘Nine months. I lasted longer than any of her other maids.’

  ‘It’s a shame you’ve lost your job.’

  ‘My ma needs all the help she can get with the rent. I’ve let her down.’ Her face fell and her voice trembled.

  ‘Well, I might be able to help you, treacle.’

  She looked up hopefully. ‘Do you know someone who needs a maid? I’m trained as a lady’s maid but I’ll do anythin’ – and I’m nineteen next week.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t know anyone who needs a maid – but I do know there’s a handsome reward out for anyone with information that will lead to the capture of the man – or woman – who killed David MacAdam.’

  Harriet’s dark face crumpled. ‘But I don’t know anythin’ about that.’

  ‘Let’s see, shall we? Shall we sit down and be more comfy?’