The Moving Stone

by Jacqueline Beard

  Your sincere friend

  Violet

  CHAPTER 9

  Amelia Jeffs

  John Manisier had not yet arrived home when Lawrence called by, but Lydia, his well-informed wife, kept a tight diary. Her husband, she said, was already conducting a viewing at 126 Portway later that evening. Lydia appended Lawrence's name into her day journal, saying she felt confident that her husband would show Lawrence the property after. He should present while John was conducting the appointment and make himself known. Lawrence wasn't sure whether it was worth the time or trouble. Visiting a crime scene so long after the event had occurred was unlikely to reveal anything of interest. But it would give him some idea of the visibility from the house, particularly over the park. Though not much to gain, Lawrence had nothing better to do and decided he'd go along anyway. The five-hour gap until the appointment was a long time to kill so he purchased a meat pie from a shop in Church Street and ate it in West Ham Park while he decided his next move. His hands shook as he unwrapped the warm pie. There was a distinct frostiness in the air and Lawrence wished he'd remembered his gloves. But his greatcoat kept him well protected from the elements, and despite chilly hands, Lawrence passed a pleasant half-hour outside. After eating, Lawrence rose and made his way to the corner of the park where he examined the area where they'd found Eliza Carter's coat. He was none the wiser by the time he had finished and left for Buxton Road, having run out of things to do.

  On arriving back at number fifty-five, Lawrence slunk upstairs trying not to disturb the Ward family as he was going out again. He shed his coat and spread all the newspapers on the bed before sorting them into date order. Two hours later and having read accounts of the disappearances of Eliza and Mary from several sources, Lawrence finished. He examined his notebook and nodded, pleased with the salient points he had pulled from the reports then closed his notebook and sifted through the papers for 1890. 'Make sure you read about the keys,' William Donaldson had said when he'd told Lawrence about Amelia Jeffs. 'It's too complicated for me to explain.' Well, if Donaldson was right, and the key situation was challenging, it might be worth planning ahead. Lawrence decided to take the newspaper cuttings with him to keep about his person while seeing the house. Samuel Higgins had given Lawrence four individual newspapers relating to Eliza and Mary which were too bulky to stow. Lawrence thought about the practicalities as he checked his timepiece. He hadn't left enough time to examine the reports with any level of accuracy. So, he opened the papers, tore out the relevant articles and shoved them in his jacket pocket. Pausing only to pour a drink from the jug by his bed, Lawrence left the house once again to retrace his steps from earlier.

  The lighting outside 126 Portway must have improved considerably in the nine years since Millie Jeff's death. While far from well lit, the gentle glow of a gas lamp close to the house was reassuring. The front room curtains were open, revealing a dim but partially lit interior. Lawrence couldn't see anyone, but he heard the murmur of voices inside and knew he wouldn't have long to wait. Reluctant to intrude, Lawrence loitered on the doorstep for five minutes. When nobody emerged, he retreated to a low wall where he sat for another five. The temperature had dropped by several degrees, and Lawrence shivered as he waited in front of the tall, three-storey house. Though Portway was a major thoroughfare, it was quiet for the time of day and Lawrence shut his eyes and tried to imagine it without gaslighting. The image was unappealing, and he opened his eyes just as the front door swung open, and three people emerged. Lawrence jumped to his feet and extended his hand before announcing himself.

  "Wait a moment," said the estate agent curtly before concluding his business with his married clients. All three turned their backs on Lawrence, and he stood uncomfortably listening to a conversation that seemed likely to end in a deal. Fortunately, the male party baulked at the price and though his wife was enthusiastic, said he would need to go away and think about it. After shaking hands, they proceeded up the street, and John Manisier turned to face Lawrence with a sigh.

  "Sorry to keep you," he said, without sincerity or warmth. "How can I help?"

  "Can I see the house?" asked Lawrence, pointing towards the building. "Your wife said you would be willing to show me around."

  "She did, did she? Well, that's good of her when I'm supposed to be conducting a viewing in Geere Road in five minutes. Not possible, I'm afraid."

  "Are you sure? I'm very keen to rent, and I can pay you six months in advance."

  Manisier bit his lip. "Oh. I see. Can't you wait until tomorrow?"

  "No, I can't. Don't worry then. I saw another property with Mr Donaldson earlier. It will have to do."

  John Manisier snorted. "If you mean that thing on Stratford Road, then don't. It's damp and full of woodworm."

  "It doesn't sound like I have any choice," said Lawrence. "I'm in a hurry."

  The land agent bit his lip. "Look. I don't normally do this, but as there's no furniture in the house and I've got to pass it on my way home, I'll let you in and lock up later. Will that do?"

  "Perfect," said Lawrence.

  "Here are the details," said Manisier, as he handed Lawrence a typewritten document. "If you want it, you must secure it with a deposit. Come and see me tomorrow."

  "I will," said Lawrence disingenuously, hoping that he wouldn't have to return to West Road. Any further encounter with the agent would prove awkward.

  "Right. I'll be about half an hour."

  "Thank you," said Lawrence as he pushed the door open.

  #

  John Manisier had extinguished the lights making it necessary for Lawrence to resort to his trusty tin. He ignited a candle before locating the gas mantle in the living room where he also found a glass of spills in the hearth. He took one and walked to the gas mantle where he pulled the chain and ignited it. The lamp spluttered into life, revealing a smartly decorated house with a wooden floor and good quality doors and architraves. The composition of the building would usually have been of interest to Lawrence, who was fond of architecture. But not today. His sole reason for being inside the property was to familiarise himself with the scene of Amelia's murder. He reached into his jacket pocket, extracted the clippings and sorted them into date order. Then he sat on the bottom of the stairs and began assimilating the noteworthy points from The Essex Standard of 22nd February 1890.

  Lawrence shivered as he read the chilling reports about the discovery of Amelia's body. They had found Amelia in the empty house – a house guarded by a watchman, with closed doors and windows and having lain empty for at least three months. Constable Cross had entered the property through an unlocked window at the rear when his approach to the caretaker yielded little assistance. The watchman denied having a key which seemed odd to Lawrence considering it was his raison d'être. Cross had opened the front door and admitted his colleague Detective Sergeant Forth, and together they'd searched the house. They found a penny piece at the foot of the stairs and a brooch on the top landing. Then, filled with trepidation, they'd proceeded to the front bedroom, finding the floor thick with dust and covered in footprints. They immediately noticed marks from the door leading to the window where someone had dragged a large object towards a cupboard. Lawrence lowered the article and imagined how the policemen would have felt as they walked towards the cupboard door. They must have known, must have feared what was inside. Yet they did it anyway. He read on. The men had approached the door, opened it and found Amelia's remains inside. She was lying on the floor with a scarf tied tightly around her neck, her skin marble cold. Lawrence licked his pencil and wrote in his notebook. 'Check patterned flannel scarf, eighteen inches long by four and a half broad belonging to the victim'. Lawrence continued reading the article. Someone had disturbed Amelia's clothing, exposing her left knee and her body showed clear evidence of a violation. The poor young girl had died of suffocation arising from strangulation.

  Lawrence shifted his weight, and the stair creaked. It was dark upstairs, the only light coming from the livi
ng room mantle and his candle. The house, shrouded in blackness and deathly quiet, was too oppressive for him to read any more about Amelia's savage death with any degree of comfort. The hairs on his neck stood on end as he contemplated her last hours. Lawrence folded the clippings, knowing he must enter the bedroom where Amelia died. But when he thought about moving, his imagination ran riot. The dark void loomed ominously ahead, and his legs would not carry him forward. Pulling himself together, he looked for another candle, something better than the worn-out stub he kept in his tin. A cursory search of the hallway yielded a long beeswax candle which he lit and held aloft as he mounted the stairs. Once on the landing, he headed straight for a pair of wall-mounted candle sconces and lit the conveniently placed tapers. He repeated the same actions on the second floor. Then, taking a deep breath, he entered the top floor bedroom.

  Shadows played across the walls as Lawrence proceeded towards the window. He drew the curtains and looked below, relieved at the comforting glow from the outside lamp. Beyond it lay West Ham Park, shadowed and ominous in the distance. Anyone could have lurked there, waiting in the darkness for an opportunity to strike. Had that happened to Amelia? Did a faceless predator hide in the gloom? Was he waiting for Millie or would any young girl have done? Lawrence turned to face the cupboard where the body had lain all those years before. He opened it gingerly, but there was nothing to see. It was only a cupboard, a cold empty space large enough to accommodate the body of a girl, but with no other redeeming features. Leaving the cupboard door ajar, and igniting the wall candle, Lawrence settled on the floor and removed the sheaf of clippings again.

  Lawrence had been careless when separating the articles from the rest of the newspaper, and the extract from Lloyd's Weekly was now in two pieces. He held them together and squinted, trying to line up the sentences. The house, it appeared, had been accessible without a key only because of an unlocked rear window. In the coroner's opinion, someone had admitted the deceased through the front door. Dr De Grogono, the divisional police surgeon, had autopsied Amelia's body and found her face and tongue swollen and her eyes dilated. Particles of wool from her scarf lay in the constriction wound, and death took place on or near 31st January. But Lawrence was more interested in the excerpt relating to Samuel Roberts, the nightwatchman. If the reports were anything to go by, there was something deeply suspicious in his conduct. Amelia's father had approached Roberts on the night she disappeared and asked if a young girl could have entered number 126 Portway. Robert said no – only two properties were accessible without keys, and number 126 was not one of them. Two weeks later, having decided to search every empty property in the area, the police tried again. They consulted Roberts who repeated his claim that he could not let them into 126 because he didn't have the key. Yet Constable Cross had accessed the property through the open rear window. It was inconceivable that the watchman hadn't thought to do the same.

  Lawrence lowered the pieces of paper and scowled in concentration. Samuel 'Daddy Watchman's' behaviour had been far from helpful. The newspaper article implied he was a prime suspect in Amelia's disappearance, but they didn't arrest him, much less gain a conviction. And the assumption of guilt made little sense. If Roberts had killed Amelia, he'd had two full weeks in which to dispose of her body. Given that the rear of the property was on common land, he could have done so without fear of prying eyes. But what was it that William Donaldson had said about keys? A story so complicated and unlikely that he could not explain it himself. The Lloyd's article was relatively straightforward, so it must be in a different report.

  #

  Lawrence turned to the final clippings, read one then the other, squinted and read them both again. William Donaldson was right. What had happened in the Portway house was difficult to fathom. The builder, Joseph Roberts, had kept the keys at home, but not the key for number 126. Roberts explained that his father Samuel, the watchman, had slept at the house on the night of the murder. Not only had his father slept there, but his son, Joseph Roberts junior, also claimed to have been in the house that same evening. Neither man saw Amelia's body and to complicate matters still further, their stories about the keys flew in the face of the evidence. A few months earlier, there had been a theft of iron and lead in the local area. Police Inspector James Harvey had approached several builders during his investigation. Joseph Roberts allowed him access to every one of the empty properties, including number 126. And he'd got inside using keys held by Samuel Roberts affixed together on a large chain. So, the key was available a mere two months earlier, and someone was likely lying.

  The events described in the last newspaper article written in May 1890 were stranger still. Lawrence bit his lip while he concentrated, trying to work out the facts from the reporter's embellishments. By May, the rental agent had let out the house, now occupied by two families, the Hewitts and the Rittens. One night, footsteps, followed by a loud crash, woke both couples in the early hours of the morning. Mr Hewitt and Mr Ritten rose and started investigating, eventually tracking the sounds to the attic window. Someone had forced it open. The noises attracted their attention to a trapdoor in the attic ceiling which they accessed using a bench. They climbed into the void and noticed that someone had removed several bricks from the wall adjoining number 125. Inside the aperture, were two keys each tagged with pieces of brown cardboard and marked with number 126. One key fitted the front bedroom door where Constable Cross found Amelia and the other might have been the front door key. Unfortunately, they couldn't check as the lock was changed when the original key went missing.

  Lawrence held his forehead as he focused on the pages. The print was small, the wall lamps not terribly effective, and his eyes were blurry from tiredness. The complicated nature of what he was reading was giving him a splitting headache. According to the newspaper, a house painter by the name of Warren said he placed the keys in the aperture a few weeks earlier. He'd been papering the house, and when he had finished, he left them there. But his story seemed unlikely, and Warren never explained why he hid the keys instead of giving them back. The coroner had asked Joseph Roberts why this should be, and the builder refused to say anything further on the subject. He told the inquest that Warren had gone and his whereabouts were now unknown, so how could he know what the man was thinking? But it was a well-known fact that Amelia's father thought she knew her killer and Charles Jeffs treated Warren's story with considerable scepticism.

  Lawrence shoved the papers in his breast pocket and heaved himself from the floor, right leg tingling with cramp. He left the front room, pausing only to close the cupboard door and located the trapdoor to the attic. It was too high to reach, and with the house unfurnished, there was nothing available to use as steps. This came as something of a relief. Had they been there, Lawrence would have felt compelled to look inside and see where the keys had lain. In the half-hour Lawrence had been in the house, the temperature had dropped still further, and the thought of Amelia lying broken on the floor was giving him palpitations. The floorboards creaked and groaned with his every step, echoing through the empty property and reminding him he was here alone. Lawrence rarely left lights on in a vacant property. But Manisier was due to return at any moment, and he couldn't face descending two sets of unlit stairs. He was not often frightened, but there was something sinister about the house. The unnerving atmosphere usually occurred in far older properties and didn't belong in a home completed only nine years before. Something evil had happened in the house, a crime for which there could be no excuse or explanation – an act of wanton cruelty Lawrence shuddered as he shut the front door and made his way back to Buxton Road. Though it made his journey fractionally longer, he kept well clear of the sinister shadows of West Ham Park.

  CHAPTER 10

  A Grave Disturbance

  Monday, February 20, 1899

  Dear Michael

  I doubt if you've had time to read my previous letter much less respond, but I wanted to share some news with you. I am embarrassed to mention the firs
t item concerning an impulsive action on my part. Against my better judgement, I asked Elsie at the tea shop for an address for Margaret Morse. Elsie knew her well – I believe they were school friends – and Elsie was more than willing to provide her address without asking why I wanted it. I wrote a letter to Miss Morse as soon as I finished my last one to you. Having no real purpose for corresponding with her, I asked her outright about her family, and particularly Ella's headstone. Well, I must have greatly offended her for she wrote back by return. And I do not use that word lightly. She must have penned her reply the moment she received my letter, and it was not pleasant reading. Margaret Morse told me in no uncertain terms, to mind my own business and never to contact her again. Well, I lost no time in confessing my unwise behaviour to Elsie as I did not want her to hear it from Miss Morse. The indiscretion was mine alone, and Elsie should not pay the price for giving me information in good faith. I need not have worried. Elsie accepted my apology with good grace and told me not to worry and pay no heed to Margaret. Although fond of Miss Morse, she is the first to admit that her friend is plain-speaking and intolerant. I was not the first, nor would I be the last to fall foul of her short temper. I asked Elsie to send my apologies next time she writes. Elsie says that there is no need, but she will pass them on if it makes me feel better. I don't, of course. I feel foolish and impetuous, and the old me would have done nothing so ill-considered. But I have learned my lesson and will give more consideration to my actions in future.

  Anyway, I have changed my daily routine, Michael, for reasons which will soon become apparent. As you know, I visit Norma's house every working day, and I have been making myself walk through the graveyard. I know my fears are irrational, and I have tried to conquer them, but in doing so, I realise that I have been negligent of my responsibilities. With that in mind, I now allow myself to walk the long way to work some of the time, and during the rest, I continue to run the gauntlet past the gravestones. But when I take this route, my heart beats so fast that I fear it will stop one day at the sheer terror that stalks me without real form or purpose. Or that is what I thought until yesterday when my fear took physical shape.