“What about the other two ‘regular’ clients?” Tollman asked, pencil poised over his notebook.
Robinson smiled and shook his head. “The other lady,” – Billy smiled at the fact that Robinson seemed unwilling to mention names – “here,” – Robinson pointed to the name in the ledger of a reasonably well-known stage actress – “has many admirers and each time one of them gives her a piece of jewellery, she brings it in here to have it appraised. If it is valuable, she has it copied, and we sell the stones for her. She is quite frank, to me, that it is a way of supplementing her income.” Beech raised an eyebrow, Billy grinned and Tollman pursed his lips in disapproval. Victoria privately thought it was rather enterprising.
“And the gentleman?” Beech probed further.
Samuel Robinson’s lips curled in disdain. “One could hardly call him a gentleman.” He pointed to a name in the ledger of a young MP, known to be a ‘man about town’, popular with the ladies. Robinson continued, “He always has the same method of operation. He brings a young lady in here and she chooses a piece of jewellery, he pays for it and he has an arrangement with us that we say it will be delivered to the young lady’s address in a week. Meanwhile, we copy it and deliver the fake one to the lady, while he gets us to sell the real item in one of our other shops and refund him the money. That way, I assume, he gets to seduce the young lady at very little expense to himself.”
Tollman looked even more disapproving, Billy’s eyes widened, Beech shook his head in disbelief, and this time, Victoria was privately outraged.
“I presume you get a nice fat commission from all of these shenanigans?” demanded Tollman.
Robinson nodded and hung his head.
Beech continued to question. “Presumably that is why Adeline Treborne was blackmailing you?” Robinson nodded again. “Was she privy to the contents of this ledger?”
Robinson looked horrified. “No! Upon my word, sir, she was not!”
“Then how did she know that these ‘arrangements’ were going on?”
“The actress’s maid had told someone who was a friend of Miss Treborne’s – but I don’t know how she found out about Lady Patrick. I was paying Adeline Treborne to protect my clients. She said that if I did not pay, she would make a note of everyone who came into the shop throughout the week and she would accuse them in the newspaper of having fake jewellery made, whether it was true or not. She said she would expose the trade of creating fakes. We would have lost our Royal Warrant!” Robinson looked thoroughly miserable.
“Where were you on the evening of the first of July and the morning of the second, Mr Robinson?”
“Why?” Robinson looked puzzled. Then he said, “I was at home with my wife and family. You can ask our neighbours. They came around for supper on the evening of the first. It was our wedding anniversary.”
Beech looked at the others. Billy shook his head, so did Tollman, meaning that neither of them believed that Robinson was the murderer. After all, the man barely came up to Billy’s chest, he was so small.
“You will be relieved to know, Mr Robinson, that Adeline Treborne is dead.”
Robinson’s face was a picture of relief, but then Beech added, “We believe that she may have been murdered.” Robinson’s face turned a nasty grey colour with shock. Beech continued, “However, we do not consider you to be a suspect in the murder enquiry.” Before Billy could catch him, Robinson slid off his chair on to the floor, in a dead faint.
“Oh, dear! Poor Mr Robinson!” said Victoria in alarm. “Constable Rigsby, please do something!”
“Yes, Mrs E,” said Billy with resignation, and he picked up the shop manager as though he were a sack of coal and laid him flat out on the table. Victoria produced a bottle of smelling salts from her bag and waved it under Mr Robinson’s nose, which soon had him spluttering and coughing and fully conscious.
“There we are now, sir,” said Billy helpfully, as he lifted Mr Robinson off the table, held him in his arms as though he were a damsel in distress, and then deposited him back on his chair.
Any further discussion was about Lady Patrick’s appointment with Mr Robinson. It was decided that Mr Robinson should go home for the rest of the day, as he was obviously still in a state of shock. Victoria and Beech would stay, to talk to Lady Patrick. Rigsby and Tollman would go back to Scotland Yard, with Mr Robinson’s ledger, to see if any of his clients had reported a burglary in the last six months, possibly with intent to defraud their insurance company.
***
As Tollman and Rigsby walked into the Yard, they found themselves almost knocked down by a stampede of detectives from CID, eager to get out of the front door as fast as they could. Bringing up the rear was Tollman’s least favourite person in Scotland Yard, Detective Sergeant Carter.
“You still blowing the dust off old cases, Tollman?” asked Carter, trying to score points. “Only you’ll have to excuse me… can’t stop to chat… some of us have real police work to do.”
“What? Like shining the shoes of West End gangsters who top up your pay packet, Carter?” Tollman thought he’d get one in, right below the belt.
Carter give him a contemptuous look. “Jealous?” he said softly.
“No, lad. You’re welcome to your boot-licking. Just be careful it don’t lead to your own personal hole in the ground one day. Gangsters have a way of disposing of people they don’t find useful any more.” Tollman gave Carter an equally contemptuous look.
“Mr Tollman, would you like me to take DS Carter around the back of this building and teach him a lesson?” asked Billy.
Carter laughed. “All right, Frankenstein’s Monster, you can get back in your cage. Mr Tollman and me have an understanding and it doesn’t have anything to do with you. All right?”
Billy was itching to thump him but unless Tollman gave him permission, he had to keep his hands by his side.
Tollman looked at Carter and smiled in a pitying way. “Now, Carter, I know that your little fragile ego is begging for me to ask what case you are on now. So, I am asking you, so you can get it off your chest and get out of my sight.”
Carter grinned. “Crime of the century,” he gloated. “Someone’s just killed Ruth Baker.” Seeing the smile disappear from Tollman’s face, Carter assumed he had scored a point and the older detective was jealous, so he decided to put the boot in before he left. “Shame you won’t be involved in the investigation – especially as you buggered up the last one into Ruth Baker. Never mind, eh?” Then he was out of the door, laughing to himself.
“What was that all about, Mr Tollman?” asked Billy, seeing Tollman’s frozen face.
“Ruth B baby!” muttered Tollman. “How could I have been so blind? Ruth B baby! Of course! Billy! Follow me!” and he sped up the stairs with frantic haste, Billy racing after him. Tollman kept up the pace until he reached the Criminal Records Department, then he paused, panting, before pushing open the doors. The uniformed sergeant in charge, an amiable man called Horace Stenton, looked up from his paperwork and grinned.
“Been expecting you all day, Arthur! I expect you want the Ruth Baker file?” Tollman nodded, still too out of breath to form the words. Stenton handed it over and said sympathetically, “Never mind, Arthur. She appears to have got her come-uppance.”
Tollman could breathe more easily now. “Did Carter say who the CID boys think did it?”
“Their money seems to be on the husband.”
Tollman shook his head vigorously. “No. Not the husband. I know it won’t be him.” Then he turned to Rigsby. “Billy, be a good lad and get us both a cup of tea and then come and find me in Interview Room B. And I’ll tell you the story of the greatest failure of my career.”
Billy looked astonished and Stenton gave him a wink. “I hope you’ve got all day, lad,” he said jovially. “Arthur’s been known to harp on about the Ruth Baker case until the small hours!”
The Perfect Victim
Lady Patrick was an exquisite young creature, Victoria decided, rather like the most delicately featured porcelain doll, with her round blue eyes, plump pink lips and golden curls, framing a creamy complexion. She could see that Beech was overawed by the woman and was already being over-attentive – fussing over a chair for her and fetching her a glass of water. Victoria imagined that all men felt an instant attraction and sense of protectiveness when confronted by this doll-like creature. Victoria also sensed that it was probably not possible for women to feel jealous of her – envious, yes, of her physical attributes, but not jealous, because there was something almost childlike about her.
As Beech gently informed Lady Patrick that Adeline Treborne was dead and that they knew all about the fact that she was blackmailing various people, of which she was one, a single tear rolled down Lady Patrick’s cheek. She even cries beautifully! Victoria was full of admiration for this living work of art.
Lady Patrick spoke in a soft, in volume and tone, American accent, as she explained the predicament she found herself in.
“Before I met my husband,” she explained, “I was the mistress of another man.” Beech looked at the floor in embarrassment and Victoria felt mean-spirited in her enjoyment of the fact that this exquisite young woman had a flaw. Lady Patrick continued, “It was not of my choosing. My mother… who was a much-admired courtesan from San Francisco… sold me to my… protector… when I was sixteen.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Beech.
Damn, thought Victoria, now I shall have to feel sorry for her again!
“Fortunately, and fortuitously, my protector and my mother both died within a few months of each other – about five years ago – and I was free. I had a house that he had purchased in my name and jewellery that he had given me, so I was able to sell all of those and move to England. I changed my name and pretended that I was a widow. People were very kind and took me into their social circles and then I met my husband.”
“I take it that your husband knows nothing about your past life?” asked Victoria, trying to be sympathetic but, judging by Beech shooting her a disapproving glare, she obviously hadn’t succeeded.
Lady Patrick just shook her head sorrowfully, her golden curls trembling around her perfect face.
“My husband is a very honourable man and a very eminent lawyer. He has advised the Royal Family and many prominent figures in British society. If I told him, I am sure he would understand but I am equally sure that he would feel compelled to retire from his valuable work. I would not wish to be the cause of such a brilliant man being lost to the legal profession.”
“So, you have been selling the jewellery that your husband gave you, in order to pay Adeline Treborne, and having replicas made so that your husband would not suspect?” Beech asked gently.
Lady Patrick nodded and gave a small smile to Beech that was guaranteed to melt the hardest of hearts.
Victoria was then astonished to hear Beech say, “Well, I don’t think we need bother you any further, Lady Patrick. Adeline Treborne will no longer be a problem for you and the secret of your past life is safe with us. We shall not mention your name in our report.”
Lady Patrick’s face lit up, like an amazed child at Christmas. The pink lips parted, and she smiled, displaying perfect white, even teeth. “Thank you, Chief Inspector,” she breathed, and Beech escorted her protectively to the door. When he kissed her hand, Victoria thought she was going to explode with fury.
“Please, Lady Patrick, do not hesitate to call me, if you should need any assistance,” Beech added. As the doll-creature left the room, Victoria realised that she had barely been the focus of the woman’s gaze – even when she had spoken to her. Lady Patrick had concentrated only on Beech, answered Beech and reacted to Beech. It was as if Victoria did not really exist.
When Beech returned, his afterglow of briefly being Lady Patrick’s saviour and protector was rudely stripped away when Victoria said, “Peter, you made a complete ass of yourself!”
“What?!”
“No wonder the Metropolitan Police Force needs the assistance of women! That creature just ran rings around you and you just lapped it up!”
Beech flushed with the realisation that he may have lacked a certain amount of professionalism in Lady Patrick’s presence.
Victoria continued, “Not only were you not prepared to countenance the fact that she may be lying, but you have dismissed the notion that her husband could very well have known and could actually be the murderer! If she can get you to abandon your professional instincts, can you imagine what she could get a besotted husband, several years her senior, to do for her? The woman could be a criminal mastermind, for all you know! Just because she has the face of an angel does not make her above suspicion!” There was no doubt that Victoria was very angry, and Beech felt helpless in the face of such fury.
“I shall take myself home,” Victoria announced, between gritted teeth, “I suggest you go back to Scotland Yard and brush up on your Chief Inspector skills!” With that, she swept out, leaving Beech confused, a little guilty and considerably embarrassed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Who Killed Ruth Baker?
“So,” said Billy to Tollman, after watching him sip his cup of tea for a while, “are you going to tell me, Mr Tollman, about this Ruth Baker, what she has to do with the case we are working on, and why your past dealings with this woman were such a failure?”
Tollman sighed. “Fifteen years ago, it was. We had a tip-off that a Mrs Ruth Baker was a baby farmer…”
“A what?” Billy had never heard the term before.
“A baby farmer,” explained Tollman, “is a woman who offers to take illegitimate or unwanted babies and either look after them herself or find them new parents. All for a fee, of course. The problem arises when the baby farmer decides that she can make more profit from killing the infants than having to go to the bother of looking after them or finding them a new home.”
Billy pulled a face of distaste.
Tollman nodded in agreement. “Someone anonymously tipped us off that Ruth Baker was one of these baby murderers. We investigated her, and her husband, but we couldn’t find any proof. We dug up her back garden. No bodies. We dragged the canal near her house in Islington. Nothing. We couldn’t prove anything. She swore that all the children she had taken in were then passed on to ‘loving parents’ in Britain and abroad but she had no paperwork to prove it. She had no names to give us. She said everything was done confidentially and people gave false names. And, of course, there was no law, then or now, that said that what she claimed she was doing was wrong. Kids could, and still can, be bought and sold like dogs and horses and there is nothing the police can do about it unless we can prove bodily harm.”
“Shameful,” said Billy.
“The thing is,” said Tollman, “her husband, the one that Carter reckons killed her, was like a faithful dog. Big dozy brute he was, a bit of a man mountain. Covered in tattoos. When he did work, he worked as a labourer. Ruth Baker was a slip of a thing. Small and dark, I remember her eyes were almost black. I think she had gypsy blood in her. But she had that husband of hers wrapped round her little finger. When we took her to the station for questioning, he cried like a baby. Great big ugly sod cried like a little kid. And when she was in the interview room, all she kept saying was, ‘I need to get back to my Sydney. He’s lost without me.’ Really anxious about it, she was. Sydney Baker struck me as a bit simple, and he never wavered in his devotion to her. He would never kill her, I’d bet my own life on that.”
There was a knock at the door and Stenton entered, with a file in his hand. “Mr Beech wanted these fingerprint reports as soon as possible,” he said. “Told me to give them to you, if he wasn’t around.”
Tollman nodded and took the file. “Oh, Stenton, where did they say
that Ruth Baker was living now?”
“Apparently, she was living, with her husband, at some house in the rough World’s End area, off the New King’s Road, not far from the Imperial Gas Works.”
“Who reported the murder?”
“Neighbour. Went over about seven o’clock in the morning, before going to work, to pay into the Christmas Club that Baker was running and found her stabbed.”
“Husband standing over the body?”
“No. The neighbour thought he had been there though, because he works as a night shift labourer on the Underground system and usually gets home around six in the morning. The husband’s gone missing.” Stenton held his hands up. “That’s all that has been put down in the Morning Report. The printing department are working on photographs of the husband as we speak. Don’t ask me anything else, Arthur, or Carter will make my life a misery.”
Tollman nodded. “OK. Thanks for that, anyway.”
After Stenton left, Tollman looked through the fingerprint reports and said, with a note of disbelief in his voice, “This just keeps getting better!”, and he turned the file round to show Billy.
“Identified fingerprints at 12 Trinity Mansions… Reginald Ingham… confidence trickster… etcetera… Sydney Baker… grievous bodily harm… arrested May 1911, Fulham. Charge sheets say that he was arrested for beating a man to within an inch of his life ‘for speaking disrespectfully to his wife, Ruth’. Spent two years in Pentonville. Fingerprints were found on the bedstead in Adeline Treborne’s apartment and on the front door. Sounds to me like Sydney Baker is the most likely candidate, at the moment, for our hangman. He could have lifted up the Treborne woman with one hand tied behind his back.”
“It says that there were other sets of fingerprints in the apartment indicating the presence of two other people,” noted Billy. “Do you think that Ruth Baker was one of them?”
A Death in Chelsea Page 13
