A Death in Chelsea

by Lynn Brittney

  He immediately handed it to Victoria, who read the note out loud. “Adeline Treborne may be gone but I am taking over her enterprise. You will be given new instructions as to where and when to pay your next instalment. Payment must be made, or I shall tell everything that I know about you to the newspapers and your husband’s career will be ruined.”

  Victoria noticed that the handwriting looked the same as the pink paper notes received by the editor of the London Herald, although this note was on white paper. “Lady Patrick, when did you receive this note?” she asked, and the American woman was forced to acknowledge her.

  “This morning at breakfast,” she said diffidently. “My butler brought it to me.”

  “Was it hand delivered or stamped?”

  “Um, hand delivered. There was no stamp.” Lady Patrick turned back to Beech with a pleading look on her face. “What do you think I should do, Chief Inspector?”

  Victoria decided that she had had enough of Lady Patrick’s little games and, before Beech could answer, she asked, “Is your husband still unaware of your past and the fact that you were being blackmailed?”

  An expression of irritation crossed the doll-like face and she said curtly, “Of course! My husband has no idea what has been happening for the last few months.”

  Beech did step in now and he asked Lady Patrick why she felt she was in danger.

  “Well, because of this man who is following me!” She was astonished that Beech would question her distress. Victoria realised that Lady Patrick was unnerved because she was not eliciting the usual response she expected from a man. This was a woman who was used to immediately triggering a protective instinct in the opposite sex and she sensed that Beech was being reserved.

  “Lady Patrick.” Beech had decided to tell her the information imparted by Stenton. “The man who is following you is a private detective. Unfortunately, he used to be one of our policemen but, apparently, a dishonourable one and he was asked to leave the police force. In my experience, private detectives, many of whom are honourable retired policemen, are usually employed by the legal profession when they wish to investigate, say, the other party in a divorce case or they are trying to find out information about the parties involved in a civil court case…” Beech trailed off as Lady Patrick had gone as white as a sheet and was trembling.

  “Are you all right?” Victoria asked her anxiously.

  “Could I have some water, please?” Lady Patrick asked in a mere whisper. Victoria immediately went out of the room to ask the duty sergeant for a glass of water. Lady Patrick leaned across to Beech and said in a stricken voice, “I think my husband may have employed this man to spy on me. This is why I feel I am in danger!”

  Beech looked helpless. “Lady Patrick, I cannot interfere in domestic matters. If your husband suspects you of some wrongdoing, he is perfectly within his rights to hire a detective to follow you. I suggest that you tell him the whole truth about the blackmail situation. Secrets within a marriage can be corrosive.”

  Victoria returned with the water, just as Lady Patrick had risen and said haughtily, “You are not the man I thought you were, Chief Inspector. I came to you for some protection, but I see that I have wasted my time.”

  “Lady Patrick, we are concerned with the blackmailer. You must tell us when the blackmailer makes contact again. We have every intention of catching this criminal and putting him or her in prison for a long time.”

  The doll-like face had become quite hard and Victoria realised that this was how the young woman looked when she did not get her own way.

  “I will keep you informed. Good day.” Then she swept past Victoria and out of the office.

  “Well done, Peter. You were thoroughly professional this time!” Victoria said encouragingly. “Although I fear that Lady Patrick will never forgive you for not being more gallant.”

  Beech looked a little sheepish and said, “Quickly! Let’s see if this Wood chap really is following her!” They went out to the corridor to look through the window.

  Sure enough, as soon as Lady Patrick got into her chauffeured car, Wood hailed a passing taxicab and set off in the same direction.

  “I thought she was going to faint when you told her about private detectives being hired by the legal profession,” observed Victoria. “I think she knows her husband is getting suspicious about something.”

  Beech agreed. “And now we have another blackmailer to worry about.”

  “And a definite motive for murder,” said Victoria. “Obviously, this new blackmailer wanted the book, so that he or she could take over the very lucrative business of blackmailing all these people. That person possibly wanted the book enough to kill for it.”

  ***

  It was a sunny day and the train journey to Dartford was a treat for Tollman, Billy and Caroline.

  “It’s amazing how quickly the landscape changes from grimy city to pleasant countryside, when you travel into Kent,” observed Caroline.

  “I love it down here,” said Billy. He was feeling relaxed because Tollman had told him not to wear his uniform today, as they were going to be searching for someone in a small village.

  “We don’t want the uniform to frighten them off now, do we?” Tollman had observed sagely.

  So, Billy was in a mood to reminisce about his childhood holidays picking hops in Faversham. “We used to come mob-handed,” he said, laughing. “My mum and her two sisters and my Aunt Ada’s two children and me. We slept in a tin hut, on blankets over straw. My mum used to cook for us all in billycans over an open fire. It was always hot weather and hard work, but you could have a swim and wash off in the stream. We used to have a rare old time!”

  Caroline laughed. “What about the men? Didn’t they pick hops as well?

  Billy made a face. “Nah! Not really! There were some casual farm workers – mostly gypsies – who moved around all the time, but it was mainly women and kids. The men stayed in the smoke, doing their usual jobs. It was a paid holiday. Mind you, pay wasn’t much, but to us kids, it was a fortune. A farthing a day will buy you a lot of sweets! Did you ever go hop picking, Mr Tollman?”

  “No, son,” was the answer. “I don’t mind drinking the end product though.”

  The conversation continued in a jocular vein for most of the journey and Caroline basked in the rare companionship of the day. As they got closer to Dartford, their conversation turned to the business before them.

  “We don’t even know if we are looking for a man or a woman,” Tollman pointed out. “Kit can be a name for either. Short for Christopher or short for Kitty, maybe.”

  “Where shall we start to look?” asked Caroline.

  “Well, my daughters came down here for a works outing. Some picnic or other. All three of them work in Arding and Hobbs department store in Clapham. And my Daphne says that Peachtree is a very small village with one church and one pub. So, we’ll start with the church, I think.”

  At Dartford station, the trio hired a horse-drawn hackney carriage to take them to Peachtree. It was about seven miles away, just past the village of Swanscombe. Caroline was dismayed to find that pretty countryside soon gave way to the ravages of the cement industry as they began to pass huge quarries and a great amount of industrial activity.

  However, Peachtree seemed to have reclaimed a little piece of rural bliss, as they approached it down a winding lane, expertly navigated by horse and driver. Caroline noted, with satisfaction, that there were cottages with flower gardens, the church looked well-kept and a small river trickled by. There was not much activity. The sun was high and warm, and bees were humming in the hedgerow. A few women were buying fruit and vegetables from a cart near the pub. Tollman, Billy and Caroline alighted, and the driver of the hackney carriage was paid some money and promised more if he would wait for an hour or so to take them back.

  They strolled over to the church and Caroline was on the
verge of pronouncing the place ‘idyllic’ when they were confronted by a jarring sight on the church noticeboard. A large recruiting poster, which said ‘Women of Britain Say GO!’ and showed a woman and her children waving goodbye to marching soldiers, had been slashed across, diagonally, in what was obviously a protest against the sentiment.

  “Someone doesn’t like the war,” muttered Tollman.

  “I can’t say that I blame them,” commented Caroline. “Exhorting people to go off to their deaths has no place on a church noticeboard. These stupid posters make me angry. They only encourage women to tyrannise men into volunteering. It’s the worst kind of propaganda.”

  “There’s worse,” said Billy. “I’ve seen ’em with pictures of children trying to shame their dads into going off to war.”

  Caroline gave a sigh of exasperation as they went through the gate into the churchyard. It was neat and tidy, and Billy noted that the same surnames kept cropping up on the headstones. Obviously, this village was a pretty tight community and had been for a few hundred years. He wondered who, in a village like this, could possibly be the victim of blackmail.

  They entered the church. It was cool and dark, a little Victorian gem, with flowers in wall sconces and family-named pews. There was a movement of a curtain and the vicar appeared, wearing military uniform with his dog collar.

  “Can I help you?” he called cheerily, as he advanced up the aisle.

  “Detective Sergeant Tollman, Constable Rigsby and Dr Allardyce,” announced Tollman briskly, his voice echoing up into the vaulted ceiling of the little church. “We have come from London to find someone and we wondered if you might be able to help us?”

  The vicar shook everyone’s hand, announcing himself as “Reverend, soon to be Captain, Peabody.”

  “I’m sure I can help you. Would you like to come through to the vestry, while I rustle up a cup of tea?”

  Peabody led the way and soon they were all sitting in the vestry, making polite conversation about the village, while the Reverend boiled a kettle and made the tea. They learned that the village was named in the Domesday Book and that there were a few family names that had been a constant presence in this and surrounding villages since medieval times.

  “Tight-knit community then?” Tollman ventured.

  “Oh very! I’ve been here nearly ten years and they still stop talking when I walk into the pub.” The Reverend found it amusing but Billy found it distasteful.

  “So,” the Reverend said, pouring tea and handing it round, “exactly who is it that you are looking for?”

  “We just have an abbreviated name – Kit B – does that mean anything to you?”

  The smile disappeared from the Reverend’s face instantly and they could all see that the name Kit B meant a great deal to the man. “Yes, well, I’m not surprised that she is sought by the police,” he said distastefully.

  “Please do tell us more, Reverend.” Caroline’s interest was piqued as to why a man of the cloth should be so disapproving.

  “Kitty Bellamy moved here, with her invalid husband, about six months ago. Her husband was wounded in the war and is… severely… disfigured. Fortunately, they live in a cottage at the very end of the village. No one sees the husband – which is just as well, because the sight of him would frighten most people, especially children. She… is a difficult woman. Various villagers have had run-ins with her, for one reason or another. She gets angry if the village children play up near her house, for example. And she is the one who, yesterday, slashed through the recruiting poster I had put up on the church noticeboard. A difficult woman. May I ask why you are seeking her out?”

  Tollman shook his head and said firmly, “Sorry, Reverend, but the matter is confidential. You understand.”

  “Of course. I am leaving at the end of the week anyway, so whatever may affect the community will not really be my concern.”

  “What regiment are you going to?” asked Billy curiously.

  The Reverend smiled. “I don’t know yet. The Army Chaplains’ Department will assign me when I get to basic training at Sandhurst. I go where I’m sent,” he added with a smile. Billy didn’t know whether he regarded padres as heroes or fools – all he knew was that he wouldn’t like to be at the Front without a gun in his hand.

  After receiving directions from the Reverend as to the exact location of Kitty Bellamy’s house, they walked past groups of cottages huddled together and then up a lane to this one dwelling on its own. It was more than a cottage, being brick-built and having a tiled, rather than thatched, roof.

  “I get the impression that this Kitty Bellamy and her husband like to be isolated,” observed Caroline. She looked back down the lane and the village was now completely hidden from sight by the curve of the lane and the overgrown hedgerows.

  Tollman knocked on the door and it was opened by a thin woman in her thirties, who looked as though she had been crying. What happened next took Caroline and Billy by complete surprise. There was a pause… Tollman seemed transfixed… The woman said “Yes?” in a weary tone of voice… Tollman produced his warrant card and then pushed into the house aggressively, pinning the woman against the wall. Then he said triumphantly,

  “Kitty Mason, I am arresting you for the planning and execution of three separate terrorist attacks in London in 1913.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A World of Hate

  “Mr Tollman!” said Caroline sharply. “What is this?”

  “This,” replied Tollman, nodding towards the woman he had cornered, “is one of the most violent suffragettes ever to stalk the streets of London. One Kitty Mason. Responsible for a dozen arson attacks and at least three bombings where witnesses placed her at the scene.” Tollman was almost laughing with glee.

  “That may very well be, but this woman is also very ill. Let her go! At once!” Caroline’s tone of voice snapped Tollman out of his exultation, as if she had slapped him across the face. He looked shocked and immediately backed off from Kitty Mason, who promptly slid down the wall in a dead faint.

  “Billy!” Caroline urged. “Can you carry her into the next room?” Billy duly obliged, pushing past the dazed Tollman, who seemed overcome with embarrassment. Lifting up the woman, Billy reckoned that she weighed no more than a child, and he placed her gently on the sofa in the small living room. Caroline began undoing blouse buttons and fanning the woman with a newspaper she had picked up off the table.

  “I’ll get some water,” said Billy, going through to the small scullery he could see through the door. He grabbed a cup and began pumping water from the standpipe outside the back door. As he was returning, he heard a howl… a terrible howl… like an animal in its death throes. Everyone froze, transfixed with horror. Then it happened again, a terrible animal noise, which died down to a strange keening, a subdued wailing of grief.

  Billy could stand it no longer and he ran up the stairs, following the sound. He opened the door and his heart stopped. Before him, on the bed, lay a creature… no longer a man… no longer even human. The face was so badly disfigured that the left side was barely there at all. Also, the left shoulder and arm were gone. Billy couldn’t see whether, under the covers, the left leg was gone as well. The man was making a terrible constant noise, somewhere between a moan and a scream, such was the level of his constant pain. Billy felt the tears trickling down his face. He couldn’t stop them. He had seen dead bodies in this sort of state in the hell between the trenches at Ypres, but he had never seen anyone who had survived such terrible injuries.

  Suddenly, the small woman, revived from her faint, pushed past him and ran over to the man in the bed. “Shush, I’m here, my love, I’m here,” she said soothingly and stroked his hair. Billy realised that the man was blind as well. Then she prepared a glass syringe and expertly injected the man’s only arm and gradually, he subsided into sleep. Billy turned away, rubbing the tears from his eyes, only to re
alise that Caroline had been standing behind him all the time. She fleetingly touched his shoulder and then went into the bedroom.

  “Why is your husband not in hospital?” she asked Kitty softly.

  Kitty raised a face full of anguish to the doctor and said, “He felt that he did not have long to live, and he wanted us to spend the time alone together. But he underestimated the strength of his body. Despite appalling pain and the fact that he cannot eat properly or see or hardly hear, he has lingered for six long months now. The doctor at the military hospital gave me enough drugs for two months. He said he wouldn’t last longer than that. I have had to get more supplies from a local doctor in Dartford. Joseph…” – she laid her hand on her sleeping husband’s chest – “…wants me to end his life. He has asked me again and again over the last couple of weeks. I love him more than my own life, but I cannot do it! God help me, I want to end his suffering, but I cannot do it.”

  “You have exhausted yourself,” Caroline said. “I can see that you have pneumonia. How long is it since you have eaten?”

  Kitty shook her head. “I can’t remember. Food doesn’t mean much to me, anyway, not since my spells in Holloway prison.”

  “How many times were you force-fed?” Caroline had encountered this health problem before with other suffragettes.

  Kitty gave a low and bitter laugh. “Over two hundred times. Your stomach never gets over it.” Billy made a sound as though he were choking.

  Caroline looked at Billy. “Constable Rigsby, do you know how to make soup?” Billy nodded and headed down to the scullery again.

  “Come downstairs now, Mrs Bellamy, your husband will sleep for a couple of hours.” Caroline was firm. “Let us look after you, in the meantime.”