Murder at the Bayswater Bicycle Club

by Linda Stratmann

  ‘No, I think it’s just used for storage.’

  ‘I can see how a cart turning into the yard would have been hidden from a rider’s view until he was quite close. If a bicyclist had been travelling south and going too fast he wouldn’t have had time to stop.’ Frances moved past the gateway to where the road became a straighter run, then turned and looked back. ‘Yes, coming up from the south the view isn’t impeded.’ She gave the question some thought. ‘Can we try an experiment? I will stand just here where the cart must have been. Could you move away out of sight and then ride slowly towards the farm entrance? I want to see how much time you have to stop.’

  Cedric obliged and wheeled his bicycle out of view. ‘Starting now,’ he called, and Frances watched for his approach. Moments later, Cedric came riding around the corner, pedalling slowly and cautiously. He had just a few feet in which to stop, and was able to do so, quickly hopping off one side of the machine.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Frances. ‘So, if Morton Vance had been going carefully there wouldn’t have been a collision at all, or at the worst a very minor one. And he must have known the dangers.’

  ‘All the members knew them, yes.’

  ‘So it follows that if he had wanted to race another rider this would have been the very last place he would have chosen.’

  ‘I would say so. Undoubtedly.’

  Frances wheeled her bicycle into the farmyard, which despite its lack of pigs still caught at the nostrils with the sour reek of manure. Wooden fencing created a large pigpen enclosing two troughs and a low house built of stone, the surface of the ground like a choppy sea of dried mud. Now pig-free it was being used to store farming equipment. Nearby, a high-sided two-wheel cart was tilted forward, resting on its shafts.

  ‘Ah!’ said Frances.

  ‘What have you seen?’ asked Cedric, following her into the farmyard.

  ‘This,’ said Frances, pointing to the cart. ‘I’m wondering if it’s the same one Morton Vance collided with.’ She rolled her bicycle forward. ‘What size bicycle did Morton Vance ride?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘I really can’t say. Maybe it was returned to his parents after the trial. It was badly damaged, that I do know.’

  The pig cart, for all that it had obviously seen years of hard use, was a substantial vehicle, with a long outer framework of steel rods around thick planks, and tall heavy wheels. When laden with pigs it would have been slow moving and a formidable barrier. It was certainly not something that any man on a bicycle would want to collide with at speed if he could possibly help it. It was clear from the size of the vehicle that when turning into the farmyard there would be several moments when it entirely blocked the roadway to all traffic.

  Frances examined the cart more closely, running her fingers over its surface. Long dry cracks in the wood spoke of age and natural wear, but there were also deep scratches carved into the planks that were only on its left side. She brought her bicycle closer and found that the scratches matched fairly well with the position of the handlebars. Further down was an indentation that could only have been made by collision with a projecting pedal. The cart had been painted when new although its colour was so long faded that it was impossible to tell what it had once been. There were other smears along its side that looked like tyre rubber, and tiny shreds of dark blue paint. ‘This must be the cart,’ she said. ‘The position of the marks show that a bicycle going south down the lane ran into it.’ She turned to Cedric. ‘Imagine that you are Morton Vance, going fast down the road. You see this blocking your way. You can’t go around it and you have no time to stop. What would you do?’

  Cedric contemplated this hazardous situation. ‘Bad business. But I don’t see why he would have been going fast. Everyone knew not to do it. Vance even wrote about it in the magazine. And remember, we only have old Linnett’s word for it that Vance was racing. He was probably lying.’

  ‘But just imagine that for whatever reason you are going too fast, and you suddenly see this cart ahead of you. What then? What do you do?’

  Cedric’s expression showed her that this was not a pleasant thought. ‘Well, there’s not a lot of choice – I mean there’s going to be an awful crash whatever I do – but I suppose if I had to ride into something, I’d try and see if I could go into the hedge. Sooner that than this thing.’

  ‘So you’d swerve to one side?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And even then there might not be enough time to do that, but a side-on collision would be better than head-first I suppose?’

  ‘I’d say so. If Vance had been going at a sensible speed, he might still have run into the cart, or gone into the hedge, but then he’d have got away with a few bruises and scratches. We’ve all ridden off the road from time to time.’

  ‘Take a look at this,’ said Frances. She brought her bicycle close to the cart and matched the deep indentation with the pedal and the gouge with the handlebars. ‘I suspect that Mr Vance had a slightly smaller wheel, but the proportions are about right. This is hard wood. That’s a lot more damage than can be accounted for by a collision at low speed. Have any other members of the club ever collided with the cart?’

  ‘No. I’m sure they would have said so if they had.’

  ‘What about Mr Babbit of the Oakwood club? It was he who was involved in the accident that injured Jack Linnett. I found a report in the newspaper but it didn’t give any details, only that the horse shied. Did Mr Babbit collide with the cart?’

  ‘No, I was told that the animal bolted after he had ridden past it, and then the cart went into the ditch and overturned. Babbit wasn’t injured at all.’

  ‘So as far as we know the only bicyclist to have collided with the cart was Morton Vance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a long silence then Cedric examined the marks and compared them with the bicycle. ‘Do you know, I don’t like to say it, but the evidence is there. Vance really was going too fast.’

  ‘Then Sam Linnett was telling the truth.’

  ‘On that point at least, I have to admit he was.’ Cedric frowned. ‘But he was lying about everything else.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘Of course he was. I mean, who else would have wanted to kill Vance?’

  Frances had no answer to that question, but realised that she would very much like to discover it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Frances returned home with a bruised elbow, a scraped knee that would require a repair to her trousers, and an aching shoulder. She had fallen off the bicycle three times in all, and she didn’t care. Twice when learning to dismount, she had been caught by Cedric, and thus avoided injury, but on her return from the abandoned pig farm overconfidence had led her to go too fast and outpace him, and she had overturned while taking a sharp left into East Acton Lane. The small amount of pain she brushed aside, it was worth it for the excitement and exhilaration. The experience was far more, she realised, than just about riding a bicycle. She had done what men thought she could not do, or even if they thought she could, what they had decreed she ought not to. Their opinion was based on no other reason than that she was a woman, as if it was somehow self-evident that her sex rendered her incapable of those mental and physical achievements they deemed to be beyond her capabilities. These were not bad men, she had to remind herself, or even thoughtless men. They just had no imagination and could not conceive of a world that was other than the way they had been taught it was and would always be. Frances Doughty had proved them wrong.

  While Frances had no especial desire to be a man, she had come to appreciate how the simple device of wearing trousers allowed a freedom of movement that was denied to her when encumbered with long heavy skirts and layers of petticoats. Trousers were such a practical garment she wished they would become a permissible part of everyday female attire. She felt sure that most of the things that women were constantly being told they could not do, would be perfectly possibl
e if society was a little more accepting in the matter of dress. Why was it, she wondered, that the supposedly weaker sex were obliged to spend their days being weighed down as effectively as convicts in leg irons, by garments far heavier than those worn by men, that prevented them moving as athletically as they were surely able to? She had once, when acting as a detective, been obliged to climb over a fence and what a bother that had been in her long skirt.

  It was ironic, she realised, that if trousers ever did become acceptable wear for women who were not on the music hall stage, even if only for those engaged in sporting activities, she would as a result find it far harder to carry out her deception. As things now stood, the mere fact of wearing a man’s suit announced her, at least at first glance, to be a man, and it was only as a man that she could hope to ride a bicycle.

  Frances had seen posters advertising circuses in which women in colourful costumes that revealed the shape of their limbs to ogling men, were able to mount and ride the high-wheeler. But these were understood to be females of a certain kind, having nothing in common with ladies. Now that she had mastered the bicycle, she determined to discover how she might ride it in public, safely, without offending popular taste or risking arrest for indecency. It was a subject she could broach with those doyennes of the female suffrage movement and devoted companions, Miss Gilbert and Miss John, who had taken an interest in the new movement of dress reform for women, and would be sure to have some interesting suggestions.

  Frances had just completed a sponge wash and change of clothes when Sarah arrived home, but she was still simmering with the memory of her ride.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ demanded Sarah, suspiciously. ‘I can see it from your face.’

  ‘I have been enjoying my little excursion with Mr Garton.’

  ‘Oh?’ Sarah gave Frances a look that would have cracked granite. ‘It’s more than that, though. You’ve not been – I mean, I thought you weren’t likely to – not with him anyhow – isn’t he one of those inverted types?’

  ‘I was inverted three times today, and I should like to try it again,’ said Frances. She laughed at Sarah’s astonished expression. ‘We were bicycling, that is all,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I fell off, but that’s quite usual, so it’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘What, dressed like that?’

  ‘I wore the suit. And do you know what I discovered? Women can ride bicycles just as well as men, it’s only their clothes that stop them.’

  ‘And common sense, too,’ growled Sarah.

  ‘I just wanted to try it for myself,’ Frances explained. ‘If I’m to go to the race meeting and talk with all those devotees I thought I should at least understand why they love bicycles so much. And now I do understand. It’s more than just having the newest ball bearings and taking pride in the size of one’s wheel. It’s about being free to go where you want and when. It’s something all women should be able to do.’

  Sarah looked dubious.

  ‘I learned to mount and dismount, and steer. I rode around the carriage drive at Springfield Lodge, and once I felt I had the measure of the machine, I rode out onto Old Oak Common Lane and visited the place where Mr Vance was killed.’

  ‘Did you learn anything?’ asked Sarah, putting supper plates on the table.

  ‘Yes, I did. The inquest report stated that the flakes of paint from Vance’s bicycle were found on the left-hand side of the cart. I had a look in the farmyard, and there is a cart there, a high-sided one for the transport of livestock. I’m sure it’s the same one. If it was turning into the farm entrance then it would have blocked most of the roadway, and there would have been no opportunity for a fast-moving bicyclist to stop in time to avoid a collision. A man moving slowly, as the club members were all advised to do, would have been safe. The paint-marks demonstrate very clearly that Vance must have been travelling south when he struck the cart. If he had been going north he would have seen the cart well in time to stop, but from the south his view was impeded.’

  Frances pushed aside the dishes, unfolded the map of East Acton on the table, and pointed out the location of the murder. Sarah stopped her work and came to stare at the map.

  ‘The road bends slightly just before the farm entrance, which is partly obscured by hedgerows, but the club members knew this very well, and they also knew about the threat posed by Sam Linnett. The club had put a white-painted marker post by the side of the road as a warning to slow down or dismount and walk. If Vance was racing another bicyclist, as was suggested, then that makes two men who were doing something that was far from sensible. But where is the other man? No one has come forward and said that he and Vance had decided to race down the lane.’

  Sarah stuck out her lower lip. ‘What about the man who found the body? Could he have been the racer? He might have been, and lied about it.’

  ‘If so, he never admitted it. He was Henry Ross-Fielder, the club’s vice-captain. He said that he was taking a gentle ride to enjoy the fine weather.’ Frances found the newspaper account of the trial. ‘Yes, here it is, he lives in Holland Park and said he was bicycling along the Vale towards East Acton, then he went north up Old Oak Common Lane, when he found the body.’ Frances studied the map to establish Ross-Fielder’s route. ‘If he’s telling the truth he can’t have been the racer. He was going the wrong way.’

  Sarah re-read the report and stabbed a finger at the newspaper. ‘Look at those injuries. Vance hit the ground hard, there’s no doubt about it. A strong young man doesn’t get all them broken bones from a little spill.’

  ‘No, and the marks on the cart do suggest a heavy collision, so we have to conclude that he was going too fast. That much at least supports Sam Linnett’s story. But why? Why do something so foolish? There must be safer places to race.’

  ‘Might have been a betting matter,’ said Sarah. ‘Men do all sorts of silly things they shouldn’t just for a bet.’

  ‘That’s very true,’ said Frances. ‘And if he was racing for a bet, I suppose the other rider would have been ashamed to admit it, since the foolishness led to a man’s death.’

  She studied the report again. ‘The last person to see Vance at Springfield Lodge was Mr Toop, who saw him take his bicycle out. I have met Mr Toop and I don’t think he is a racing man. So Vance stored his machine in the coach house there, and took it out about an hour before he was found. But where did he ride? Why did no one see him, or report having seen him? And an hour later why was he riding south away from East Acton where he should have been going if he wanted to replace his machine?’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m thinking that there may be more to the murder of Morton Vance than is generally supposed.’

  ‘Man’s been hanged for it,’ Sarah reminded her.

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Frances. ‘I know.’ She took out her notebook and began to write down all the things that puzzled her and what she might need to find out.

  ‘You’ve not been asked to look into that,’ said Sarah, setting out the plates again. ‘And supposing Sam Linnett did get hanged for a murder he didn’t do? You can’t unhang him.’

  ‘No, but a murderer has gone free, a man who allowed another to suffer for his crime, and he should be brought to justice.’

  ‘He’ll be dangerous, mind.’

  ‘I have no doubt of that. I do understand, of course, that I have not been engaged to find Morton Vance’s murderer, but at the same time it is possible that that crime is in some way connected with the criminal activities, which I have been asked to look out for.’

  ‘Well, I’m only glad your friends will be there to watch over you. Cold pie and eggs?’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Frances absently, staring at her list. Sarah grunted and went to fetch supper. The meal was almost silent, as Frances made notes, eating what was put on the plate before her without paying a great deal of attention to it.

  The only sounds for some time were Frances’ busy pencil, and Sarah scraping out the pickle jar.


  After a long pause, Sarah coughed. ‘The thing is, Pounder and me we want to get married.’

  Frances nearly snapped the pencil lead. ‘Well, that’s wonderful!’ she said, when she had recovered her composure. ‘When will the wedding be?’

  ‘We thought next month.’

  ‘And afterwards, will you both be living in the ground floor apartment?’

  ‘We want to, yes, but I remember when we took this place we were told that we weren’t to have animals and children in the house.’

  Frances smiled. ‘And I assume that you are not planning to adopt pets. Very well, I shall write to the owner and ask if the rule can be removed. After all, the only other tenants are myself, and hopefully Tom and Ratty soon, so we will be very like a family.’

  Sarah nodded but she was clearly pleased by the prospect.

  A thought struck Frances. ‘Sarah – you’re not —?’

  ‘Don’t know yet,’ said Sarah, and went to make tea.

  With Sarah and Tom under one roof, Frances reflected, it would be a family in more ways than one. Sarah had never revealed the identity of Tom’s father. It was a memory she had buried, and it was understandable that she would not want to relive the terror, shame and betrayal that her robustly nurturing family had helped her to survive. Now that Sarah was no longer a frightened girl but a stout brawny woman, Frances could only hope that the man was well out of her associate’s revengeful reach.

  Frances completed her notes and once she and Sarah were settled over tea she decided not to press her companion for further details of her wedding plans, which she doubted would be forthcoming, but turned instead to another issue.

  ‘One thing about today’s adventure, it has made me think very seriously about how women’s clothes stop them from doing things they are perfectly capable of doing. I am sure Miss Gilbert and Miss John would have something to say about it.’