A Better Quality of Murder: (Inspector Ben Ross 3)

by Granger, Ann

  ‘If I’d known Pritchard – or anyone else – was watching,’ I said, ‘I should have followed her down the street a little way and then spoken to her.’

  ‘Pritchard would still have seen you. He was following Miss Marchwood and caught up with her at Waterloo.’

  ‘I should still have tried harder to persuade Miss Marchwood to confide in me!’ I burst out. ‘I should have walked with her to Waterloo and, along the way, gained her trust. Bessie and I could have stayed with her until she boarded her train that evening; and she would have had no chance to write that note for Pritchard to deliver to Wisteria Lodge. She would not have got into that train up to London on Monday morning and Pritchard would not have been following her.’

  ‘Come now, Lizzie,’ Ben replied, taking my hand. ‘You were a stranger to her. She didn’t wish to confide in you.You couldn’t make her.’

  ‘I could have done something!’ I insisted.

  ‘You did. You observed her speak to Jemima Scott and overheard the invitation extended to her to go to Clapham. You told me about it. The knowledge of that scrap of conversation was very important to the investigation. Lizzie, Isabella Marchwood was doomed from the start, when she first took Allegra Benedict to Wisteria Lodge.’

  I supposed Ben was right and sighed, but then a thought occurred to me that made me say angrily, ‘And the dreadful Fawcett will bear no blame in any part for it? But surely, he is the cause of it all! His lies and deception led to his being invited to speak at Mrs Scott’s house and meeting Allegra there. He began the affair with Allegra – and don’t tell me he was an innocent seduced by a designing woman. That man doesn’t know what innocence is!’

  ‘It’s a great pity,’ Ben returned, ‘that for the first time in his life he didn’t seek first and foremost to save his skin. He understood the risk of Benedict finding out and was half planning to leave London, as he had left other towns when things got complicated. But though he knew he should cut and run, he found it hard to break away from Allegra. In his own fashion—’

  ‘Do not,’ I interrupted fiercely, ‘I beg you, say he loved her. He is not capable of it!’

  ‘All right then,’ Ben agreed meekly, ‘let’s say he was infatuated with her. He is still a young man. She was a young and very beautiful woman. She made a mistake in trusting him. He made a mistake in wanting to cling to his relationship with her . . . and both of them were being watched by a woman who was, in her own way, just as obsessed with your Mr Fawcett as Allegra Benedict was. Don’t you think it possible, Lizzie, that Jemima Scott, despite the difference in their ages, had also developed a passion for the fellow? Allegra was not just a threat to the cause, as Scott calls it, she was a rival for the preacher’s affections. Fawcett himself told me how some women fall in love with a male figure in authority. That could be at the root of it all.’

  I stared at Ben in horror. It had not occurred to me that Mrs Scott had been more than simply committed to Joshua Fawcett’s so-called campaign to save the poor from drunkenness. Had she really fallen in love with him? The thought of that cold woman harbouring secret desires . . . It made me shudder.

  ‘If that’s so,’ I pointed out, ‘then she can’t possibly be telling the truth about the plan hatched with Pritchard. How could she really only have intended Pritchard to plead with Allegra to break off the affair? Did she really not know he would strangle her? Did she truly, in what passes for her heart, not want her rival out of the way for ever?’

  ‘She will never admit to deeper feelings or any personal rivalry for Fawcett’s affections,’ Ben replied. ‘So, for practical purposes, let us say her only wish was to protect Fawcett from scandal and enable him to continue his work. I still believe she plotted with Pritchard to murder Allegra. It came as no surprise to her that he had done so. I don’t think she would have been so calm afterwards if it had come as an unwelcome shock. She would have been furious with Pritchard and gone at once to the police. Instead, she deliberately shielded and colluded with a murderer, following the crime. She will find that hard to explain to a court.’

  Remembering my own visit to Wisteria Lodge after the murder of Isabella Marchwood, and the composed manner in which I had been received by its owner, I murmured, ‘She must have nerves of steel and no ounce of pity. Perhaps both things brought her safely through the dangerous days of the Mutiny in India.’

  Ben rattled the poker in the hearth then took the tongs and added a lump of coal to the fire. It made a token attempt to blaze up. ‘Pritchard himself claims she knew the meeting was arranged for the purposes of murdering Allegra Benedict,’ he said. ‘It was not his own idea; it was hers. He followed her instructions. There seems to be little reason why he should lie about that, unless he fancies that spreading the blame will save him. It will not.’

  He shrugged. ‘Personally I believe that she did know and that was the plan from the first. Of course, Isabella Marchwood knew nothing of their true intent, but Jemima Scott, as well as Pritchard, had decided Allegra would not leave Green Park alive. But proving her involvement? Ah, that’s a different matter. Scott is a clever woman. She took good care not to be present herself when either murder was carried out. The note Isabella wrote at Waterloo Station on the back of a leaflet and gave to Pritchard to deliver, that was surely thrown into the fire the very same evening. She is too clever to deny he came to the house. Her housekeeper might have remembered that and told us. But Mrs Scott insists he only came to discuss his fears. She told him she would speak to Isabella Marchwood on his behalf and persuade her of the need to stay silent. No more.’

  There was another silence during which I stared into the struggling flames and Ben seemed lost in his own thoughts. He was roused from them by a particularly loud crash from the kitchen, followed by Bessie’s voice calling, ‘Don’t worry, missus, no harm done!’

  ‘You know, Lizzie,’ Ben said quietly, ‘when I first began to unravel this case, I thought I dealt with two separate murderers. One dressed as a wraith and hunted down the street girls like the unfortunate Clarrie Brady. The other had murdered Allegra Benedict and subsequently murdered Isabella Marchwood.’

  ‘And there was only the one, Pritchard!’ I observed, as it turned out precipitately.

  ‘It depends how you look at it, Lizzie. Only one pair of hands, Pritchard’s, physically carried out the murders but there were two minds behind it all. That, I now know, was what confused my thinking. Left to his own devices, Pritchard would have continued to prowl the foggy streets until we caught him, concentrating on the prostitutes whose activities so offended him. He had no reason to entice Allegra Benedict into the park and kill her. He had known nothing about her! Don’t forget, Pritchard had never been invited to the afternoon tea and cakes at Wisteria Lodge where Fawcett met Allegra. Allegra never attended the meetings at the Temperance Hall. Pritchard had never set eyes on Allegra Benedict before the fateful encounter in Green Park. Pritchard only knew of the liaison between Fawcett and Allegra because Mrs Scott told him of it; and persuaded him that Allegra posed a serious danger to the minister. After that she had little difficulty in getting him to agree that the danger must be removed. One man, you see, but two minds: a double-headed monster, if you like.’

  ‘And will a judge and jury believe that?’ I asked, aghast at the image created of the conspirators.

  ‘They will believe what the prosecution can prove in a court of law,’ said Ben ruefully. ‘Where is the proof? There are no witnesses to the conversations between Scott and her minion. Other than Mrs Scott’s shielding of Pritchard after the murder of Allegra, which continued after the murder of Marchwood, it is a question of his word, a confessed murderer’s, against hers. She is guilty of criminal behaviour in shielding him after the fact. But that is a lesser charge than conspiracy to murder.’

  ‘Then there will be no justice!’ I stormed.

  He shrugged. ‘Have you seen the newspapers?’

  ‘Not today,’ I admitted.

  ‘Well, when you do, you’ll see th
at they have found out Jemima Scott’s history during the Indian Mutiny, the privations she and others suffered during the five months of the siege, and how her husband died there despite her efforts to save his life. One or two artists have even illustrated the scene . . . Major Scott dying in his loving wife’s arms.’ He gave a bitter little smile. ‘I cannot imagine a judge willing to don a black cap and sentence to death a heroine of Lucknow.’

  I broke the long silence that followed this statement by saying, ‘I think Bessie has lost interest in temperance.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ said Ben, ‘perhaps now I can have a bottle of porter with my dinner in peace.’

  Inspector Benjamin Ross

  A few days after my conversation with Lizzie I was again walking across Waterloo Bridge. It was a bright clear day and the skyline as crisp as a painted cardboard silhouette in a child’s model theatre. I began to whistle a tune, because when all was said and done we had tied up the Green Park murder (and the railway one, not to forget the killing of poor Clarissa Brady) and although these cases had yet to come to trial, we had been successful. (Lizzie would never be satisfied but that couldn’t be helped. A police officer is very often dissatisfied with the outcome of a case but he knows that, in the end, these things are decided by lawyers.)

  Even a case that was not mine had been decided. As I left Scotland Yard the previous evening I had encountered my colleague, Inspector Phipps, in the company of a choleric-looking gentleman with magnificent whiskers and a single eyeglass dangling from a ribbon round his neck.

  ‘Ah, Ross,’ said Phipps with something of a smug look, ‘you will be pleased to know we have the gang who were foolish enough to threaten Colonel Frey here. There’s no honour among thieves, they say, and one of ’em decided to turn Queen’s evidence when he found out the Yard was on the case!’ To his companion he added, ‘This is Inspector Ross, Colonel, the first officer to begin the enquiries at your stable yard. You were absent at the time, I believe, and have not met Inspector Ross.’

  The colonel screwed the monocle into his eye and studied me. ‘Ah, quite so, quite so. Good work, er, Ross . . . good work!’

  ‘Inspector Phipps’s good work, sir, I was only standing in for him that day,’ I explained with suitably modest demeanour.

  ‘Nevertheless, played your part, I am sure. Good man!’

  With a nod, the colonel strode past me. Phipps followed in his wake, giving me a wink as he passed by.

  I was thinking of that encounter and smiling when I saw a familiar silhouette coming towards me, feathers bouncing atop its head.

  ‘Well, ’allo, Mr Ross!’ said Daisy cheerfully.

  ‘Good afternoon to you, Daisy. Is that a new hat?’

  ‘No . . .’ Daisy put up her hand and patted the confection adorning her scarlet hair. ‘It’s the same one, but I got new feathers to replace the ones Lily Spraggs broke. I got ’em off a poulterer in the market. They’re from a pheasant’s tail. Nice, ain’t they?’

  ‘Very elegant,’ I said.

  ‘All the girls are very pleased we caught the Wraith,’ Daisy informed me. ‘Now they don’t have to worry about him jumping out at them every foggy night!’

  ‘Daisy,’ I said awkwardly, ‘you know that, although one danger has been removed, there will always be others for you and your – your friends to face? This occupation that you follow may have kept you from the workhouse, but it is full of risk. Girls like you get attacked both by their clients and by men like Jed Sparrow. There is the danger of the sicknesses associated with your trade with all their hideous physical effects. You may be brought in off the street and subjected to a forced examination at any time. If discovered to be infected, you’ll be locked away until declared no longer able to pass on the disease. But there are plenty of clients out there who will pass it on to you. There are threats enough without men like the Wraith who prey on the girls for warped reasons of their own. There are also the Jed Sparrows who would seek to bully you out of your money. Above all, forgive me, even if you escape all that and the ravages of syphilis, you will still not always be young and pretty. What will you do—’

  ‘You’re not preaching at me, are you?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Not preaching, only pointing out, as a friend and one very much indebted to you for saving my wife, that you should think seriously of giving up your way of life. Surely you don’t want to finish like your unfortunate friend, Clarrie, in the river?’

  ‘It’s the only trade I know,’ said Daisy, after a moment.

  ‘But you could learn another. My wife knows of an organisation in Marylebone. They have as their object the rescue of girls such as you from the streets. They teach them skills that make them employable and help them to find work.’

  ‘I know all about them!’ broke in Daisy with a scornful snort. ‘They’d teach me to be a housemaid. What, spend all me life polishing and dusting, with some old woman ringing a bell every five minutes, expecting me to run and see what she wants? I should think not! Don’t you worry about me, Mr Ross, and tell your wife not to worry, either. I’m glad I, and that funny-looking maid you’ve got, arrived in time to pull the Wraith away from her.’ Daisy gave me a wicked grin. ‘See, your wife is a very respectable lady, but she still got attacked by the old monster in his shroud, didn’t she? It ain’t being out on the streets like me that makes life so risky. It’s just being a woman that’s dangerous, that’s what.’

  With that, she burst into laughter and with a wave of her hand set off past me across the bridge. I turned to watch her go, the new pheasant feathers bobbing bravely in her refurbished hat.