The Ring

by M. J. Trow

  Grand was more secure sartorially, but even so was caught on the back foot. This was altogether too grand, even for him. He cleared his throat.

  ‘We are here to see Mr Byng. Mr Selwyn Byng.’ He still wasn’t convinced he was at the right address.

  ‘Mr Byng is currently at his toilet, sir,’ the butler said, his voice coming from the depths of a honey-filled well. ‘If you would like to follow me and wait in the withdrawing room, I will see if he can attend you.’ He leaned forward and seemed to inspect the two as if they were something on a microscope slide. ‘Who should I tell him is calling?’

  Grand handed him a card, which he took between a supercilious finger and thumb.

  ‘Please,’ he swung open a door, ‘if you would wait in here, I will ascertain whether the master will see you.’ There was something in his tone which made it clear that they should have used the tradesmen’s entrance or, for preference, not have come at all.

  The room into which the butler ushered them was in the very height of fashion. There was hardly a flat surface which was not smothered with knick-knacks and the fringing and furbelowing made the two enquiry agents feel almost breathless. The whole space was stifled and airless and neither of them dared move for fear of toppling some artefact from its perch. There wasn’t a fingermark or smudge to be seen; it was a little like being buried alive.

  There was something about the setting that made casual conversation all but impossible and they stood there like a couple of shop mannequins. After a while, Grand eased out his pocket watch, being careful to keep his elbows tucked well in. ‘Ten minutes,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Five more, and we go and look for the cuss. I can hardly get my breath in here.’

  ‘It’s very … fashionable.’ Batchelor ventured. ‘Like a room set up in Debenham’s. It must have cost a packet.’

  Grand carefully leaned sideways and peered at a whatnot. ‘It did. This one still has a price tag on it.’

  Batchelor turned gingerly.

  ‘Don’t look, James. It will only upset you.’ Grand had winced at the price, which seemed a little steep to say the least. It begged the question why Selwyn Byng didn’t just dip into his back pocket and pay the money the kidnappers were demanding. ‘By the way, I’ve been thinking. Did that butler look familiar to you?’

  ‘No. I’ve never seen him before. He just looks like …’ Batchelor scoured his memory, ‘well, every other butler I’ve ever seen. You keep rather more aristocratic company than I do, Matthew. That’s probably why he looks familiar.’

  Grand thought for a moment and then shrugged, carefully. That might be it. But he was still puzzling over it when the door opened and Selwyn Byng entered.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen,’ he said. For someone who had been at his toilet for at least twenty minutes, he looked as much like an unmade bed as ever. There are people who don’t really suit clothes and Selwyn Byng was definitely in that category. ‘Symes didn’t want to disturb me. I was at my toilet.’

  ‘Yes,’ Grand said. ‘He said. I don’t want to beat about the bush, Mr Byng, but an Inspector Bliss of the River Police will be visiting you later, at your place of business, I would imagine. We wanted to warn you.’

  Byng went pale. ‘Police? What does he want?’

  ‘Well, he has some rather upsetting news,’ Batchelor said. ‘They have found a body …’

  Byng went even paler and clutched at the back of an over-stuffed button-back chair, his fingers digging into the pile of the velvet. ‘A … body …?’ he croaked and slid gracefully to the floor.

  Batchelor looked at Grand. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was trying to break it to him gently.’

  Grand was kneeling beside the prostrate man, loosening his collar and slapping his face, none too gently. Byng groaned and tried to sit up. ‘Stay lying down for a moment,’ Grand said. ‘You’ve had a shock.’

  ‘A body?’ Byng said as though unconsciousness had not intervened. ‘Is it … is it Emilia?’

  ‘No. But it is her maid, Molly.’

  ‘Molly?’ Byng struggled to his feet. ‘Molly? Are you sure?’

  Grand nodded.

  ‘But … how did you find out? That it’s Molly, I mean. How did she get in the river?’

  ‘Did I say she was in the river?’ Batchelor wasn’t an enquiry agent for nothing.

  ‘No,’ Byng said, smoothing out the velvet pile where his fingers had dragged it. ‘But since you said River Police, I put two and two together.’

  Batchelor had to concede the man had a point. ‘We don’t know how she got there. Mr Grand here actually found her.’ That seemed a better way of putting it than the actual description of him bumping into her handless corpse in the filthy water off Limehouse.

  Byng stared at Grand. ‘You did? How did you know she was there?’

  Grand was a little nonplussed. ‘It was accidental,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t looking for her. I … fell in.’

  Batchelor let him get away with that small inaccuracy.

  ‘But that’s not all,’ he continued. ‘Emilia’s uncles have had an anonymous note. In writing this time, not cut out letters. We assume it is from the kidnappers, even so. It demands that they release the funds, or the worst will happen.’

  ‘The worst?’ Byng clutched his arm. ‘Surely not!’

  Grand frowned and then the penny dropped. ‘No, Mr Byng, I don’t mean that. I mean that Emilia will be killed.’

  ‘Oh.’ Byng didn’t look exactly relieved, but his fingers released Grand’s arm and his hand swung down to his side. All of the life seemed to have gone out of him. ‘Oh. I see. Are there funds? Can they be released?’

  ‘It’s an endowment,’ Grand told him. ‘Until it matures, there are no funds.’

  ‘That’s what I was led to understand,’ Byng said, his voice flat.

  Batchelor caught Grand’s eye and leaned forward. ‘Mr Byng. I can’t help noticing that you keep a very expensive establishment here. The furniture in this room alone would more than pay the ransom that is being asked. Could you not … well, could you not simply pay what they want?’

  Byng’s eyes flashed. ‘Do you not think I would if I could, Mr Batchelor? I have approached any number of dealers in furniture and fine things and they wouldn’t give me even half of what I need for everything I own. Sadly, as soon as fashionable items such as these leave the shop, they are almost worthless.’ He slapped his palm to his forehead. ‘If only we had known. But Emilia loves nice things and … we weren’t to know. We were just building our little nest. Making it nice for when …’ he stifled a sob, ‘when little feet came pattering.’

  Neither Grand nor Batchelor was exactly an expert on children, but it struck them both that this was scarcely a room conducive to the pattering of little feet. But what did they know?

  ‘And your father …?’

  ‘Still adamant, I fear.’

  Grand and Batchelor came from very different homes, with money a talking point in both, though from opposite ends of the spectrum. But they both knew that had they needed something, even the skin from a parent’s back, that something would have been delivered, no matter what the cost. Byng senior must have a heart of stone.

  ‘My father is not an affectionate man. He doesn’t really … understand.’

  Nods were the only answer. Nods and averted eyes.

  ‘What about Westmoreland Tea?’ Grand said. ‘I have to say that I didn’t used to be a tea drinker, but your Uncle Teddy has converted me. Surely, they do well?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Byng said. ‘Appearances are deceptive. There are so many tea importers, so many shops that sell it but somehow Westmoreland don’t get the big orders. Fortnum’s, now, or one of the big grocers, an order from them would transform the business, but too slowly to help my poor Emilia.’ He trumpeted into his handkerchief. ‘I need money now. This instant.’ He stamped his foot like a child. ‘Or I fear I will never see her again. Alive or …’ he choked. ‘Alive or dead.’ He turne
d his back and blew his nose again, then put his handkerchief resolutely away. ‘But for now, gentlemen …’

  Before he could continue, there was a genteel tap on the door and the butler’s head appeared round it. ‘If I may make so bold, sir,’ he said to Byng, ‘there is an important appointment imminent.’ He nodded politely to the enquiry agents. ‘If you recall, you asked me quite specific to remind you.’

  Batchelor gave him an old-fashioned look. Specific? Perhaps the man was foreign, brought over with a load of lumber and trained up. But Byng had jumped to attention.

  ‘Symes,’ he said. ‘You are quite right. I will have to ask you to leave now, gentlemen. I do have a very important appointment which won’t wait.’ He glanced up at the butler. ‘Are the gentlemen here, Symes?’

  ‘It wants half an hour as yet, sir. But you asked me to remind—’

  ‘Yes. Well done, Symes.’

  The man’s head withdrew and the door began to close.

  ‘Oh, and Symes?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’ He reappeared.

  ‘That’s “specifically”, not “specific”.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I will make a note.’

  When he had gone, Byng smiled at the others. ‘Foreign,’ he said.

  Batchelor metaphorically patted himself on the back.

  ‘Welsh. But we do what we can. Let me show you out.’

  ‘No need, really …’

  ‘No, no, I’m going that way anyway. Big old place like this, it’s easy to miss your way.’ He opened the door and ushered them through. Symes was waiting just by the front door and pulled it towards him, stepping back with a flourish. ‘Thank you for letting me know about poor Molly,’ Byng said. ‘And about Inspector Bliss. Please excuse the rush, but I must keep this appointment. A special delivery from Peru – very tricky, Peruvians, you know. They drink special tea and all sorts. Poor Symes is kept on his toes catering for them, are you not, Symes?’

  ‘Indeed to goodness, look you,’ the butler said, impassively.

  Byng clicked his tongue. ‘Welsh!’ he said. ‘You can take the butler out of Haverfordwest, but you can’t take the Haverfordwest out of the butler, eh, gentlemen? Goodbye.’

  In a blink of an eye, the two men were on the other side of the front door. ‘That was odd,’ Grand said, thoughtfully.

  ‘He’s an odd bloke,’ Batchelor said. ‘Look at how he behaved when he came to us first. Like some wandering loony. You can’t expect normal from anyone in the Byng family, I’m beginning to think. Look at his father, skinflint that he is. Won’t even help out with money to save his daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Unless he’s in on it,’ mused Grand. ‘With her, I mean. Helping her to teach her husband a lesson.’

  ‘Do you think he’d do that?’ Batchelor was incredulous.

  ‘You used to be a journalist. Surely you have seen odder things than that.’

  Batchelor riffled through the filing cabinet of his brain and mentally ticked off the stories stored under ‘damned peculiar’ and ‘almost incredible’ and nodded. ‘You’re right. Compared to many people in London, they come under the heading of “perfectly normal”.’

  ‘Quite. Anyway, let’s get back to the office. Those lost dogs won’t find themselves, you know. Oh, God – watch out!’ Grand pulled his friend out of the road where he was standing ready to cross. A dray-horse pulling an open cart missed Batchelor by a whisker; he felt the animal’s hames scrape past his chest. There was a clash of steel-shod hoofs on the cobbles and the snort and whinny of a horse.

  ‘He nearly got me,’ he said, his throat dry with shock. ‘Where the hell did he come from?’ He shook his fist at the driver who sat impassive on his perch. ‘Imbecile!’ he shouted. He took a deep breath. ‘Before we go and find those dogs, a drink, I think, don’t you?’

  Grand patted his arm. ‘Definitely. Home or away?’

  ‘There’s a pub just near here, isn’t there?’

  Grand looked puzzled. Of course there was; this was London, after all. ‘I expect so,’ he said. Shock could do odd things to a man.

  ‘Away, then. I just need a sit down.’ He sniffed his sleeve and held it up to Grand’s nose. ‘Saddle soap. That’s how close he came.’

  ‘There, there,’ Grand said. ‘He missed you and that’s the main thing. Come on. I’m buying.’

  Batchelor shrugged. He had never even thought it might be otherwise.

  Eyes watched them go. Some were hot with love, some swivelling with madness, others keen and calculating. But ignorance, for the agents that morning, was very heaven.

  FOURTEEN

  The lamplight was reflected in the raindrops that spattered the windows. Felix Kempster was looking at them, tiny pinpricks of light that now and then ran in long tears to the bottom of the pane.

  Fanny Kempster knew the signs. She had married a brilliant man eight years ago, but, more than that, she had married a good one. And here he was, wrestling with a death he could only explain in strictly medical terms, remembering a face he couldn’t identify.

  ‘Difficult one, dear?’ she asked, looking up from her crewel work, one of those mundane but beautiful things that reminded them both that there was more to life than sudden, violent death.

  ‘More difficult for Daddy Bliss, I’ll wager.’ The doctor was finishing the notes he had begun in the mortuary, preferring the warmth of the drawing room to the cold antiseptic slabs.

  ‘Tell me about this one.’ Fanny knew it helped her husband to talk at moments like these.

  ‘She was in her mid-twenties, I’d say, younger possibly but no older than twenty-six.’ He didn’t have to check the ledger he was writing in. ‘Well-nourished, good-looking before the river got at her.’

  ‘Children?’ Fanny could almost picture the tiny faces, tear-stained as they waited for a mother who would never return.

  ‘No,’ her husband said. ‘But she was …’ even with his wife, he kept his language circumspect, although he knew she was all but unshockable, ‘… no stranger to a man’s attentions, shall we say? In fact, quite the opposite, although there was no coercion involved, I would say.’

  ‘So not rape, then?’ Fanny believed in calling a spade a spade.

  ‘Er … no.’ Even after eight years, she could still pull him up short. ‘I would classify the signs as showing enthusiasm but no force.’ He felt himself blush and blushed some more at the realization.

  ‘Were there any mutilations?’ Fanny Kempster was a doctor’s daughter as well as a doctor’s wife. Not for her the smelling salts, the avoidance of all things nasty and the usual euphemisms of her class. And not a blush mantled her pretty cheek.

  ‘None.’ He shook his head, glad to be in more manageable conversational waters.

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Strangulation,’ he told her. ‘Ligature. Usual bruising under the jaw line. There was some bruising to the face, probably a fist, but it could have been post mortem.’

  ‘Where did they find her?’

  ‘On the foreshore at Rotherhithe. Some lightermen, yesterday morning.’

  ‘Do we know who she was?’

  Kempster sighed. ‘Not a clue. She was fully clothed. I made an inventory. All good quality stuff, so we can assume middle class. There were no laundry marks on her underwear but her bodice was made by Jesmer and Jay’s.’

  ‘Oxford Street,’ Fanny said promptly. She was a lovely woman, but she did have a tiny shopping habit.

  He smiled at her. ‘I thought you’d know it,’ he said. ‘The police will follow that up, though if it wasn’t tailormade, that’ll probably lead nowhere. She was married, or at least engaged for a long while – there was the groove left by a ring on the appropriate finger. I am assuming married, though, because of …’ He cocked his head at her. That conversation didn’t need to be revisited.

  She reached across and patted his arm. ‘You are such a darling,’ she muttered. He had seen so much and yet he could still be embarrassed talking to his wife. It made him the man
he was and she never failed to appreciate it. ‘How long had she been in the water?’ she asked, to change the subject slightly.

  ‘That’s tricky,’ Kempster admitted. ‘Not long, I’d say. And that’s what gave Daddy Bliss his first headache.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, apparently, the first copper on the scene was a rookie, one of Daddy’s Waterbabies with the accent on the baby. He took one look at the deceased and promptly passed out.’

  ‘Ah, London’s finest,’ Fanny beamed.

  ‘Precisely. Anyway, another Police boat saw the commotion and came to the lad’s aid.’

  ‘So where does Daddy’s headache come in?’

  ‘By the time the second skiff got there, yet another copper had arrived, from dry land, I mean. He took charge and there was an unseemly contretemps over jurisdiction – the River Police or M Division.’

  ‘Oh, really! They’re like squabbling children!’ Fanny had no patience with red tape, especially when it got tangled around Felix.

  ‘Daddy arrived with his usual suave charm and persuaded M Division that it would be better for their collective knee-caps if they gave the body to him.’

  ‘What a foul man he is.’ Fanny shook her head.

  ‘Agreed,’ Kempster said. ‘But he’s our foul man. His second headache is caused by the fact that this woman doesn’t fit the pattern of the others. No mutilations.’

  ‘Which means …?’

  He looked at her. ‘Either our murderous friend was interrupted on this one and didn’t have time to remove various body parts …’

  ‘… or?’ Fanny Kempster was there already, but she knew it helped her husband to spell it out.

  ‘Or there is not one killer on the river, but two.’

  It was days later that William Bisgrove came face to face with fate. He was shambling along South Street again, the trees of the park rustling as the evening breeze tried to part them with their autumn leaves. There it was, a piece of paper fluttering on the lamp post as he passed it. ‘Metropolitan Police,’ it read. ‘Have you seen this man?’ William Bisgrove had. Not once, but many times. Every time, in fact, that he had looked in the mirror. He read the print below the engraving, just to make sure. ‘William Bisgrove. Aged 32. Height, 5ft 9in. Brown hair. No distinguishing features. Wanted for murder.’