Given my advanced years, I see no reason to establish communication between us now. Even if you are indeed my flesh and blood, I have in my husband and his connections all the family I need, and in my aunt-in-law, if I am scrupulously honest, perhaps somewhat more.
You allude to the wealth that it is my good for tune to enjoy. Allow me to reassure you that it is a very good fortune indeed, and that I enjoy it enormously. If it is necessary to avoid such communication then what you suggest can be arranged, but this must be a unique transaction, with no further correspondence ensuing.
The letter was wisely unsigned, but it had been written in a prettily rounded feminine hand, on headed notepaper bearing the Lowndes Square address of Algernon and Cecily Moncrieff.
Holmes said, ‘I assume that the Moncrieff family have not yet been made aware of this development. I would urge that, unless it becomes unavoidable, they should not be told the identity of Cecily’s blackmailer. I cannot imagine that it would do any of them any good to know, and it would be likely to cause unnecessary distress.’
Gregson nodded. ‘Very much my own thoughts on the matter. Although it may become impossible to avoid it, of course.’
‘I admit, Gregson, that I retain some doubts as to how this constitutes a case for murder against Lord Illingworth. Given the circumstances of the death, I would be surprised if the murderer were a man like the earl, larger than Bunbury and physically fit. If we allow that Illingworth was able to place the victim at his ease, however, so that he was sufficiently off his guard to be pushed over the balustrade, and even if we further accept that the earl is so unscrupulous as to make it appear that Mabel Goring was to blame for the crime, what did he gain by killing Bunbury?’
‘That’s not easy to say until we know who Bunbury was. But everything about the way the fellow turned up at the house, including the name he used, suggest that he was there with blackmail on his mind as well. If Illingworth thought he was a rival, he might have tried to kill him.’
‘Or he might simply have bought him, if he is as wealthy as we are told.’
‘If he’s as wealthy as all that,’ Gregson countered, ‘why blackmail his own daughter in the first place?’
‘That is a significant point,’ Holmes conceded. ‘Did your search of the house unearth any evidence of recent debt or insolvency?’
‘There were any number of unpaid bills, but I gather that that is to be expected for the gentlemen of that set.’ Gregson looked disapproving, as well he might. ‘If it becomes material, we may have to talk to his bankers. But there is another possibility, if the victim really was a blackmailer. Illingworth is obviously a man with a lot of secrets. Maybe this Bunbury was trying to blackmail him as well as the Moncrieffs. Maybe that was why Illingworth killed him.’
‘Based on everything we know,’ Holmes acknowledged, ‘that is a more promising line of inquiry. Nevertheless, at present there is no case for Lord Illingworth to answer, for the murder at least.’
‘Well, when we find him we’ll hold him for blackmail until we have the evidence we need,’ Gregson vowed. ‘One way or the other, we’ll get him.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AN EDUCATED GARDENER
Mentioning our appointment with Major Nepcote at the police mortuary, Holmes invited Gregson to join us, but the inspector was bound for Lord Illingworth’s St James’s Square townhouse, to speak to the remainder of the earl’s servants. He promised to meet us later at Scotland Yard.
In the cab to the Yard, Holmes made me cognisant of his nocturnal exploits. He had, it seemed, spent a peripatetic night trawling a list of insalubrious taverns where the landlords were surly, the beer tasteless and the floors liberally scattered with sawdust, but where the clientele might include men who had served as common soldiers in the regiment commanded by Ernest and Algernon’s father during the 1860s. He had found a number of them, a few of whom had remembered William Durrington, the former sergeant who had compromised Letitia Prism’s loyalty to Colonel Moncrieff, though mostly they seemed to feel little fondness for the man.
In his character as a wandering labourer with a nebulously defined family connection to the Durringtons, and applying some lubrication in the form of rounds of drinks, Holmes had been able to extract from them some reminiscences. They had confirmed Mrs Chasuble’s suspicion that Durrington had been cashiered for selling drugs to the troops. However, the conjecture that Ernest Moncrieff senior had dealt with the matter himself was seemingly incorrect.
‘In fact, the popular view is that the colonel was a peaceable man, who avoided confrontation wherever he could,’ Holmes told me.
Evidently, Durrington’s pusillanimous commander had passed the distasteful duty on to some more junior officer, who had dealt with it more ruthlessly than he would have been able to. Durrington had believed, possibly correctly, that his commanding officer was sufficiently susceptible that he could have persuaded him to keep him on, had he only been given the opportunity. His grudge against the colonel came about not because the latter had discharged him personally, but because he had been afraid to do so.
Despite this, the general opinion among Holmes’s informants, which some gave more forthrightly than others given Holmes’s purported relationship to him, had been that the late sergeant had got his just desserts.
‘This was to be expected, of course,’ Holmes noted.
‘I should think so!’ I exclaimed.
‘Of course, that is the moral view of the matter. But what I mean is that any who might have been more sympathetic to Durrington’s illicit activities would have been those who benefitted from them, if opium can be considered a benefit. Nobody who was a devotee of the poppy in 1867 can reasonably be expected to be alive now and sufficiently compos mentis to defend their supplier to us, and so the survivors are censorious.’
With careful interrogation, however, Holmes had been able to identify one person who might have been more kindly disposed towards Durrington, the man had who served as his corporal before Durrington’s dismissal. Some of Holmes’s informants suspected that this man, one Charlie Findon, had been, if not actively involved in Durrington’s drug-running scheme, then at least turning a blind eye to his activities in return for a modest share of the proceeds.
Holmes had eventually found Findon in a far less reputable establishment in Whitechapel, a filthy den of thieves and vagabonds where tasteless beer would have been a godsend and the floor was strewn with much less savoury substances than sawdust. Despite his sordid surroundings, Findon had reached his mid-fifties in rude health, having never partaken of the substances his sergeant peddled then or since. After his initial suspicions were eased through the application of gin, he was inclined to be garrulous on the subject of his old boss to the man claiming to be Durrington’s distant relation.
His recollection of the sergeant’s disgrace was not substantially different from that of his former comrades, except that in his view Durrington had been harshly treated for his crime.
‘What he told me was, “The way I seen it, he done old Monkey-face a favour,”’ Holmes said, giving an effortlessly convincing imitation of the man’s hoarse cockney accent. Holmes had gathered by now from Findon’s former comrades that ‘Monkey-face’ was the regiment’s nickname for Colonel Moncrieff. ‘“That old coot done his stint out in India when he was just a captain or what-have-you, and now he was sitting pretty back home he wasn’t in no rush to go nowhere else. Thing is, there’s some blokes what enlist what wants some argy-bargy, and coves like them lot don’t take well to sitting idle on their backsides all day. The sarge had the what’s-what to get ’em settled back down. After he’d gone they all got antsy for want of the treacle, and ended up rowing and scrapping like the very Devil. Old Monkey-face had some bigger headaches then than a few pipe-hungry dossers.”’
According to Findon, Durrington had greatly resented his expulsion from the regiment, and had heaped imprecations on the colonel’s head for not doing him the courtesy of dismissing him in person. Fi
ndon had, in fact, ceased to have much to do with his former sergeant soon afterwards, partly because of his growing obsession with this topic, and partly because of Durrington’s jealousy and anger after Findon was given his stripes and charge of Durrington’s old platoon.
One point which Findon recalled, though, Holmes had found of particular interest. ‘“Sarge had a kid,” he told me. “Wrong side of the sheets, mind, ’cause old Bill Durrington never got his self spliced. But he was fond of the little bleeder even so. Thing is, the lad got whelped round the same time as old Monkey-face’s grub, didn’t he? Same ages, near enough. So Bill gets to thinking to himself, he thinks, ‘How come Young Monkey-face gets a nursery to his self with all the wooden toys he can slobber over and a dollymop to push him about the place, when my Timmy and his ma doss down in a mucky lumber with three other petticoats and their nippers? How’s that fair, then?’ He got quite jawsome on that score, did Bill.”’
I said to Holmes, ‘Well, presumably if Durrington had given the mother of his child a reasonable share of his wages—’
‘Doubtless, Watson, doubtless, but I fear the late Sergeant Durrington is beyond profiting from your practical wisdom now. The pertinent point is that, according to Findon at least, the difference between the circumstances of his son Timothy and those of Colonel Moncrieff’s son Ernest struck Durrington as profoundly unjust. Hence, we must assume, the extension of his grudge from the father to his blameless child.’
‘And hence Ernest’s abduction. I say, Holmes!’ I realised suddenly. ‘One of the blackmailers was claiming that Ernest had been swapped with another child during the kidnapping. Do you think it’s possible that Durrington substituted Timothy for Ernest?’
‘It seems unlikely. If that were Durrington’s intention, why would he make elaborate plans involving handbags and railway termini when he could simply have met Laetitia Prism while she was walking with the child and effected the exchange? No, I believe he simply intended to hold the Moncrieff child for ransom, as he told her at the time. One might generously imagine that he intended to use the ransom money for the benefit of his own son, but given his character it seems doubtful.’
‘So what did happen to the child?’ I asked. ‘Durrington’s son, I mean. He’d be Ernest Moncrieff’s age now. Still, I mean.’
‘A most apposite question, Watson, and one which I took it upon myself to seek an answer to.’
It had taken Holmes considerable effort, a deal more gin, and in the end the sum of ten shillings to pry from Charlie Findon the name and former residence of the mother of Durrington’s child – one Jane Bramber, long since deceased – and then some tedious further conversation in inns and on street corners to identify a living relative, a cousin of hers. This man, when Holmes intercepted him leaving for an early shift at the docks that morning, had been able to inform Holmes of the younger Durrington’s current position.
Holmes smiled. ‘Timothy Durrington,’ he told me, ‘is employed as an undergardener at the London home of Major and Mrs Nepcote, where he may well have encountered the current generation of the Moncrieff family. Further enquiries, the last of which I made before returning for breakfast this morning, told me that the man has not been seen since the afternoon preceding the Moncrieffs’ ball, and may expect a dismissal when he does return. My strong suspicion is that he will not.’
‘You think that he was Bunbury,’ I realised. ‘That’s why you asked Major Nepcote to meet us at the mortuary. Wouldn’t somebody at the house have recognised him, though?’
‘It could have been awkward had he run into either of the Nepcotes, but otherwise, I think not. Few people of that class look closely at servants, particularly outdoor servants, and even those with a glancing familiarity with one are unlikely to think of him when presented with a man in a suit. Much of our recognition of faces depends upon the context in which we see them.’
Holmes’s account had eaten up most of the distance from Baker Street to Westminster, where the New Scotland Yard buildings stood. As we approached, I regarded the structure, designed by Norman Shaw some ten years before. It had always seemed oddly whimsical to me, its continental red-and-white-striped brickwork and its peculiar corner turrets unsuited to a building with such a practical, and even grim, purpose.
As we drew up outside, I saw a carriage waiting, and surmised that the major was there already. As Holmes and I disembarked, however, a shrill voice cried, ‘Dr Watson! Such a relief to see so familiar and so comforting a face at such a distressing occasion!’ and to my dismay the small but dapper figure of Roderick Nepcote was followed out of the carriage by his young wife.
Inside, Holmes gave our names to the sergeant on duty with his usual offhand urgency, and he, the major and I were led down to the mortuary, accompanied, despite all the protests I or the policemen in attendance could muster, by the voluble Mrs Nepcote. Any hope I might have had that Holmes’s presence might have absorbed some of her interest faded quickly as she clutched at my arm, protesting her trepidation at her forthcoming, entirely voluntary ordeal, praising my bravery and my generosity in agreeing to see her through it, and occasionally complimenting me on the firmness of my biceps.
‘Oh, but that’s him!’ she shrieked when, after we had been shown into the cellar where the police surgeons did their work, the body of Bunbury was brought out and partially unshrouded for us. ‘That’s Durrington! Oh, what a terrible thing to happen, and to such a harmless man! I swear, Dr Watson, he would never have hurt a fly! Oh, what a tragedy, and how perplexing that he should have been at Mr Moncrieff’s house that night, and giving the name Bunbury, I understand…? How entirely inexplicable, and how awful!’ She continued in this vein for some time.
Although it was clear that she was acting out a scene, and with considerable relish, her husband, the major, was ignoring her while he peered with interest at the body, and Holmes evidently considered her noise an unwelcome and possibly malicious distraction. Though I was reluctant, chivalry required me to play my part. I patted her arm and muttered soothing words while struggling to hear what Holmes and Major Nepcote were discussing. Though I would have much appreciated an opportunity to examine the body’s head wound in mortuary conditions rather than the uncongenial environment of Ernest Moncrieff’s lawn, I was eventually forced, to my considerable frustration, to take the lady outside and find her somewhere to sit down.
‘So terrible,’ she repeated for perhaps the fifth time, ‘to think that he was lying there in the garden for heaven knows how long before dear Lord Illingworth and little Cecily Moncrieff discovered him. And how strange to think that he was waiting in the library while we were enjoying ourselves without a thought of him. What was his business there, I wonder, with Mr Ernest Moncrieff? I cannot fathom what it might have been. Do you know, Dr Watson?’
‘No, madam, I do not,’ I said shortly, although by now I had a fairly clear idea. I would not give this well-fed vulture more than the bare minimum demanded by propriety. Then it occurred to me that I could at least use this opportunity to confirm what Mrs Nepcote could tell us of the evening’s events. ‘You knew he was in the library, then?’
She looked at me, her dry eyes wide. ‘Oh, not at the time, Doctor, of course, but the police were so interested in that room when I spoke to them, and he fell to the ground beneath that balcony. Where else could he have been?’
‘Did you see where he fell?’
‘Oh, only through the window from the ballroom. I had no idea it was poor Durrington, of course.’ I had no doubt that she had tried to get the best look at the body that she could, but I could well believe that a woman such as she had failed to recognise a junior servant from a distance in the moonlight.
I asked, ‘But had you realised that… the victim was upstairs in the library when you told the police that you saw Lady Goring enter?’
‘Well, I suppose I knew it from the fact that they asked. They asked me about the room, you see, not about dear Lady Goring. Oh, Dr Watson, I hope they do not suspect her of t
he murder – for it was murder, was it not?’
‘I’m afraid that question is beyond my medical expertise,’ I equivocated. A point struck me. ‘Did you see whether she was wearing her shawl when she went upstairs?’
‘She wasn’t, I’m sure of it. I remember thinking at the time that she should be careful about taking it off, with that beautiful spider’s-web brooch pinned to it. It would have been a dreadful pity for that to have been misplaced.’
So said Mrs Nepcote, but by now, between her false hysterics, her insinuations and her angling for information, I was unsure whether anything she said was to be trusted at all.
Rather gleefully, she added, ‘I wonder whether Mr Holmes will discover the murderer? Oh, this is so shocking, Dr Watson, so very horrific. Of course, I suppose the two of you must have met very many murderers in your adventures. You must be used to the lengths to which they will go to protect themselves. I am sure that it is a great credit to your friendship that Mr Holmes is alive at all, after defying so many homicidal persons. It must be a great worry to you,’ she added enigmatically, ‘to consider that one day your protection may fail.’
I mumbled something about Holmes being more than capable of looking after himself, but at that point my friend mercifully emerged, bringing Mrs Nepcote’s ineffectual husband with him. I looked to Holmes for information, and he nodded. ‘Major Nepcote is also assured of the body’s identity. Evidently, the late Bunbury was Timothy Durrington.’
Politely, he asked the Nepcotes if they would mind waiting while we found Inspector Gregson, speaking discreetly to the sergeant at the desk to ensure that the couple did not leave without us.
‘We must search Durrington’s personal effects,’ he told me quietly as we headed for Gregson’s office, ‘and before anybody else has an opportunity to tamper with them, assuming that that has not happened already.’
I said, ‘Do you think the Nepcotes would do such a thing? Just now Mrs Nepcote delivered what might have been a warning to desist our investigations, but honestly I cannot tell what weight to give to any of her utterances.’
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