Murder at the Natural History Museum

by Jim Eldridge

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Dolly, firmly.

  ‘And I believe that also,’ said Abigail. ‘But the person to convince is Superintendent Armstrong.’

  ‘He don’t like us,’ said Tess, wiping her tear-stained cheek with her hand. ‘He thinks we did it.’

  ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you,’ said Abigail. ‘If I ask you some questions – no trick questions, I promise you – and we’re able to establish that you didn’t know about any connection between Raymond Simpson and your Tom, we’ll talk to the superintendent and put your case to him.’

  ‘We didn’t know about any connection between Simpson and our Tom,’ said Dolly. ‘We already told him that.’

  ‘Tell me about Tom,’ said Abigail. ‘What was he like?’

  At this question, Dolly looked uncomfortable, and there was hesitancy in Tess’s eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Dolly.

  ‘As a boy. What was he like?’

  Dolly shrugged. ‘He was just an ordinary boy.’

  ‘How old was he when he left home?’

  ‘He was fifteen,’ said Dolly. ‘Coming up to sixteen.’

  ‘And he thought it was time to leave?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dolly, shortly.

  ‘How did you feel about that?’

  Dolly hesitated. Then she said: ‘It was for the best.’

  ‘For whom?’ asked Abigail.

  ‘All of us,’ said Dolly. She looked at Abigail, studying her, aware that Abigail wanted to know more. Finally, reluctantly, she said: ‘He’d been difficult.’ Again, Abigail waited, saying nothing. ‘He started going out and not saying where,’ said Dolly. ‘He’d come home smelling of drink and perfume. We guessed it was women, but we didn’t know who he was seeing. Sometimes he had money to spare and sometimes he didn’t have any, and when he didn’t he’d get all sullen.’

  ‘Was he working?’ asked Abigail.

  ‘He was supposed to be, but some days he just stayed at home in bed. We didn’t know what was going on with him. In the end I lost my temper with him. “I can’t afford to support you,” I told him. “You’re old enough to pay your own way. Me and Tess are working hard to pay the rent and put food on the table and we never see a penny from you.”’

  ‘How did he take it?’

  ‘He said if he wasn’t wanted at home he knew people who would want him. And one day me and Tess come home from our cleaning at the museum, and he was gone. His clothes weren’t in the cupboard.’

  ‘Were you upset?’

  ‘Of course I was upset. But he’d been leading me and Tess a merry dance with the way he was living. We couldn’t be doing with it. I was glad to see the back of him, to be honest. But I thought it’d only be for a day or two, then he’d come home with his tail between his legs, like he always used to when he’d run out of money. But he didn’t. Days went by, then weeks. I kept expecting him to be there when we came home from work, but he never was.’

  ‘He didn’t write?’

  ‘Waste of time,’ said Dolly. ‘Neither me nor Tess can read. But even if we could, I don’t think he’d have written. Out of sight, out of mind. And then the day come when that police inspector who was here turned up to tell us Tom had been found dead. Killed himself, he said. Hung himself from a lamp post. Somewhere in Whitechapel, it was. He wanted to know if we knew anything about it. What he’d been up to. I told him we didn’t know what sort of life he’d been living, that we didn’t know he was in Whitechapel. We hadn’t seen him in six months.’

  ‘Did the inspector mention Raymond Simpson?’

  Dolly shook her head. ‘No. Not till this morning when that big policeman, the superintendent, told us that Simpson had done something to Tom and that’s why we killed him.’ Her face tightened in indignation. ‘I told him, we didn’t know anything about Raymond Simpson, except he worked at the museum as an attendant. We didn’t know that he knew Tom.’ She frowned as she said to Abigail: ‘He said that Tom was involved in some trial.’

  ‘That’s the allegation,’ said Abigail.

  ‘So, it wasn’t a woman,’ said Dolly. ‘That perfume.’

  ‘I don’t know the details,’ said Abigail. ‘I’ve been told that Simpson was a witness at the trial of Oscar Wilde earlier this year when he was charged with—’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ interrupted Dolly sharply. She gestured at her daughter. ‘No need for Tess to hear all this. He was her brother.’

  ‘It’s all right, Ma,’ said Tess.

  ‘No, it ain’t,’ said Dolly. She looked again at Abigail. ‘Is that why he did it? Tom? Because he was being blackmailed by Simpson?’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t see it. Tom never had any money to pay blackmail.’

  ‘The inspector told us that Simpson had named Tom as one of the people who’d … been with Oscar Wilde and his friends, and that he was going to be called as a witness at Wilde’s trial,’ said Abigail. ‘They think he killed himself rather than be exposed in public court.’

  Dolly fell silent, and Abigail now saw tears glistening in her eyes. Suddenly, she wiped them away. ‘Poor Tom,’ she whispered. ‘He should have come home. We’d have looked after him.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Feather and Daniel stood by the barred door of the cell in the basement of Scotland Yard looking down at the miserable figure of Simon Purcell, who sat on the concrete bench that doubled as a bed.

  ‘This is all so unfair,’ moaned Purcell. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. I shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘What do you know about Mason Radley?’ asked Feather.

  ‘Nothing. Just that he came to the office and said he had to go away for a few days, just as Mr Sprigg told you.’

  ‘What about Raymond Simpson?’ asked Feather.

  At the name, they saw fear in Purcell’s eyes.

  ‘Who?’ He gulped, the quaver in his voice showing his distress.

  ‘Did you kill him?’ asked Feather. ‘Did you kill Raymond Simpson?’

  ‘No,’ squealed Purcell.

  Feather fixed the young man with a threatening stare. ‘A man has been murdered and your employer has vanished. Everything about your attitude, your voice, your manner, tells me that you know what’s going on. In which case, you are an accomplice. An accomplice to murder. That’s a hanging offence.’

  ‘No,’ repeated Purcell, and he broke down, his face dropping into his hands, his body racked with great sobs. Feather watched him, calmly, impassionate, waiting for the burst of crying to subside. When at last it did, Purcell raised his head and looked beggingly at the inspector, his face grimy with the streaks of his tears.

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ he whispered, desperately.

  ‘Let me be the judge of that,’ said Feather. ‘What did you do? Something with Raymond Simpson?’

  Purcell nodded.

  Feather shot a look at Daniel, then both men moved to sit on either side of Purcell on the bench.

  ‘What did you do with him?’ asked Feather.

  ‘I gave him some information he wanted,’ said Purcell, sniffing back his tears.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About the company.’

  ‘Anglo-India Tea?’

  Purcell nodded, all the fight gone out of him now.

  ‘What sort of information?’ prodded Daniel.

  ‘There was a letter,’ said Purcell.

  ‘A letter?’

  ‘From the regional governor in the part of India where the company has a plantation. There’d been some killings.’

  ‘What sort of killings?’

  ‘Some of the workers, the tea-pickers. They’d been protesting they hadn’t been paid and were talking about striking. The local manager had said he wasn’t going to give into threats and he was going to make an example of them. According to the letter, he hired some thugs to beat the tea-pickers. But the beatings got out of hand. Some died.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Fifteen. The thugs who did it weren’t caught. They just disappe
ared. But some of the tea-pickers who survived told their story to the regional governor. The letter from him was to demand compensation be paid to the families of those who died, to avoid a scandal.’

  ‘And this letter was sent to the company?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To Mr Mason Radley directly?’

  ‘Yes. He’s the managing director of the company.’

  ‘And how did you come to see this letter?’

  ‘I do the filing. The letter was with other letters to be filed.’ He hesitated, then admitted: ‘I think it got into the pile by mistake, because Mr Radley got very worried and asked if anyone had seen a letter from the regional governor.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  Again, Purcell hesitated, then he hung his head before admitting: ‘I said I hadn’t seen it and asked what it was about in case it turned up.’

  ‘And what did Mr Radley say to that?’

  ‘He didn’t answer at first. Then he said it wasn’t important, but I could tell by the way he acted that it was.’

  ‘What did you do with the letter?’

  Purcell fell silent and looked so agonised that Feather thought he was going to burst into tears again.

  ‘Did you give it to Raymond Simpson?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Purcell, miserably.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he said if anything ever came my way that suggested a scandal, we could make money out of it. He said I wouldn’t have to do anything; he’d do everything and we’d share the money we made.’

  ‘You knew he was talking about blackmail?’

  ‘He never used that word.’

  ‘But you knew that was what he meant.’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Purcell, lowering his head, averting his face from Feather’s probing eyes.

  ‘How did you know Simpson?’

  ‘I worked for a time as an usher at the Lyceum Theatre. Raymond was there, and he used to talk about how easy it was to make money from people who had secrets they wanted to hide.’

  ‘When I came to the office you were nervous,’ said Daniel. ‘Afraid. Why?’

  ‘I knew Mr Radley was a trustee at the Natural History Museum and when I read in the papers about Raymond being murdered there I remembered how Mr Radley was when he came into the office that day – all in a hurry and looking a bit panicky – and I thought he might have done it. Killed Raymond, that is. And if he did it could be because of the letter I’d passed to Raymond, and I was worried I’d be involved.’

  ‘You are involved,’ said Feather.

  He got up, as did Daniel.

  ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ begged Purcell. ‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘You gave someone a letter they could use to blackmail someone,’ said Feather. ‘You did it for money. That’s a criminal offence.’

  As the two men walked to the barred door, Purcell shouted out, his voice rising in with panic: ‘I don’t want to hang!’

  Daniel and Feather walked back upstairs to the inspector’s office, where Abigail was waiting.

  ‘Where are the two women?’ asked Feather.

  ‘They’ve gone back down to the cells,’ she said, her tight-lipped look showing her disapproval. ‘They shouldn’t be here. They didn’t do it.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Daniel. ‘It looks like Mason Radley is the person we’re looking for.’

  ‘You got that from Purcell?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘Purcell was blackmailing Radley, along with Simpson,’ he said. He told her about the contents of the letter and the killings at the tea plantation.

  ‘So, all things considered, Radley has to be our main suspect,’ said Feather. ‘He was spotted at the museum around the time Simpson was killed and he was being blackmailed over these killings at his plantation.’

  ‘He couldn’t be prosecuted for them,’ pointed out Abigail. ‘One, they were in India, which is a separate jurisdiction. Two, the decision to employ these thugs was made by his manager, not by him.’

  ‘Yes, but if word about the killings leaked out it would affect his company’s reputation and its share price,’ said Feather. ‘The fact that immediately after Simpson’s body was found and Radley realised he’d been seen he ran for it, is the clincher.’

  ‘In view of this, we ought to tell the superintendent that Radley is now our main suspect, and he should let the two Tilly women go,’ said Abigail. ‘There’s no reason to keep them in custody.’

  Superintendent Armstrong stared at them, stunned, as they told him what they’d learnt from Purcell.

  ‘A trustee of the museum?’ he said, shocked.

  ‘Who was being blackmailed by Simpson,’ repeated Feather.

  ‘Which means the two Tilly women are innocent,’ said Abigail. ‘They should be released. With an apology.’

  ‘We were just following procedure,’ snapped Armstrong, defensively. Then he nodded and grunted reluctantly to Feather: ‘Send ’em home, Inspector.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Feather.

  As he headed for the door, Armstrong asked him: ‘So, where’s this Radley gone?’

  ‘According to what his housekeeper said, to India, sir. But then we hear his office manager said he had no knowledge of that.’

  ‘So, he could still be in this country, hiding out somewhere.’

  ‘He could,’ said Feather, and Daniel and Abigail both nodded in agreement.

  ‘Right, Inspector, once you’ve released the Tillys, get a search going for him,’ said Armstrong. ‘The usual stuff. Check passenger manifests in case he really has left the country. And talk to people who know him and see if they can think where he might hole up.’

  ‘We’ll talk to Miss Scott at the museum,’ Daniel offered. ‘As he’s a trustee there she might be able to offer some insight.’

  ‘Good,’ said Armstrong. ‘Good work. At least I’ve got something to tell the commissioner.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sergeant Cribbens strode alongside his uniformed colleague, Sergeant Jim Bunn, as they made their way through the back streets of Paddington towards the house where Dolly and Tess Tilly lived.

  When Cribbens had met his old pal at Paddington police station and told him he was after information about whether Dolly and Tess Tilly had known Raymond Simpson, Bunn had given a big smile and told him: ‘You’ve come to the right man.’

  ‘You know ’em?’

  ‘Of course I know ’em,’ said Bunn, slightly offended. ‘This is my patch. Even better, I know someone who’ll be only too pleased to dish any dirt on them, if there is any. A sharp-tongued woman called Mrs Henrietta Chapman.’

  With that, they’d set off from the station, Bunn leading the way at a brisk pace.

  ‘You think this Mrs Chapman will be able to help us?’

  ‘If she can’t, there’s no one else I can think of who can,’ said Bunn. ‘Mrs Chapman can’t stand the Tillys, and there’s nothing like someone who can’t abide people to get another side of the story from everyone who’ll tell you what lovely people Dolly and Tess are.’

  ‘And they aren’t?’ asked Cribbens.

  ‘Well, I’ve never found anything against them,’ said Bunn. ‘As far as I’m concerned they’re decent people, but Tom was a different kettle of fish, and it was Tom that used to get Mrs Chapman upset. She’d come and see me at the station to make complaint after complaint.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Tom and his cronies hanging around outside her door. See, she lives on the floor below the Tillys, and she said there was disgusting things happening outside her door that shouldn’t be allowed and she wanted ’em charged.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I told her there wasn’t a lot I could do. The stairs was private property. I said if they were doing it out in the street I might be able to charge them with causing a nuisance, but even then it would be their word against hers if it came to court.’

  ‘What were they doing?’

  ‘M
essing about with one another, according to her. You know, in ways that men shouldn’t.’

  ‘How did she know? Did she open the door and see them?’

  ‘She looked through her letterbox at them.’

  ‘And Raymond Simpson was one of them?’

  ‘I never got all their names. They used to scarper when a copper turned up. We grabbed two of them, both sixteen: Harry Bentham and Walter Harris, but they denied they’d been doing anything. They said they were just hanging about on the stairs because their pal Tom’s ma didn’t like them going to his place.’

  ‘And you never arrested any of ’em?’

  ‘Like I say, on what charge? We had no proof; it was their word against Mrs Chapman’s. So, I had to be content with warning them, threatening them with jail for causing a nuisance. It seemed to work because, shortly after, Tom left home.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. I was just relieved he’d gone, because the other lads stopped going to the house, so there was no more of that playing about on the stairs. The next thing I knew was when Tom topped himself.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘What a mess, eh?’

  They stopped in front of the house where just a few hours earlier Sergeant Cribbens and Inspector Feather had called to take Dolly and Tess Tilly into custody.

  ‘Right,’ said Bunn. ‘Let’s go and call on Mrs Chapman.’

  Daniel and Abigail were also on foot, in their case heading back to the Natural History Museum after their encounter with John Feather and Superintendent Armstrong.

  ‘It was very fortunate that we took Purcell to Scotland Yard, otherwise who knows how long Dolly and her daughter would have been kept locked up. It wouldn’t have happened to them if they were middle-class women,’ observed Abigail.

  ‘Sadly, I have to agree,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s an unfortunate truth that the wealthy and better connected are more likely to escape punishment for their crimes than the poor. Which is why this business of William Watling irks me. We need to call on him and confront him.’

  ‘But he’s nothing to do with the case,’ pointed out Abigail.