A Breach of Promise

by Anne Perry

  Hester shook her head quickly. “No, of course, Mr….”

  “Walcott, Harold Walcott, ma’am.”

  “Hester Latterly,” she replied. “But I know Martha Jackson, Samuel Jackson’s sister. I know her quite well.”

  Mr. Walcott shook his head, the breeze ruffling his thin hair.

  “I always liked Sam. Quick, ’e was, but kind, if you know what I mean? Loved them little girls something fierce.”

  “They had a terrible time after he died,” Hester said bleakly. “But we’ve just found them and taken them to Martha. They’ll be all right now. They’re in a very good house, with a distinguished soldier from the Indian army. He was badly injured in the Mutiny, scarred in the face, so they’ll not be misused or made little of.”

  “I’m right ’appy to ’ear that.” Mr. Walcott beamed at her. “You and yer ’usband are real Christian people. God bless yer both.”

  The color was brighter on Hester’s face than could be accounted for by the wind, but she did not argue. “Thank you, Mr. Walcott.”

  Monk felt a curious wrench in his chest, but he did not argue either. There were more important issues, and far more urgent ones.

  “You are very gracious, Mr. Walcott,” he answered, inclining his head in acknowledgment. “Since you knew Samuel, would you be kind enough to answer a few questions about the way he died? Martha is still troubled by it. It would set her mind at rest … perhaps.”

  Walcott’s face darkened and his lips compressed. “Very sudden, it were.” He shook his head. “I suppose there in’t many good ways ter go, but bleedin’s always scared me something awful. Just my weakness, I suppose, but I can’t stand the thought of it. Poor Sam bled terrible.”

  “What did the doctor say caused it?” Hester asked quietly. The situation would not be unknown to her. God knew what she had seen in the battlefield, but looking sideways at her face, Monk saw the horror in her eyes too. Experience had not dulled it. It was one of the things about her he cared for most. He had never known her to deny or dull her capacity to feel. She exasperated him, irritated him, was opinionated, but she had more courage than anyone else he had ever known. And she could laugh.

  Mr. Walcott was shaking his head again. The wind was sharper and his hands were turning white holding the daffodils.

  “I never ’eard. Not sure as ’e knew for certain,” he answered the question.

  “Who was he?” Hester asked, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice—and not succeeding.

  But if Mr. Walcott noticed he did not take offense.

  “That’d ’ave bin Dr. Loomis, for certain.”

  “Where might we find him?” Monk asked.

  “Oh …” Mr. Walcott considered for a moment. “Well… ’e were gettin’ on a bit then. ’E lived in Charlwood Road, I ’member that. Nice ’ouse, wi’ a big may tree in the front garden. Smell something marvelous in the late spring, it does.”

  “Thank you,” Monk said with feeling. “You’ve been of great assistance, Mr. Walcott.” He held out his hand.

  Walcott shook it. “A pleasure, Mr. Latterly.”

  Monk winced but kept his peace.

  “Ma’am.” Mr. Walcott bowed to Hester, and she smiled back at him, biting her lips to stop herself from laughing. All the same there were tears in her eyes, whether they were for Samuel Jackson, for the bereavement which had brought Mr. Walcott here with the flowers in his freezing hands, or due to the wind itself, Monk had no way to know.

  He took her arm and turned her to walk back through the gravestones to the street again, and left towards Charlwood Road. They went for some distance in silence. He felt curiously at ease. He ought to have been embarrassed, filled with urgency to rectify Mr. Walcott’s mistake, and yet every time he drew breath to say something, it seemed the wrong time, the words clumsy and not what he really meant to say.

  Eventually they had walked all the way along Upper Richmond Road and around the corner right into Charlwood Road and down as far as the unmistakable house with the ancient, spreading may tree leaning over the fence and arching above the path to the front door.

  “This must be it,” Hester said, glancing up at him. “What do we say?”

  He should have been thinking about that, and he had not, not with any concentrated effort.

  “The truth,” he answered, because he must appear as if he had been silent in order to turn over the matter and make a wise judgment. “I don’t think anything else will serve at this point.”

  “I agree,” she said immediately.

  She must have been thinking about it. She would never be so amenable otherwise. Why was he faintly disappointed?

  He stood back for her to go first up the path.

  She saw the brass plate saying “Hector Loomis, M.D.” beside the bell pull. She glanced around at Monk, then reached out and yanked the brass knob, a little too hard. They heard it ringing with a clatter inside.

  It was answered by an elderly housekeeper with a crisp white apron and cap.

  “Good morning,” Monk said straightaway.

  “Good … morning, sir, ma’am,” she replied, hesitating momentarily because it was now well into the afternoon. “May I help you?”

  “If you please,” Monk responded. “We have come a very long way to see Dr. Loomis on the matter of a tragedy which happened some time ago and which we have just learned may involve a very serious crime … the crime of murder. It is essential we are certain of our facts beyond any reasonable doubt. Many people may be irreparably hurt if we are not.”

  “We are sorry to trouble you without warning or proper appointment,” Hester added. “If there had been another way, we should have taken it.”

  “Oh! Bless my soul! Well … you had better come in.” The housekeeper stepped back and invited them to enter. “Dr. Loomis is busy with a patient this minute, but I’ll tell him as you’re here and it’s important. I’m sure he’ll see you.”

  “Thank you very much,” Monk accepted, following Hester to where the housekeeper led them to wait and then left them. It was a most agreeable room, but very small, and looked onto the back garden of what was apparently a family home. Children’s toys lay neatly stacked against the wall of a potting shed. A hoop and a tiny horse’s head on a stick were plainly discernible.

  Hester looked at Monk, the question in her eyes.

  “Grandchildren?” he suggested with a sinking feeling of disappointment.

  She bit her lip and said nothing. She was too restless to sit down, and he felt the same, but there was not room for them both to pace back and forth, and even though she wore petticoats without hoops, her skirts still took up what little space there was.

  When Dr. Loomis appeared he was a mild-faced young man with fast receding hair cut very short and a friendly look of enquiry in his very ordinary face.

  “Mrs. Selkirk says you have come a great distance to ask about a crime?” he said, closing the door behind him and looking from one to the other of them with a frown. “How can I help you? I don’t think I know anything at all.”

  “It happened twenty-one years ago,” Monk answered, rising to his feet.

  “Oh …” Loomis looked disappointed. “That would be my father. I’m so sorry.”

  Monk felt a ridiculous disappointment. It was so strong it was physical, as if his throat had suddenly tightened and he could barely catch his breath.

  “Perhaps you have his records?” Hester refused to give up. “It was about a Samuel Jackson, who died of bleeding. He had two small daughters, both of them disfigured.”

  “Samuel Jackson!” Loomis obviously recognized the name. “Yes, I remember him speaking of that.”

  Monk’s hope surged up wildly. Why else would a man speak of a case many years afterwards, except that it worried him, was somehow incomplete?

  “What did he say?” he demanded.

  Loomis screwed up his face in concentration.

  Monk waited. He looked at Hester. She was so tense she seemed scarcely to be brea
thing.

  Loomis cleared his throat. “He was troubled by it …” he said tentatively. “He never really knew what caused him to bleed the way he did. He couldn’t connect it with any illness he knew.” He looked at Monk earnestly. “But of course we know so little, really. A lot of the time we are only making our best guess. We can’t say that.” He shrugged and gave a nervous laugh. His pale, blue-gray eyes were very direct. “I think, to be honest, his greatest concern was because he couldn’t help, and Samuel was so desperate to stay alive because of his children. And as it turned out, Mrs. Jackson did lose them. She couldn’t care for them, poor woman. She was left with almost nothing. She was obliged to make her own way, and she couldn’t do that with two small children … especially not ones that weren’t … normal.” He looked as if he hated saying it. There was a tightness in him, and his hands moved uneasily.

  “She did very well for herself,” Hester assured him acidly. “Could Samuel Jackson have died of any sort of poison?”

  Loomis regarded her curiously. “Not that I know of. What makes you ask that? Look … Mrs. Selkirk mentioned a crime. I think she actually said murder. Perhaps you had better explain to me what you are seeking, and why.” He waved to them to sit down, and then sat on the chair opposite, upright, leaning forward, listening.

  Monk outlined to him all that he knew about Samuel Jackson, but he began with a brief history of the case of Keelin Melville and her death from belladonna poisoning. It took them nearly three quarters of an hour, and neither Hester nor Loomis interrupted him until he had finished.

  “What you are saying”—he looked at Monk grimly—“is that you think Dolly Jackson—Delphine Lambert, as she is known now—murdered Samuel in order to escape her situation because he insisted on keeping the children, and she couldn’t bear to have them. She wanted perfection and wouldn’t settle for anything less.”

  “Yes,” Monk agreed. “That is what I’m saying. Is it true?”

  “I don’t know,” Loomis admitted. “But I’m prepared to do everything in my power to find out.” He stood up. “We can begin with my father’s records. He never destroyed them. They are all in the cellar. Do you know exactly when he died?”

  “Yes!” Hester said straightaway. “September twenty-seventh, 1839. It’s on his gravestone.”

  “Excellent! Then it will be a simple matter.” Loomis led the way out into the hall, calling his intentions to Mrs. Selkirk and instructing her that he was not to be interrupted for anything less than an emergency. “I’m glad you came today,” he went on, going to the cellar door and opening it. “We’ll need a light. There’s no gas down here. I have very few patients today, and my wife has taken the children for a day or two to see her father. He is not very well and does not travel, but he is very fond of my daughters.” He smiled as he said it, and his own affection was clear in his eyes. Perhaps that was some of his feeling for Samuel Jackson.

  He found a lantern and lit it, then led the way down the narrow stone steps to the cellar where rows of boxes filled with papers lay neatly stacked.

  It took them only ten minutes to find the right box for the month of September in the year 1839, most of the work moving the boxes above it.

  “Here it is!” Loomis exclaimed, lifting out a handful of papers. “Samuel Jackson…” He held it closer to the light, and Hester and Monk both peered over his shoulder while he read the generous, sprawling hand.

  “You are right—he didn’t know,” Hester said the moment she came to the end. She stared at Loomis. “He wasn’t satisfied. He just couldn’t prove there was anything wrong. Can we get an order for an exhumation?”

  Loomis chewed his lip. “Difficult…”

  “But possible?” she insisted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where do we begin?” Monk asked urgently. “We can’t just let this go!”

  “With the police,” Loomis answered, meeting his eyes. “We’ll go up to the station and speak to Sergeant Byrne. He’ll remember Sam Jackson—and Dolly. I won’t let this go, I promise you. But it’ll be very hard….”

  Hester straightened up. “We’ll find Sergeant Byrne, then we’ll find the judge.”

  Monk looked dubious. “The question is, if it was poison, will it still be there to find, even if we can dig him up?”

  “Depends what it is,” Loomis answered, putting away the rest of the papers and closing the box. He handed all the papers on Samuel Jackson to Hester. “Depends on the quality of his coffin, if it’s all dry inside, and what’s in the surrounding earth. I don’t know what chance we have of proving anything this long after. Arsenic remains, I know that. But this doesn’t sound like arsenic. I think my father would have seen that. This was bleeding … more like an internal ulcer burst, or an artery, or something of that sort. I don’t know why he wasn’t satisfied, but from his accounts here, he wasn’t.”

  “Probably because Samuel had no history of earlier illness,” Hester suggested. “There’s no mention of pain before, or difficulty with eating, no nausea or earlier signs of blood.”

  Loomis looked at her quickly.

  “I am a nurse,” she explained. Then, as if she recalled the general reputation of nurses as women who scrubbed floors and emptied slops, she added, “In the Crimea. I’ve done a good deal of field surgery.” She said it with pride. It was not boasting but a statement of fact.

  Loomis nodded slowly, his face full of admiration.

  “Then we had better take these papers and see if we can get Sergeant Byrne on our side, and then persuade a judge that we have reasonable cause to suspect a murder. I warn you, it may be a long and fruitless task, but I am ready, if you are.”

  “We are!” Monk said without hesitation, including Hester automatically and without even bothering to glance at her.

  Sergeant Byrne at the local station was quite easily persuaded. He was a middle-aged man who had known and liked Samuel Jackson, and Jackson’s death had shocked him. He took little convincing that there was cause for further investigation. He was more than willing to leave his tedious paperwork and go immediately with Hester, Monk and Dr. Loomis to call upon Judge Tomkinson across the river in Parsons Green.

  The judge occupied a large house with an excellent view over a sweep of lawn towards the water, and he did not appreciate being taken from the dinner table.

  Loomis had been right in that it was difficult and frustrating to a point close to loss of both temper and hope to persuade Judge Tomkinson to order an exhumation of the body of Samuel Jackson, decently buried, without question, twenty-one years before. He argued with every point they raised, shaking his head and tapping his fingers on the top of his cherry wood desk.

  They tried every line of reasoning they could think of, relevant and irrelevant, based on logic or emotion, anger, pity or the desire for justice. The judge dismissed them all, for one cause or another. Even Sergeant Byrne’s presence moved him not at all.

  Finally, at quarter to seven in the evening, it was Monk’s impassioned anger at the death of Keelin Melville which won him over.

  “Melville?” the judge said slowly, letting out his breath in a sigh. “The Melville who built that marvelous hall for Barton Lambert? That place full of light?”

  “Yes!”

  Hester held her breath.

  Loomis looked nonplussed.

  The judge frowned at Monk. “Are you saying you believe this woman murdered Melville to stop the case, and thus you from pursuing her past, and probably finding these wretched children of hers?” he asked with rising emotion.

  “Yes … my lord.”

  “Then—then perhaps we had better find the truth of the matter,” the judge said with a sigh. “Not that I imagine it will do any good now. About the only justice you will get will be to spread the news around that she was once Dolly Jackson of Putney and that Leda and Phemie are her natural children.” There was a hard edge to his voice. “For whatever satisfaction that may bring you.”

  “Very little,” Monk repl
ied. “It sounds like vengeance, and would hurt her present husband and daughter for very little reason.”

  “Then you’d better make the best of your exhumation,” the judge replied with a tight shrug. “Although if you find poison, that won’t help his present family very much.”

  Loomis took the paper as the judge signed it.

  Monk pushed his hands into his pockets. “Thank you.”

  “It may not help anybody now,” Hester acknowledged. “But if he was murdered, we can’t look away because it will hurt. It always hurts.”

  The judge did not reply.

  The rest of the evening was spent in frantic organization. They had barely half an hour to eat a hasty supper, then Loomis went to the local police station to inform them of their intentions and show them the judge’s order.

  When he had gone, Monk searched his pockets, then turned to Hester.

  “How much money have you?”

  She looked in her reticule. “About two shillings and four-pence,” she answered. “Why?”

  “We’ve got to pay the grave diggers,” he answered grimly. “It’s hard work, and we haven’t got the time to haggle. I’ve only got half a crown and a few pence. We’ll need more than that. There’ll be the local sexton as well.” He looked anxious, his eyes bleak, mouth tight.

  She understood his reluctance to ask Loomis. He had given a great deal already. But who else was there? Callandra was still on holiday.

  They stared at each other.

  “Gabriel?” she suggested. “He’d lend it—even give it. How much do we need?”

  “Another thirty shillings at least! Maybe two pounds.”

  “I’ll ask him.” She started to move even as she spoke.

  “He’s miles away,” he protested.

  “Then the sooner I start, the better chance of being back in time.” She smiled with a little twist. “At least we know he’ll be at home.”

  “You stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll go!”

  “Don’t be stupid!” She dismissed the idea with unaccustomed brusqueness, even for her. “I know him, you don’t. You can’t turn up on the doorstep and ask for two pounds.”