by Robin Paige
Kate softened her tone. It would do no good to frighten the girl, or alienate her. “How long have you known Lawrence, Amelia?”
“A few months, miss,” Amelia said nervously. “Since the magic lantern show.”
“And you have become well acquainted with him?”
She ducked her head. “Not to say well-acquainted, miss. We ‘uv got t’ be friends.”
“How long has he been with the Marsdens?” No, wait. She knew the answer to that. Eleanor said he had been in their employ for seven years.
Amelia was shaking her head. “I can’t say, miss. All I know is that he’s th’ footman, an’ well-liked. But he’s valetin’ fer Sir Charles right now.”
Kate looked up sharply. “For Sir Charles?”
“Yes, miss.” Amelia shifted. “Sir Charles didn’t bring a valet. Lady Marsden give him Lawrence.”
“I see.” Kate thought for a moment. “Do you and Lawrence have future plans, Amelia?”
Amelia went rosy. “Oh, no, miss,” she said, flustered. “I’m sure I—I mean, he hasn’t . . .”
“If you were to marry, would he stay in service?”
Amelia looked shocked. “Of course, miss! How else would we live? Service is how we earn our living.”
“Thank you, Amelia,” Kate said. If Lawrence had made off with the emeralds and planned to use them to finance a new start in life, he had not told Amelia, of that Kate was certain. But Beryl Bardwell’s imaginative mind did not for one second take that to be a guarantee of the man’s innocence. He wouldn’t be the first man to fly with his booty and leave both his service and his sweetheart behind.
Still, Kate had discovered something interesting from her questioning of the maid: Lawrence, it seemed, was temporarily serving as Sir Charles’s valet. Eleanor had said that she planned to inform Sir Charles about the theft of the emeralds. Kate wondered whether he might have some immediate impression of Lawrence as a possible thief—or murderer. For Beryl Bardwell. was persuaded that there was a link between the two.
So as Kate directed the maid’s unpacking, she had something else to think about: the conversation she planned to have with Sir Charles regarding Lawrence, the emeralds, and the dead police sergeant. She sat down at her desk to write him a note and ask him to call tomorrow—in the afternoon. For in the morning she must offer her condolences to Agnes Oliver.
At the thought of Agnes, Kate felt a deep sympathy. How hard it must be for her to be left in the world without the one she loved and depended upon for her livelihood. But at least she had her pension, Kate reminded herself as she sealed the note to Sir Charles and rang for Mudd to arrange for it to be sent. When a woman lost her husband she was very likely to lose everything else, as well.
14
Throughout the late 1800s, the average British citizen had little respect for the effectiveness of the police. Lack or training and opportunity, bureaucratic corruption, low pay, and even lower social status made it difficult to recruit good policemen. This was compounded by a reluctance to adopt modern scientific methods for criminal investigation and identification, and a lack of interest in new technologies of communication and transport. Most people felt that the police, taken all in all, were a sorry lot.
—GERRARD BINDLE
The Police in Nineteenth Century England
Dudley Pell turned in his chair and contemplated the detailed map of the County of Essex that hung on the plaster wall of the borough office in the Colchester Town Hall. On the map, each of the county’s boroughs was outlined in red: the half-dozen smaller ones, like Braintree and Bishop’s Stortford, and the larger ones, Chelmsford and Colchester. Within each borough, the police districts were outlined in green, with clusters of coloured pins to represent each location of the constabulary. He had risen from humble beginnings as a simple constable in the District of Great Baddow—a black pin, as it were—to the position of chief constable of the Colchester Borough—the only green pin. And he now had the enviable and useful authority of deploying and overseeing two red pins (inspectors), five blue pins (sergeants), and forty black pins (constables). Forty-seven pins in all, the entire borough force. His contemplation of the map was coloured with a certain justifiable pride.
The success that had come Chief Constable Pell’s way in the last two decades had not been without cost. His leg, but more than that, his time and energy, leaving him with none to spare: he spent it all in work, one way or another. Much of this expenditure was invisible to those beneath him, who imagined that what he did in this office—signing his name to papers, drinking tea, speaking with his subordinates—was all that he did. They had no imagination. They couldn’t conceive of his real work: all that went on in this office and outside it, beyond the formal perimeters of the job, as it were.
For of course the four hundred pounds a year plus fifty in allowance that the borough paid Dudley Pell did not come close to providing the kind of life—the house, the servants, the carriage—desired by his wife. Upon their marriage, she had brought him a meager but potentially profitable family interest in marine transport, which interest he had expanded over the years so that it now made up the difference between his salary and his wife’s expenditures, with a nice bit left over for his own pleasures. This enterprise required that he spend the latter part of each afternoon at the quay at Wivenhoe, below Colchester, an altogether profitable activity, taking the long view of it. And even if his several undertakings did not require his full attention, he would have found something to keep him away from home. No matter what luxuries he bought her, Mrs. Pell grew more pettish every year, no joy after a long day at the office, on the quay or in the field. So the chief constable was in the habit of spending even longer days doing the various things he did, and very little time lounging in slippers and shirtsleeves at home, where Mrs. Pell could set upon him.
Chief Constable Pell withdrew his attention from his private affairs and looked again at the map, pulling at his black whiskers. At the moment, he was faced with a problem in the deployment of manpower. Sergeant Arthur Oliver, of the district of Gallows Green, had unfortunately gotten himself killed. Most unfortunately, for his was a record of exemplary service to the force. But there it was, he was dead, and Chief Constable Pell must assign his replacement. For the time being, P.C. Bradley from Manningtree could take on the district of the deceased in addition to his own, for Gallows Green and Manningtree were contiguous. Bradley was young and inexperienced, to be sure, but not unsuitable for the chief constable’s purposes, for he was ambitious and had a young family to support. Superintendent Hacking had been set on Edward Laken, whose Dedham district also adjoined Gallows Green. But Laken would not do at all, and Pell was glad to have succeeded in bringing the super around to his way of thinking. It was Bradley, then. Pell would keep his eye on the boy and see how he got on.
Pell turned to his desk and picked up his pen to execute the appropriate order. He had just dipped it into his inkwell when there came a knock at the door. Upon his bidding, it opened, and P.C. Nutter put his head through.
“A gentl‘man t’ see ye, sir,” he said respectfully.
“On what business?” Pell asked, not looking up. He signed the order with a flourish, blotted it, and held it out. “Take this and see that it’s taken care of.”
“Yessir.” P.C. Nutter took the order. “ ’E says ’tis th’ business o’ Sergeant Oliver’s death, sir.”
Chief Constable Pell pushed his lips in and out, considering. “Oh, very well, then,” he said at last. “Show him in.”
The man who came through the door had the easy, unconscious grace of a gentleman, but he did not wear a gentleman’s clothes. His shapeless brown jacket was missing several buttons, his boots were muddy, and his brown felt hat a ruin. The chief constable, who required those about him to be neatly turned out, was not impressed.
“Well?” he demanded, leaning back in his chair. “What’s this about Oliver?”
The man sat down and took off his wreck of a hat. “My name is
Charles Sheridan. I am an old friend of Artie Oliver. I took the photographs of the body.”
“Photographs?”
“Of the body,” Sheridan repeated distinctly. “Entered in evidence at the inquest.”
“Ah, yes, those photographs.” Pell had little use for the camera as part of a policeman’s kit. A sharp eye, that’s what was wanted. He regarded the man. “Well?” he asked.
Sheridan’s lips tightened. “I have come on the widow’s behalf to ask about your plans for the investigation of her husband’s death.”
“Ah, yes.” Chief Constable Pell gave a heavy sigh. “Poor woman. I understand she has a child.”
“Yes.”
“But the Standing Joint Committee has recommended a generous pension.”
Sheridan leaned forward and put his elbows on the chief constable’s desk. “The investigation,” he said pointedly, “is my concern at the moment.”
The superintendent gave the man’s elbows a distasteful look. “My dear, ah, Sheridan,” he said. “While the widow is due every sympathy, surely she cannot expect me to jeopardize the investigation by revealing its details.”
“Details are not necessary,” Sheridan said. His eyes were hard as brown-bottle glass. He fixed them on the chief constable. “A general outline will do.”
Pell frowned. “I am afraid,” he said carefully, “that I must refuse your request. I—”
“To whom have you assigned the investigation?”
“Why, I—” Pell’s frown became a scowl. “I quite fail to see why it is any concern of—”
“To whom?”
The chief constable felt cornered. “P.C. Bradley, from Manningtree, will be doing the legwork,” he said stiffly. “I, of course, will be informed of each development. Now, I must insist that you—”
“I met Bradley at the funeral. He’s a boy. Why was Laken taken off the case?”
The chief constable puffed out his cheeks, feeling his face redden. “I am not in the habit of discussing police affairs with civilians. Now, if you will be so good as to—”
There was another knock on the door, and the chief constable felt a great relief. P.C. Nutter came in. “Sorry fer th’ int’ruption,” he said. “Superintendent Hacking has sent fer ye, sir.”
The chief constable did not rise. “Inform the superintendent that I shall be there shortly,” he said. “And show this gentleman out, Constable Nutter. Our business is concluded.”
Sheridan got up and jammed on his hat. “You’re making a mistake. Laken is your best man.”
Pell did not answer. For several minutes after Sheridan had gone, he sat musing. Then he hoisted himself up and faced the map. He took down one blue pin and moved a black pin a precise quarter of an inch to the left. He surveyed the map for a moment, his lips pursed. In his careful planning, had he overlooked something he should have considered? He thought not. At last he turned and walked, stiffly, to the door.
15
“Ha! I have a theory. These flashes come upon me at time. ”
—SHERLOCK HOLMES
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
Charles Sheridan, his hat pulled down over his ears, rapidly took the stairs to the basement of Town Hall, where he pushed his way through the door of the Colchester Department of Police. A stout sergeant wearing a too-tight uniform jacket looked up from a stack of papers on his desk and gave him a weary nod of recognition.
“Morning, Sir Charles,” he said, moving his elbows. As he did so, several sheets cascaded to the floor and he bent to pick them up. In the process, his pen flipped out of the inkwell, raining droplets of ink on the desk. With an even wearier look, the sergeant resumed his seat. “How c’n I be o’ service, sir?” He picked up the pen wrong end first and looked dismally at the ink on his fat fingers.
“Why don’t they buy you a fountain pen, Battle?” Charles asked. He took out a handkerchief and offered it. “Is Inspector Wainwright, in?”
“With respect, sir,” Battle said, “th’ budget’s a bit light with regard t’ fountain pens.” He wiped off his fingers and made as if to return it. Then, noticing with some confusion the inky stains on the snowy cotton, he pulled it back and stuffed it in his pocket. “I’ll see if th’ inspector’s available,” he said, red-faced. As he stood, he dislodged a ledger that fell from the corner of the desk, knocking over a can and spilling dirty sand and the chewed stubs of cigars onto the floor. A moment later, when he returned with the news that the inspector was in, he had a broom in his hand and a resigned look on his round face.
The inspector’s basement office was a square, dingy room with one window let into the wall near the ceiling and gridded over to hinder access from the street. His desk was a table piled with papers, boxes of evidence, and a crumpled paper parcel that from the look of it had recently contained eel pie and baked potato. Inspector Wainwright stood in the corner, taking down two crockery cups from a shelf over a gas burner on which a chipped enamel kettle was beginning to steam.
“Tea?” he asked morosely.
“Yes, thank you.” Charles sat down on one of the two chairs. “It’s good to see you in such high spirits.”
Wainwright gave his caller a sideways glance as if to determine whether he was joking. But he apparently found nothing to smile at, for his long grey face remained gloomy. “No biscuits,” he remarked, and poured boiling water onto a spoonful of tea leaves in a cracked pot.
“I can do without biscuits,” Charles said. “Tell me about Pell.”
Inspector Wainwright’s face, if possible, grew even more gloomy. He put the lid on the pot.
“Well, then,” Charles asked, “what about Hacking?”
Wainwright’s thin mustache drooped. He put his hands in his pockets and stood stoop-shouldered, pondering the teapot. After several moments, he took his hands out of his pockets and poured the tea, then carried the cups to the table, where he pushed papers aside to clear a space. He still had said nothing other than “Tea?” and “No biscuits.”
Charles sat back in his chair and regarded the inspector. They shared a fairly recent acquaintance, having jointly apprehended the killer of an unfortunate foreign gentleman whose remains had been discovered in an archaeological dig. During the investigation, their relationship had grown from mutual suspicion to grudging respect. But even on the crime’s resolution, Wainwright had not seemed cheered by their success. In the several months Charles had known the inspector, he had yet to see the man smile.
Charles accepted his cup and looked around for the sugar. “I take it,” he said mildly, “that you do not have a high opinion of either of your superiors.”
With a long sigh, the inspector broke his silence. “Th’ Colchester Telephone Exchange has signed on twenty-seven subscribers.” He took a packet from his pocket, mournfully counted out four cubes of brown sugar into his tea, and handed the packet to Charles. “The Colchester Police haven’t yet subscribed. ‘Twill be next month, th’ superintendent tells me. But he’s very mean as to ha‘pence, and that’s what he’s been tellin’ me for th’ past year. Next month.” He stirred his tea with a bent spoon.
“I see,” Charles said. When he had first met Inspector Wainwright,, the man was hoping for a typewriter to assist with mountainous paperwork. But judging from the stacks on both his and Sergeant Battle’s desks, his hopes had been disappointed. “It appears that neither Hacking nor Pell has a great interest in making the force more efficient.”
The inspector gave his bleak assent.
Charles shook his head. “Well, I suppose I can understand. Little money, less imagination. But why in God’s name did Hacking put Pell in charge of the Oliver murder? And why did Pell take Laken off the case and replace him with a green recruit?”
“Sheer baboonery,” Wainwright said with an infinite sadness. “Pell’s too wrapped up in his shippin’ business t’ take any notice of what’s afoot, an’ Hacking’s too bone-lazy t’ care. Doubt we’ll see any improvement in th’ force until they’re gone, wh
ich won’t be in my lifetime.” He sighed heavily. “But at least they don’t have sticky fingers, as they do at th’ Yard.” Wainwright never failed to bring up the moral corruption of the Metropolitan Police Force, whose scandals were regularly exposed in the newspapers. It was in his nature to be heavily burdened with the melancholy knowledge that all men—even, on occasion, the police—had their dark side.
Charles leaned forward. “What have you heard about the Oliver case?”
Wainwright sipped his tea. “Sheep-stealers,” he said.
Charles frowned. “But if there were sheep-stealers about, I don’t understand why Constable Laken wouldn’t have known. The two districts are contiguous, and Laken is a careful policeman.”
“Careful as may be,” Wainwright replied. “But there are gypsies abroad, and where there are gypsies, there are sheep-stealers. At least that’s the theory.”
“Whose theory?”
“Hacking’s. And Pell’s.”
“But I don’t see the evidence for it,” Charles persisted. “Laken tells me that no one has reported the theft of an animal. And if Oliver had received such reports, he would have informed Laken.”
Wainwright shrugged. “Well, it’s Hacking’s theory, and he’s not the sort to require a lot of evidence. Pell told him, I guess. Pell is the one who set Oliver to work on it, anyway.”
“So it’s Pell’s theory?”
“Pell or Hacking, what does it matter?” Wainwright was philosophical. “Theories are easy. They come like flashes. It’s the evidence that’s harder.”
“Is something being done to discover evidence?”
