The Good Wife

by Jane A. Adams

  She pouted, still obviously unsure. ‘It was Mr Elliston, Mr Timothy Elliston. Lord Elliston’s son.’

  ‘Potentially a powerful enemy,’ Henry said. And Elliston had been at the races. Had his son, had Kirkland?

  ‘Yes, so you can imagine how surprised we all were when Mr Kirkland wanted her to be the woman in the photograph. Martha was not very happy about it, but she met with Mr Kirkland and he managed to persuade her. He said he was no longer friends with this other chap because he’d found out what he was like and that he never knew that he’d been violent to his wife. Anyway, he got his divorce and then Martha went off and got married, and that’s all there is to tell.’

  ‘And now Martha’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, well. I know nothing about that.’

  ‘Was she already calling herself Martha before she left? You use the name very easily and casually, as though you’re used to it.’

  ‘Sometimes. We all used different names. Of course we did. You play a part, and you need a name to go with the part. It was just part of the job, but Martha suited her and sometimes we would forget and I would just call her Martha. Look, if you’ve done with me, I really must go. Some of us have to work for a living.’

  ‘Take this photograph with you,’ Henry told her. ‘I have a second copy. It might be that you remember where you have seen this man before, because I know that you have. You are not good at lying, Mrs Conway.’

  She snatched at the photograph and stuffed it into her bag. Henry waited for her to go, finishing his coffee and checking the time before picking up his travelling bag and heading towards the station. So, what had she told him? he wondered. He wished he had time to go back to Scotland Yard and look through the catalogues of booking photographs they held there. But his departure was already later than he had intended. Something at the back of his mind was telling him that he knew the face, but that it was not from recent history. Perhaps Mickey would know. Or perhaps he had just seen it in one of the society newspapers his sister read, and which he had skimmed on occasion. ‘It is as well to keep up with the gossip, Henry,’ she had told him when he had jibed her on this habit. ‘You should always go into a conflict knowing your enemy.’ Henry had the unsettling feeling that he was entering this particular conflict not knowing his enemy at all.

  FOURTEEN

  Henry arrived back in Southwell to find that once more events had overtaken them. Dr Mason’s house had been broken into and Dr Mason had been attacked. On hearing the news, he made his way to the Mason house and found Mickey and Emory examining the French windows. The lock had not been fixed, and this was now the point of entry for a vicious attack.

  ‘The neighbours heard noise, they came round and hammered on the door, this was about five o’clock this morning. Someone had thrown poisoned meat out for the dogs. The big one’s dead, the little one might just pull through. Typical terrier.’

  ‘We had constables doing extra patrols,’ Emory said. ‘But no one on the spot all the time, not since the doctor moved back. He said he didn’t want that, and frankly we don’t have the manpower for it. He said he’d lock his doors, but that back one, well we both know a child to get through it. But it was no child did this.’

  The room that Mason had used as his dispensary had been completely ransacked. Medicines were strewn across the floor and books shredded.

  ‘Has the whole house been attacked like this?’

  ‘Mostly the downstairs. And much of the chaos in here has been caused because Dr Mason came down and confronted the housebreaker. It’s possible they did not know the doctor had returned, the house was in darkness and it is well known that he’d been staying with Dr Phillips. Mason came down with the poker in his hand, but whoever was here disarmed him and turned his weapon against the unfortunate man.’

  ‘Will he survive?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Mickey said. ‘We found him alive, only because the neighbour disturbed proceedings and set up a hue and cry. The neighbours came out and broke down the door and they found the poor doctor lying over there, half in and half out of the French doors.’

  Henry walked over. A smear of blood seemed to indicate where a hand had grasped the frame. Blood cast off from a weapon, repeatedly raised and then falling on the unfortunate victim, had spattered across the walls and ceiling. A pool of blood stained the slabs outside the French doors. ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘No, he was too far gone. Unconscious by the time the neighbours broke in. He is literally a bloody mess and I certainly doubt he will survive the day.’

  ‘So what were they looking for?’

  ‘The key?’ Emory suggested. ‘That makes no sense. Anything that key locked could be broken open with a teaspoon. So did he actually have what they sought? Was it here? It certainly doesn’t look as if he knew he had it and surely if they thought he did, they’d have tried to extract the information first.’

  ‘It’s most likely they didn’t realize he’d returned home,’ Mickey agreed.

  ‘Has anything been stolen from the dispensary? Those addicted to opiates, perhaps …?’

  ‘No sign of anything being gone. Of course, it’s hard to tell with all the mess, but Dr Phillips informed us that his colleague kept such medicines in that locked cabinet over there. The cabinet is still locked, it has simply been knocked to the floor.’

  While Mickey examined the crime scene, Henry told them both what he had discovered in London and they exchanged information in return.

  ‘Complications on complications,’ Mickey said. ‘But the connection to Lord Elliston is an interesting thing. I wonder if this Kirkland character was with him on the day. With this friend that Martha Mason made an enemy of.’

  Henry left them to it and returned to the police station. It was mid-afternoon and he was hoping that any results from the fingerprint bureau would now have been forwarded to them. He was not disappointed. He read the communication and then turned on his heel and headed straight back to the Mason house.

  Mickey Hitchens was kneeling on the dispensary floor, dislodging broken glass from beneath a cabinet.

  ‘Mickey, we have a very interesting breakthrough. The photographs of the fingerprints you found on the door of the horsebox, well we have a match and it’s a most unexpected one. The bureau has matched them to one Eric Columbus Davies.’

  Mickey looked up in surprise. ‘I thought he was still safely locked up inside.’

  ‘It would seem not. He was released three months ago.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Mickey said.

  Emory was studying them both with great interest. ‘A known felon.’

  ‘Indeed he is. And it’s suspected. No, more than suspected, that he’s killed before, though we have not been able to prove it. He’s a known razor man, and I’ve seen the victims he’s cut to ribbons. They won’t name him, of course, but once you’ve seen a man’s face cut in a particular way, you recognize the signature. He’s an enforcer with the racing gangs, which probably explains what he was doing up here. And he was known to attack a man with an ice pick; the witnesses to the crime later retracted the statement and said only that they’d seen two men brawling and must have been mistaken about what they first reported. Though the other man’s injuries were consistent with being smashed with an ice pick. His shoulder was almost severed at the joint.’

  Belatedly, Henry remembered the photograph he had in his pocket. He took it out and showed it to Mickey, pointing to the man standing beside the ex-Mrs Kirkland. ‘I feel I know that face, but I cannot place it.’

  Mickey’s eyes narrowed and he rummaged through his capacious memory. Finally he came up with the name. ‘Johnny Sexton,’ he said. ‘Also affiliated with the racing gangs, but he’s not been active for a while. He was a big man just after the war, but it went quiet in ’22 or ’23. I’d all but forgotten about him. Things begin to come together.’

  ‘After a fashion,’ Henry agreed. ‘Now we must find how they come together and how Martha Mason fitted in with all of this. I think we
will need to pay a visit to this Lord Elliston and see if he still has his houseguests after the races.’

  Otis had observed Henry’s meeting with Felicity Conway and seen him showing the young woman a photograph. He hadn’t been able to sit close enough to catch the conversation; Henry spoke quietly, but the girl’s voice travelled and he heard the name Kirkland. Kirkland; so what was the inspector on to?

  What was it he was showing that girl? A photograph of what?

  Otis had left his tea half drunk and pushed by their table, dropping his gaze and trying to make sense of the photograph. On the train he’d had time to think about it further and come to the conclusion that the photograph had something to do with the Kirkland divorce.

  The contact with Martha Mason had been one strand; this was another. It seemed that he and the inspector were chasing the same clues.

  And now Dr Mason was probably dead.

  Otis left his position on watch and wandered back to where the press pack had gathered.

  The household of Dr and Nora Phillips was in complete disarray. Walking there, Henry had glimpsed a swarm of reporters and photographers camped out on Burgage Green close by the police station. He had been careful to avoid them as he made his way down Church Street and on to Queen Street, thence to the Rope Walk.

  The maid servant, Grace Richardson, let him into the house. She looked flustered and anxious. ‘Madam is packing and will be taking the children away,’ she said. ‘Everybody’s most terribly upset, sir.’

  He was directed through to Dr Phillips’ study. Ephraim Phillips did not look pleased to see him.

  ‘What is going on?’ Ephraim Phillips demand to know. ‘Inspector, this is madness. I’m sending Nora and the children well away from here.’

  ‘That is understandable. You will not be going with them?’

  ‘How can I? I not only have my practice to run but now I will have to see to Clive’s too. It may be possible that I can amalgamate them both, maybe take on someone else. It will have to be done.’

  ‘Dr Mason may yet recover.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’ Henry had to admit that he had not as yet. ‘If you had you would not be so stupid. Forgive me, Inspector. We are all deeply upset, as I am sure you can imagine.’

  Dr Phillips closed his study door, shutting out the noise and confusion outside. Children running back and forth, excited to be going on a trip. Nora calling to Grace that she couldn’t find something or other. Grace running up the stairs.

  ‘I trust the ridiculous conversation I had with your sergeant will go no further.’

  ‘If you mean my questions about your relationship with Martha Mason,’ Henry said, ‘then I still do not feel you gave him a satisfactory answer. I will do you the courtesy of waiting until your wife and children have departed, but we will speak again, Dr Phillips.’

  Ephraim Phillips gestured impatiently. ‘You’re wasting your time. I didn’t get Clive killed. I had nothing to do with Martha’s death. You should be getting out there and finding the person that did.’

  ‘Oh, make no mistake, I will,’ Henry assured him. ‘What is your connection with Mr Geoffrey Steiff and his sister, Mrs Regina Edwards? They live in Newark-on-Trent on––’

  ‘I know full well where they live,’ Dr Phillips said impatiently. ‘Regina has a medical background; she sometimes helps out with young women who find themselves pregnant and are in need of care during that pregnancy. There is a hostel for unwed mothers close to here, she is reliable and knowledgeable and the girls learn to trust her very quickly. Adoptions are arranged and the young women go on their way.’

  ‘And she does nothing else, for these young women?’

  ‘I will not even deign to answer that. It is a foolish question. Girls who have fallen pregnant need antenatal care. Those who have fallen by the wayside and find themselves pregnant with bastards, still need antenatal care. The best thing that can be done for such girls is to find places for their babies.’

  ‘I have one more small question. There are rumours that you are a little heavy-handed in your dispensation of morphia to the elderly and the infirm.’

  Dr Phillips laughed bitterly. ‘I don’t have to ask where that must have come from. Miss Georgia Styles. Gossip extraordinaire. She could not accept that when three or four of her friends died this past year, it was because they were old and ill. If I gave morphine to ease the pain of their passing, then that is all I did. I do not like to see people in pain. It is needless.’

  As long as they can pay, Henry thought. It crossed his mind briefly that his mother had died in great pain, despite the fact that his father was a doctor and had access to all the pain relief she might have required. But then, that was typical of his father.

  ‘I wish to have a quick word with your wife.’

  ‘Now look here, you just said—’

  ‘The question I have to ask is nothing to do with you,’ Henry told him coldly. ‘We will speak later. For now, I have a question to ask your wife about some of Mrs Mason’s personal possessions. It seems to me that another woman might answer my questions far more aptly than you would, for example. Unless you have much more intimate knowledge of Mrs Mason’s belongings then you have previously declared.’

  Ephraim looked as though he would like to say more but didn’t think he could control his temper. He pointed to the door. ‘She’s upstairs. You may go up.’

  Henry inclined his head in mild acknowledgement and then left.

  Grace was in the hall and she took Henry up to see Nora Phillips. The children were busy bouncing on the bed and their mother was making no attempt to stop them. She seemed utterly preoccupied with gathering things from the wardrobe and dumping them into a suitcase. Grace was taking them out again and packing properly. A large and fully packed trunk stood nearby; evidently her trip was not intended to be a brief one.

  ‘Mrs Phillips? If I could have a moment or two.’ He could see that she’d been crying.

  ‘First Martha, and now this. Inspector, I do not feel safe in my own house any more. I do not feel safe anywhere.’

  ‘It is probably wise to go away for a little while,’ Henry agreed. ‘Not because I believe you are in any danger, but because this must play on your mind so much. Are you staying with relatives?’

  She nodded. ‘My aunt lives by the sea, the children will love it for the summer. And it is an age since I saw my sister and her family. We had planned to go, but these things kept being put off. I will put them off no longer. I simply want to be away from here, can you understand that?’

  ‘Of course I can. Mrs Phillips, I have one little question to ask you. No, in fact I have two.’

  She paused in the demolition of her wardrobe and sat down on the bed, finally noticing that the children were bouncing there. She told them to get off and to go out and play in the garden. Henry could hear them running down the stairs. She pointed to a bedroom chair and Henry sat down, even though it was too low for him. He stretched his long legs and tried not to look ridiculous.

  ‘I have a photograph here … could you tell me if you recognize anyone?’ He handed her the picture that had been taken outside the courthouse on the day of the Kirkland divorce.

  Nora studied the photograph for a moment and then nodded. ‘Well, Martha is in the background, isn’t she? And the woman standing there on the step, I’ve seen her in the society magazine. Was she Mrs Kirkland? She’s remarried, I believe, one of the magazines had pictures of her wedding about three years ago. I remember because Martha pointed it out to me. She said she met her once and I wondered how. I asked because they must have moved in very, very different circles and Martha said that once she came to the solicitor’s office where she worked. I remember saying I didn’t realize she had worked in a solicitor’s office; I thought the business that she worked in was involved with imports, but she passed it off and said sometimes she worked in other places.

  ‘I must admit, the idea of having a job really appealed to me. Having money of one’s own and res
ponsibilities that don’t involve chasing children around the house.’

  She laughed, slightly embarrassed. ‘I must sound very ungrateful.’

  ‘No,’ Henry told her. ‘I think most people want independence and money of their own. I think it is a natural thing.’

  ‘Then you are an unusual man,’ she said. ‘Most men like their wives to be at home. Are you married, Inspector?’

  ‘No. I know that many police officers are, but this job can make it difficult to maintain any kind of domesticity. I’ve never felt ready to inflict myself or my job on some poor woman.’

  Nora Phillips laughed. Then looked guilty for finding something funny. ‘There is something familiar about the man,’ she said. ‘But I can’t think what.’

  Henry took the photo from her and pointed to the figure of Johnny Sexton, standing beside the now ex-Mrs Kirkland. ‘You mean this man?’

  She nodded. ‘I just have the feeling of having seen him somewhere, but I can’t think where.’

  ‘Do you have acquaintance with Lord Elliston?’ he asked.

  ‘Inspector, we most certainly do not move in those circles. I know him by sight, of course. He too has been in the society pages and I caught a glimpse of him at the racetrack last Monday. Can you believe that it is almost a week since Martha died? It just does not seem possible. None of this seems possible. Was that your second question?’

  ‘No, my second question concerned this.’ He took the key that had been in Martha’s bag from the envelope in his pocket. ‘I wanted to know if you’d seen this. If you had any idea what it was for. It was found in Mrs Mason’s bag, it had either been concealed beneath the reinforcement of the bottom, or it had slid down in there. I wondered if you’d seen it before.’

  ‘But of course I have. It fits this.’

  Henry looked at her in astonishment as she went back to her wardrobe and from the top shelf took a small box that looked as though it had been made as a tea caddy. It looked old and some of the veneer was flaking. Nora brought it across to the bed and set it down and Henry slid the key into the lock. ‘How long have you had this?’