by Gary Dolman
Lucie stared at it for a moment.
“Dear God, Atticus, but the devil has been at work in here! This is without a doubt where Alfred Roberts was killed. One of the blows must have severed an artery.”
“Tell me,” Atticus murmured, “How in God’s name the frail old lady we met in the workhouse yesterday could have done this?”
Chapter 11
When a somewhat shaken Atticus and Lucie Fox re-entered the smoking room of the Annexe, they found Elizabeth sitting by her nurse on one of the chaises longues, gently rocking to-and-fro with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She was singing her lullaby ‘Hush-a-Bye, Baby’ quietly to herself, seemingly oblivious both to the dark stains of her uncle’s lifeblood, smeared starkly across the pure white silk of her new nightgown, and of the photograph opposite her, with the accusing leers of the man himself and of his gentlemen friends, gaping mockingly down at them, safe in their gilded cage high on the wall.
“Miss Wilson – Elizabeth – Lizzie,” Lucie ventured gently, “Do you think we could ask you some questions about what happened last night?”
“It’s one-and-eight-and-eight-and-one and one-and-eight-and-eight-and-one.” Elizabeth’s voice was harsh, like the call of a magpie or a buccaneer’s parrot.
“She doesn’t understand you, Mrs Fox.”
Startled, Atticus and Lucie turned to see Dr Roberts standing suddenly behind them. He was looking visibly more relaxed now.
“I’ve sent James to run and inform the police, just as you asked, Atticus,” he continued. “They should be here presently.”
“Thank you,” replied Atticus curtly. “Their job will not be difficult. The knife used to murder your grandfather was almost certainly taken from the Master’s office at the Union Workhouse. It’s covered in what must be Elizabeth’s bloody fingertip prints, which I can assure you are entirely unique to her, and could have been left by no-one else. She’s sitting there, drenched in his blood, and the murder was committed in her bedroom. No, the police will have an easy task in identifying who the murderer is. The difficult part will be in deciding what to do with her. If, as you say, she cannot even understand my wife’s questions, then she surely won’t be fit to stand trial.”
His voice tailed away as Lucie walked slowly and purposefully up to Elizabeth. Kneeling, she gently took the old lady’s right hand in her own and began to examine it closely. Elizabeth regarded her with mild curiosity as she gently rocked and sang her lullaby:
“And down will come Baby, cradle and all.”
“There is a bloody palm print on the back of her hand,” Lucie remarked softly.
“It’s probably my grandfather’s,” Roberts muttered, “Or it might have been Miss Lovell’s, from when she brought my aunt in here from her bedroom.”
He watched, fascinated, as Lucie took out her pocket handkerchief and pressed it firmly down over the print with her own hand.
“There was blood everywhere,” he continued. “We left it though. We wanted to be careful not to disturb any evidence of what had happened ahead of your arrival.”
“Yet you moved the biggest part of the evidence: your grandfather’s body, to the Surgery.”
The remnants of Atticus’ earlier frustration cut a new edge to his tone.
Roberts shrugged.
Atticus stooped to examine the hand Lucie was holding and as he did so, Elizabeth’s gaze settled onto him. She stopped singing and let out a soft moan. A stream of dark, yellow urine pattered onto the carpet between her skinny ankles.
“It’s fine, Lizzie, you’re safe; you’re quite safe,” the nurse murmured.
“I’m so sorry!” Atticus was utterly mortified. “I didn’t mean to startle her.”
“You weren’t to realise, Atticus.” Roberts squeezed his shoulder reassuringly as he sidled past. Then he too stooped in front of his aunt.
“You’ve had a little misfortune,” he said patiently, soothingly. “You need to go with Mary, Aunt Lizzie. You need to go with her now. She will get you washed and changed into a fresh, clean dress. Go with her now.”
Elizabeth said “Yes, John,” and began to rock once more.
‘Go with her now… Go with her.’
The words pierced her soul like a dagger, spilling memory after memory from their secret places, and sending them skittering through her mind.
Uncle Alfie was looking down at her now, with his face full of contempt.
“Go with the lady now, Lizzie. Be a good girl for your dead mama and do as I say. I shall need my full two hundred pounds worth if I’m to feed you and clothe you all the while ’til you’re grown.”
The woman’s – that woman’s – loathsome face was there with her cruel, hard eyes and her thin lips.
“You paid two hundred pounds for her, Mr Roberts? I thought you said you’d inherited her from your late sister.”
“I did, Mrs Eire, but what I meant was that she would have cost me at least two hundred pounds if I’d bought her on the open market.”
The woman’s eyes turned on her, appraising her from head to foot.
“She’s pretty enough I dare say with nice manners and fine, blonde hair but I could have bought you half a score of girls just like her from Leeds or Bradford for two hundred pounds. They’re all the same below stairs if you take my meaning. Anyways, like you say, she came to you for free so there’s nothing lost I suppose, and nothing to fret about. Let’s get her into the surgery and I’ll patch her up and make her nice and fresh for you again.”
“Thank you, Mrs Eire. But let me tell you first that the value in a fallen girl is not just in what’s below stairs, as you so eloquently put it; it’s in just how far you can make ’em fall. I’ve promised her to Mr Price next week so do a good job on her and there’ll be an extra guinea in it for your efforts.”
She felt again the woman’s bony fingers biting into the soft flesh of her arm. She felt herself being dragged into the surgery, being pushed down onto her back, onto the hard table there. The woman’s cruel eyes were boring into hers and the thin lips beneath them were moving.
“Here, drink this, you little two hundred pound whore. This is going to hurt and I don’t want you wriggling about and spoiling my needlework, and costing me my extra guinea.”
She felt oily liquid on her tongue, felt it falling into her throat and tasted its bitter, acrid tang. It was medicine for naughty girls, she knew. One of Uncle Alfie’s gentleman friends had made her drink some so that she wouldn’t remember him properly. But she did remember; she remembered he was a vicar and that he had come to punish her for the sake of her soul. Then she realised with a sudden wave of panic that she was going to be punished again, here, by this woman. But how could a woman punish her? She could still feel the stinging and still feel the hurt deep in her belly, where first Uncle Alfie and then his two gentlemen friends had punished her already. How could a woman do that?
Mrs Eire was holding up a tiny sewing needle. Her thin lips were moving as she tried to thread it, but now she couldn’t hear the words she was saying. The room was beginning to float and she was only vaguely aware of her dress being pushed up, of her knees being pulled roughly apart and of the sudden, sharp pains; pains that pierced her even through the fog of the medicine, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing.
Lucie Fox waited until she heard the door of the Annexe’s bathroom click shut behind the nurse and her shambling charge.
Then she asked: “Dr Roberts, what could have caused Elizabeth to commit such a violent act? She’s senile, but she’s not mad as such, is she?”
“No, Mrs Fox, Elizabeth is certainly not mad, not in the true and proper sense of the word anyway, nor is she really an imbecile as the Master of the Union Workhouse would have us believe. She simply presents the classic symptoms of senile dementia; the loss of the memory of recent events, an inability to perform even simple tasks, a loss of continence, and so on.”
His eyes darted along the hall towards the sudden sound of running water behind the locke
d bathroom door.
“Sometimes, it can also cause sufferers to be unmannerly, hostile and even downright violent, although until last night, we’d never observed anything like that in my aunt. I can tell you both in confidence that Aunt Elizabeth didn’t have a happy childhood with my grandfather. Although he carefully cultivated this reputation he had of being a good, benevolent old fellow and a great philanthropist, he was impossibly cruel to her, and that, coupled with the death of her father when she was very young, and then that of her mother as well, has left her with deep emotional scars. I can see clearly now that my judgement was flawed. Those scars must have been ripped open again by the sight of her childhood tormentor, and I’m afraid that her emotions must simply have overwhelmed her. She already had a knife in her hand, which as you say, she had taken from the workhouse, and I suppose that the result was… inevitable.”
Lucie frowned.
“But if she has senile dementia, she couldn’t possibly have planned the attack with malice aforethought, so why did she steal a knife?”
“Have you seen Aunt Elizabeth’s arms by any chance, Mrs Fox?” Roberts sounded suddenly weary.
Lucie shook her head, puzzled.
“Well, if you had, you would have seen that she barely has a patch of skin left on them that isn’t covered in cicatrices – in old scars – and in new scars for that matter. Mary tells me that she has a fresh set of wounds that must have been made only yesterday, probably as you were talking in Liddle’s office or even as you were bringing her across here. She cuts herself on her arms and on her breasts; she cuts herself with knives, scissors, broken glass, anything she can get her hands on, so that the pain of the wounds can shut out the pain of her memories. Mary tells me that she could never really be trusted with a knife for fear of her taking it away to cut herself. It’s the memories, you see; it’s her awful, awful memories.”
“My wife remarked only this morning that Miss Elizabeth seemed to be suffering from a form of battle fatigue.” Atticus said.
“Battle fatigue!”
Roberts’ expression changed in an instant from weariness, to thoughtfulness, to downright exultation.
“You said that, Mrs Fox: that she suffers from battle fatigue? Ye gods, that’s brilliant! I never thought to describe it that way. You’re quite correct, of course; Aunt Elizabeth’s experiences, traumatic experiences all of them, reinforced by a lifetime in the workhouse, have indeed caused her to suffer a kind of battle fatigue. I’ll tell the police exactly that. Mrs Fox, you must tell them that too, and be sure to tell them that you are a nurse, a trained nurse… Battle fatigue, yes, of course.”
The silence that followed was interrupted by a gentle knock on the open door. It was Petty, the butler.
“Excuse me sir, but I have two policemen from the West Yorkshire Constabulary here to see you; a Detective Inspector Douglas, and Detective Sergeant Hainsworth.”
“Indeed you have, Dr Roberts, and with respect, sir, we should have been called for hours ago,” said a disembodied voice from the corridor beyond Petty.
Then, without waiting to be shown in, two large and stocky men pushed past the butler and strutted into the room. Their entrance mirrored the inflection in their greeting, which was aggressive, disdainful and sneering.
The first’s eyes darted around the room, appraising everything. They lingered for a second or two on Lucie, and then finally came to rest on Atticus and Dr Roberts.
“I am Detective Inspector Douglas; which of you gentlemen is Dr Michael Roberts?” he asked of the space somewhere between them.
The doctor made as if to rise from his chair but Douglas ignored him, fixing his glare instead on Atticus.
“And you are?”
“Fox, Atticus Fox, of A & L Fox, commissioned investigators,” Atticus said, completing the sentence for him. “And this lady is my wife.”
“Upon my soul,” Douglas exclaimed, the sneer in his tone rank and unmistakable. “Detective Sergeant, it would seem that we’re in the esteemed company of none other than the noted A and L Fox; Harrogate’s very own commissioned investigators.”
“Are we indeed?” the sergeant replied, taking up the game enthusiastically. “Now that’s a treat, and no mistake.”
“Isn’t it?” Douglas agreed. “So that would explain why Dr Roberts took so long to send for us. Upon my honour, Sergeant, I wonder why he bothered to send for us at all. No doubt Mr and Mrs Fox will have the whole case sewn up already, with the murderer on the gallows, prayers said, and all ready to drop.”
The detective inspector chuckled mirthlessly at his own wit, and then stopped laughing and said: “So why are you here, Mr Atticus Fox, commissioned investigator?”
Atticus, his heckles up, met Douglas’ stare directly.
“We are here on Dr Roberts’ express invitation,” he growled. “There was a murder in this house last night, Detective Inspector. The likely perpetrator, a relation of the family as it happens, was traced, contacted and brought here by my wife and me only yesterday. That was our commission, not the investigation of the murder.”
Douglas stared intently at Atticus for several, long, highly charged seconds, as if sifting his story for flaws. He found none.
“I am very pleased to hear it, Mr Fox. Reuniting missing relatives is what you people should be used for, and nothing more.”
He held Atticus in a silent battle of wills for a few moments longer before turning his attention to Roberts.
“Now, Doctor, perhaps you can tell us exactly what happened here last night.”
As he and the sergeant settled themselves comfortably side-by-side on one of the nearby chaises longues, Roberts licked his lips and darted a pleading glance to Atticus.
“May I?” Atticus began.
“No, you most certainly may not, Mr Fox. You brought this ‘relation of the family’ here, and so your task is complete. I asked the good doctor here what happened, and with all due respect to him, I expect him to answer me.”
Douglas’ eyes remained fixed on Roberts’.
“Very well, Inspector, here goes: The relation of the family Mr Fox previously described as the likely killer of my grandfather is my Aunt, Elizabeth Wilson. She used to live here many years ago with my grandfather, who was also her uncle.”
“Your grandfather being Mr Alfred Roberts, the deceased,” Hainsworth interrupted.
“Yes, Detective Sergeant. My aunt left the house when she was still just a girl and we decided that it would…”
“‘We decided’? Dr Roberts… whom do you mean by ‘we’?” Douglas demanded.
“I beg your pardon, Inspector Douglas, I meant ‘I’. I decided that it would be for the best if she were to return here to Sessrum House to live out her dotage with me.”
Douglas regarded him thoughtfully.
“And precisely why did ‘you’ decide that would that be for the best, Doctor?”
“It was because my aunt suffers from senile dementia.”
Roberts’ voice seemed suddenly stronger, more confident. He was on his home ground.
“She’s quite elderly and her condition is deteriorating rapidly. I decided as a psychiatric doctor that it would be better if she lived here, under my direct care. I also brought in a nurse to attend to her daily needs.”
“Very noble of you, I’m sure. And this happened only yesterday, as Mr Fox has so kindly told us already. But then tell me, why would you need, let me see, commissioned investigators, of Mr and Mrs Fox’ esteemed reputation, just to fetch your elderly aunt to come and live with you? Surely any common cabriolet driver could have fetched her for a couple of shillings?”
Roberts hesitated and threw a second pleading glance at Atticus.
“Miss Wilson spent many years at addresses in Starbeck and Knaresborough, Inspector,” Atticus replied for him. “Dr Roberts was not yet born at the time that she left this house, and the family had long since lost all contact. We needed to trace her whereabouts before we could bring her back.”
Douglas’ gaze shifted between Atticus and Roberts, and then fell on Lucie.
He said: “I have been a serving policeman for well over five-and-twenty years now, Mrs Fox. During that time, I have not been idle. No ma’am. I have developed many, very useful skills. One of those skills is the uncanny ability to know when someone is not being entirely straightforward with me, and I am getting that distinct impression now, with your husband and with your client.”
Lucie smiled disarmingly.
“Very well, Inspector: What my husband and our principal have not yet had chance to tell you is that Miss Wilson has been living in workhouses since she left Sessrum House. Those were the addresses in Starbeck and Knaresborough my husband was referring to. She didn’t care at all for her uncle who by all accounts was very unkind to her, and she fled to the poor-law when she was just fifteen years old.”
“Ah, at last… Finally we make progress. Thank you, Mrs Fox. That wasn’t too difficult now, was it? Don’t be shy of telling us the family secrets. We’re quite used to them. I always say, don’t I, Hainsworth, that there’s many a dark secret to be found lurking behind the prettily-painted doors of the well-to-do.”
He leaned back into the chaise longue and rested his hands comfortably behind his head.
“Do go on with your tale, Doctor. It’s becoming quite intriguing.”
Roberts licked his lips.
“Very well, Inspector: Sister Lovell, the nurse who came with Aunt Elizabeth from… well, from the Union Workhouse at Knaresborough, put her to her bed last night and then retired to her own room, which is just adjacent to it. I sat in here for a while and had a glass or two of brandy before going to my own room in the main house.”
“Your own room in the main house?”
Douglas’ raised eyebrows and accusing tone turned the statement into a stinging question.
